• The Department for Education (DfE) has taken steps to tackle teacher shortages, with a range of initiatives totalling £700m in 2024-25
• Further education colleges are the worst affected by shortages and DfE has predicted they could need between 8,400 and 12,400 more teachers by 2028/29 – more than government’s current pledge for new teachers
• For all but one of the past ten years, DfE has missed its target for those starting secondary school teacher training
• The National Audit Office (NAO) recommends government publishes its plan for recruiting an additional 6,500 teachers by the end of this Parliament, so the sector understands what this means in practice

The government budgeted £700 million last year for initiatives to address the critical, nationwide teacher shortage, but its latest data shows 4,000 vacancies across secondary schools and further education colleges, says the NAO.

The new report by the independent public spending watchdog assesses whether DfE is achieving value for money through its work to recruit and retain teachers for state-funded secondary schools and further education colleges in England.

In July 2024 the government pledged to recruit 6,500 additional teachers by the end of the current Parliament – Spring 2029 at the latest, but the NAO found, given the forthcoming spending review, it is not yet clear to what extent this will address current or future shortages.

Since 2018, more teachers have been recruited than left the profession each year; however, there is a growing number of secondary school pupils, which is expected to peak in 2028, and teacher numbers are already failing to increase in line with students. Between 2015/16 and 2023/24, secondary teacher numbers increased by 3% to 217,600, while secondary school pupils rose by 15% to 3.7 million.

Growing pupil numbers will later affect further education, with DfE estimating a need for between 8,400 and 12,400 more teachers by 2028/29.

The most cited reasons school teachers leave the profession is due to work overload or stress. In 2022/23, 19,900 secondary teachers left, compared with 14,700 in 2019/20 and 18,500 in 2018/19, the year before the pandemic. The proportion of secondary teachers retiring has decreased, from 33% in 2010/11 (6,900) to 7% in 2022/23 (1,500), meaning people are leaving teaching but continuing to work. Only 8,700 newly qualified teachers started work in 2023/24, the lowest number since 2010/11, while 8,200 teachers returned to the profession.

DfE has a good understanding of secondary school teacher numbers through an annual census, but its future projections do not account for existing shortages or indicate total number of teachers needed. The further education model assesses workforce needs relative to teacher numbers in 2020/21.

DfE has missed its target for those starting to train as secondary school teachers in nine of the ten previous years, missing its targets for 13 out of 18 subjects in 2024/25 including physics (31% of target met), computing (37% of target met), and foreign languages (43% of target met). It exceeded targets for classics, history, biology, physical education, and English.

In 2024-25, DfE budgeted to spend £700 million across a range of financial and non-financial initiatives, to try to improve teacher recruitment and retention. These include training bursaries, opportunities for career development and retention payments of up to £6,000 to those qualified to teach secondary school maths, physics, chemistry or computing who choose to teach in disadvantaged schools in the first five years of their career.

Schools with more disadvantaged pupils tend to have greater staff turnover and a higher number of unfilled vacancies. In 2023/24, secondary schools with the highest percentage of disadvantaged pupils had just over a third of teachers with five years or less experience, compared with 20% in schools with the lowest percentage of disadvantaged pupils.

Teachers in further education colleges earn £10,000 less on average than secondary school teachers, making recruitment even harder. Colleges set their own pay but have said that DfE’s funding increases of £285 million for 2024-25 and £300 million for 2025-26 will mostly cover costs from increased student numbers. The government has funded a 5.5% pay rise for all schoolteachers in 2024/25, representing £1.2 billion extra funding.

DfE sees fair pay as critical for ensuring enough teachers in schools and colleges. This was backed up by stakeholders who submitted evidence to the NAO, who identified competitive pay as the most effective way to improve teacher retention and recruitment. Government needs to consider pay decisions for long-term affordability, pending a multi-year spending review.

The NAO has several recommendations to help DfE address the continuing challenges with teacher recruitment and retention, including:

• Build on the innovative steps it is taking to consider challenges across the education sector to further develop cross-sector data and insights across schools and further education colleges
• Publish a delivery plan for achieving the 6,500-teacher pledge so the sector understands what this means in practice
• Consider what more it can do to encourage those undertaking teacher training to move into teaching jobs in the state-funded sector
• Extend its evidence base on what works to recruit and retain teachers, and analyse the costs and benefits of initiatives in helping to decide where to prioritise resource
• Assess the extent to which the further education workforce model is fit for purpose

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said:

“Despite the government’s pledge, secondary schools and further education colleges face a challenge in securing enough teachers to support growing student numbers. DfE must continue efforts to look at this as a cross-system issue and improve further education workforce data, to allocate funding effectively and ensure all children and young people achieve the best outcomes.”

