Tag Archives: teacher training

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.

Do teachers lack for good career advice?

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A quarter of a century ago, I started a career clinic on the pages of the TES when it was still part of News International. I recall going to Admiral House, their then HQ, and presenting a live webinar where teachers posed question on line, and I dictated the answer in real time to a typist and the answers then appeared on the web. Later, between 2008 and 2011, I answered over 5,000 questions in a twice weekly on-line clinic.

I recall these memories, not to boast, but to ask whether anything is now better for teachers? Do MATs help their staff with career development. Do mature entrants receive any advice about careers when they train to be a teacher, or is the emphasis from the DfE’s website onwards just about bringing them into the profession? I am inspired to ask these questions having read laments about the challenges around returning to teach in the UK after a spell abroad.

Now it maybe your partner has returned to the UK for job reasons or the geopolitical situation makes teaching overseas a risk at a particular moment I time.

Here in England, who is telling teachers what the consequences for their careers will be if the Spending Review doesn’t compensate for falling rolls across the school system, and VAT has been imposed on private schools? What does the 6,500 extra teachers mean for your career as a thirty-something teacher of English in a council area now run by Reform?

I assume that the professional associations provide support. Indeed, I used to run seminars on ‘managing your teaching career’ for one of them. But, when there is a teacher shortage, and rolls are rising, teaching posts are easy to come by. That won’t be the picture for much of the next decade, whatever government is in power.

Then there are those that want to leave teaching and either set up their own business, as consultants, curriculum content creators or just tutors. Where do they turn for advice?

Fifteen years ago, I charged £100 for a CV appraisal and a phone conversation with teachers and double that for school leaders. What might be the going rate today?

With universities facing cutbacks, should they start being entrepreneurial and offer career services to teachers? What about the big recruitment agencies that make money from schools. How much do they reinvest in the sector?

Today is an interesting day to write this post, as tomorrow is the 31st of May, the traditional date for final resignations for those leaving at the end of term. This year’s output of new teachers will be particularly aware of how successful they have been in finding a job already. If they and their colleagues haven’t found a job yet, what is someone going to do about that in the face of the huge expansion of in-school graduate apprenticeships announced recently by the DfE. How will the axing of Level 7 apprenticeships affect serving teachers and their career ambitions?

Lots of questions, but few answers. I would welcome your views and comments.

How will the Apprenticeship Levy changes affect schools?

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Will the changes to the Apprenticeship Levy announced today affect schools? I have argued before I this blog that the Apprenticeship Levy is in fact a tax on schools, and especially primary schools, as their individual budgets often all below the threshold for paying the levy, but, unless they are small stand-alone academies, they pay the Levy. This is because they are either maintained schools, where the local authority is the employer, or they are part of MATs or other arrangements where the salary bill crosses the threshold for paying the levy.

Now, a tax may not be a bad thing per se, especially if the proceeds are used for the good of those paying it. When it was first introduced some local authorities were slow to ensure the proceeds of the Levy were used by schools, and ended up returning unused cash to HM Treasury. Hopefully, that doesn’t happen anywhere today.

The announcement by the DfE this morning of the effective abolition of the Level 7 apprenticeships, expressed by the government as: “Refocusing funding away from Level 7 (masters-level) apprenticeships from January 2026”, (DfE Press Notice) comes hard on the heels of the announcement on the 9th May for the school sector about teaching apprenticeships that said:

“postgraduate teaching apprenticeship (PGTA) courses will be slashed from twelve months to nine, aligning to the school year and getting newly trained teachers into the classroom sooner.  

Courses currently run from September to September, meaning trainees typically have to wait months before kicking off their careers, and making it challenging for schools to support apprentices while training.  

The change will be made from August this year and is expected to open up more opportunities to train to teach, as well as accelerating trainees’ journeys to the front of the classroom.” Red tape slashed to get more teachers into classrooms – GOV.UK

On the one hand, the government gives, but on the other hand it could take away in-service opportunities for teacher development where these were paid from the Levy for Level 7 courses. The outcome must not be unspent levy cash once again being returned to the government by employers of teachers and other staff working in schools.

Incidentally, school leaders should check whether the employers of those services they contract out have a policy for using the Apprenticeship Levy that they pay. If they don’t, then schools may not be receiving full value for money for their expenditure.

How will the news affect higher education departments working with pre-service and in-service teachers, and others in the education field? If there is a move away from courses where trainees pay fees towards an employment-based apprenticeship with a salary and associated benefits that might reduce interest in higher education courses. If the removal of Level 7 apprenticeships cuts enrolment on higher degrees that could be a double whammy, coming just at a time when training targets are being affected by falling pupil numbers.  This may not be an easy summer for those responsible for training teachers, even if interest in the profession is once again on the increase.

