DfE wasting money on ITT

Posted on August 25, 2025 by John Howson

The latest data on applications to postgraduate ITT courses appeared this morning. Such are the wonders of modern technology that data generated on the 18^th of August can be programmed to appear on the bank holiday Monday in order to keep up the sequence of posting the data on the last Monday of the month by the DfE. Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2025 to 2026 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK

As is already known, 2025 is going to be best year for recruitment to graduate teacher preparation courses since 2013, especially in many traditional shortage subjects, such as the sciences and mathematics. But it is not ’a bed of roses’ all round.

AUGUST 2025 OFFER
SUBJECT	2024	2025	2025 TARGET	DIFF ON 2024	DIFF TO TARGET
CLASSICS	66	53	60	-13	-7
ENGLISH	2399	2080	1950	-319	130
RE	494	491	780	-3	-289

OTHERS	454	472	2520	18	-2048
DRAMA	298	337	620	39	-283
MUSIC	378	407	565	29	-158
COMPUTING	642	884	895	242	-11
D&T	680	764	965	84	-201
BUS STUDIES	252	324	900	72	-576

PE	1675	1734	725	59	1009
ART & DESIGN	871	1087	680	216	407
HISTORY	963	1100	790	137	310
MATHEMATICS	2597	3004	2300	407	704
MFL	1498	1677	1460	179	217
GEOGRAPHY	942	1093	935	151	158
CHEMISTRY	920	1054	730	134	324
PHYSICS	1285	1677	1410	392	267
BIOLOGY	1415	1600	985	185	615

Three subjects have recorded fewer offers this year than last year. Two, classics and drama, will miss their target. In English it would be touch and go to meet the target by the date of the ITT census in early December from just this source of trainees. However, Teach First and other routes should mean that the target will be comfortably met. But, the applications patterns for 2026 will need careful monitoring.

Five subjects won’t meet their targets this year, even with Teach First. Computing should, although it hasn’t yet done so from the courses included in this dataset.

The remaining subjects have all recorded increased offers this year and, in most cases, are way over target. This raises the question about whether or not the DfE should once again consider recruitment controls in some subjects. After all, although we will need teachers to cover the missing trainees in the group of ‘other’ subjects, will the 1,000 extra PE teachers offered places over the target have the appropriate skill sets to fill those vacancies? They are certainly unlikely to fill the music vacancies, but presumably could be offered business studies teaching.

Hopefully, the DfE will be matching up to date vacancy data with the targets generated from historical data to see what changes might be needed for 2026 entry. After all, there isn’t money to waste in the public exchequer.

There also appears to be over supply in the primary sector

SUBJECT	2024	2025	2025 TARGET	DIFF ON 2024	DIFF TO TARGET
PRIMARY	10610	11405	7650	795	3755

But I wonder whether, as in some secondary subjects, some candidates are recorded holding more than one offer. Even so, this is a sizeable overshoot and may cause issues next September in some parts of the country for trainees seeking teaching posts in primary schools. Especially, if a combination of falling rolls and a reluctance to move jobs in a deteriorating labour market overall sees fewer posts advertised.

I believe that Ministers need to do some hard thinking about balancing supply and demand for teachers and the cost to the public purse.

Numbers granted teaching awards

Posted on August 20, 2025 by John Howson

In a previous post I looked at the prohibition from teaching work of the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA). However, that is only a part of the work of the Agency. The other main task is to maintain the register of qualified teachers, and to grant admittance to the register. There are two main routes to registration. Obtaining QTS in England via one of the several routes available, including the assessment only route, or to seek registration for a teaching qualification awarded overseas. Various governments at Westminster have approved QTS for teachers from certain countries with acceptable teaching qualifications.

The numbers admitted via the various routes in recent years is shown in the table.

