Tag Archives: learning

Where should Teach First recruit its trainees?

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There have been some interesting discussions recently on the LinkedIn platform about Teach First, and its possible extension beyond its original scope of recruiting from the Russell Group of universities after SchoolsWeek revealed this condition might be altered when the contract is re-tendered for the scheme. Teach First: Labour plans recruitment scheme revamp

Two points are worth making about the discussion. Firstly, the universities within the Russell Group have not remined the same since Teach First was established more than twenty years ago. Secondly, when faced with challenges in filling its target for recruiting teachers, Teach First does seem to have already extended its reach beyond the Russell group. In it 2024 annual report to the Charity Commission it said that:

‘Increasing the proportion of trainees from Russell Group universities compared to the previous year and sustaining the proportion of trainees with a first-class degree despite a decline in the number of firsts awarded.’ (Page 10, 2024 accounts with Charity Commission)

However, it didn’t provide any details of the number of non-Russell Group trainees recruited, and in which subjects. This is an important issue because of the schools where Teach First place their trainees. Historically, schools within the M25 with high percentages of disadvantaged pupils were the main focus of the programme, although in recent years it has spread more widely across the country while keeping its core mission.  

An analysis of, for instance, the percentage of new physics teachers recruited through Teach First and the schools they were placed in, and subsequently went on to work in, would be interesting, especially if compared with the distribution of new teachers of physics across all schools with similar levels of deprivation in the parts of the country not covered by Teach First.

Another interesting issue with regard to Teach First is the cost of recruiting their teachers. I saw a comment that surprised me about ‘needing to interview applicants because of AI generated applications’. I thought that all qualified applicants would have been interviewed as a matter of course.

This caused me to look at the cost of recruitment to the Teach First programme. Their accounts with the Charity Commission suggest that in 2023 the charity spent just over £7 million on recruitment and then £6,587,000 in 2024. Now, in 2023, it recruited 1,417 trainees, including to the pilot SCITT programme. In 2024, with the development of the SCITT programme, some 1,419 trainees were recruited. If the financial data is correct, then that would mean more than £4,000 to recruit a trainee in 2023, falling to £3,800 in 2024.  I wonder whether other ITT courses spend anything like this amount on recruitment?

Of course, some of the expenditure is offset by donations to the charity, and during a period when recruiting new entrants to teaching is a challenge, recruitment costs would be expected to be high. Although when recruitment to teaching is buoyant, as it may well be over the next few years, the overall cost may be higher because there are more applicants to process, especially if Teach First is opened up to a wider range of graduates seeking to become a teacher and interviews more applicants. How much should we spend on recruiting trainees teachers and how good are we at obtaining value for money on recruitment overall, including the national TV advertising campaigns?

Will the 6,500 new teachers be heading for schools in disadvantaged areas?

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Increasing teacher numbers in disadvantaged areas and core subjects. I was very happy when I read this heading in today’s Public Account’s Committee report on ‘Increasing Teacher Numbers’. Increasing teacher numbers: Secondary and further education (HC 825)

However, when I turned to paragraphs 25-29, this section just seemed like an afterthought. How depressing was it to read that

‘Schools and further education colleges are responsible for deciding the staff they need and recruiting their own workforces. Local authorities employ teachers in maintained schools.’ Para 25

There is nothing factually incorrect in the statement, but although local authorities are the de jure employers of teachers in maintained schools, ever since the devolution of budgets in the 1990s, local authorities have had little to do with the hiring policies for teachers in these schools, and nothing to do with the academy sector.

The Committee did acknowledge that

‘Those schools with higher proportions of disadvantaged pupils tend to have higher turnover rates and less experienced teachers. This impacts the government’s mission of breaking down the barriers to opportunity and means disadvantaged children are at risk of being locked out from particular careers.’

Teachers in schools with higher proportions of disadvantaged pupils are also less experienced

‘In 2023–24, 34% of teachers in the most disadvantaged schools had up to five years’ experience (20% in the least disadvantaged schools).’

