Teaching unions have criticised the government’s decision to reduce its secondary teacher training target by nearly a tenth compared with last year.
The Department for Education’s postgraduate initial teacher training (PGITT) targets for 2024/25 show that an estimated 23,955 trainees are required to start secondary teacher training this year, a 9.1% reduction from the figure from last year.
Its primary teacher training target has been increased by 2.4% to 9,400. The overall trainee target is 6.1% lower than in 2023/24.
Teacher training targets
Government to remove performance-related pay in schools
The 2024/25 target for secondary PGITT increased by 815 across eight subjects including biology, chemistry and mathematics, and decreased by 3,220 across ten subjects including English, computing and physics, despite growth in the number of secondary school pupils.
The DfE said recruitment forecasts for both returners and teachers new to the state-funded sector are more favourable for almost all subjects this year.
However, unions said there was still a critical shortage of teachers. Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association for School and College Leaders said: “Postgraduate initial teacher training recruitment to secondary subjects was a disaster last year with the government missing its target by 50% – including just 17% of the required number of physics teachers.
“Given these circumstances, the decision to reduce the 2024/25 target for secondary postgraduate trainees – whatever the technical explanation – will be regarded with suspicion as it obviously looks like an attempt to make the recruitment figures look better. This perception will be reinforced by the fact that some of the adjustments downwards are in key shortage subjects including physics and modern foreign languages.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “It is astonishing that the government is cutting its secondary school teacher training targets, at a time when schools are in the grip of a spiralling recruitment and retention crisis. Last year just half of the secondary teachers estimated to be needed were recruited, with targets missed in 12 out of 15 subjects.
“School leaders are struggling to recruit enough teachers in both primary and secondary schools, with class sizes growing and staff increasingly having to teach subjects they do not specialise in. The nation’s children deserve better.”
He said the government needed to “properly address the key issues that are fuelling this crisis, including years of real-terms pay and funding cuts, and the intolerable pressures caused by Ofsted inspections and unsustainable levels of workload.”
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
To reduce teachers’ workloads, the DfE recently said schools will no longer be obliged to use performance-related pay and updated the list of administrative tasks that teachers should not be required to do.
Education sector HR roles on Personnel Today
Browse more HR jobs in education
