Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what her Department's (a) physics teacher recruitment target and (b) recruitment levels of qualified physics teachers were in each year between 2011 and 2015.

The Department for Education does not have teacher recruitment targets – individual schools and academy trusts are responsible for recruiting the teachers they need. At the time of the last census; vacancy rates were just 0.2% of the total number of teachers in schools.

The total number of trainee physics teachers is published each year in the ‘Initial Teacher Training: Trainee Number Census’ statistical series by the National College for Teaching and Leadership, and is published online at:

www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-teacher-training

The total number of secondary school teachers teaching physics (to year groups 7 to 13) is published each year in the ‘School Workforce in England’ statistical series published online at:

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

However, there is no information available to show how many newly recruited physics teachers are teaching in secondary schools.