Commenting on new data released today showing that the government has missed its target for secondary school teacher recruitment again this year by 50%, Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT, said:

"These deeply worrying figures provide the starkest evidence yet that schools are in the midst of a full-blown teacher recruitment crisis.

"Missing the secondary target by 57% overall, and in all bar three subjects, while expected, speaks to government’s abject failure to create a compelling proposition for a career in teaching.

"The primary shortfall was a more modest 4%, but to a large extent this is due to a cut of a fifth (21.2%) in the primary target, made in April 2023. The reduction in the target from 11,655 to 9,180 has not been fully explained by DfE. The result is that this year there were 8,844 new entrants compared to 10,640 in 2022/23 (when the target was missed by 9%). It’s perhaps interesting to note that the primary intake this year was only 76% when compared to the ITT recruitment target for 2022/23.

"Put simply, this means that despite the best efforts of school leaders to plug gaps, some pupils may not be getting the consistency or depth of teaching they deserve. More are being taught by teachers with no qualification in the subject they are teaching, by teaching assistants, or by often costly supply staff

"Staffing vacancies in schools add to already unsustainable workload among teachers and leaders, and can harm their wellbeing, prompting more to consider their future in what should be a richly rewarding profession.

"The government must scrap its failed recruitment and retention strategy and replace it with a new vision which restores teaching and school leadership as career graduates aspire to. This must include action to tackle oppressive levels of workload, fundamentally reform Ofsted, and reverse more than a decade of real-terms pay cuts."