	2021/22	2022/23	2023/24	2024/25
ITT in England	37,077	32,877	26,911	25,621
Assessment only route	1,576	1,511	1,697	1,670
Wales/Scotland and Northern Ireland	1,907	1,790	1,457	1,392
OTT recognised for QTS	1,684	5,750	5,233	912
All routes	42,244	41,928	35,298	29,595

Source: Teaching Regulation Agency Annual Report and Accounts 2024-25

Those granted QTS, especially through the ITT routes in England, may not enter service in schools where QTS is a requirement. They may choose to work in the private school sector or those post-16 establishments where QTS is not a requirement. They may also move abroad. On the other hand, those granted QTS by the assessment only route and by converting teaching qualifications from outside of England are highly likely to be either working or expecting to work in a school where QTS is required for a teacher to be paid on the Qualified Teacher Scale.

Schools have aways been able to employ unqualified teachers, once called instructors, either where no qualified teacher was available or where the law did not require them to employ qualified teachers, as in some academies and free schools. That latter exemption may be changed by the current parliamentary Bill once it becomes law.

The decline in ITT registrations is partly down to reductions in the primary ITT numbers. These have declined to meet the reduced need for teachers due to the decline in the birthrate, but the fall in registrations also highlights the ITT recruitment crisis of the years immediately post the covid pandemic. Hopefully, the number of registrations will increase over the next few years as targets should once again be met in many secondary subjects.

Where did overseas teacher applying for QTS apply from?

Country	2023/24	2024/25	Difference
Australia	494	486	-8
Canada	174	148	-26
Ghana	6912	1916	-4996
Hong Kong	107	490	383
India	1762	779	-983
Ireland ROI	93	88	-5
Jamaica	281	157	-124
New Zealand	195	177	-18
Nigeria	5189	1519	-3670
South Africa	617	229	-388
Ukraine	217	131	-86
USA	706	706	0
sub total	16747	6826	-9921

All applications	18,310	12413	-5897
% list of all applications	91%	55%

The response to both a change in the rules regarding overseas trained teachers, and the evidence of a teacher shortage in England, produced a spike in applications in 2023/24 to register as qualified teachers in England from two West African countries, Ghana and Nigeria. Following the exit from the EU, numbers from most EU countries are now very low, amounting to less than 300 in 2024/25, of which 74 applications were from teachers trained in Spain.

Of the countries with the largest number of applications in 2023/24, 1,197 teachers from Ghana; 723 from Hong Kong; 550 from India; 1,309 from Nigeria and 235 from the USA resulted in an award.

Of course, granting an award did not mean that a visa would also be granted, but without these teachers many schools would have found staffing their schools even more of an issue that it actually was in September 2024.

Does where you study make a difference to ‘A’ Level outcomes?

Posted on August 15, 2025 by John Howson

Next week, pupils will receive their GCSE results and will then have to decide where to continue their studies. If they are intending to take ‘A’ levels, then the options may be between staying on at the same school or transferring either to another school or to an institution run under further education rules such as either a general further education college or a Sixth Form College, where they exist.

As the tables for this years’ results by type of institution shows, there are different percentage in terms of outcomes.

Centre type	Year	Percentage of results at grade A and above	Percentage of results at grade C and above
Independent school including city training colleges (CTCs)	2025	48.40%	89.70%
Secondary selective school	2025	43.70%	88.20%
Free schools	2025	31.30%	80.60%
All state-funded	2025	25.20%	76.30%
Sixth form college	2025	24.00%	76.20%
Academies	2025	23.10%	75.00%
Secondary comprehensive or middle school	2025	22.60%	75.20%
Other	2025	16.40%	55.80%
Secondary modern school/high school	2025	16.30%	64.80%
Further education establishment	2025	14.40%	66.30%

Young people across England celebrate exam results – GOV.UK

I don’t think anyone would be surprised to see independent schools with the highest percentage of results at A*-A. But it is important to understand what the policy about entering candidates for the examination is when considering outcomes. Is anyone taking the subject entered or is there a bar to be achieved at ‘mock’ exam time to be allowed to enter.

These results also cannot identify any time candidates spent either on tutoring during the course or cramming during the Easer break before the actual examinations.

