Career-changers boost numbers in secondary shortage subjects

22nd March 2002, 12:00am
AROUND 840 people will start teacher training “on the job” next term, half of them in secondary shortage subjects. The latest recruits, from 1,100 applications, bring the total number of people on the Graduate Teacher Programme to 3,200 this year, double the 2001 figure. School standards minister Stephen Timms said the programme, which was recently criticised by the Office for Standards in Education, had brought 6,000 career-changers into the profession since it started four years ago.