Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support is given to schools experiencing difficulty in attracting and retaining teachers.

We have more teachers in our schools than ever before and the number of teachers has kept pace with changing numbers of pupils. We are, however, aware that recruitment can be challenging for some schools.

We are therefore continuing to invest in recruitment; at the 2015 Spending Review we announced we would invest £1.3bn up to 2020 to attract new teachers into the profession. We have also given more schools the means to address recruitment locally, encouraging them to make greater use of pay flexibilities and retention allowances. We also continue to invest in professional development so the best teachers stay in the profession.

In addition, we are continuing our extensive work with the profession to remove unnecessary workload, the most frequently cited reason for teachers wanting to leave the profession, so that teachers can concentrate on teaching, rather than bureaucracy. This includes implementing the recommendations of the three independent review groups from the 2014 Workload Challenge – ineffective marking, use of planning and resources, and data management.