Teacher shortages are hitting schools hard. Vacancies are reaching new highs in recent years despite an all-time record number of teachers in the profession. The government failed to meet its teacher recruitment target last year, reaching just 59 per cent of the target for secondary teacher trainee entrants starting courses.

I am concerned that it is likely to miss its recruitment targets yet again this year and continue to do so unless significant changes are made.  

The Commons Education Select Committee recently launched our new inquiry into this unfolding crisis in teacher recruitment, training and retention. My colleagues and I will hear from experts and academics throughout the sector on the current situation of teacher retention and recruitment, and the main factors contributing to it. We will also gauge the impact on students from staff shortages, and whether the problem is making it increasingly difficult for state-funded schools to provide consistent, high-quality education. 

The Stem problem

Unsurprisingly, the shortage is marked particularly by a lack of science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) teachers whose skills and knowledge are highly sought after in other, better-paid sectors of the economy.

To give a sense of the challenge schools face, a recent report by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) found that only 17 per cent of the target for hiring secondary physics teachers was achieved last year. One of its lead economists, Jack Worth, recently told the committee that non-specialists are filling in for lessons that should be delivered by staff with maths and other sciences degrees.

If this continues, it will be almost impossible for schools to follow through with the prime minister’s proposals for requiring 16- to 18-year-olds to study maths. 

As Tes readers may well know, the Department for Education has introduced measures to try and tackle this undersupply, with varying degrees of success.

They included financial incentives such as the levelling up premium, focusing on the severely under-recruited Stem subjects. Additionally, the government has tried to address the challenges of retention with the “golden-thread reforms” like the early career framework, the Workload Reduction Toolkit and investment in National Qualifications.

Our inquiry will look at what impact they have had, and whether changes on a larger scale will be needed. 

The ‘mental health burden’

I recently spoke at the launch of the NFER’s Teacher Labour Market Annual Report, where I drew a link between both the retention issue and another that is reaching a tipping point: young people’s mental health. 

Worrying numbers of pupils are presenting in classrooms with symptoms of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder - all conditions that require medical diagnosis and attention. We shouldn’t expect our teachers to have to tend to these problems any more than physical illnesses.

There is reason to believe that this is yet another burden that is driving talented teachers away from the profession. 

The first port of call with any illness should be the health service - with clinicians, not teachers - which is why our country’s overstretched Camhs need urgent reform. These services should be provided as primary care, not acute emergency care and the barriers to receiving preventative treatment appear to be too high. 

Pupil absence on the rise

Children’s mental health has also come up as a significant issue in relation to absence, and is something we’ll be looking into as the inquiry progresses.  

The department’s latest estimates for autumn term 2022-23 indicate that 25.2 per cent of all state school pupils were persistently absent (missing 10 per cent or more of sessions), up from 10.9 per cent in 2018-19. 

These statistics were published shortly before we held our first evidence session for this inquiry. Among our witnesses was children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza, who left no one in doubt about the seriousness of the absence problem in state schools.

She told us nearly half of the 1.6 million persistently absent children in the autumn and spring terms of 2021-22 missed sessions for reasons unrelated to illness. 

Dame Rachel and another witness, Alice Wilcock, head of education at the Centre for Social Justice, which has extensively researched the absence issue, revealed that some schools misuse “B codes”, giving the false impression that children are still receiving education at an off-site setting, such as alternate provision, when they were more likely to have been sent home.

Both Wilcock and Dame Rachel also highlighted a culture of more affluent parents taking fines for unauthorised absence on the chin, seeing it as a worthwhile expense for taking the family on holiday in term time. 

These were only two of a range of factors, some less predictable than others, that experts and others from the sector believe are contributing to the increase in absence.

As with teacher recruitment and retention, this is an issue that my committee will investigate with scrupulous care over the coming weeks and months. 

Robin Walker is chair of the Commons Education Select Committee and former minister for school standards