Teacher vacancies soar as schools struggle to keep staff

THE Government is failing to recruit enough teachers and the number of North East secondary school vacancies has shot up.

That’s according to the new report from the National Audit Office (NAO), which claims the Department for Education (DfE) cannot demonstrate its efforts to improve teacher retention and quality are having a positive impact and are value for money.

Schools spend around £21bn a year on their teaching workforce and in its March 2016 white paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere, the DfE set out plans to have “great teachers everywhere they are needed”.

But 16% of North East secondary schools report they have at least one post unfilled – up from 11% in 2010.

While schools have teaching posts to fill, they are struggling to attract and recruit staff.

The number of vacant roles has increased across the country, and schools in other regions are struggling even more than in the North East.

In outer London, 30% of schools say they have a vacant post.

And nationally the number of secondary school teachers fell by 10,800 between 2010 and 2016 as secondary schools face significant challenges to keep pace with rising pupil numbers.

The NAO report said more teachers are now leaving before retirement than five years ago, and schools are finding it difficult to fill posts.

In 2016, 34,910 teachers, 8.1% of the qualified workforce, left for non-retirement reasons.

The DfE’s own survey found classroom teachers worked, on average, 54.4 hours during the reference week in March 2016, including the weekend.

But the report also found a greater number of qualified teachers are returning to statefunded schools.

The DfE is taking steps to improve teacher retention and quality and plans to increase spending on teacher development programmes to around £70m annually over the next three years.