Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate his Department has made of the percentage shortfall in the cumulative targets for recruitment of trainee secondary teachers of (a) religious education and (b) modern foreign languages for the recruitment period 2017-18 to 2021-22, excluding the 2020-21 recruitment year.

The attached table shows the new entrants to postgraduate Initial Teacher Training for modern foreign languages and religious education for the recruitment years from 2017/18 to 2021/22. These figures have been taken from the ITT Census publication which can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/initial-teacher-training-census/2021-22#releaseHeadlines-tables.

The table also presents the postgraduate ITT recruitment targets for those subjects as well as the percentage of the target reached in each of the recruitment years. It is not recommended to add up shortfalls to targets over several years to obtain a ‘cumulative shortfall’. This would likely over-state the true recruitment shortfall over the period - a consequence of the methodology used to set the targets each year.

The 2022/23 recruitment year Postgraduate Initial Teacher Training (PGITT) targets include an adjustment to build in impacts of recruitment being below targets for the two PGITT rounds prior to 2022/23 (the 2020/21 and 2021/22 recruitment year rounds).

The 2022/23 recruitment year Modern Foreign Languages (including Classics) PGITT target of 2,170 trainees includes such an adjustment due to missed targets in the two previous ITT cycles.

For Religious Education, the 2022/23 recruitment year PGITT target of 450 trainees does not include any adjustments for under-recruitment in the two previous ITT cycles. Whilst the 2021/22 recruitment year target for Religious Education was slightly below target (99% of target), this under-recruitment was offset by increases in supply from other routes such as returners to teaching.

For more information on the 2022/23 recruitment year PGITT targets and the underlying methodology, please see the following link: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/postgraduate-initial-teacher-training-targets/2022-23#releaseHeadlines-summary.