Recruitment and Retention of Teachers

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. Government reforms have done little to help in that regard. The Government’s push towards recruiting teachers via School Direct has created a confused and fragmented system, with schools across the country reporting that they are struggling to access the School Direct programme. That will only get worse in the upcoming school year, as 17,000 places formerly allocated to university departments are transferred to School Direct. Since its creation by the former Secretary of State for Education, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), the School Direct programme has under-recruited every single year.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that figures produced by TeachVac show that teacher recruitment is more difficult in this year than it has been at any time for a decade? With something like 800,000 children coming into the system over the next decade or so, a national strategy will be needed to solve this important problem.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend raises an important point, which is further evidence of more failed ideological experiments from the Tories.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

I will come to the vacancy rate in a moment, but it has remained stable at about 1% of the teaching profession since 2000, so it has been stable for 15 years. No one in the Government underestimates the challenge that having a strong economy presents in professions such as teaching.

[Ian Mearns]

Does the Minister accept that many head teachers are reporting that they have stopped advertising vacancies, because they do not feel that they have any chance of recruiting and they do not want the unnecessary expense of placing adverts in the national journals?

[Mr Gibb]

I am aware of those examples, which were set out in the hon. Lady’s speech. There are challenges but, as I said, the vacancy rate is the same this year as it was 15 years ago. It has remained stable across the system at about 1% of the teaching workforce.

To get more high-quality teachers into England’s classrooms, we need to continue to promote teaching as a profession for top graduates. Our recruitment campaign, “Your Future Their Future” is getting results, with registrations on the “Get Into Teaching” website up by about 30% compared with last year. In 2014-15, we recruited 94% of our postgraduate ITT target, at a time when the economy was improving and good graduates had more choices open to them. As I have said, the teacher vacancy rate remains very low, at about 1% of the total number of posts—a figure that has remained steady since 2000.

Contrary to the hon. Lady’s suggestion, retention remains strong. Ninety-one per cent. of teachers who qualify are teaching a year later, and 76% remain in the classroom five years later. More than 50% of teachers who qualified in 1996 were still teaching 17 years later.