wrans/answers2025-01-22 conversation_236
Source: hansard.parliament.uk (2025-01-22)

UK Parliament Hansard data: wrans/answers2025-01-22 conversation_236

Damian Hinds:To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure the target for an additional 6,500 new expert teachers in key subjects this Parliament will be met. \p Catherine McKinnell: High quality teaching is the in-school factor that makes the biggest difference to a child’s outcomes and is thus essential to delivering the government’s mission to break down the barriers to opportunity for every child.

​​There are now 468,693 full-time equivalent teachers in state-funded schools in England, but this has not kept pace with pupil numbers, with teacher vacancies increasing more than five-fold since 2010. This is why the government is committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers across our schools, both mainstream and specialist, and our colleges over the course of this Parliament.

Our plans include getting more teachers into shortage subjects, supporting areas that face the greatest recruitment challenges and tackling retention issues. The department will continue to work alongside the sector as we seek to re-establish teaching as an attractive profession, one that existing teachers wants to remain in, former teachers want to return to, and new graduates wish to join.

The department has made good early progress towards this key pledge by ensuring teaching is once again an attractive and respected profession, key to which is ensuring teachers receive the pay they deserve. We have accepted in full the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommendation of a 5.5% pay award for teachers and leaders in maintained schools for 2024/25. Alongside teacher pay, we have made £233 million available from the 2025/26 recruitment cycle to support teacher trainees with tax-free bursaries of up to £29,000 and scholarships of up to £31,000 in shortage subjects. The department has also expanded its school teacher recruitment campaign, ‘Every Lesson Shapes a Life’, and the further education teacher recruitment campaign, ‘Share your Skills’.

​A successful recruitment strategy starts with a strong retention strategy, and new teachers of mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing in the first five years of their careers will now receive a targeted retention incentive of up to £6,000, after-tax, if working in disadvantaged schools.

The department is also working closely with teachers and school leaders to improve the experience of teaching. This includes introducing a new school report card in place of Ofsted’s single headline grades, to provide a clearer picture of schools’ strengths and weaknesses for parents and more proportionate accountability for staff. It also includes enabling flexible working, such as allowing planning, preparation and assessment time to be taken from home, and making key resources to support wellbeing, developed with school leaders, available to teachers.

The department is also funding bespoke support provided by flexible working ambassador schools and multi-academy trusts, to ensure schools are able to capture the benefits of flexible working whilst protecting pupils’ face-to-face teacher time.

High quality continuous professional development is also key to ensuring we have and retain an effective teaching workforce. ​The department has established Teaching School Hubs across the country, which provide approved high quality professional development to teachers at all stages of their careers. These Hubs play a significant role in delivering initial teacher training, the Early Career Framework, National Professional Qualifications and Appropriate Body services.