They cited the examples of computer science and physics

‘In the most disadvantaged areas, 31% of schools do not offer Computer Science A-level, compared to 11% of schools in the least disadvantaged areas, due to a lack of trained teachers. For Physics A-level, this is 9% compared to 1%.’

This will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog. Here is the link to a post from the 21st July 2023, almost two years ago.

Free School Meals and teacher vacancies | John Howson

Thos who know my background will know that I started teaching in a school in a disadvantaged part of Tottenham in 1971, and this issue has been one that has concerned me throughout my career in education. I was, therefore, disappointed to read that

‘We asked the Department when we could expect there to be less variation between schools in the most and least disadvantaged areas, but it did not commit to a timeframe. Instead, it noted that its retention initiatives providing financial incentives were targeting schools and colleges with the highest proportion of disadvantaged students.’

This seems to me to be as close to a non-answer as one can expect. Indeed, looking in detail at the oral evidence session, this is an area where answers from the senior civil servants in my opinion suggested little hope, and not as much concern for the values implied in the questions that I would have liked to have heard. In reality, past experience tells me that it is falling rolls and fewer job opportunities that will propel teachers towards schools where they would otherwise not take a teaching post. Iti s the economy, not the DfE that will improve the life chances of children in those schools with a high proportion of disadvantaged children. This is at the same time as the lives of their parents may be worsened by unemployment and welfare cuts. It’s a funny old world.

6,500 extra teachers; myth or realistic aim?

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Hurrah for the Public Accounts Committee at Westminster (PAC). Today the Committee published a report into the government’s plans – or lack of them – to meet their target of 6,500 extra teachers – and lecturers. Increasing teacher numbers: Secondary and further education (HC 825)

The Committee is as sceptical as this bog has been about how the government intends to meet this target that was to be paid for by the addition of VAT on private school fees from January 2025.

One recommendation that the PAC doesn’t make is the creation of a Chief Professional Adviser on Teacher Supply. I held such a post between 1996 and 1997, but was never relaced when I left the then Teacher Training Agency. Such a designated post would draw together the work of civil servants who may change roles almost as frequently as ministers- What odds would one give on the present Secretary of State surviving a cabinet reshuffle before the party conference season? A central role with professional oversight might help the government achieve its aim.

Anyway, the PAC Recommendations included

  1. The Department should set out how it plans to deliver the pledge for 6,500 additional teachers to provide assurance that this will f ill the most critical teacher gaps. This should set out: • how the pledge will be split across schools and colleges; • the baseline and milestones so Parliament can track progress; and • how it will stay focused on teacher retention alongside recruitment.
  2. The Department should develop a whole-system strategy to help frame how it will recruit and retain school and college teachers. This should be based on a fuller evidence base, establish the preferred balance between recruitment and retention initiatives; set appropriate targets for those joining teaching through different routes; and include value for money analysis of different initiatives.
  3. The Department should work with schools and colleges to understand the reasons behind variations [in recruitment and retention], particularly within deprived areas and core subjects, setting this out in published information to help identify and share good practice and ideas on what works best.
  4. The Department should work to better understand why teachers leave and then better support schools and colleges in addressing these factors. This includes looking at changes to contractual and working conditions, such as flexible working, and at how teacher workload can be reduced. It should also collect data on the effectiveness of the newly-announced behaviour hubs, rolling them out further if they prove to be successful.
  5. The Department should assess the effectiveness and relative value-for-money of pay against other recruitment and retention initiatives, to make an explicit decision on whether it needs to do more to ensure teachers are paid the right amount.

The final recommendation will not be welcomed in HM Treasury if it means finding more cash for teachers’ pay, especially coming the day after resident hospital doctors threatened strike action over pay benchmarking. In paragraph 22 the Committee stated that

‘However, teacher pay has lagged behind others – in 2024, those working in the education sector were paid around 10% less in real terms than in 2010, with the wider public sector being paid on average 2.6% less than in 2010.’

Will a return to the 2010 benchmark now be the goal of the teacher professional associations?

