Source · Select Committees · Education Committee
Recommendation 39
39
Accepted
Subject-specific teacher shortages significantly compromise teaching quality and reduce subject provision.
Conclusion
We have significant concerns about the negative impacts of subject specific teacher shortages. These include compromising the quality of teaching where subjects are being taught by teachers without subject expertise and the reduction of subject provision where schools do not have sufficient specialist teaching capacity. We also heard that lack of specialist teachers can have an adverse impact on take up of certain subjects. This is evidenced by modern foreign languages having the lowest take up by pupils when compared to other English Baccalaureate (EBacc) subjects. Out of the 86.2% of pupils who entered four of the five EBacc components 88.9% were missing the languages component in 2022/23. (Paragraph 163) Teacher recruitment, training and retention 81
Government Response Summary
The government acknowledges teacher shortages and outlines ongoing efforts to improve recruitment and retention, including addressing workload, offering retention payments for maths teachers, and providing bursaries and scholarships for ITT courses, with a focus on shortage subjects like languages.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
Whilst there has been some progress since the previous government published the 2019 recruitment and retention strategy, there are shortages of qualified teachers across the country and there is much more to do to meet our goal to ensure every child is taught by a great specialist teacher. For subjects like Maths and Physics or Design & Technology, recruitment targets have been missed each year for 10 years. To achieve our ambition, further work is needed to improve the experience of being a teacher and re-establish teaching as an attractive profession, one that existing teachers want to remain in, former teachers want to return to, and new graduates wish to join. This includes addressing broader factors such as workload, wellbeing, and career development opportunities because we believe the best recruitment strategy is a strong retention strategy. Teacher retention is key to ensure children and young people receive the excellent education they all deserve from experienced and high-quality teachers. We know there is further work to do to increase the supply of maths and other shortage subject teachers, but we have already taken action. We are offering increased bursaries worth £29,000 tax-free and increased scholarships worth £31,000 tax-free for maths trainee teachers. We are also offering a Targeted Retention Incentive worth up to £6,000 after-tax for maths teachers in the first five years of their careers who work in disadvantaged schools, which is a doubling of the previous retention payments available. The Department currently offers bursaries worth up to £29,000 tax-free and scholarships worth up to £31,000 tax-free for school ITT courses. We review bursaries each year before announcing the offer for those starting ITT the following academic year. In doing so, we take account of a number of factors including historic recruitment, forecast economic conditions, and teacher supply need in each subject as determined by the Teacher Workforce Model. We offer the highest bursaries in STEM subjects where there are persistent shortages and graduates have the highest earning potential outside teaching. In recent years, we have also increased the languages bursary, and reintroduced lower bursaries in subjects such as art & design, music and RE. As we have a limited budget, we need to prioritise when deciding the bursaries on offer.