The number of teachers in schools in England is in crisis, with problems recruiting and retaining high quality teachers.
This morning’s Teacher Labour Market in England report from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) outlines the scale of the challenge – recruitment targets are likely to continue to be missed, and there are increasing difficulties in retaining teachers due to workload and pay pressures.
This follows last week’s Department for Education announcement of its 2024–25 targets for postgraduate initial teacher education recruitment – DfE anticipates that it will need 33,355 trainee teachers. This is six per cent fewer teachers than the 2023–24 target, despite missing that target by almost 50 per cent for secondary school teacher applicants. Notwithstanding this reduction, NFER is forecasting under-recruitment in 10 out of 17 secondary subjects for the coming year.
This reduced target is justified on the grounds that more teachers are expected to return to the profession and that while secondary pupil numbers are increasing, they are doing so at a slower rate. The increased international applications this year, on the back of new government initiatives, might also be masking the scale of the problem as many of these applications are not high quality.
This reduction in the target feels optimistic at best, and when seen in the context of the additional teachers needed to deliver more subjects at A level through the Advanced British Standard seems divorced from reality. Teacher recruitment targets have been regularly missed for almost ten years, particularly in subject areas such as maths and physics, and only 26,955 trainees were recruited last year. This reduction in the target is perhaps more driven by the desire to be seen to be missing the target by less, rather than a need for fewer teachers.
In December GuildHE launched its Teacher Education Manifesto, highlighting the central role of universities in helping to tackle this shortage in the number of teachers. Universities deliver teacher education at scale, taking pressure off schools and grounding teacher education in the evidence of how best to enhance pupil learning.
The shortage of teachers stems from various factors, including the challenge of attracting new trainees, the financial burden of teacher training, and the lack of sufficient placement places. Additionally, the constantly changing landscape of education policies and accreditation systems has destabilised the teacher training market. We therefore proposed a number of key recommendations to tackle this.
Recruitment and retention
To address the shortage, it’s crucial to incentivise more people to enter the teaching profession and support them throughout their training. Financial support, such as scholarships and bursaries, has been proven to increase applications and help students complete their studies.
However, these financial incentives need to be announced well in advance to alleviate concerns about accumulating debt. Currently bursaries are announced on an annual cycle with the amount of funding available changing annually. This makes it difficult for institutions to promote bursaries a couple of years in advance to build interest in teaching and for students to know with any certainty whether they will get a bursary and how much it might be. Government should announce bursaries as part of the comprehensive spending review process with funding amounts known several years in advance – and there should be bursaries available for all teacher training students.
Universities play a vital role in training teachers, but recent reforms have sidelined many of them from teacher education. This has led to some geographical areas in the UK without any accredited teacher training providers. It’s essential to encourage universities back into teacher training and provide them with sufficient funding to deliver high-quality education in partnership with schools.
Retaining experienced teachers is as crucial as attracting new ones. Continuous professional development, especially in areas such as the use of new technologies, is key to retaining teachers and universities can play a key role in delivering this type of CPD. Additionally, the increasing political expectations around extending the availability of early years provision will mean that more training will be needed for early years educators and this may also help increase the prestige of the profession.
Thinking long term
The challenge of recruiting teachers is in part a result of successive government policy interventions all claiming to raise the quality of new teachers but which in aggregate have failed to ensure sufficiency, damaged a highly effective higher education ITT infrastructure, thrown away tools for effective management of teacher supply, and treated high quality providers with disdain. If we do not get this right the impact will be worst on the children from the most educationally and economically deprived homes and in the most challenged areas with the weakest schools but it will also impact on the economic and social prosperity of the country as a whole.
The current approach isn’t working. Constant policy interventions from DfE that are not evidence-based have resulted in short-termism and confusion. There needs to be a strategic, stable and well-designed approach to tackling this issue – and it should be led by an expert agency free from political intervention and focused on teacher supply and quality.
This body should focus on ensuring high-quality teacher training provision and support, rather than the short-term policy interventions that have characterised the last decade. We would propose the creation of a non-departmental public body similar to the Training and Development Agency for Schools which used to have oversight of this issue. Additionally, the inspection process should prioritise the continuous improvement of teacher education rather than solely focusing on grade outcomes.
Universities are essential to the education and supply of teachers and will play a pivotal role in addressing the shortage of teachers in schools – but we can’t do this alone. We need a coordinated effort from policymakers, universities, schools and other stakeholders to implement immediate and long-term solutions. By incentivising more people into teacher training through bursaries and funding for placements, ensuring high-quality training places and retaining experienced teachers, we can mitigate the crisis. It is only by taking a strategic approach that we can ensure a sustainable and robust supply of teachers for the future, and universities look forward to playing their part in addressing this crisis.