In the next blog, I will discuss the committee’s idea for dealing with the thorny issue of providing teachers for deprived areas.

Are teachers losing control of classrooms?

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A recurrent theme running through the recent DfE’s ‘Working lives of teachers and leaders: wave 3 Summary report November 2024’ Working lives of teachers and leaders: wave 3 – GOV.UK is that teachers seem less happy about pupil behaviour than in the previous reports.

In this report, 44% of leavers from teaching cited pupil behaviour as a reason, up from 32% in the previous study and a statically significant change compared to the 2024 study. Not yet at the level of ‘high workload’, cited by 84% this year, up from 80% last year and the top reason in both years.

Nor is it yet at the 47% level of those citing government initiatives/policy changes, although it is worth noting that eight per cent fewer leavers cited this reason this year compared with last year.

Other pressures and stress are still also at the top of leavers reasons for quitting, but dissatisfaction with pay, never near the top of the list of reasons fell by five per centage points to 34%. No doubt both the government and the professional associations will be looking closely at that figure as will be those advising the School Teachers Review Body. Conditions of service seem more of a concern than pay at this point in time.

The point about pupil behaviour is reinforced in the table showing the views about discipline deteriorating among both teachers and school leaders completing the survey. In the 2022 survey 18% of teachers and 5% of leaders said that pupil behaviour was either ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’.  By the 2024 survey the reporting levels were 27% and 8%,

It would be interesting to know more about his change. Is it across all teachers and leaders; worse in the secondary sector than primary schools and what, if any, role has increased absence rates played in deteriorating views of pupil behaviour?

Perhaps more worrying was the findings that although

“around eight-in-ten (79%) leaders with teaching responsibilities reported that they felt always or mostly supported to deal with disruptive behaviour (consistent with the 80% in 2023 but lower than the 85% in 2022).”

But those bearing the brunt of classroom teaching, teachers with teaching responsibilities were less positive,

 “with 49% reporting feeling always or mostly supported with dealing with disruptive behaviour (lower than the 52% in 2023 and 58% in 2022).”

Not surprisingly, there have been declines in those teachers and school leaders viewing classroom behaviour as very good over the same period.

Is this change a consequence of the deteriorating staffing situation in secondary schools in recent year, or is it a reflection of the debate about mobile phone use in the classroom? It would be interesting to know more about the types of school and ages of the teachers reporting the deterioration in pupil behaviour to see how widespread the decline is among teachers.

At these levels this is certainly a flashing amber light, but not yet a full-blown crisis, but all concerned will need to understand the reasons why classroom behaviour is deteriorating.

AI in education: tackling the third revolution

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Earlier this week, I sat in on a webinar hosted by the Education Policy Institute about Workforce Sustainability in the modern school system. The recording of the webinar can be accessed at Workforce sustainability in the modern school system Inevitably, much of the discussion was around how AI might make a difference to schools. AI is the third wave of the IT revolution, after the initial microprocessor revolution of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the arrival of the web and the development of means to access it from desktops to mobile phones, and even watches, from the mid-1990s onward. AI has the possibility to significantly impact on the school system as we know it even more than the previous two ‘revolutions.

The impact might be in four areas

Recruitment – this will be cheaper, faster and more complex as both candidates and recruiters strive to make use of AI to help them secure either the perfect job or the best candidate, whether it be a teacher or any other post in a school.

Administration – compared to the days of pen and paper, typewriters and adding machines, technology in the past 50 years have vastly changed how processes are handled, and especially how data can be analysed. EPI even have a Model, described in the webinar, for assessing how MATs are operating. AI offers much more power to create systems with less need to burden teachers. Tracking individual learning will be far enhanced, well beyond what is possible even today.

Learning – AI could transform how students learn. No longer will teachers need to worry about coping with a range of abilities in the same learning setting: AI will tailor the learning package to the individual and make the learning experience stimulating enough to motivate every child. In doing so it could fundamentally change the role of a teacher, removing some of the drudgery and enhancing the personal interactions with learners. But, will the lightbulb moments teacher value so much disappear?

