Recommendation 3

Teacher vacancies and the challenges of retaining experienced teachers are greater for schools in deprived areas, and across some core subjects, leading to inequities in provision and career opportunities. Schools and colleges decide their own staffing model and have discretion around how they chose to use funding which may, for example, lead to variances in the use of supply teachers and pupil-teacher ratios. Schools with higher proportions of disadvantaged pupils tend to have higher turnover rates and less experienced teachers – 34% of teachers in the most disadvantaged schools had less than five years of experience, compared to 20% in the least disadvantaged schools. These schools also suffer teacher shortages in specialist subjects, such as in Computing (1.4% vacancy rate against 0.8% in secondary schools overall). This means that disadvantaged students are at risk of being locked out of particular careers due to a lack of trained teachers 31% of schools in the most disadvantaged areas do not offer Computer Science A-level (compared to 11% in the least disadvantaged areas), and 9% do not offer Physics A-level (1% in the least 5 disadvantaged areas). This issue is critical to the government’s mission of breaking down barriers to opportunity, but the Department does not have a timescale for when we can expect to see reduced variation between schools in more and less disadvantaged areas. Challenges extend to colleges which struggle to find trained teachers in specialist subjects, such as construction, where shortages in the wider labour market increases the competition for talent and means fewer people are likely to apply. recommendation The Department should work with schools and colleges to understand the reasons behind variations, particularly within deprived areas and core subjects, setting this out in published information to help identify and share good practice and ideas on what works best.