March 16, 2025 - 1:00pm
When defending its controversial decision to impose VAT on private school fees, the Labour government promised that the end would justify the means: the money raised would be used to recruit 6,500 more teachers over the next five years. Yet with no concrete details about how it would find and retain these teachers, this ambition seems less achievable than ever. A new report from the National Foundation for Education Research has found that the teacher vacancy rate is six times higher than it was in 2010, and that this is having an impact on pupils. In 2015 only 10% of secondary school pupils were in classes of more than 30, whereas now that figure is 15%.
Failure to deliver on this manifesto promise will be profoundly embarrassing. The 6,500 shortfall in teachers is an unrealistically small number. To put this in perspective, last year the UK recruited 13,000 fewer teachers than required, and every year around 40,000 teachers leave the profession. In STEM subjects, the problem is even worse: in 2022, the UK only recruited 17% of the required Physics teachers, meaning we would need 3,500 more teachers just to cover this subject alone.
Exacerbating the problem further, Labour is also diluting its original pledge. The Government initially proposed 6,500 teachers a year, but then changed this to over the course of its term because, according to Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, this is “a rather large number of teachers”. Yet it’s still too low, and effectively meaningless, because it is also not clear whether this target will include the extra number of teachers retained in the sector, or just new recruits. Keir Starmer therefore isn’t exactly promising more teachers, just more than there otherwise would be.
The June spending review will be a critical opportunity for the Government to reveal its plans for education. As well as stagnating pay, teachers are leaving due to poor behaviour, unmanageable workloads, inspection pressures and inflexible working arrangements — all of which will take money and ambition to fix. Yet given the rising cost of borrowing, low growth forecasts, competing priorities for spending (such as on defence), and lack of transparency around exactly how much VAT has been raised, it seems unlikely that Labour will be willing or able to financially commit to one of its key campaign promises.
Private-school families are therefore being penalised so that the Government can supposedly reinvest that money into the state sector, but eight months into Labour’s term it is still unclear exactly when or how things are going to improve. Despite some progress in international league tables, there is a general feeling of inertia in education at the moment. The revolving door of education secretaries, chronic underfunding, underwhelming Ofsted reforms and ever-more complex needs of pupils means change is needed more than ever.
Yet governments lack the vision and imagination to do more than just manage this decline. Schools need the state to fulfil its promises, but we also need greater promises in the first place than tweaking the curriculum for more diversity or raising the teacher headcount by a measly 0.3% a year.
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SubscribeLast year I did some contract work which involved reading some of the many thousands of pages of government guidance/instructions/regulation in schools. It’s no mystery to me as to why they can’t recruit teachers. You have to be a masochist to want to do the job. And certainly you have to be very left wing, those whose inclinations are more sensible need not apply. As the population moves rightwards, my guess is that a lot of other government funded occupations will find it difficult to recruit too.
Just to illustrate your point: about 20 years ago, hearing about the STEM teacher shortage, I considered offering my services part time. I thought naively that the procedure would be as simple as when I was at school – subject qualified people could come in and teach without too much formality. I thought that a Physics Ph.D. with real world experience in computing, maths and a number of sciences would be welcomed with open arms!
Not a bit of it these days. No chance of getting near a classroom without spending several years getting indoctrinated into a teaching certificate. Definitely not worth my while. I wonder how many public spirited STEM professionals are put off part time teaching because some bureaucrats have invented superfluous hurdles?
The more things change the more they stay the same. My cousin taught math and physics. His good friend taught modern languages. Both took early retirement. They complained of the same things the author describes and that was back in the 1980s.
My cousin was very smart. He even helped me with university level math. I can’t help feeling he would have done better in another profession, which is sad given the importance of teachers.
If one ran a chain of kennels whose mission was to turn good dogs into bad dogs….. would it be hard to recruit staff to do this? And to then work in a setting with a bunch of bad dogs?
Now I am not saying modern schools are actually on this track, but one hears stories and gets a kind of feel of how things are, and the sort of zeitgeist of the authority position re crime and punishment, antisocial behavior, respect for law, diligence in work ethic, honour, reliability, politeness…. and one wonders on root causes.
Watching the President’s enthusiastic backing as he destroys the Dept of Education – well, it says a lot on education as an industry now days.