The contract between The State and families – will the current 190-day requirement to attend a ‘school’ or face sanctions that has existed since 1870 in England be replaced by a different sort of model where learning is at the pace of learner, and qualifications are obtained when ready. Could AI be used to identify those children not making progress, and offer support that families would be required to accept? I don’t expect such a radical change anytime soon, but it would be worth looking at how different groups in society see schooling today and what they want from it as the twenty first century enters the second quarter of the century.

What is certain is that the State needs to participate, and not leave everything to the market. There is a lot of profit to be made from AI, and schools represent a large potential market. The first step will probably be to agree on standards and certification for learning materials so individual schools and teachers can be sure what they are using are high quality learning materials. This is much more important that the debate over banning mobile phones in schools, but receives much less attention from politicians.

Ministers; music matters

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Yesterday, in this blog, I wrote that music courses preparing new teachers for our schools had the highest conversion rate of applicants to offers for any subject. By June this year, some 63% of candidates have been offered places. This compares with just 27% of candidates applying to become a business studies teacher. This data comes from the DfE’s monthly updates on recruitment into these courses.

I also pointed out that the 325 candidates offered places by June this year, of the 565 that have applied, meant that the DfE’s target for new entrants of 565 was unlikely to be met ,making 10 missed targets in the last 11 years.

Music ITT recruitment

Recruiting yearJuneSeptemberdifferenceITT censusTarget% filled
2014/153103605035348173%
2015/163403703035739989%
2016/172903102029539375%
2017/182503106030040973%
2018/192403208031239280%
2019/20360480120469385122%
2020/213904203038654071%
2021/222282875929247062%
2022/232012302921679027%
2023/242883789033182040%
2024/25326565

The table shows that the only time the DfE target for music was met was during the initial covid year, when there was a surge of applications for teacher preparation courses. Even in that year, the 469 trainees recorded at the time if the ITT census in the autumn would not have been enough to meet the target for this year of 565.

Between June and September new offers made have ranged from 120 in the covid year to as low as 20 in 216/17. Based upon last year’s figure of 90 new offers, and assuming this year is a little better and that 100 new offers are made, would mean a figure of around 426 offers by September, still more than 100 adrift of the target for this year that has been set at a more sensible level of 565 compared with the targets for the previous two years.

In passing, it is worth recording that adding shortfalls into future targets is not a helpful exercise, especially as all schools start the year fully staffed. Doing so also makes the percentage of target filled number misleadingly low, as with the 27% of the 2022/23 recruitment round.

Collecting this data together isn’t just of interest to data watchers. There is a serious issue here that is also linked to the cutbacks in university courses currently underway.

Imagine a scenario where the civil servant in charge of teacher supply and training meets his opposite number in charge of universities over coffee one lunchtime this summer. ‘I have just seen the data on ITT music offers and we risk not hitting our target again this year’.  ‘Bad luck’, the other replies, ‘but if universities cut music courses, won’t that make it even more difficult for you in future years?’ ‘You cannot let that happen, as we need graduates for teaching’. ‘Sorry, universities are free agents, and music courses are not in fashion right now.’ ‘What shall we do?’ ‘Perhaps we can write a joint paper for the PS mentioning apprenticeships’ ‘Good idea, job done.’  ‘After all music is an important export industry, and we mustn’t let it go the way of design and technology in our schools.’

Last week I attended a concert in Dorchester Abbey where in the course of a week pupils from 41 primary schools came together to sing their hearts out. We must ensure that music is available to all of them when they transfer to secondary schools.

Mixed messages on teacher retention in latest data

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How long do teachers stay in service? The DfE comment in their analysis of the latest data that Retention rates for teachers increased for both the newest teacher cohort who qualified in 2023 and for second year retention for those who qualified in 2022, while decreasing for most earlier cohorts compared to the equivalent measure last year.

Now after a period where retention rates have been declining that’s good news, and with the worsening general labour market and an older teacher workforce than in recent years, I expect retention rates to continue to improve over the next few years.