I am not sure whether the institutions classified as ‘City Training Colleges’ are actually ‘City Technology Colleges’. If so, it is not clear where UTCs and Studio Schools have been located? Possibly, along with the academies group or do they make up the ‘other group’ and does ‘other’ include special schools. Why Free Schools merit a separate line under a Labour government is an interesting question.

It is also not clear whether the further education establishments (not Sixth Form Colleges) include entries from adults as well as those that would be in Year 13 if at a school? Certainly, anyone thinking of doing ‘A’ levels at a college might want to ask about the grades achieved by students at the college. The eight per cent gap to a comprehensive school for those gaining the top grades in a further education establishment and the nearly nine per cent gap for Grade C and above merits questions if faced with the choice. However, an earlier post noted, there are differences in the percentage of candidates achieving top grades between different subjects, and that may well be a factor in the outcomes.

This year, boys outperformed girls for the first time since 2018. There have also been different rates of improvement when comparing percentages achieving the top grades by type of institution. Without knowing what types of institution are classified as ‘other’ it is difficult to account for the decline in outcomes for the top grades for these schools.

Provider	% difference 2025 on 2023
Free schools	4
Secondary modern school/high school	2.7
Secondary selective school	2.3
Independent school including city training colleges (CTCs)	1.9
All state-funded	1.7
Academies	1.6
Sixth form college	1.5
Secondary comprehensive	1.3
Further education establishment	0.7
Other	-2.3

It would also be integrating to compare the different types of intuitions by their outcomes by region.

Better outcomes but rankings don’t change much

Posted on August 14, 2025 by John Howson

Congratulations to everyone receiving examination results today. And a big Thank you to all the other family members, including siblings, the teachers and other school staff, and, indeed, anyone that helped the candidates achieve their grades.

In the first year of this blog, 2013, now available as a book, TEACHERS, SCHOOLS AND VIEWS ON EDUCATION: How 2013 unfolded as viewed from my blog eBook : HOWSON, JOHN: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store I wrote a post comparing the percentage of A* grades between physics and media studies. At that time physics had a much higher percentage of A* outcomes than did media studies. That didn’t make physics easier than media studies as an ‘A’ Level, but might reflect the policies around who could take the subject, and of those that took the subject who were entered into the examination.

Fast forward to 2025 and we find the following

Category	Subject	Year	Number Sat	A* %	A*-A %	A*-B %	A*-C %	A*-D %
A Level UK	Physics	2025	44957	11.2	32.1	52.9	71.7	86.0
A Level UK	Media / Film / TV Studies	2025	23320	2.4	14.8	50.5	82.3	96.0

A level and Level 3 results – Summer 2025 – JCQ Joint Council for Qualifications

There is still a big difference between the percentage of candidates in the two subjects gaining A*-A results. Such differences makes it is risky to talk about average outcomes when there is a difference of more than 17 points in the percentages gaining A*-A grades between the two subjects. It is worth blanking out the subject names and asking a random group of people to tell you which set is physics and which media studies, a subject sometimes rubbished by politicians as easy.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been doing some work on funding across the country, and an apparent bias towards London, as measured by changes pupil teacher ratios during the past 50 years as a proxy for funding. The paper can be found on Researchgate at: (PDF) PTRS OVER TIME: A REVIEW OF PUPIL TEACHER RATIOS BETWEEN 1974 AND 2024 AND TWO PERIODS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT RE-ORGANISATION PTRS OVER TIME: A REVIEW OF PUPIL TEACHER RATIOS

It is worth looking at how the regions fared in the ‘A’ level results. The table places the regions in the order that the percentage of A*-A grades achieved and the change between 2023 and 2025

region	Difference % A grade
North West	2.50%
Yorkshire and Humber	2.30%
London	2.10%
England	1.60%
East Midlands	1.50%
East	1.40%
West Midlands	1.30%
South East	0.90%
North East	0.80%
South West	0.70%

DfE release 14^th August 2025

It would be interesting to drill down within the regions to see whether types of schooling -see next post for national outcomes – makes a difference. Why is the improvement so small in the South West and North East regions? Is the small increase in the South East partly a result of the higher number of candidates from either private schools or selective schools where outcomes were already high. This will be one static to track over the next few years to see any possible change due to the VAT imposition on private schools.

