Schools: Recruitment and Retention Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Schools: Recruitment and Retention

Lord Lexden Excerpts
Tuesday 18th July 2017

(7 years, 3 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash
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One reason why it has become difficult to recruit teachers is the strength in the economy. The best way to recruit more teachers might be to have a Labour Government, who would wreck the economy and therefore dramatically improve unemployment rates and increase our chances of employing teachers. We live in a highly competitive economy. In many parts of the country, we have full employment. Difficulty in recruitment is not exclusive to teaching or to this country. However, we are not complacent; we are investing a great deal of time in a more regional approach to teacher recruitment and in changing our approaches to advertising and marketing, with schools working together in different regions on a much more sophisticated approach to recruitment.

Lord Lexden Portrait Lord Lexden (Con)
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Are the Government continuing to improve the arrangements under which teachers are initially trained?

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash
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Yes. As I think my noble friend knows, we have substantially increased the proportion of teachers trained in schools—it has now risen to 56% of initial teacher training. As I said in answer to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, we are continuing to look at improving initial teacher training.