However, the improvement is something of a mixed blessing. Teachers with longer service tend to cost more, and if schools are funded for average salary costs, more schools will find the pay bill higher than the funding, especially as pupil numbers drop.

At the same time, higher retention rates mean fewer vacancies as rolls fall unless schools receive real increases in their funding that allows additional teachers to be recruited (the Spending Review will answer that question).

If past history is anything to go by, then different regions of the country will be affected differently. My guess is that retention rates will be lower in London and the Home Counties, and higher the further north and west you travel across England. This improvement in retention rates is bad news for job hunters, and also bad news for recruitment agencies that make their profits from schools advertising vacancies unless schools’ resort to only offering one-year contracts that are not then renewed.

Any reduction in job opportunities may also be bad news for teachers trying to return to work in the United Kingdom from abroad. Add in the decline in the number of pupils in private schools, some 11,000 in the latest data, when compared with the previous year’s data, and that might be somewhere around 750 less jobs in that sector in one year.

Although retention is better for the first two years of service in the latest data from the DfE, rates still have some way to go to return to levels of twenty years ago.

% in service after each year of service2003 entrantsLatestDifference
19189.7-1.3
28580.5-4.5
38173.2-7.8
47870.2-7.8
57667.6-8.4
67564.6-10.4
77362.5-10.5
87060.6-9.4
96859.2-8.8
106657-9

The table compares the latest data with the 2003 entry cohort survival rates for their first ten years of service. So, 66% of the 2003 cohort were still in teaching after ten years, but only 57% of the 2014 cohort were still in teaching after ten years.

The table shows an alarming difference for teachers with six to seven years of service, the group that might be expected to be taking on middle leadership positions. Hopefully, the new pay rise will be a further incentive to persuade teachers to to quit. Knowing why they do quit, and where they go, is some other data the DfE might wish to share with everyone.

How are secondary schools staffed?

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In a previous blog I looked at some aspects of the school workforce in England for the present school year. After looking at the data from the DfE’s January School Census of schools and pupil numbers, it is now possible to consider questions arising from the staffing of the present curriculum.

On average, each secondary school would have 68 teachers if you divided the number of teachers by the number of schools. Of course, that’s a mythical school, and the mean isn’t a very good measure of central tendency, but it is all we have that is easily accessible in the dataset.

So, how might our mythical school be staffed?

Number of hours taught for all yearsNumber of teachers of all yearsaverages based on 3,456 schools
Total3,807,978234,40668
English Baccalaureate subjects2,412,756164,48748
All Sciences667,23748,38614
Other147,69645,08113
English541,13441,29312
Mathematics548,09137,83511
General/Combined Science440,39136,75311
PSHE78,59535,98810
PE/Sports281,29124,2887
History210,71318,6305
Geography197,70918,0905
All Modern Languages247,87117,9865
Religious Education128,31416,8425
Other/Combined Technology120,66313,6304
Art & Design137,00812,7144
French109,39211,6163
Other Social Studies80,94410,0963
Spanish97,2349,5383
Business Studies89,6859,3313
Drama83,0269,1993
Computer science70,4128,1852
Biology53,1338,1672
Music87,4617,6102
Chemistry48,7747,2452
Design and technology – All52,7377,2032
Physics43,4056,2422
ICT36,8755,5302
Media Studies23,8713,9451
Citizenship8,9553,9411
Careers and Key Skills7,4303,5541
German25,5802,9551
Other Humanities15,4342,6711
Other science11,1212,5341
Other Modern Foreign Language15,6662,0071
General Studies3,0721,8561

The English Baccalaureate subjects account for the majority of the staff. Although design and technology only accounts for 2 teachers, if IT and other/combined technology and computing are added in the total increases to 10 teachers, not far short of the numbers for English and Mathematics.  Of course, not all the teachers will be teaching the subject all the time, and this tells us nothing about how qualified they are to teach the subjects they are actually delivering? It would be interesting to know how many qualified teachers of physics (with a physics degree) are teaching in schools with the highest percentages of free school meals?

