Teacher recruitment crisis is still growing

s a new school year begins, there is an air of renewal breathing across the country. Parents let out barely audible sighs of pressure-relief as their offspring are packed off to the system once more, and teachers and schools staff bolster down for another session at the coal face.

But the coal face needs more miners; there is currently a shortage of teachers, an event which has been predicted by unions for some time. Teacher recruitment has been falling for the last five years, and there is an estimation that one in 10 teacher training places this year, are unfilled. But why?

Firstly, there is a population boom, and school intakes are growing year on year. The latest estimate, in a report published last week, is that there will be a rise of more than a million over the next ten years. Couple this with falling recruitment and 10% of teachers leaving the profession this year alone, and we see that the crisis is yet to grow.

Several factors are in play, notably including the academisation of many schools; the increase in individual workload; the disparity of pay compared to other graduate professions; and the depth of accountability on teachers, unaccompanied by support.

There are no higher stakes than the educational outcomes of a child, and all teachers that I know don't need to be made accountable by policy and admin – they are accountable by their nature. But retention and recruitment is at an all-time low, because the "9am to 3pm, 39-weeks-a-year" package that people imply, couldn't be further from the truth.

Someone worked out that an average newly qualified teacher earns around £6.25 an hour after tax, and with the scrapping of the policy of paying teachers' university tuition fees, and the additional charge of £9,000 to do the post-grad certificate required, it is little wonder that many potentially wonderful teachers are seeking to use their skills elsewhere in a market which values their input.

So, unqualified teachers (more than 20,000 currently in employment), supply teachers and agency teachers are the new normal as we start this new school year, with a particular shortage of secondary maths and English teachers.

And you have to wonder at the maths education of whoever thought that the agency fees of around £500 per week per agency teacher – on top of their pay – was better value than £6.25 an hour for a real one!

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