Introducing minimum teaching hours for students resitting GCSE maths and English shows an “alarming lack of understanding” of teacher shortages, a school leaders’ union has said.
The Department for Education updated its 16-19 funding guidance this week and it states that resit students must receive a minimum of three hours a week of English teaching and four hours a week for maths teaching from September 2024.
This will not be monitored in the first academic year from this September but schools and colleges who fail to deliver these hours in future years will face post-16 funding reductions.
Kevin Gilmartin, post-16 specialist at the Association of Schools and College Leaders, said: “Blithely increasing teaching hours for GCSE resits in maths and English amid a recruitment and retention crisis shows either an unwillingness to face reality or an alarming lack of understanding of the current teacher shortage.”
The guidance states the teaching hours should be “stand-alone, whole-class, in-person teaching, with any additional support, such as small group tuition or online support, supplementary to these minimum classroom hours”.
The new minimum hours will be an expectation from September 2024, but the government has said it will not be “measuring compliance” in the first year to reflect that some institutions may not be able to meet the new rules so easily.
However, from 2025-26, the government will reduce funding for every instance “where a student’s planned English and/or maths hours are below the minimum teaching hours”.
It has said it will provide further details ahead of the 2025-26 academic year on how it will be collecting this data, assessing compliance and applying funding reductions.
Mr Gilmartin said instead of bringing in minimum teaching hours, the government should focus on bringing in a new English and maths qualification that would prevent students from becoming stuck “in a demoralising cycle of retakes”.
The DfE has said it is also removing a system of tolerance in funding cuts applied when pupils who should be resitting GCSEs in maths and English are not doing so.
DfE tolerance threshold to drop
It currently reduces funding to schools and colleges where more than 5 per cent of students without a GCSE grade 9 to 4 in maths and/or English have not enrolled on approved qualifications in these subjects.
This tolerance threshold will drop to 2.5 per cent of students in the 2025-26 academic year and 0 per cent in 2026-27.
This summer’s GCSE results saw an increase in the number of 16-year-olds failing to achieve a passing grade 4 or above in English and maths. It meant a large spike in the number of students having to resit in the November exam series.
Resit entries were up 29 per cent for English language from 2022 to 2023, and maths resit entries were up 18 per cent.
The new funding guidance also introduces a £900 premium for core maths to encourage the provision of these qualifications and to encourage pupils to take maths up to age 18.
A DfE spokesperson said: “Having good English and maths skills significantly enhances job prospects and opportunities to progress in education. That’s why we’re investing £600 million to support the Advanced British Standard, including funding for English and maths resits, with students benefitting from minimum English and maths teaching hours in our post-16 institutions to boost learning outcomes.”
The spokesperson added that £470 million invested in further education teaching over the next two years will address challenges such as teacher recruitment and retention, along with an expanded levelling up premium and bursaries.
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