The Department for Education is not moving quickly enough to address the crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, its former national schools commissioner has said.

Sir David Carter said that difficulty filling teacher posts was no longer “localised” and was now a problem affecting “most schools”.

In August, Sir David stood down after two and a half years as national schools commissioner, during which he was responsible for overseeing more than 7,000 academies.

Speaking exclusively to Tes, he said that teacher recruitment and retention was one of the biggest factors threatening the stability of the school system.

“The notion of recruitment and retention of teachers being something that is now localised in certain areas and not in others - I think we’re at a point where most schools are saying it’s difficult,” he said.

Sir David said the DfE was taking the recruitment situation seriously, but suggested that it was not moving fast enough.

Teacher advert ‘won’t be enough’

“I don’t think there’s anybody in the Department - certainly not the people I worked with - that are complacent about that, but I don’t think we’re moving quickly enough,” he said.

He said there was “a lot more to do done about basically, how do we celebrate this profession? How do we encourage graduates to become teachers?

“Once we’ve got them [in schools]… how do you keep them?”  

Sir David welcomed the latest Get into Teaching advert - ”Every lesson shapes a life” - launched by the DfE this week, saying it was  “the best one I’ve ever seen”.

But he added: “It will need more than a teacher recruitment advert to convince people to do this.”

The teacher recruitment crisis has risen up political the agenda in recent years. According to Tes analysis, an additional 47,000 secondary teachers need to be recruited by 2024 to cope with an explosion in pupil numbers, while two-thirds of secondaries say they are currently struggling to recruit maths teachers.

This week new Tes research found that two in five UK teachers would be prepared to move abroad next term for the right job. 

A DfE spokesperson said: “The education secretary has made clear his top priority is to ensure teaching remains an attractive and fulfilling profession. There are more than 450,000 teachers in our classrooms - 11,900 more than in 2011 - with increasing numbers returning to the profession.

“We want to continue attracting the best and brightest to the profession, so are working with teachers, school leaders, Ofsted and the unions to develop our recruitment and retention strategy and deal with issues like unnecessary workload, which can frustrate teachers.

“Just this week the education secretary announced new training for teachers - backed by £10 million for schools to share best practice - to help them tackle poor behaviour and make sure they are free to focus on teaching.

The spokesperson added: “We are also ensuring teachers are fairly rewarded and recently announced a 3.5 per cent uplift to the main pay range for classroom teachers, funded by a £500 million government grant, in addition to the tax-free bursaries worth up to £26,000 for trainee teachers in priority subjects.”