Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much her Department has spent on programmes aimed at recruiting (a) primary and b) secondary education teachers in each of the last five years, broken down by (i) programme and (ii) region and nation.

High quality teaching is the in-school factor that has the biggest positive impact on a child or young person’s outcome in schools and colleges. Recruiting and retaining more qualified, expert teachers is critical to the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and boost the life chances for every child.

As part of the government’s Plan for Change to deliver 6,500 additional new expert teachers across secondary and special schools and colleges, the department funds initiatives across the teacher training and recruitment pipeline in England, based on available evidence of what works best. In the 2024/25 financial year, the department spent just over £600 million to support school teacher training, recruitment and retention.

We are already seeing positive signs that our investment is starting to deliver: the workforce has grown by 2,346 full-time equivalent teachers between 2023/24 and 2024/25, in secondary and special schools, the schools where they are needed most. This includes 1,435 more secondary school teachers and 911 more special and pupil referral unit teachers compared to last year.

Our future school teacher pipeline is also growing. As of May 2025, there are 11% more trainees who have accepted offers to train as secondary subjects, including in priority subjects such as Physics, where we have seen a 43% increase in acceptances compared to last year.

The table below provides detail of the spending on programmes supporting recruitment and retention of the teacher workforce. All programmes are targeted and focused on school specific need. Data on spending by region is not available.