Nicholas Soames – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nicholas Soames on 2015-11-06.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an estimate of the number of additional teachers that will be needed to accommodate the predicted population rise over the next 25 years; and if she will make a statement.
Nick Gibb
The Department for Education uses the Teacher Supply Model (TSM) to estimate the demand for qualified teachers in active service within state-funded schools in England each year using a range of assumptions including projections for the numbers of pupils in schools. The TSM then estimates the number of postgraduate Initial Teacher Training (ITT) places required in England to meet this demand, given the number of entrants expected through routes other than the Newly Qualified Teacher route; for example through returning to teaching.
The TSM estimates the number of postgraduate training places required one year in advance and is updated each year to take account of the most up-to-date data – for example, the population projections published by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) – which means our estimates change each year. As with any long-term forecast, the further into the future the forecast the more uncertain the estimates become. For this reason, the department does not produce 25 year forecasts of teacher demand. The forecast period of the current TSM provides the department with estimates of the broad trend in likely future demand for teachers which is sufficient for our policy development needs.
The 2016/17 version of the TSM, which was used to inform the 2016/17 ITT recruitment process, along with a user guide explaining the methodology in detail, is available at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-supply-model.
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