Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information the Government holds on schools’ ability to recruit and retain permanent teaching staff.

Information on the number of new entrants to teaching in state funded schools is available in Table 7a of the publication, School Workforce in England, 2017. This is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2017.

Information on the retention of newly qualified teachers is available in Table 8 of the above publication. Further information on the retention of newly qualified teachers, including the characteristics and type of teacher training and regional information, is available in the Teachers Analysis Compendium 4 available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/teachers-analysis-compendium-4.

In January 2019 the Department launched the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy which outlines 4 key areas for reform and investment. These are creating the right climate for leaders to establish supportive school cultures, transforming support for early career teachers, building a career offer that remains attractive to teachers as their careers and lives develop, and making it easier for great people to become teachers.

Designed collaboratively with the sector, the centrepiece of the strategy is the Early Career Framework, which will underpin a fully-funded, two-year package of structured support for all early career teachers linked to the best available research evidence. The strategy can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-recruitment-and-retention-strategy.