Sector Reaction

Jenifer Burden, Director of Programmes at Gatsby Charitable Foundation said:

“Further education is central to England’s skills agenda, yet its teaching workforce remains chronically under-resourced. The NAO’s report confirms what many in the sector have long known: colleges cannot deliver on technical education ambitions without action to improve pay and training for FE teachers.”

Pepe Di’Iasio, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said:

“Virtually every school and college in the country is having to manage teacher shortages because of long-standing nationwide recruitment and retention problems.

“The last government failed to address this issue and it is not clear how the current government intends to achieve its pledge of recruiting 6,500 new teachers or whether this will be anywhere near enough.

“We’ve had no end of piecemeal policies but the overriding factors remain unresolved – pay levels are not competitive enough and workload and stress is driving teachers out of the profession.

“This will only be resolved by improving pay, school and college funding, and dialling down the excessive pressures of Ofsted inspections and performance tables.

“Instead, schools and colleges are facing huge budgetary pressures and the government and Ofsted seem hell-bent on increasing the pressure of inspections with a new five-point grading scale. This is only likely to further deepen the recruitment and retention crisis.”

Jenni French, Head of STEM in Schools at Gatsby Charitable Foundation said:

“The NAO is right to call out pay as a key driver of teacher supply, and to highlight the need for better workforce data. Without competitive salaries or real-time insight into regional and subject-specific shortages, policies will continue to fall short. “

Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT, said:

“This cut in teacher training targets is surprising. Last year, teacher recruitment targets were missed, with secondary schools only reaching 62% of the target number of trainees, and primaries 88%. So it is not clear why this year’s targets for both are around a fifth lower.

“Given the National Audit Office has found that secondary school pupil numbers will rise, it is hard to see why targets would be reduced.

“We need to understand more about how these targets have been calculated. This is particularly important in light of the government’s ambition to recruit 6,500 more teachers.”

Jack Worth, School Workforce Lead at NFER said:

“This report sends a clear message to Government that it will miss its 6,500 teacher recruitment pledge if it does not take action now.

“Unfilled vacancy levels are at their highest rates since records began in 2010, with pay, stress from dealing with pupil behaviour and workload pressures reported to be contributing to teachers leaving the profession.

“Properly funded pay rises are urgently needed alongside and non-financial measures, such as workload reduction and flexible working, to improve both recruitment and retention.”

James Zuccollo, Director for School Workforce at EPI said:

“The NAO’s report highlights significant shortcomings in the DfE’s six-year-old teacher recruitment and retention strategy. Despite its ambition to recruit an additional 6,500 teachers, this target is both insufficient to address the current shortfall and unlikely to be met at the current pace. Teachers’ pay remains 10 percent lower than in 2010, and the proposed 4 percent pay increase will do little to resolve this issue. To make teaching a more attractive profession for both current educators and young graduates, we need more innovative and creative solutions. However, recent decisions to ban flexible pension schemes and restrict academy freedoms risk hindering progress. Without a change in direction, schools in England will continue to face challenges in recruiting and retaining the exceptional teachers our pupils deserve.” 

Jo Grady, General Secretary at UCU said:

“The latest report from the National Audit Office lays bare the crisis gripping further education (FE) in England. UCU’s New Deal for FE campaign has demonstrated the reasons why the sector is on a cliff edge, and today’s findings are yet another wake-up call. Without urgent and sustained investment and a proper workforce strategy, the government risks failing thousands of students and burning out the educators who support them.

“With rising student numbers, reactive piecemeal funding, and chronic recruitment and retention problems, the report makes clear that doing nothing is not an option. The government must act now to address the structural challenges in FE. That starts with investing in the people who make further education work.

“UCU is calling for a clear and funded roadmap to achieve pay parity with school teachers, a national agreement to tackle excessive workloads, and fully funded, sector-wide collective bargaining. These are the foundations of a stable and sustainable FE sector and its time government delivered on them.”