Labour has accused the government of creating “a perfect storm” in England’s teaching workforce, after analysis revealed the scale of the crisis, with teachers old and new quitting the classroom and too few replacing them.
A teacher who qualified in 2010 is 15% more likely to have left teaching within a decade than one who qualified in 2000, according to Labour’s analysis of the most recently available official figures.
There is also a concerning gap between the number of teachers quitting the profession and those entering it, Labour says. Its research found 36,262 left the teaching profession in 2020/21, compared with 34,394 who joined via initial teacher training, leaving a shortfall of 1,868.
The government’s own teacher training statistics, published in December, revealed recruitment down by a fifth, which was described as “catastrophic”. Fresh analysis by Labour, however, found that outside London recruitment is down by nearly a third compared with 2019/20.
Labour says the recruitment crisis threatens to jeopardise the quality of pupils’ education and harm the life chances of children, particularly in the north of England and the Midlands.
