For the education cogs keep turning efficiently we need there to be enough teachers to teach and enough pupils in classrooms to be taught.
Last month it was revealed that the number of pupils attending secondary school has increased each year since 2013 with the total number of 11-18 year olds at school in the UK now at 3,223,090.
Despite the number of students in school steadily increasing, secondary school staff numbers fell by a considerable 10,000 teachers since 2010.
Educator exodus.
A new report by the National Audit Office (NAO) explains that even though secondary school staff numbers fell by 4.9% between November 2010 and November 2016, there was a 13.2% increase in the number of primary and nursery school teachers signing up during the same time.
Another survey by the NAO found that 85% of secondary school leaders feel that they have insufficient support from the government to help them build and maintain a high quality workforce.
This staggering statistic is supported by the fact that last year £37.5 million was spent on teacher development and retention and £34.2 million on improving teacher quality. These figures are compared to the £555 million that was spent on training and supporting teachers in 2013/14.
On top of this, two thirds (67%) of secondary school leaders said that workload played a major part in persuading teachers to leave rather than join the profession, which could be why 34,910 qualified teachers left the profession for reasons other than retirement in 2016.
Randstad can help.
Randstad supports schools to fill short and long-term vacancies as well as permanent roles and our flexible training packages work around your schedule to upskill your staff. Get in touch with your local randstad branch for more information.
For secondary schools, we recently launched our new cover supervisor training that develops candidates' skills to work in schools as cover supervisors.
