Conservative response to embargoed public accounts committee report on teacher recruitment

Laura Trott MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Education, said: 

“Labour are in chaos over their broken manifesto pledge to hire more teachers.  

“They promised that taxing education would pay for new staff, yet that money is now being diverted to house illegal immigrants. Their first milestone for school readiness was hiring 6,500 new teachers, but instead there are 400 fewer.  

“Under Labour, teacher numbers are falling. This government is defined by U-turns and broken promises. Parents, teachers, and children deserve better.” 

Notes to Editors:  

One of Labour's flagship manifesto pledges was to recruit 6,500 teachers across England:

• Labour pledged to recruit 6,500 new teachers in their 2024 General Election manifesto. In their 2024 General Election manifesto, Labour pledged to ‘recruit 6,500 teachers in key subjects to prepare children for life, work and the future, paid for by ending tax breaks for private schools' (The Labour Party, Change, 13 June 2024, link).

• The Education Secretary reiterated the policy to recruit 6,500 new teachers in a primary school.PHILLIPSON: ‘We know that nothing matters more to the quality of a child's education than the teaching they get. And all of our children deserve to be taught by the best teachers. That's why Labour will recruit six and a half thousands new teachers'. She filmed this video with clips from a primary school, reinforcing that primary school teachers will be included in the recruitment of 6,500 additional teachers (Laura Trott, Twitter, 11 June 2025, link).

• Education Minister Catherine McKinnell clarified that this pledge was for teachers ‘across schools and colleges over the course of this parliament'. Conservative MP Damian Hinds asked ‘which phases of education count towards the 6,500 target of new expert teachers', to which McKinnell said, ‘This government will work with the sector to deliver its pledge to recruit 6,500 additional teachers across schools and colleges over the course of this parliament to raise standards for children and young people' (UK Parliament, 4 October 2024, UIN 5985, link).

However, Labour are now fiddling the figures to deceive the public into thinking they are well on their way to meeting their target when the reality is teacher numbers are falling on their watch:

• On 6 June, the Department for Education said they are ‘over a third of the way' to recruiting their flagship target of 6,500 teachers. The Department for Education shared a graphic that said Labour have recruited 2,346 more teachers in secondary and special schools compared to last year and the yare ‘already over a third of the way to [their] Plan for change target of recruiting 6,500 teachers' (Department for Education,Twitter, 6 June 2025, link).

• However, the Department for Education's own statistics show that there are 400 fewer teachers because of a drop in 2,900 primary school teachers. Published on 5 June, the Department for Education's own official statistics show that there are 468,300 FTE teachers, a decrease of 400 since last year – as a result of a decrease of 2,900 state-funded nursery and primary school teachers, in addition to an increase of 1,400 secondary and special teachers (Gov.UK, School Workforce in England, 5 June 2025, link).

• Education Secretary then said Labour are delivering on their promise to recruit an additional 6,500 expert teachers across just secondary schools, special schools, and colleges ‘over the course of this Parliament'. PHILLIPSON: ‘I am today providing an update on the steps we are taking to drive high standards for every child and deliver our promise to recruit an additional 6,500 expert teachers across secondary and special schools, and our colleges, over the course of this Parliament' (Hansard, 22 May 2025, Vol.767 Col.47,link).

• The Department for Education said that primary school teachers are now being excluded in the target because of falling birth rates. A spokesperson said, ‘The country's birth rate is falling, meaning fewer children in primary schools, so it would clearly be nonsensical for primaries to be part of the pledge' (The Telegraph, 9 June 2025, link).

• The National Foundation for Educational Research said the Education Secretary's wording ‘seems to deliberately exclude primary schools from the definition', adding that he ‘wouldn't be surprised if that is the case when they do publish the definition'. The lead economist at the National Foundation for Educational Research, Jack Worth, said ‘this is because primary pupil numbers are falling slightly and expected to fall further over the next few years' (TES, 5 June 2025, link).

This is in addition to the Department admitting it still has no plan to fund Labour's pledge after 11 months in office:

• The Department for Education still has no idea how to deliver Labour's non-ambitious pledge to recruit 6,500 extra teachers ten months into a Labour Government, commenting it will be ‘significantly challenging to deliver'. The National Audit Office's recent report said, ‘DfE has yet to formalise its delivery plans, which will need to align with government funding and wider spending priorities…Ten months after the pledge was announced, it currently assesses its confidence in delivering the pledge as significantly challenging given the fiscal context' (National Audit Office, Teacher Workforce: Secondary and Further Education, 30 April 2025, link).

This is on top of Labour's disastrous Jobs Tax, which is forcing schools to make thousands of teachers redundant:

• The Association of School and College Leaders said that schools are up to 20 to 30 per cent short of the money they needed to pay NICs, equating to a loss of over 6,900 teachers. ASCL said this shortfall could equate to losing at least two teachers at an average-sized secondary school, which would equate to a loss of 6,904 teachers for all of England's 3,453 state-funded secondary schools – hundreds more than the 6,500 extra teachers Labour promised (I News, 26 March 2025, link). 

And teacher vacancies being at their highest since records began:

• The National Foundation for Educational Research found that teacher vacancies in England were at their highest since records began. The National Foundation for Educational Research reported, ‘Teacher unfilled vacancy levels are at their highest rates since records began in 2010, and June's Spending Review is the Government's last chance to hit its target to recruit 6,500 new teachers' (NFER, Press Release, 13 March 2025,link).

The Prime Minister repeatedly promised to spend any money raised from taxing education on the state school system – but he himself admits this is no longer the case:

• The Prime Minister repeatedly vowed that his Education Tax would fund state schools—now he admits it's going to ‘affordable housing' for illegal migrants instead in the latest of his bare-faced lies. Keir Starmer tweeted, ‘In the budget last year, my government made the tough but fair decision to apply VAT to private schools. The Tories opposed it. Reform opposed it. Today, because of that choice, we have announced the largest investment in affordable housing in a generation' (Keir Starmer, Twitter, 11 June 2025, link).