Teacher Education: Arts, Crafts and Design

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Earl that a broad and balanced curriculum is an essential part of a child’s education. I am afraid that I have not seen the Oxford Brookes report but I reassure him that many schools buy-in the PGCE qualification to run alongside their own School Direct programme to enable students to benefit from this in addition to the practical emphasis of the school-based approach.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government have missed their own target for the last five years on teacher recruitment and retention. Does the Minister think that lifting the public sector pay cap, tackling rising workloads and allowing teachers more say in the curriculum might alleviate the serious position in which the Government have put us?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we have 15,000 additional teachers in the system today compared with 2010, and an increasing number of teachers are returning to the profession. Last year, we had increasing numbers recruited in maths, all the sciences, modern foreign languages, geography and art. I acknowledge that there are one or two shortages but I do not feel that we have in any way a teaching recruitment crisis.