ASCL: Teacher trainee shortfall is ‘deeply concerning’

Commenting on the publication today of the Initial teacher training: trainee number census - 2017 to 2018 (see Table 1c), Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said:

“It is deeply concerning to see that the government target for recruiting secondary school trainee teachers has been significantly missed. It is the fifth successive year that secondary trainee recruitment has failed to match the identified need, and on this occasion only 80% of the target has been achieved – a shortfall of 3,731 new entrants. Out of 15 subjects, only two have enough new recruits.

“We simply cannot go on like this. There are severe teacher shortages in many subjects and in many areas of the country, and this is having a real and detrimental impact on the quality of education that we able to provide to our young people.

“It is imperative that we better incentivise teaching as a career, not least through a cost-of-living pay increase which addresses the significant real-terms decline in teaching salaries and which is fully funded by the government.

“We also need to work together with the government to reduce teacher workload and put the joy back into teaching.”