In my previous post, I said at the end of the post that I would look at what any differences between the August ITT acceptance data issued by the DfE earlier today, and the ITT census to be issued in December 2026 might be, by looking at the difference between those accepted in September 2025 and the ITT Census of December 2025.
In reality, this task has proved something more of a challenge that I had expected. This is mostly because of the late announcement of the targets for September 2026. These were not announced until April 2026, by which time many subjects had already made offers in excess of the new, and lower, targets. The fact that the targets for 2026 were in many subjects drastically reduced has made the analysis almost impossible.
Because of the reduction in the targets, it is possible that the outcome of the 2026 ITT Census could be the best year in terms of hitting targets since 2012, especially once Teach First and any other non-DfE portal recruitment is factored into the census.
However, there are a few subjects that rely almost entirely upon the DfE portal for recruitment that we now know are very unlikely to meet even the revised target for September 2026.
These are: Business Studies; Classics, Drama; Religious Education and the catch-all ‘Other’ that includes media and communication studies, social studies, citizenship and psychology.
Although how the ‘other’ subjects grouping reaches a target of 2,035 places remains a bit of a mystery. As I have advocated elsewhere, it is now time to breakdown the ’other category’ into its component subject targets to allow for meaningful discussions about teacher supply. With around one in eight places in the ‘other’ category and the category recruiting very poorly it is time for a more meaningful discussion about the classifications used by the DfE for its IIT targets.
A reminder of how the targets have changed this year when compared to the previous year
| 2025/26 | 2026/27 | ||
| Total | 26,920 | 20,800 | |
| Primary | Total | 7,650 | 5,520 |
| Secondary | Total | 19,270 | 15,280 |
| Art and Design | 680 | 605 | |
| Biology | 985 | 675 | |
| Business Studies | 900 | 1,200 | |
| Chemistry | 730 | 690 | |
| Classics | 60 | 75 | |
| Computing | 895 | 565 | |
| Design and Technology | 965 | 620 | |
| Drama | 620 | 370 | |
| English | 1,950 | 1,980 | |
| Geography | 935 | 685 | |
| History | 790 | 520 | |
| Mathematics | 2,300 | 2,000 | |
| Modern Foreign Languages | 1,460 | 1,085 | |
| Music | 565 | 260 | |
| Others | 2,520 | 2,035 | |
| Physical Education | 725 | 655 | |
| Physics | 1,410 | 810 | |
| Religious Education | 780 | 450 | |
Some years ago, the total was nearer 40,000 trainees, so this has been a dramatic reduction.
When were secondary trainee targets last as low as 15,280? Not for some time. I will do a search and see if I can find out the last time the targets were this low for both primary and secondary trainees. As these targets now include almost all routes, it will be interesting to see whether when they were last this low were there no ‘off target’ numbers such as the former employment-based routes?