I am sorry that there is less to say about T Levels and other Level 3 qualifications that are equally as important as A Levels to both those that took them and society as a whole.

Headteacher vacancies: even in August

Posted on August 9, 2025 by John Howson

More than 40 years ago, I first started counting heads. That’s actually headteacher vacancies, not actual heads. With some spare time on my hands, I thought that I would go back to my roots and look at what is the current state of play this August?

Of course, August is a quiet month, and there are currently fewer than 60 headteacher vacancies listed on the DfE website that is the main go-to place these days, just as the TES was in the 1980s.

The DfE vacancy website still contains some of the flaws created when it was established. Anyone trying to use modern methods of’ scraping’ jobs will come across the random duplication outcome that has been a feature of the site ever since its inception. I am not sure whether it was deliberate or a fault in the coding, but it always used to annoy me when I was running TeachVac to see the same job repeated in the listing more than once.

The alternative, pioneered by TeachVac was to ‘scrape’ school websites where schools placed their jobs. However, for obvious reasons, not all schools placed headship vacancies on their website. Presumably not to let staff and parents know of the impending departure of their headteacher.

At least with headteacher posts, there is no problem deciding whether the vacancy is a repeat listing or a re-advertisement. Headteacher posts are unique, and thus easy to track.

Anyway, what did I learn from collecting the first 50 vacancies? Special schools were over-represented, with eight such schools looking for a headteacher this August. As a part of the White Paper on SEND, I hope that the government will consider the staffing and training of staff for the special school sector that has long been a Cinderella, and if not bullied by the bigger primary and secondary sectors, it is certainly still in search of a fairy godmother.

There are only two secondary schools in the list, and one is a 10-14 school, and the other a private school. That doesn’t surprise me, as secondary schools usually sort out headship vacancies well before the start of the school year. If there is an unexpected vacancy, then there is often a deputy head that can ‘act up’ until an appropriate time to advertise the vacancy.

Of the 50 or so primary schools, including one First School, 17 were faith schools: ten Roman Catholic; six Church of England and one other Christian faith. These numbers don’t surprise me in the least; indeed, I would have been surprised if there were fewer Roman Catholic schools in the list. All the years I monitored headteacher vacancies, Roman Catholic schools often featured prominently in any listings.

The relative absence of schools from London and much of the South East is interesting, but I need more data to say anything else than that.

Almost all schools provide a starting salary, either as a point on the scale or as a cash sum. One academy adds 5% to the quoted salary. The indication of a starting salary is an improvement over the time when schools rarely quoted a starting salary for those interested in becoming their headteacher.

Whether I keep us this task will no doubt depend upon how much else I have to do, but it was interesting retracing my footsteps.

Ethnicity issues remain for new teachers

Posted on August 5, 2025 by John Howson

Data published by the DfE for the 2023/24 postgraduate cohort of trainees achieving QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) showed that differences still remain in regard of entry into the teaching profession between different ethnic groups on two counts. Firstly, the percentage trainees achieving QTS, and secondly, the percentage employed in State-Funded schools.

Ethnicity		Postgraduate
		2023/24
		Number of trainees
		Total	Achieved QTS		Did not achieve QTS
		Total	Total	Teaching in State-Funded School	Total
	Asian / Asian British	2,931	2,704	1,868	227
	Black / African / Caribbean / Black British	1,206	1,106	821	100
	Mixed / Multiple ethnic groups	872	814	611	58
	Other Ethnicity	410	380	268	30
	White	16,082	15,048	11,570	1,034

Initial teacher training performance profiles, Academic year 2023/24 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

The outcomes were more favourable for the dominant White group. 94% of this group achieved QTS, compared with 93% for the Black and Mixed Group’s trainees and 93% from the Asian Group.

