In England, the number of teacher trainees being placed on secondary school teaching courses is nearly a fifth below pre-pandemic levels, according to government figures. South of the border, the government has outlined plans to boost teacher recruitment by encouraging candidates from any country in the world to apply to teach in England. The current scheme only allows teachers from a set number of countries to apply for qualified teacher status.

Experts, meanwhile, are warning that if teacher pay in England doesn’t improve there could be “a rapid return to chronic teacher shortages”.

So what’s the situation in Scotland, where the government has committed to recruiting an extra 3,500 teachers during the course of the current five-year Parliament?

• Related: Big fall in applications to teaching courses
• News: 15% of places on secondary teaching courses unfilled
• 2022 targets: Places on Scottish secondary teaching courses set to rise

The data on applications to postgraduate initial teacher education (ITE) courses - “teacher training” is a phrase studiously avoided in Scottish education - shows that, like in England, Covid led to increased interest in joining the profession, but that that has not been sustained.

Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) figures show that, by the 26 January deadline, applications for 2022 were actually down 28 per cent on January 2021, and 4.5 per cent on the pre-pandemic level in 2019.

Responding to the figures, Professor David Smith, head of the University of Aberdeen’s school of education and the chair of the Scottish Council of Deans of Education (SCDE), said at that application level, demand was still high and that applications would continue to be accepted for teacher education programmes starting in the 2022-23 academic year. He also said that, while SCDE would be “keeping the admission figures under close watch”, it would “take time to establish if we are seeing a notable decline in demand to become a teacher”.

In terms of recruitment onto teacher education courses and the extent to which targets are being hit, the latest figures on this were published in March.

They showed that - while universities had managed to recruit the required number of primary teachers - more than one in 10 places on secondary teacher education courses in Scotland went unfilled in 2021-22.

The postgraduate courses - the main one being the professional graduate diploma in education (PGDE) - are the most popular routes into secondary teaching. In 2021-22, the goal was to recruit 1,800 secondary teachers via these routes and 336 onto undergraduate courses.

However, just 1,527 teachers were recruited to postgraduate secondary courses in 2021-22 and 286 were recruited onto undergraduate courses.

Subjects such as maths, physics and chemistry recruited far fewer student teachers than it is projected schools are going to need.

Key figures include:

• 15% - Proportion of places on secondary teacher education courses that went unfilled in 2021-22
• 6 - Number of secondary subjects that hit target (out of 20)
• 50% - Places on physics teacher education courses that went unfilled
• 38% - Places on technological teacher education courses that went unfilled
• 23% - Places on maths teacher education courses that went unfilled

Next year, the government has set Scottish teacher education institutions the challenge of bringing through 200 additional secondary teachers. The target for the number of primary student teachers to be recruited is set to remain the same in 2022-23, in recognition of “historical over-recruitment in primary”.

The government acknowledges that, to hit that increased target for secondary staff, a “considerable effort” will be required from the universities, and that they will require support “in promoting teaching as a career to meet this challenging target”. But it says that the target takes account of its pledge on teacher numbers.

The upshot is that recruitment targets for subjects such as maths will be higher next year, even though lower targets were not met this year.

In the case of maths, this means that even though universities were unable to recruit 224 students in 2021-22 - and managed to recruit 172 - they are being required to recruit 250 next year.