Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to improve school staff recruitment and retention.

Answered by Bridget Phillipson - Minister for Women and Equalities

High quality teaching is the factor that makes the biggest difference to a child’s education. There are now 468,693 full-time equivalent (FTE) teachers in state-funded schools in England, but we must do more to ensure we have the workforce needed to provide the best possible education for every child in all parts of the country, which is why the government has set out the first step of its opportunity mission, to recruit 6,500 new expert teachers.

Teachers are supported by a range of staff that help drive high standards and ensure we give children the best possible life chances. We have laid the groundwork for the reinstatement of the School Support Staff Negotiating Body, thereby recognising and championing the vital role support staff play in schools across the country. The Body was scrapped in 2010 by the previous government. In the first hundred days, this government has legislated to bring it back.

We are committed to resetting the relationship with the education workforce and working alongside them to re-establish teaching as an attractive, expert profession. Work has already begun to recruit 6,500 new teachers with the expansion of our flagship teacher recruitment campaign, and we will focus on getting more teachers into shortage subjects and supporting areas that face the largest recruitment challenges. We are offering retention payments worth up to £6,000 for teachers in years 1 to 5 teaching physics, mathematics, chemistry and computer science in disadvantaged schools.

The first crucial step towards achieving this is to ensure teaching is once again an attractive and respected profession and teachers get the pay they deserve, which is why we have accepted in full the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommendation of a 5.5% pay award for teachers and leaders in maintained schools from September.

Alongside teacher pay, financial incentives are an effective way to increase teacher supply, and we are continuing to support teacher trainees with tax-free bursaries of up to £29,000 and scholarships of up to £31,000 in shortage subjects. To help with retention, new teachers of mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing, in the first five years of their careers, also receive retention payments if working in disadvantaged schools.

The department is providing schools with almost £1.1 billion in additional funding, in the financial year 2024/25, to support schools with overall costs. This matches what we have calculated is needed to fully fund, at a national level, the teacher pay award, and the support staff pay offer in financial year 2024/25, after accounting for the overall available headroom in schools’ existing budgets.