Teachers from the White group were also more likely to be working in a State-Funded school by the time the data was collected. 77% the White Group that had achieved QTS were teaching in a State-Funded school. This compared with 75% of the Mixed and Multiple ethnic groups; 74% of the black Group and just 69% of the Asian group.

Despite the number of teachers from the Asian group not working in State-Funded schools, this group still accounted for 12% of entrants. The black group accounted for 5% of entrants and Mixed and Other ethnic Groups together made up another 6% of entrants. The White group, of some 11,570 teachers, accounted for 76% of entrants.

Sadly, it isn’t possible to track the whole journey from application to train as a teacher through to working as a teacher with QTS for each ethnic group. It is also not possible to see whether certain routes are more or less favourable to certain ethnic groups. Both those sets of data would help illuminate possible areas of concern within the process of how graduates become a teacher.

The DfE has also included some experimental regional data about outcomes that would also be useful to see by ethnic groups because, historically, the Asian and black groups applicants and trainees have tended to be concentrated in specific urban areas.

The DfE data suggested that fewer trainees achieving QTS were employed in State-Funded schools in the north of England than the south. The region with the highest percentage employed was the East of England, were 82% of those achieving QTS were employed in a State-Funded school.

Another indicator where there are no published data on trainees by ethnic groups are in respect of new graduate and career changers. For the purpose of the employment data for those with QTS, the DfE splits the trainees into two groups; those under 25 that might be assumed to be mostly new graduates and those over 25 that will predominantly be career changers. Those in the over-25 group were less likely to achieve QTS, but there was no difference among those with QTS in terms of the percentage working in State-Funded schools.

Less than 400 teachers of physics entered service in 2023/24

Posted on August 4, 2025 by John Howson

As a result of the latest data from the DfE, it is now possible to start to see the consequences arising from the collapse in ITT recruitment to secondary courses in 2023/24.

It is interesting to compare the turnaround from the improvement in recruitment brought about by the covid epidemic with the poor recruitment figures for just three years later.

Year Achieved QTS	Achieved QTS	Did not achieve QTS	% Did not achieve QTS
2017/18	25490	1304	5
2018/19	26402	1348	5
2019/20	27542	1191	4
2020/21	30706	1606	5
2021/22	29715	2241	7
2022/23	22437	1840	8
2023/24	21210	1550	7

Initial teacher training performance profiles, Academic year 2023/24 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

The reduction in numbers achieving QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) from 30,706 in 2002/21 to 21,210 in 2023/24, a reduction of some 8,500, or more than a quarter in just three years, goes some way to demonstrate the depth of the problems with recruitment schools faced in September 2024 and even more so in January 2025.

Hopefully, these numbers represent the lowest point for secondary trainee numbers over the next few years, after adjusting for the changes in targets that result from falling rolls in schools.

The data on the percentage achieving QTS might suggest that when it is difficult to recruit trainees, more marginal candidates are offered a place by training providers, and, as a result, the percentage not achieving QTS increases.

Because the DfE only records those with QTS teaching in a State-Funded ‘school’ it does not count those employed in a Sixth Form College or other further education college and, does not count any teachers from the cohort with QTS working in the private school sector. This latter omission might account for why only 49% of those trained to teach Classics were teaching in a State-Funded school.

Subject	Postgraduate
	2023/24
	Number of trainees
	Total	Achieved QTS	Teaching in a State-Funded School (of those achieved QTS)	Teaching in a State-Funded School (of those achieved QTS)
Classics	69	67	33	49%
Physical Education	1,485	1,438	965	67%
Primary	9,378	8,712	6,271	72%
Business Studies	227	201	146	73%
Art & Design	401	382	286	75%
Computing	413	374	282	75%
Total	22,760	21,210	15,921	75%
Modern Foreign Languages	1,024	970	739	76%
Other	327	310	237	76%
Drama	246	227	175	77%
Physics	540	485	373	77%
Secondary	13,382	12,498	9,650	77%
Geography	822	771	601	78%
Chemistry	764	691	544	79%
Mathematics	1,900	1,762	1,385	79%
Biology	885	818	652	80%
Music	237	223	179	80%
Design & Technology	576	540	437	81%
English	2,210	2,062	1,661	81%
History	977	919	744	81%
Religious Education	279	258	212	82%

It is interesting to note that the percentage of those trained to teach physics teaching in a State-Funded school was the same as the overall average, at 77%. However, that meant that there were only 373 new physic teacher entrants into State-Funded secondary schools from this cohort. It would be interesting to know the routes these 373 took before taking up their initial posts? How many of these 373 were from the PG Salaried High Potential ITT route? (Better known as Teach First).

