Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made on recruiting 6,500 teachers.

The government has a central mission to break down barriers to opportunity and boost life chances for every child. The within-school and college factor that makes the biggest difference to a young person’s education is high-quality teaching, but this government inherited years of rising teacher vacancies and low recruitment resulting in shortages of qualified teachers across the country. This is why this government is committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers across our schools, both mainstream and specialist, and our colleges over the course of this parliament.

This government has already made good early progress towards this key pledge by ensuring teaching is once again an attractive and respected profession. 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, which is effective from September. The department has expanded its school teacher recruitment campaign, ‘Every Lesson Shapes a Life’ and the further education teacher recruitment campaign ‘Share your Skills’. The government has also reformed the school inspection system to remove Ofsted’s single headline grades.

This government has recently announced the Initial Teacher Training financial incentives package for the 2025/26 recruitment cycle, which is worth up to £233 million, a £37 million increase on the last cycle. This includes a range of measures, including bursaries worth £29,000 tax-free and scholarships worth £31,000 tax-free, to encourage talented trainees into key subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing.

This government wants to support retention alongside recruitment so that teachers stay and thrive in the profession. As of 14 October, eligible early career teachers in priority science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and technical subjects can claim targeted retention incentive payments worth up to £6,000 after tax, with payments made available to college teachers in key STEM and technical subjects for the first time.

In addition, the department is supporting teachers to improve their workload and wellbeing and have a made a range of resources available to support teachers including the ‘Improve workload and wellbeing for school staff’ service and the ‘education staff wellbeing charter’. The department is also working with schools to increase opportunities for greater flexible working, for example we have clarified that teachers can undertake their planning, preparation and assessment time remotely.