As previous blog posts have argued, the staffing crisis may be abating, but is not over. It is good to see the TES taking in interest in these numbers Teacher supply: why 5 subjects face gloomier forecasts | Te as well as making the DfE admit what this blog has thought for some time now that the pledge for 6,500 teachers was totally unrealistic. Falling rolls and budget constraints meant that it was always going to be a non-starter. Labour ‘abandons’ manifesto pledge to hire more teachers

Green shoots, but still issues with the teacher workforce in schools

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This week the DfE issue the annual data collected in last Novembers census. There are two main sets of data, those on the school workforce and those on schools and their pupils. This blog looks at the Workforce data. The DfE link is School workforce in England, Reporting year 2024 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

Here are the key points as identified by the DfE.

  • There are 468,300 FTE teachers, which is an decrease of 400 since last year and an increase of 26,900 since 2010 when the school workforce census began. Trends differ by school phase; state-funded nursery and primary schools saw a decrease (2,900, -1.3%) whereas there were increases in secondary (1,400, 0.7%) and special and Pupil Referral Units (900, 3.2%). 
  • There are 288,800 FTE teaching assistants, which is an increase of 5,900since last year and an increase of 67,300 since 2011 when the census began collecting support staff information.
  • Pupil to teacher ratios are similar to last year: 20.8 pupils per teacher in nurseries and primary schools (the same as last year), 16.7 in secondary schools (down 0.1) and 6.5 in special and PRU schools (up 0.1).
  • The number of teachers entering and leaving service both decreased, though the number of entrants continues to be higher than for leavers. This, combined with changes in working patterns and an increase in teachers without qualified teacher status, resulted in a marginal decrease to the number of teachers in England.
  • 9 in 10 teachers remain teaching in state-funded schools in England one year after qualification. 
  • Teacher vacancies and temporarily filled posts decreased in November 2024after three years of increases.

Here are my comments:

 PTRs: looking over the longer period since 1975, primary PTRs have improved from 24.0 to 20.1, some 3.2 pupils better, whereas in secondary schools the change has just been from 17.0 to 16.7, albeit this is 0.1 pupil per teacher better than last year despite all the comments about funding. By the way, I do wish the DfE would not use up and down in relation to PTRs as it can be misleading.

Workforce: Here there is both good and bad news. The bad news is that the 16999 New entrant numbers were well below the average of the past 14 years, and some 9,400 below the peak reached in 2015/16. The good news is that this should mark the low point of the present cycle, and numbers should increase from next year onwards. Deferred entrants were also below the average for the past 14 years at just 2,710

And now more good news. Returners to teaching were up to their highest level since 2014/15 and entrants new to state schools were above the 14-year average, but below last year’s number.

Taken overall, entrants in total at 41,736 were the lowest recorded for any year in the past 14. Thankfully, this is less of a concern with pupil numbers falling in the primary sector across much of the country and likely to fall in the secondary sector as well over the next few years.

Age of the workforce: While the DfE is happy to note that “A third of the teacher workforce is aged 30 to 39”, this disguises the fact that teachers under the age of 29 now only account for 17.6% of the workforce. This is where the school leaders of tomorrow will be mainly drawn from. In 2016/17 teachers in their 20s accounted for 23.2% of the workforce. With cuts to ITT targets over the next few years more than likely, the age profile of new entrants might be something worth considering in order to ensure adequate leadership candidates in the 2040s.

Ethnicity: there has been some further improvement in the number of teachers from ethnic minorities, but the teacher workforce is not yet representative of the population as a whole.

Support Staff: interestingly, despite all the talk about budget issues, numbers rose. Are teaching assistants being used to replace more expensive teachers as a result of budget pressures. If so, it is interesting to see more administrative and other support staff being employed. More than 2,600 non-teaching staff are once again employed in leadership positions, reflecting the diversity of roles with a school in the 2020s.

