Increase in teacher shortages, NAO report confirms

A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) has claimed that teacher shortages in England are growing and the government has missed its recruitment targets for four years.

Despite spending £700 million a year on recruiting and training new teachers, the government is missing crucial targets, with the report calling for it to ‘demonstrate how new arrangements are improving the quality of teaching on classrooms’.

The NAO found that 53 per cent of the 44,900 full time teachers entering the profession in 2014 were newly qualified, with the remainder either returning to teaching after a break or moving into the state-funded sector from elsewhere. More strikingly, the number of teachers leaving the profession between 2011 and 2014 increased by 11 per cent, and the percentage of those who chose to leave before retirement age increased from 64 per cent to 75 per cent.

While the overall number of teachers has kept pace with changing pupil numbers, the NAO reported that 54 per cent of school leaders in areas with large proportions of disadvantaged pupils find attracting and keeping good teachers is ‘a major problem’.

This has led to some classes in secondary schools being taught by teachers without a relevant post-A level qualification in the subject. For example, the proportion of physics classes being taught by a teacher without such a qualification rose from 21 per cent to 28 per cent between 2010 and 2014.

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said: “Training a sufficient number of new teachers of the right quality is key to the success of all the money spent on England’s schools. The Department, however, has missed its recruitment targets for the last four years and there are signs that teacher shortages are growing.

“Until the Department meets its targets and can show how its approach is improving trainee recruitment, quality and retention, we cannot conclude that the arrangements for training new teachers are value for money.”

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), said: "It is shocking that at a time of rising pupil numbers the Department for Education has missed its teacher trainee recruitment targets for the last four years. If 14 out of 17 secondary subjects had unfilled training places in 2015, this means that nearly every secondary subject is now a shortage subject. This will make it increasingly hard for schools to find enough trained teachers and force some to raise class sizes or cut the range of subjects they teach.

"It is all too easy for politicians to repeat the mantra that no education system can exceed the quality of its teachers. They must now explain to parents how teacher quality can be maintained when the profession is attracting, and retaining, too few teachers."

Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "The fact that government has missed its recruitment figures for the past four years is a sad indictment of the effect their education policies are having on the profession.

"Schools are struggling to fill posts and children are being taught in larger class sizes, often with a teacher who does not have the specialisation in the subject they are taking. This will clearly impact on children's education. Unless the government radically tackles the pay, workload and excessive accountability that teachers currently suffer, this is a situation that will get increasingly worse."