The relatively small percentage of physical education trainees recorded as working in State-Funded schools may well be a result of the numbers recruited into training compared with the target.

Where trainees are required to pay a tuition fee for a course, what responsibility does the government and the course provider have to the trainee to ensure that there are not way too many trainees for the number of vacancies likely to arise? If this means that the student debt is less likely to be recovered, is this a waste of public money?

In a future post I will explore some other aspects of this dataset.

Windfall profits and SEND

Posted on August 1, 2025 by John Howson

There is no doubt that the rise in demand for special school places over the past few years was neither anticipated nor effectively dealt with by the State. One consequence is that large amount of off-balance sheet debt being carried by many local authorities responsible for schooling in England. Another consequence, highlighted by the Liberal Democrats in a press release issued today, is what might be described as the ‘windfall’ profits being made by a few in the SEND sector. Lib Dems demand cap on SEND providers profits as top firms rake in £100m – Liberal Democrats

When the highest paid director of a company operating both care homes for children and special schools is paid over £300,000, or more than twice the salary of a Director of Children’s Services commissioning the use of places in the schools and homes, it seems sensible to question whether such use of public money should continue.

At this point, I must make clear that I am a capitalist. The 40 years I have traded on my own account and through a company, as well as held a portfolio of investments in other companies. However, there are two issues that concern me. Where should the boundary line between services offered by the State and those run by the private sector be drawn? And how should price be determined?

It is interesting, as I have noted before, that in the USA and many other countries, public transportation is just that: a service run by the State. In England it has become a battleground between the State and private enterprise and the differing political opinions. Most would expect SEND to be a public service.

What often seems to be lacking is a mechanism to regulate the costs of suppliers to the State. When the private sector funds its enterprise by borrowing to provide the services and then expects the State to service that debt with a profit element added, it seems to me like time to take the service out of the private sector, and back into public provision.

In the case of SEND school places, national and local government should work together to prove places in state-run schools that would obviate the need for private sector intervention. This means the State, in this case the DfE, being much more interventionalist than has been the case.

The Liberal Democrats, of which I am a member and activist, noted in their press release that

‘Research commissioned by the party and carried out by the House of Commons Library showed that the top handful of profiting companies each took home tens of millions a year. One Group, operators of 28 special schools, turned over just over £200 million a year, making £44 million in profit – a margin of over 20%. That profit is 150% what the company made in 2022.’

How many more teachers might the £44 million have funded? While we wait for the government to produce a White Paper on SEND, perhaps the Local Government Association should set up a taskforce to remove the need to use the private sector.

I am sure that when John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth century philosopher, said that’ it was the duty of the State to see it citizens were educated, not to educate them itself’ he did not expect the cost to the State to be more than a reasonable amount.

NEETS: Why is London so different to the rest of England?

Posted on July 29, 2025 by John Howson

London seems to be a different world to much of the rest of England when it comes to looking at a range of different indicators about education. The latest one where the statistics raise an interesting question is the percentage of 16- and 17-year-olds that are NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training).

With the raising of the suggested ‘learning leaving age’ to eighteen (the official age is still sixteen) it is expected that almost all students in what is Years 12 and 13 should be in some form of certified education or training. The DfE asks local authorities for data each year bout the percentage participating in education or training and produces scorecards on-line. I wonder how many local authority scrutiny committees ever see this data? Participation in education, training and NEET age 16 to 17 by local authority, Academic year 2024/25 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

The scorecard for Oxfordshire can be found at Oxfordshire_neet_comparator_scorecard.pdf

Looking through the data for all local authorities for both 2019 and 2025 what struck we was there was a definite London effect. 28 London boroughs had higher participation rates in 2025 than in 2019. For the rest of England there were only 37 other local authorities with higher participation rates in 2025 than in 2019.

