The teacher recruitment “challenge” (according to schools minister Nick Gibb) or “crisis” (according to just about everyone else) continues apace. Figures released by the Department for Education last week show that the number applying to initial teacher training courses has declined by 2 per cent since last year.

Only four of the 18 secondary subjects recruited enough trainees to meet the government’s teacher supply model targets. The situation is particularly grave in maths, physics, computing, and design and technology - all subjects where schools were already struggling to find teachers. But there are likely to be shortages even in the subjects that have met their targets, because not enough people have been trained over the past four years.

This is not good news for school leaders struggling to recruit. Those I speak to tell me of the soaring cost of advertising, the exorbitant fees paid to supply teacher agencies and the growing market in enhanced payment packages for graduates, particularly in Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects.

A pressing problem

If ministers were brave enough to face facts, they would acknowledge that there was a pressing teacher recruitment problem. The percentage rate of vacancies and temporarily filled positions for full-time classroom teachers in state secondary schools trebled between 2011 and 2015.

School leaders, desperate to find teachers, are resorting to a “jack of all trades” approach - requiring teachers to teach out of their subject area. For English Baccalaureate subjects in November 2015, some 15 per cent of lessons were taught by teachers who were not subject specialists.

One in four maths and one in five English secondary school teachers didn’t have an A level in these subjects. This is not a sustainable situation. Teaching out of their subject area increases stress and workload for those teachers. I know this to be true from my own experience when I was required to teach drama. However hard I worked, I never felt as secure as I did when teaching English (my specialist subject). And I knew that, despite my best efforts, the pupils were being short-changed.

Diminishing attraction

Ministers who continue to bury their heads in the sand over the crisis in recruitment and retention will find that, in a very short time, the situation will have moved beyond their control.

Approximately 40,000 new teachers are needed, each year to replace those retiring or leaving the profession. And as teachers vote with their feet, quitting a profession that routinely requires 50- to 60-hour working weeks, the attraction of starting in teaching is diminishing.

Too many teachers are, unfortunately, not prepared to recommend their profession to the next generation. Unless and until teachers’ working lives are improved, and their professionalism is respected, this situation will persist.

Years of underfilling training places, uncompetitive salaries and rising workload - exacerbated by changes to the curriculum, exams and tests - have fuelled the current recruitment and retention crisis, which the government has steadfastly refused to acknowledge for far too long.

Ministers need to concentrate their energies on two issues: ensuring there are enough trained teachers and guaranteeing enough places for pupils in schools. Embarking on a policy of expanding grammar schools, instead of dealing with these fundamentals, is a massive distraction.

Mary Bousted is general secretary of the ATL teaching union and tweets @MaryBoustedATL