But anyway – AI is about to spring into the chaos and things will get very different, very fast. This article in 3 years, I suspect will read very differently, as a full paradigm change is coming and there is no knowing what that brings (although I feel it will be the ‘bad to worse’ case.)
Schools could be organised much more effectively if their primary purpose was to convey literacy, numeracy and other knowledge. Question is what they are actually for.
With the best interactive AI teaching methods all constantly updating and adapting to an individual child’s needs and motivations, the transmission of educational content could be vastly improved and very possibly this could be done more cheaply.
But schools perform a central function in modern societies where both parents work, in that they warehouse the kids during working hours. Perhaps the future is non-specialist mentor-type teachers, empathetic role models, helping students learn and grow, providing a safe environment where the kids spend the day, but with provision of content in the hands of AI.
Bring back the cane. There is no discipline in schools. Many parents are as ignorant and feckless as their offspring. Some children are impossible to teach with rights but no responsibility. Without proper parental example children run riot in school and impinge on the right to learn of others. I’m sick of the descent of our civilisation in to chaos.
Bring back the cane for parents, do you mean?
Why do we need to have graduates in specific disciplines to be teachers. As an example, why does a physics teacher, teaching GCSE physics, need to have a minimum 2.1 in physics. Surely someone with a decent pass at A level could be very quickly trained to teach the curriculum.
There’s probably something in what you’re saying, but being two years ahead of GCSE is not always going to be enough. Even at A Level there is more emphasis on knowledge and process than on understanding, which is crucial for effective teaching. A teacher educated to A Level standard may have insufficient understanding to guide pupils appropriately.
I think in practice that’s what happens anyway.
If you’re only recruiting 17% of the Physics teachers you need, someone else is teaching Physics.
More to the point how could someone with a first in Physic communicate with a pupil who struggles with the subject.
I had a maths teacher who worked at Bletchley Park during the War. Obviously extremely clever but bloody poor teacher
A good friend of mine, an ethnic white British national, had the misfortune to be born in Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) , his English parents having emigrated there under a British government scheme after WW2. After completing his university studies there he did a post-graduate certificate in education (PGCE) at the then University of Rhodesia. This qualification was in fact validated by the University of Birmingham. He taught A-level English and other subjects at secondary schools there
After being beaten up by Mugabe’s thugs in the early 2000s, he moved to the UK (being a full British citizen by birthright). He was told he would need to obtain Qualified Teachers Status (QTS) in order to be hired as a fully graded teacher as his University of Zimbabwe/Brimingham PGCE. However, none of the schools at which he worked as a supply teacher were motivated or willing to mentor him through this programme. Consequently, my friend has never been able to secure a salaried teacher job and has had to rely on hand-to-mouth supply teaching to make a precarious living. Moreover, because he is not QTS certified he has been employed as a Teaching Assistant on much lower rates of pay.
This guy is an excellent teacher; dedicated, experienced and totally committed to the young people in his educational care. And yet, because of the mindless bureaucracy that governs this country, he has been treated abominably and children who might otherwise have benefited from a superb teacher have been denied the opportunity. The education bureaucracy in the UK absolutely stinks!
The above should have read: … as his University of Zimbabwe/Birmingham PGCE was not recognised by the Department of Education.
Surprise, surprise!
Oh, I’m sure we’ll find a solution. The latest UG “working” methods vis a vis assignments is to create an agent, illegally upload lecture notes, articles, parts of text books, and train the algo into the required role (eg sustainability.analyst in the telecoms sector). Then set the algo loose on the assignment. Surely we can show as much resourcefulness as a 20 year old
I don’t think “underfunding” is the problem. It is top-heavy micromanagement by a flourishing bureaucracy that has never been near a classroom since its own schooldays.
It is not the teacher shortage that surprises me but that so many continue to teach at all. If it wasn’t for the ‘childminding’ aspect of ‘education’ in a world where two parents must work to make ends meet, I think we would also see fewer and fewer pupils attending school, even among the better educated class. Society is failing and compulsory education is going the way of the birds. It’s all very well making it a legal requirement but laws must be enforced. You can’t lock up every parent, especially when cultural sensitivity is in play.
Time was when reacher recruitment in England was difficult when there was full(ish) employment, but a recession always made things easier. Now it seems that it’s difficult all the time.