Is the teacher supply crisis over?

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“As part of our Plan for Change, we are already seeing green shoots, with two thousand more secondary school teachers training this year than last and more teachers forecasted to stay in the profession.” DfE Press Release 22nd May 2025

Good news is always worth repeating, so the release continues later:

There are encouraging signs that this is working with two thousand more secondary school teachers training this year than last, a 25% increase in the number of people accepting teacher training places in STEM subjects, and more teachers forecasted to stay in the profession.  DfE Press Release 22nd May 2025

Good to see the DfE confirming the data showing the improvement in teacher supply, at least at the national level. The secondary trainee numbers increased from 13,000 in 2023 to 15,000 in 2024. This was a substantial increase on the previous year. With targets lowered for 2025 entry in some subjects, and the primary sector, perhaps the sector can breathe a small sigh of relief, at least for the rest of this decade?

For those that missed it, here’s what I said on LinkedIn in April

What do English and Classics have in common? They are the only two subjects where ‘offers’ on PG ITT courses are still below those of April last year. As I predicted last month, the decade long teacher supply problem may be finally coming to a end. Falling school rolls; underfunded pay settlements squeezing PTRs – watch for my analysis of PTRs from 1974 to 2024, coming soon – and a tightening labour market in graduate level jobs for new graduates all mean good news for the DfE. The task then is to hang on to those teachers already in the system; a 4% pay rise will help here. Around 1,300 of the additional applications this year are from those under-24: just what is needed for the long-term health of the profession. Even better, most of the additional applications are coming from within the UK, with RoW applications 1,000 lower than last April. too early to crack open the champagne, but could make the research the DfE are going to commission on the workforce interesting. Also, need for help with teachers looking for jobs writing their letters of application and careers advice.

And what I said on LinkedIn in March

The ITT numbers for March 2025 are interesting. The gentle trend downwards in primary, and upwards in secondary applications (in most subjects) continues. The former is of concern, the latter is not enough to see all vacancies filled in 2026, even with the expected cuts schools are facing in their workforce between now and then. Dig a little deeper, and a couple of interesting facts emerge: a third of applications come from just two areas, London and the rest of the world.
The second fact is that career changers numbers are on the decline, but new graduate numbers are once again on the increase. This is entirely to be expected with a labour market where jobs for new graduates may be harder to come by this year, and those in work are less likely to take the risk of becoming a teacher with no job guarantee at the end of your training; a fresh student loan to repay, and a loss of earning for a year. If we do see a real downturn in the job market, then expect the decade long crisis in teacher supply to disappear. At present, the jury is out on this point. The question mark about interest in English and drama continues this month, with ‘offers’ in English some 200/300 where they might be expected to be. Generally, it is the arts and humanities where there has been little growth (art and design excepted) in interest. Despite the continued decline in applications to train as a primary sector teacher, it looks as if all the growth in applications to train as a secondary teacher have come from women.

Are teacher redundancies inevitable?

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The blunt answer is probably yes. Falling rolls, and a pupil driven National Funding Formula mean that even if a pay settlement is fully funded, some schools won’t be able to cover their present levels of expenditure with fewer pupils.

In the past 50 years, during periods when school rolls were falling, some redundancies took place, but new entrants from ITT often bore the brunt of the disappearing jobs. I recall doing a radio interview around 2010 about new teachers stacking shelves in Tesco because they couldn’t find a teaching post. For some primary school trainees, it might yet come to that state of affairs again.

The key issue for the next few years is, how will HM Treasury react to falling rolls when it sees funding for schools is now largely pupil driven. The creation of a National Funding formula so heavily tied to pupil numbers was a big risk. It was easy enough to turn a blind eye at the time the Formula was being created, as rolls across the country were on the increase. However, those of us with a longer vision could foresee that when rolls were falling, school budgets would quickly come under pressure. With staffing the largest component of school spending: less cash means less staff, even when there was the buffer of high levels of reserves accumulated for a ‘rainy year’.

In the past, HM Treasury has generally allowed the spending department at Westminster responsible for schooling o keep the same funding levels, even as rolls were falling, and when schooling was a local service councils could also prop up schools from Council Tax. I doubt that such an approach will be possible this time.

Falling rolls will mean falling income for schools and hence, redundancies. Such a scenario allied to parental choice means that some popular schools will up their marketing, and ride out the crisis, but less popular schools, and I include some faith schools in that group these days, with either face closure or the need to operate with lower costs and fewer staff.

