Labour’s Pledge to Recruit New Teachers Not Enough to Prevent ‘Serious Shortage’

Labour’s key election pledge to recruit 6500 new teachers will not be enough to prevent a serious shortage in secondary schools and further education colleges by 2028, the National Audit Office (NAO) says in a report published today.

The NAO estimates that in the worst case scenario, they may need 14,000 new teachers—the greatest shortage being in further education colleges to teach new T-line courses, and where teachers are paid, on average £10,000 less a year than in secondary schools.

The aim was to reverse the record of previous Conservative and coalition Governments since 2010, who met recruitment targets only once in 14 years. The number of teachers recruited in the last year the Conservatives were in office was the lowest ever—only 8,700 newly qualified teachers started work in 2023/24, while 8,200 teachers returned to the profession.

The previous Government saw record numbers of teachers leaving the profession with 19,000 exiting in 2022-23, higher than the pre-pandemic level of 18,500 in 2018-19. Just over a third left secondary schools after five years, citing high workloads, stress, and lack of well being. The number of teachers in schools has risen by 3% to 217,600 over the last 10 years but the number of pupils has increased by 15%.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown, Conservative chair of the Commons Accounts Committee, said: “The Department of Education assesses that meeting the Government’s pledge of 6,500 more teachers will be very challenging. Even if met, it is not clear that this will be enough to fix the nationwide shortage of teachers amidst growing numbers of students.

Targets for training new teachers have been repeatedly missed and over a third of teachers leave within their first five years. Teachers need to feel values and rewarded. There needs to be a new cross-sector approach to recruiting and retaining enough high-quality teachers otherwise, workforce challenges will continue to pose a real threat to young people’s education and life prospects

Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown, hair of the Commons Accounts Committee

Labour decided to tackle the shortage by investing £700 million, providing incentives to recruit teachers in shortage subjects. These include training bursaries, opportunities for career development, and retention payments of up to £6,000 to those qualified to teach secondary school maths, physics, chemistry, or computing, who choose to teach in disadvantaged schools in the first five years of their career.

But the latest figures show that many of the attempts to recruit new teachers have failed. Targets to recruit new physics teachers were missed by 69%, computing by 63% and modern languages by 57%. Recruitment of new classics, English, biology and history teachers exceeded targets.

The Department for Education (DfE) told the NAO that Labour’s target was extremely challenging and cited lack of competitive pay — despite the new Government giving teachers a 5.5% pay rise last year — as one of the reasons for the failure to recruit enough teachers in shortage subjects.

 This was backed up by stakeholders who submitted evidence to the NAO, who identified competitive pay as the most effective way to improve teacher retention and recruitment. Government needs to consider pay decisions for long-term affordability, pending a multi-year spending review.

The report will also help unions representing teachers make a case for higher pay in the next pay round.

The NAO also picked up concern in the ministry that Chancellor Rachel Reeves further spending review could affect the programme to recruit more teachers.

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “Despite the Government’s pledge, secondary schools and further education colleges face a challenge in securing enough teachers to support growing student numbers. DfE must continue efforts to look at this as a cross-system issue and improve further education workforce data, to allocate funding effectively and ensure all children and young people achieve the best outcomes.”

The Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, told Byline Times:

“The failure to recruit and retain the expert teachers our schools need over the last ten years is stark, which is why our Plan for Change has a clear commitment to recruit an additional 6,500 teachers by the end of this Parliament.

“We’re already seeing green shoots, with two thousand more secondary school teachers training this year, alongside a boost in the number set to begin training in shortage STEM subjects, but there’s still much more to do.

“Following last year’s 5.5% pay award, and with hundreds of millions of pounds being invested to help us turn the tide, I’m determined to restore teaching as the attractive, prestigious profession it should be.”