(Lab):...That is, of
course, poverty. In saying this, he echoed points made by the
National Education Union about the need for a
plan to tackle, among other things, the root causes of persistent
post-Covid absence, a plan that should focus on the impact of
poverty, insecure housing and mental health—all absent from the
Speech.
The advanced British standard would also face a challenge, in
that there are currently insufficient teachers in our schools,
with future prospects not looking good. While the Schools
Minister talks about this being the best
time to be a teacher, recruitment figures to the profession seem
to give the lie to that. The Government recruited only 59% of
their target for trainee secondary teachers this year, with a
projection of only 50% for next year. Retention continues to be a
big problem. Some 25% of teachers leave within three years and
about a third within five years, and only 60% remain after nine
years. That is not good enough. The Government will say that the
number of teachers has increased by 27,000 since 2010, but the
number of pupils has increased by close to 995,000.
The NEU calculates
that that equates to 37 extra pupils for every extra teacher.
Clearly, more teachers are needed.
I could give chapter and verse on the number of teachers who are
not properly qualified to teach the subjects on their timetable,
but I will just say this about English and maths: one in six
English teachers and one in five maths teachers has no post
A-level qualification in the subject—yet another indication that
the advanced British standard may well have problems.
Turning to the state of our school buildings, reinforced
autoclaved aerated concrete—RAAC—is, as the NEU says,
just the tip of the iceberg of the acute problems caused by the
real-terms decline in capital spending of 44% between 2009-10 and
2019-20. The Office of Government Property has calculated that to
maintain the school estate in line with best practice—and surely
our children deserve conditions in which to learn that represent
best practice—the Government should be spending £7 billion a
year. The current figure is £2.6 billion, so perhaps that is
another idea for the Autumn Statement...
For context, OPEN HERE
