Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has issued guidance to schools that have amended their subject curricula due to staff shortages.

Schools have the flexibility to organise the content and delivery of the curriculum to meet the needs of their pupils and to suit their local contexts.

There is no prescription about the number of teaching hours for each subject, or about the format of lessons. It is for schools to decide how much time is spent on any subject.

As part of our Plan for Change, the department is committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers across secondary and special schools, and in our colleges, over the course of this Parliament.

In 2024/25, we drove forward teacher recruitment and retention, backed by investment of around £700 million across schools and further education. The workforce has grown by 2,346 full-time equivalent between 2023/24 and 2024/25, in secondary and special 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.