Finally, the fact that there were more drama teachers employed by schools than all design and technology teachers should give pause for some thought abut the curriculum schools are able to deliver.

Teacher training numbers set to fall for next few years

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The May 2025 data on applications to ITT courses was published today Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2025 to 2026 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK The news is almost, but not entirely good, with offers ahead of last year across the board, although only by 14 in Religious Education, nine in Drama and 43 in design and technology. Still, at the macro level, the teacher supply crisis can almost certainly be declared as having come to an end if those offered places all turn up at the start of their courses.

Of course, there are still three months of the recruitment round left, and those subjects not yet likely to hit their DfE targets, announced in April, may yet do so. I think it is possible that Chemistry and English will meet the targets, but I am doubtful about business studies 212 offers (900 target); Classics 44 (60); design and technology 466 (965); drama 235 (620); music 276 (565); religions education 347 (780) and subjects in the ‘others’ group 2,520 (375).

The 1,762 offers to applicants classified as from the ’rest of the world’ amount to 6% of all offers and, I suspect, somewhat higher percentage in some secondary subjects. Still, it is good to see more younger applicants applying, even if the percentage of those 21 and under – i.e. new graduates – being made offers has dropped from 84% to 77% as a result. By comparison offers to those career changers in the 25 to 29 age group have stayed stable at 52% last year and 51% this year.  

Male applicants are doing slightly better this year with 45% offered places compared with 42% last May. For women applicants, the offer rate has remained at 59%. London still leads the way, with around 15% of all applicants.

One of the reasons why some subjects won’t meet their targets is the decision of the DfE Teacher Workforce Model team to include some element of carry-over where some subjects failed to meet their target last year. The DfE Postgraduate initial teacher training targets, Academic year 2025/26 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK document explains the decision as follows:

“The drivers behind changes in target vary by subject. The key factor as to whether the 2025/26 targets have increased or decreased for specific secondary subjects is the extent to which those targets have been adjusted to build in the impacts of recruitment being below target in the two ITT recruitment rounds before 2025/26. This is done via the under-supply adjustments [1], which account for approximately a sixth of the combined primary and secondary target.” My emphasis

“[1] Under-supply adjustments calculated in the TWM assess the impacts of retention and recruitment via all routes. They use ITT recruitment data, and ITT completion & post-ITT employment rates to estimate the number of NQEs entering the workforce, having trained via PGITT, from the two ITT cycles immediately before 2025/26. It uses these figures, along with estimates for both the corresponding numbers of entrants into the stock via other routes (e.g. returners) and leavers, to estimate the size of the workforce in the target year. This figure is then compared to previously estimated teacher demand & supply, to identify if enough teachers were recruited/retained/re-entered to meet the needs of the system. If there is a supply shortage, an under-supply adjustment is made. The model does not apply an over-supply adjustment.” DfE Postgraduate initial teacher training targets, Academic year 2025/26 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

Now, this is a perfectly respectable method of helping schools replenish their teaching stock in ‘shortage’ subjects once recruitment starts to pick up. However, it comes with policy implications. Firstly, changing targets each year so late in the process makes life difficult for ITT providers to manage the staffing for their courses. What is going to happen in the three subjects where offers already exceed targets? Thirty years ago, targets were issued on a three -year cycle with years two and three being indicative, but rarely subject to wide swings, unless there was a policy change.

Then there is the issue of whether schools will have the vacancies for any increased recruitment by September 2026. These targets were set ahead of the Spending Review. Schools staff their timetable to be fully staffed each September even if some staff are less than ideally qualified.

As long-time readers will know, I think there should be a closer alignment between ITT targets and the actual behaviour of the labour market. By waiting until the end of April to announce targets, the DfE has managed to use data from recruitment in 2023, and that helps, but is still a risk when pupil rolls are falling and school funding is also under pressure. However, as many of the targets adjusted upwards still won’t be met, even with increased recruitment, this is all a bit academic, but worth discussing for future years.

The next few years, especially for anyone contemplating a career as a primary school teacher, might well be challenging when it comes to finding a teaching post after training.