Teacher shortages are worsening, new goverment figures released today reveal.
They show that the number of teacher vacancies in England’s state funded schools shot up by a by more than a third in a single year. This comes despite the number of primary teachers climbing by 6,000 between November 2013 and November 2014 to 215,500.
But in secondaries, beginning to be hit by the bulge in pupil numbers, the number of teachers has fallen from 214,200 to 213,200
The Department for Education has been keen to play down reports of recruitment problems as schools in many areas of the country struggle to fill vacancies. Ministers have argued that the national vacancy rate has remained stable at around 1 per cent for years.
Today’s figures, collected in November, will allow them to continue with that line. They show that the national proportion of teaching posts vacant is 0.3 per cent and the proportion of teaching posts temporalily filled is 0.9 per cent.
That adds up to an overall national vancy rate of 1.2 per cent. But while seemingly small, it is up from 0.8 the previous year and represents a doubling since 2010 when it was 0.6 per cent. Five other statstics released today also suggest that teacher recruitment problems are increasing for England’s state schools:
1 Number of teacher vacancies
November 2014: 1,030
November 2013: 750
2 Number of temporarily-filled teacher posts
November 2014: 3,210
November 2013: 2,330
3 Number of teachers without Qualified Teacher Status
November 2014: 20,300
November 2013: 16,600
4 Percentage of maths lessons taught by teachers with a relevant post A-level qualification
November 2014: 79.8
November 2013: 82.7
5 Percentage of English lessons taught by teachers with a relevant post A-level qualification
November 2014: 83
November 2013: 84.8