Jim Cunningham – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Cunningham on 2016-03-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of teacher recruitment and retention in primary and secondary schools.

Nick Gibb

There are now more, better-qualified teachers in England’s classrooms than ever before. We are attracting top graduates and career-changers with generous incentives, including tax-free bursaries worth up to £30,000 and the opportunity to earn a salary whilst training.

This year, over 1,000 more postgraduate trainee teachers were recruited than in 2014/15. We exceeded our target for new primary teachers and finished ahead of last year in key secondary subjects such as maths and physics.

Teacher retention rates have remained broadly stable for two decades. 72% of those who qualified in the 2009 calendar year and entered teaching by November 2009 were still teaching five years later.

It is vital for schools to be able to retain good teachers. That is why we have made significant policy interventions in the areas that teachers tell us matter most, such as improving pupil behaviour and reducing unnecessary workload. We have appointed behaviour expert Tom Bennett to lead a review to ensure new teachers are fully trained in dealing with disruptive children and to consider all of the challenges of managing behaviour in schools.

We have established three groups to address the biggest concerns that teachers raised in the workload challenge: marking, planning and data management. The groups will create principles for practice and make specific recommendations for action. All three groups are due to report to Ministers in 2016 and we are commissioning a biennial survey to track teacher workload, starting in the spring of 2016.

We have also given schools the freedom to pay the best teachers more, recognising excellence and improving retention.