In a damning report published today, the National Audit Office has set how how the government spends an annual £700 million on recruiting and training new teachers, but has missed its own recruitment targets for the past four years.

The spending watchdog goes on to highlight a series of points about teacher recruitment that the Department for Education does not know but needs to find out. They include:

1. The extent of local teacher supply shortages and whether they are being resolved locally.
2. Whether the route a trainee takes into teaching makes them more likely to stay in teaching.
3. A measure of how accurate the DfE teacher supply model is.
4. The impact of bursaries on the proportion of trainees who qualify as teachers. 
5. Data to show whether the quality of a newly qualified teacher is linked to their route into teaching.
6. Whether bursaries improve the proportion of trainees who stay in the classroom as teachers. 

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