With education probably lower down the pecking order in the forthcoming Spending Review than many other departments of state, certainly below defence and the NHS, and also not scoring highly in polling with voters, I can see HM treasury wanting to clawback some of the expenditure on education necessary when rolls were higher as an alternative to tax increases.

The macro picture doesn’t look great, and the new General Secretaries of the main teacher unions are going to face a tough battle, and almost certainly industrial action against a Labour government. In such action, the losers will be those living in our most deprived communities and not the parents that can make alternative arrangements: just look back to 2020, and what happened when covid hit our schools.

We are already seeing entrepreneurs marketing courses on ‘how to recruit pupils’ to schools worried about falling rolls.

What will be done for teachers either made redundant or unable to find their first teaching post? In the 2000s, I ran a regular career clinic for the ‘tes’, and offered career guidance and seminars for those worried about their futures. Maybe, it is time for some of the bigger MATs to work together to provide a service for teachers. The first action might be to allow those facing redundancy priority look at any vacancies as they arise. With modern technology, posting jobs to a defined group before general circulation seems like a good idea, and could save on redundancy costs if redeployment is possible. Perhaps, I should restart TeachVac now I am no longer a councillor in Oxfordshire?

ITT: less good than hoped for

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The September data on postgraduate ITT curses was published by the DfE yesterday. Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2023 to 2024 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK (apply-for-teacher-training.service.gov.uk) Sadly, there was no last-minute surge in offers for teaching. Although offers for primary courses should be sufficient to meet the number of places on offer, the same cannot be said for the secondary sector.

Amongst secondary courses, only English, history, geography and physical education seem likely to meet their DfE targets. Offers in mathematics this September are less than 2,000 for the first time in over a decade. In music and religious education, it is necessary to delve further back in the archives to find offer levels of 480 across the two subjects. There will be real issues with the supply of new teachers in these two subjects next year.

Although physics and design and technology have seen better offer levels than in recent years, in neither subject will the DfE’s suggested recruitment level be met. I suspect that the numbers actually starting courses this year will only be above last year’s dismal total for all secondary subjects if those with conditions pending are able to convert these conditions into recruited students, otherwise the total may be little different to the seriously low number recorded last year.

In mathematics, the number ‘recruited this year is just 1,340 compared with 1,482 last year. However, there are 516 applications listed as ‘conditions pending’ compared with only 300 in this category last year. Should these ‘conditions pending’ relate to visas and right to enter the country it is possible that the number that transfer into the ‘recruited’ column may be smaller than wished for.

The number of new graduates aged 24 or younger is considerably down on last year, a worrying sign for future leadership recruitment. Less than 5,00o men have been ‘recruited’ this year despite the total number of applicants being 16,470 compared with 11,819 last year. This means that those ‘recruited’ has dropped from 46% of applicants to just 30% this year. Such a dramatic decline must merit some form of investigation to allow providers to understand the cause of the change.

The answer may lie with ‘rest of the world applicants, where only 6% have been accepted this year, compared with 13% last year.

The final outcome for recruitment that will include Teach first must await the publication of the ITT Census, early in December. Although this may show a small improvement over last year’s total, there will not be enough trainees to allow the government to be able to say that it has hit its target and STEM has now really become STEAM in terms of recruitment into teacher preparation.

These figures are such as to warn schools to think carefully about recruitment for September 2024 and especially January 2025. Retention may become an important watchword in the corridors of power.

The other crisis facing schools

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In my experience, editors usually have September, and the national annual ‘return to school’ event, as a time to ask journalists to look for a school centred story. This follows on from the useful two-week period in August when there are examination results to cover in the month when there is often little news from the political scene.

This year, editors and their journalists didn’t have to work very hard, if at all, for their ‘return to school’ story. RAAC, and the school buildings saga, was a gift send. Would the story have topped the bill at any other time of year? Who knows, as it is an important issue, but more important say that a reshuffle?

What is clear, is that by focussing just on the school buildings issue, editors are missing the opportunity to take a wider look at the health of our schools. Had there not been RAAC, and the still largely hidden asbestos issue, might the staffing of our schools have been the main story this September?

This is a much more difficult story to sell, as except in rare cases such as a special school reported to the DfE in the summer, schools don’t send children home for a lack of teachers. Instead, they cut subjects from the curriculum – I have been told of a school that is no longer offering languages in the sixth from this September; increase class sizes; reduce non-contact time for teachers and, most commonly, employ what might be considered as under-qualified teachers to teach some groups.

