This NFER report explores the key trends in teacher recruitment, retention and working conditions over the last decade, assessing what progress has been made in addressing the growing teacher supply challenge and where future policy attention could best be focussed to continue addressing the challenges.
Recruitment to teacher training in 2022 was extremely poor: the numbers of trainees recruited failed to meet the respective targets in 13 out of 17 secondary subjects as well as primary. However, teacher supply challenges are as much a reflection of retention challenges as they are of recruitment issues.
Therefore a systemic approach to addressing the teacher supply challenge must include measures aimed at improving retention.
Failing to recruit and retain enough teachers has significant implications for school staffing and therefore for pupils’ education and learning. In turn, there are likely to be negative impacts on longer-term skill development and supply, particularly in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects, and ultimately on long-term economic growth.
Since schools with high levels of disadvantage struggle more with retaining teachers and show greater indications of teacher shortages, solutions to the national teacher supply challenge therefore also have important links to the challenges of levelling up educational outcomes, increasing social mobility and closing the disadvantage gap.