Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, in which secondary school subjects her Department has been unable to recruit enough trainee teachers to fill the number of training places allocated in each of the last five years for which data is available.

The Department’s teacher recruitment targets for each academic year are calculated on an annual basis and take into account changes in the overall workforce from the previous year and wider economic changes that impact on retention and recruitment. Therefore the absolute targets change each year.

The statistics at the following link show new entrants to initial teacher training (ITT) as a proportion of the targets, for each subject, for academic years 2011/12 to 2015/16. Proportions above 100 per cent represent an over recruitment and proportions below 100 per cent represent a shortfall in recruitment against the target in the year in question.

The relevant statistics are available in Table 1c of the ‘Initial Teacher Training: trainee number census 2015 to 2016’, available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/initial-teacher-training-trainee-number-census-2015-to-2016

Equivalent statistics for academic year 2016/17 are due to be published in November.