Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Prime Minister's oral contribution of 10 October 2018, Official Report, column 133, what the evidential basis was for the Prime Minister's statement that there are more teachers in our schools now and we see more people applying to be teachers; and to which year she was making that comparison.

Table 1 of the School Workforce in England publication shows that there were 451,900 full time equivalent teachers in state funded schools in 2017. This is 11,900 more than in 2011 and 10,100 more than in 2010.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-school-workforce.

Table 1a of the initial teacher training (ITT) census 2017/18 shows that we recruited 32,710 trainee teachers in academic year 2017/18. This is 815 more than 2016/17, an increase of 3%.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/initial-teacher-training-trainee-number-census-2017-to-2018.

The latest recruitment data published by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service shows that as of 17 September, there were 2,110 (7%) more acceptances to ITT in England than at the equivalent point last year (Report B, Table B.4).

https://www.ucas.com/data-and-analysis/ucas-teacher-training-statistical-releases.