Because anyone with Qualified Teacher Status can teach anything on the curriculum, it isn’t easy to identify the problem, as schools, quite rightly, don’t advertise any shortcomings in the staffing of their timetable. However, extrapolating from the last School Workforce Census that provided a baseline, and adding in the results of new entrants being below the targets set by the DfE through the Teacher Supply Model, it seems clear that some schools are not properly staff this September.

Does this matter? Like the lack of a schools’ database on building issues, we don’t know whether some young people are missing grades in those public examinations we celebrate each August because of staffing issues last year or even earlier in their school lives.

This blog has charted re-advertisements of teaching post against free school meal rates in schools. I wrote a blog on this issue last month, just before the exam results season started Are we levelling up? | John Howson (wordpress.com) I won’t bother to repeat what I said then, but it would be interesting to look at examination results in specific subjects at different centres with different levels of staff turnover for a period of three to five years, to see if there is any measurable effect of staff turnover on outcomes, including entry policies.

My hunch is that it is difficult to create a ‘normal’ distribution curve for results subjects such as ‘A’ level physics if many schools cannot offer the subject, and those that do only enter those likely to be successful candidates.

Editors might like to pencil in a story for January 2024, when secondary schools facing unexpected vacancies will find recruitment even more of a challenge than for this September. What might be the effects on their results in Summer 2024 of an unexpected vacancy, especially if they started the school year this September with both a RAAC and a staffing crisis?

Physics: Better. Arts: worse

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Despite today being a bank holiday, the DfE obligingly published the monthly ITT data on applications and offers for postgraduate courses. Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2023 to 2024 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK (apply-for-teacher-training.service.gov.uk)

Perhaps not surprisingly, little has changed since the last set of figures published at the end of July. With courses about to start in a matter of weeks, there are likely to be few more surprises left in this round. On the basis of the data, secondary subjects can be grouped into three sets: those subjects with higher offers this year than at any time since 2019/2020, or in the case of physics, since 2015/16; those subjects where ‘offers’ this year are above the number at this point in 2022, and those subjects where the offers this year are below the number in August 2022.

In the first category are: physics -the subject has recorded 729 offers, the highest August number since the 840 of August 2016. However, this is still not a high enough number, even if all those offered actually turn up, to meet the DfE’s target. Also, in this group of subjects are; geography, design and technology and biology. The offers in design and technology will still not be sufficient to come anywhere near meeting the DfE’s target.

In the middle group, of subjects better than last year, but worse than 2021, are: mathematics, English, computing and chemistry.

In the group where this year’s offers are below last year are: art and design, religious education, physical education, music, history and business studies – in this case almost the same as last August.

In the case of music, the 232 recorded offers are the lowest recorded in recent years. This is despite a high conversion rate of 21% of applications into offers.  In religious education, the 259 recorded offers are also the lowest level of offers in recent years in this subject. In both these subjects, this level of offers will not be enough to satisfy the demand for teachers in a normal recruitment round. By comparison, only eight per cent of physics applications have been converted into offers, and in biology the percentage is 13%.

Compared with last year, most of the increase in candidate numbers has come from those age 24 or above. The youngest age groupings of 21-23, have seen an increase of 400 from 10,116 to 10517. By contrast, the 40-44 age grouping alone has increased from 2,477 to 3,621, an increase of more than 1,100 applicants.

As reported previously, when compared with two years ago, the largest increase in candidates is the group applying from ‘the rest of the world’, up from 3,216 to 8,406, an increase of more than 5,000. By contrast, the East of England number two years ago was 3,495 and this year it is 3,440.  The South East numbers are: 4,651 two years ago, and 4,825 this year: a meagre increase.

This data suggests that schools will find recruitment in some subjects that they have not been concerned about in the past, may well become difficult during the 2024/2025 recruitment round unless the consequences arising from the pay settlement depress demand below that seen in the past two years.

Fewer salaried entrants to teaching?

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Ever since Kenneth Baker introduced the Licensed and Articled Teacher Schemes, wat back in the last century, when he was Secretary of State for Education, there have been possibilities to earn and learn to become a teacher.

Since 2000, the main schemes have been the Graduate and Registered Teacher Schemes; Teach First/High Achievers route/School Direct Salaried route/Postgraduate apprenticeship route and a few specialist routes such as troops to Techers and Teach next. The government has recently proposed a new undergraduate apprenticeship route (see Bring back King’s Scholarships? | John Howson (wordpress.com) on this blog).

