Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to (a) increase recruitment to and (b) maintain retention of the education workforce.

The number of teachers remains high, with over 461,000 working in state-funded schools in England, 20,000 more than in 2010. The department is improving the process of becoming a teacher, from stimulating initial interest through world-class marketing, through to improving the application to initial teacher training (ITT). In October 2021, our new digital service, ‘apply for teacher training’, was rolled out. This is a key milestone in the delivery of a more streamlined, user-friendly application route.

We are transforming the training and support we provide to teachers and school leaders, to not only attract more people into teaching, but encourage them to stay and thrive in the profession.

We have created an entitlement to at least three years of structured training, support, and professional development for all new teachers, across ITT and into induction, to bring teaching into line with other prestigious professions, such as law, accountancy, and medicine. Underpinning this is the refreshed ITT core content framework and the early career framework. We have also launched a refreshed suite of fully funded National Professional Qualifications for teachers and school leaders at all levels, from those who want to develop expertise in high-quality teaching practice to those leading multiple schools across trusts.

To support recruitment of specialist secondary teachers in subjects that are harder to recruit for, we have put in place a range of measures, including bursaries worth £24,000 tax-free and scholarships worth £26,000 tax-free. This will encourage talented trainees for key subjects such as chemistry, computing, mathematics, and physics. Additionally, we have announced a Levelling Up Premium worth up to £3,000 tax-free for teachers in these subjects in years 1 to 5 of their careers. We also remain committed to increasing teacher starting salaries to £30,000 to make teaching an attractive graduate option.

Teacher retention is key to ensuring effective teacher supply and quality, and we are taking action to support teachers to stay and thrive in the profession. The department has published a range of resources to help address teacher workload and wellbeing, including by launching the education staff wellbeing charter, and by driving down unnecessary burdens and reducing teacher workload though the use of our workload reduction toolkit. Further information on the staff wellbeing charter and workload reduction toolkit are available here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter and here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/school-workload-reduction-toolkit.