Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 19
38th Report - Increasing teacher numbers: Secondary and further education
Published 9 Jul 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Increasing teacher numbers: Secondary and further education All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The Department’s annual teacher survey showed that 84% of teachers who had left between its 2023 and 2024 surveys described high workload as a reason for leaving, with 75% citing stress and/or poor wellbeing. Full-time secondary school teachers in England work on average 50.3 hours per week in term time.47 The Department told us schoolteachers in England work more than their international counterparts but spend fewer hours in the classroom with pupils. It also told us that while it has made some progress on reducing hours by working with Ofsted to reduce marking requirements, it is “quite hard” to understand the root causes behind what contributed to high teacher workloads and when or why this would be a problem.48
From: Public Accounts Committee, 38th Report - Increasing teacher numbers: Secondary and further education (HC 825), 9 July 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Thirty-eighth Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026 (deadline 9 September 2025).
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Thirty-eighth report from Session 2024-26
Published 15 October 2025.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government states that it agrees with each of the Committee's recommendations on increasing secondary and further education teacher numbers, and gives target implementation dates between November 2025 and December 2026.
- On the pledge of 6,500 additional teachers, the department "will set out more detail" in a published delivery plan covering the definition of the pledge, tracking of progress, progress to date and the levers it will use, including recruitment and retention.
- On a whole-system strategy, it points to upcoming publications (the Schools White Paper, the 6,500 delivery plan and the post-16 education and skills strategy) and says it is "embedding value for money analysis" into major initiatives.
- On further education, it commits to update the Committee "every 6 months" on progress in recruiting and retaining FE teachers, with a first step being the 6,500 delivery plan.
- On behaviour hubs, it says "further rollout and funding are subject to spending review outcomes and evaluation findings".