Teacher vacancies are at their highest rates since records began, a report shows.
Almost as many working-age people are leaving teaching as those retiring, with the gap at its smallest ever, according to the National Foundation for Education Research.
Poor pupil behaviour is one of the fastest-growing contributors to excessive workload, which is driving many teachers from the profession, the foundation’s annual report found.
It urges the government to increase its planned pay rise for teachers from 2.8 per cent to above 3 per cent in an attempt to address the problem.
Children are now taught in larger class sizes and, increasingly, by unqualified and non-subject specialist teachers.
Unfilled vacancies reached six per 1,000 teachers in the academic year 2023-24 — double the pre-pandemic rate and six times higher than in 2010-11.
Trainee recruitment for all but five secondary subjects was below target for this academic year and this is unlikely to change for next year.
The report says the spending review due in June is the last chance for the government to meet its target of 6,500 new teachers, who are supposed to be funded by VAT being added to private school fees.
It says the severity of the teacher supply crisis means the review is a “now or never” moment.
There are growing signs of teacher shortages in schools having a negative impact on the quality of education for pupils in England, the report says.
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Fifteen per cent of secondary pupils were in classes of more than 30 in 2023-24, up from 10 per cent in 2015-16.
Government figures in December showed that 88 per cent of the government’s initial teacher training (ITT) target for primary schools was reached in 2024-25, down from 94 per cent in 2023-24.
The government achieved just 62 per cent of its postgraduate secondary ITT recruitment target for this year.
The report, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, said: “Sluggish recruitment and persistently high leaving rates have led to real impacts on schools and pupils. Schools have also become more reliant on unqualified teachers to fill gaps in their workforce, while non-specialist teachers teaching secondary subjects like maths and physics have become more common.”
“The government’s focus on recruiting 6,500 additional teachers is a welcome acknowledgement of the threat to educational quality posed by the worsening teacher supply challenge in England.
“However, delivering on this ambition by the end of the current parliament will require significant, focused policy action.”
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Last year school teachers in England were offered a fully funded 5.5 per cent pay rise for 2024/25.
The Department for Education said in December — in written evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body — that a 2.8 per cent pay rise for teachers in 2025/26 would maintain the competitiveness of teachers’ pay.
However, the National Foundation’s report has suggested that a 2.8 per cent pay rise from September would be “a missed opportunity to make further gains on teacher pay”.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said: “The profession has grown weary of successive education secretaries promising fixes that never come.
“The NEU is carrying out an indicative ballot of its members to gauge willingness to strike over the government’s completely unfunded recommendation of a 2.8 per cent pay award for 2025/26.”
