Job adverts for secondary school teachers are up 47 per cent on last year and 14 per cent on 2019, a report by education data company SchoolDash has found, The Times reports.
Schools are also experiencing “severe difficulties” in recruiting specialist technicians for art, science, technology and other subjects and the number of job adverts for such roles is now 64 per cent above the pre-pandemic year of 2018-19.
Surveys by teacher polling app Teacher Tapp also found heads were worried about being unable to find enough suitably qualified teachers and technicians in time for the start of the next academic year.
Separate analysis by Labour has found recruitment for trainee teachers has fallen behind, with physics and design and technology worst affected. Government figures show fewer than 9,000 of the 20,945 new teachers it hoped to start training from September have been offered a training place.
Commenting on the results of the report today, Dr Timo Hannay, founding managing director of SchoolDash, said: “We’re in an incredibly unusual time and this is an unprecedented situation.” He said the system was “seeing much higher recruiting activity than we’ve ever seen before”.
Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, said teachers were being driven out of classrooms in a “perfect storm” for schools.
She said: “The government is failing our children once again. Labour would help keep teachers in our schools through tackling increasing workloads and giving every teacher the training and support they need to thrive.”