One explanation is the inclusion of ‘no data’ in the NEETs percentage. As the DfE noted;

‘NEET/not known rates at the end of 2024/start of 2025 ranged from 0.0% City of London to 21.5% in Dudley. Dudley’s rate includes 2.4% NEET and 19.1% activity not known.’

So, either London boroughs are better at collecting the data – quite possible, given their relatively small size and close geographical cohesion, or there is something else going on.

On the other hand, only seven ‘shire counties’ had higher participation rates in 2025 than in 2019. Might the decimation of rural bus services and the effect of a punitive motor tax on those without a no claims bonus be something to do with this change? Could it be that in large counties there are no longer the staff to badger multi-academy trusts (MATs) to provide accurate data about the destination of Year 11 leavers?

I think the DfE data should make clear both the known percentage of NEETs and the percentage of the age group where these is no data available. Perhaps, there might be a scorecard of MATs to identify those that provide high quality data, and those where hard pressed local authorities have to waste time and money chasing the data.

With the job market looking increasingly challenging over the next few years, and fewer incentives for employers to offer jobs with training to school leavers, the percentage of NEETs is an issue that needs more visibility, especially with the rapid growth in EHCPs. Will the significant increase in young people with mental health issues result in more NEETs, and if so, will London be different?

It’s a funny old world

Posted on July 28, 2025 by John Howson

On the day when nurses look as if they will join resident doctors in demanding more pay, figures about applications from graduates to train as a secondary school teacher hit decade high levels, even after removing the degree apprenticeship numbers from the totals. This month, according to DfE data, 58,880 candidates have submitted one or more applications to train as a teacher. This compares with 46,696 list July and 45,000 in 2108, before the pandemic. Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2025 to 2026 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK

This July, there were 36,283 candidates applying to train as a secondary school teacher, compared with 17,997 wanting to train as a primary school teacher.

By comparison in July 2018, 26,060 women had applied, whereas in July 2025 that had increased to 31,439. However, applications from men had increased from 12,680 in 2018 to 18,904 this July

Traditional higher education and SCITT courses still account for the bulk of the routes into teaching selected by candidates. However, candidate numbers on traditional salaried routes were down this July, from 8,927 to 7,636, but that may be partly the 7,332 candidates that have applied for the Postgraduate teaching apprenticeship route, up from 6,433 last July.

The new Teacher Degree Apprenticeship route that has attracted 1,079 candidates so far this year. This is a new route and, presumably isn’t open to graduates.

Although applicant numbers from the ‘rest of the world’ group are down this July, from 9,586 in July 2024, to 8,563 this July – this number still represents nearly 20% of all candidates.

Some subjects, including art, physical education, physics, mathematics and computing have recorded their highest level of ‘offers’ this year since the 2013/14 recruitment round. How many are multiple offers or from candidate’s not able to fulfil visa requirements won’t be known until the courses start in just over a month’s time. Interestingly, offers for English courses are below the number of offers made in July 2024.

Despite the significant increase in candidate numbers, some subjects will not hit their targets set by the DfE this year. Subjects most likely to miss their targets are business studies, drama, religious education, music and design and technology. In English, it looks touch and go at this moment in time as to whether or not the target will be hit.

In some subjects, such as physical education, where the target is 725, there is a risk of a significant overshoot in offers. Such a situation might leave large numbers of trainees with additional debt and little chance of a teaching post in England next summer. The DfE will need to be alert to this issue, especially if the growth in ‘AI’ changes the labour market for those with degrees in physics and mathematics, so as to make teaching look like an interesting career at current salary levels.

It would be a funny old world if incentives to train as a teacher had to be switched from mathematics and the sciences to English and the arts.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Category Archives: economic