Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 19 October 2017 to Question 108025, on Teachers: training, what evidence supports her Department's assertion that the number of new teachers continues to outnumber those who retire or leave.

The Department publishes statistics on the size of the school workforce each year. The latest statistics were published in June 2017 in the ‘School Workforce in England: November 2016’ statistical release: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2016.

Table 7b shows the time series, from 2011 to 2016, of the full-time equivalent number of teacher entrants and the full-time equivalent number of teachers leaving.

The statistics show that between November 2015 and November 2016, 43,830 full-time equivalent qualified teachers entered our classrooms (this includes newly qualified teachers, qualified teachers returning to the profession after a career break and experienced qualified teachers working in state funded schools for the first time). This represents a teacher entrant rate of 10.1%.

During the same period, 42,830 full-time equivalent qualified teachers left state funded schools (this includes those retiring, those leaving the profession early and those taking a career break and who may come back at a later date). This represents a teacher leavers rate of 9.9%.

Table 7b shows that the qualified teacher entrant rate has been higher than the qualified teacher leavers rate throughout the period 2011 to 2016.