After a decade of grim recruitment graphs, the latest initial teacher training (ITT) figures offer genuinely encouraging news.
This year’s census shows just over 32,000 people starting ITT - an 11 per cent rise on last year.
Crucially, 99 per cent of the postgraduate target has been met, up from 69 per cent the year before.
Recruitment to science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) subjects has exceeded the target for the first time since subject-specific targets were introduced in 2019: physics is up 36 per cent, computing 44 per cent and maths 16 per cent.
Across secondary, subjects from art and design to PE have met or surpassed their goals.
After years in which each dataset pointed to a deepening supply problem, these are real green shoots.
Teaching is becoming competitive again
Secondary recruitment as a whole still falls just short of the overall target - a reminder that recovery is uneven and far from complete - but the direction of travel is unmistakably better than it has been for years.
Financial incentives have played a role. Increased bursaries and the expansion of the Postgraduate Teaching Apprenticeship have widened access, particularly for career-changers.
The recent pay awards - almost 10 per cent over two years - have also mattered.
Teaching is becoming competitive again within the graduate labour market, particularly in Stem fields, where schools have long struggled to match salaries elsewhere. Pay isn’t everything, but it has stopped being the automatic deal-breaker it once was.
A better narrative on teaching
But pay alone doesn’t explain the shift. Something more fundamental is changing: the national story about what it means to be a teacher.
From her first days in post, education secretary Bridget Phillipson has been deliberate in positioning teaching not as a fallback or an act of sacrifice, but as a vital civic profession.
She talks about it alongside medicine, public leadership and social service - work that shapes communities and expands opportunity.
Recent campaigns have focused on subject passion, expertise and impact rather than martyrdom. That shift in tone matters. People respond not only to salary but to status, purpose and story.
Let’s not talk our profession down
Yet government rhetoric is only part of the picture. The profession’s own voice matters, too.
In recent years, the public conversation has understandably centred on pressure points: workload, behaviour, funding and the strain on special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). These issues are real, and they require action.
However, when difficulty becomes the dominant - or the only - storyline, it can shape how prospective teachers perceive the job.
If challenge is the main thing they hear about teaching, they may never encounter the aspects that draw so many of us in: intellectual challenge, subject expertise, purposeful work and the daily experience of helping young people grow.
This is not about downplaying reality. It is about offering a complete and honest picture. Teaching is demanding, and parts of the system remain under acute pressure.
At the same time, it is one of the most meaningful and socially valuable careers available. When both sides of that truth are voiced, people can make informed decisions about joining - and staying in - the profession.
Accentuate the positives
ITT data suggests that when people hear a more confident and balanced story about teaching, they still want to join it. The task now is sustaining this momentum while tackling the barriers that remain.
For government, that means following through on workload reduction, ensuring behaviour support is credible rather than rhetorical, fixing the SEND system and providing stability on curriculum and qualifications. Narrative only holds if policy aligns with it.
For the profession, it means being intentional about how we talk about teaching.
Prospective teachers need to hear the full picture: the intellectual satisfaction of deep subject engagement, the purpose that comes from work that matters and the reality that expert practice grows within strong professional cultures.
Early career teachers, in particular, need environments where induction is coherent, workload is manageable and collaboration is the norm.
The green shoots in recruitment are real but fragile. If we believe that teaching changes lives, we must sound like a profession that believes in itself. The story we tell - and the conditions we create - will determine whether today’s progress becomes a genuine turning point or a brief pause in a longer crisis.
Sam Gibbs is director of education at Greater Manchester Education Trust
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