Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many new teachers will be delivered in (a) South Shropshire and (b) other rural areas.

Delivering the government’s agenda to break down the barriers to opportunity relies on a highly skilled workforce in schools, and high-quality teaching is the in-school factor that makes the biggest difference to a child’s education.

There are now 468,693 full-time equivalent teachers in state-funded schools in England but numbers have not kept pace with demand. This is why the department 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 will help ensure that children in South Shropshire and all other areas of the country, including rural areas, have the expert qualified teachers they need in order to achieve and thrive.