How important are returners to our school system? The DfE measures returner numbers each year as part of the data collected in the November School Workforce Census. The returner numbers during the past few years have been affected by the covid pandemic, so it was important that the fall in new entrants from training last September was balanced by an increased number of returners to help mitigate the staffing crisis affecting schools.

The need for returners will be even more important next September to balance the further reduction in new entrants into training in some subjects in 2023 that seems likely on the latest data around applications and offers.

We won’t know the data on returners this autumn util next June, but the fact that there is a recruitment crisis this year is now well understood.

Although returners were some 2,000 in number higher in 2022/23 than in 2021/22, both their number and percentage was in line with the figures from the three years prior to the pandemic – the equivalent of 3.7% of the workforce, and just short of 17,000 teachers. My guess, is that schools need around 17,000 returners this year, even with the reduction in demand this September across parts of the primary sector.

Looking back into the archives, I see that in the 1980s, returners averaged between 45-50% of entrants each year. In recent years, the percentage has hovered around the low 30%s figure. In 1987, the returner percentage reached what was probably an all-time high of 58%. However, those percentages were reached on a workforce with much less turnover than nowadays.

By 2000, returner numbers were at 13,000, only a few thousand below their current levels. With the fall in rolls now apparent in the primary sector, although not yet affecting the secondary sector: that’s to come in a few years’ time, will schools opt for newly qualified teachers over returners or prefer experience to recent training? Newly qualified teachers are usually cheaper than returners, so if budgets are tight, schools may prefer teachers from training, unless the added requirements of the Early Career Teacher Framework push up the cost of employing new teachers to appoint where returners look to be a cost-effective hire.

There are also likely to be regional differences accentuated in a largely female workforce from the consequences on house prices of increased mortgage rates. Dual household earners may react differently to a period of high mortgage rates to single household earners. High mortgage rates might also force an earlier than anticipated return to the labour market of some teachers currnetly taking a career break. This sort of boost might produce some a short-lived improvement in the teacher labour market in some areas, but would be unlikely to solve to the present crisis in teacher supply.