Over the years numbers on these employment-based routes have fluctuated. The table is my best estimate of numbers each September starting such courses. The total should be treated as indicative rather than absolute for two reasons: some routes, numbers from some routes such as Fast Track and troops for Teachers aren’t included, and the numbers published often changed between the original ITT census and later published data containing both late registrations and early departures.

YearEBR ITT
20004120
20014810
20026810
20037676
20047417
20057403
20067635
20077282
20086963
20095699
20105842
20116890
20126057
20133701
20144146
20154750
20164485
20174115
20183969
20194246
20204078
20213197
20222850
Source: Various government publications

From the turn of the century up to 2012, the GTTP was the main source of employment-based entry, after the Fast Track Scheme ended. Whether that latter scheme really qualified as an employment-based route is anyway debatable, although the management of their careers did ensure some sort of control not present in other routes.

After the Gove revolution, the School Direct Salaried route took over as the main employment-based route into teaching, alongside Teach First (High Achievers route) that had been steadily growing in numbers since its inception as a short-service route for those prepared to teach for a couple of years.

Even allowing for the caution about the data, it seems that since the Market Review of ITT by the DfE numbers on employment-based routes have dropped to their lowest levels this century. At their peak, the various routes were recruiting more than twice as many new teachers through employment-based routes as in 2022. Indeed, Teach First is, seemingly, now the main route for those wanting an employment-based route into the teaching profession. Is this what the DfE intended when it set up the Market Review?

School-based preparation exists in other forms, through the SCITTS and School Direct Fee routes, but neither are as attractive to those that want to earn while teaching.

Does the DfE think that there should be an employment-based route for career changers, as opposed to new or recent graduates, and if so, how is it prepared to fund such a scheme?

The proposed school leaver apprenticeship model seems to want to tap into a market that may not exist, while the government doesn’t seem to have a plan for career changes that need to earn and learn. This seems like an odd approach driven more by the spare cash from the Apprenticeship Levy sloshing around the system than any sensible approach to market planning.

Hopefully, someone will correct my thinking and tell me of the DfE’s grand plan for career changers wanting to become a teacher. After all, this was the fastest growing segment of those showing interest in teaching as a career this year.

Assessment Only route into teaching: sideshow or useful source of teachers?

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How well is the assessment only route to QTS doing, and what part has it played in helping reduce the shortage of teachers in some subjects? The recent data on outcomes for 2021/22 year for this route was contained as a part of the ITT profiles statistics and does produce some interesting information. Initial teacher training performance profiles, Academic year 2021/22 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk)

Assessment only candidate numbers by subject and phase

Subject2019/202020/212021/22
Art & Design293344
Biology256530
Business Studies211929
Chemistry11916
Classics345
Computing101720
Design & Technology253342
Drama113135
English128150145
Geography191218
History423524
Mathematics9389125
Modern Foreign Languages152428
Music222732
Other254189
Physical Education649798
Physics38922
Religious Education152917
Primary614747612
Secondary596724819
Total1,2101,4711,431
Initial teacher training performance profiles

The numbers in some shortage subjects, such as physics, (leaving aside 2020/21 as possibly affected by the covid pandemic) only represent a small fraction of the total candidates on the Assessment Only route to QTS: around two per cent in 2021/22. Computing candidate numbers were even lower in 2021/22, at just 20 candidates.

Around 40% of the candidates on this route were working to become qualified teachers while in the primary sector, so we do not know the range of subjects that they might contribute expertise to when they have obtained QTS.   

In the secondary sector, only English and mathematics were subjects with candidate numbers in three figures, although physical education – hardly a shortage subject – just missed reaching 100 candidates with a total of 98.

The government web site on teaching says that

You can take the assessment only route to QTS if you already meet the standards for qualified teacher status, so do not need any further training.

Instead, you will undertake a series of assessments. This may include lesson observations, providing a portfolio of evidence to show you meet the teachers’ standards, or written assessments. This will vary by your provider.

The assessment programme takes up to 12 weeks.

To be eligible, you need (all of the following):

  • to be able to show you meet the teachers’ standards(opens in new window) without any more training
  • to have worked in 2 or more schools
  • a degree
  • GCSEs at grade 4 (C) or above in English and maths (and science if you want to teach primary)

Specific entry criteria may vary by teacher training provider. 

There are nearly 100 providers of the Assessment Only route certification, although only four are open to non-UK citizens. Based upon the data in the table, some providers must receive very small numbers of registrations each year. Is there a case for rationalisation to provide a smaller number of providers in each region to allow for larger cohorts?