Progress towards a diverse teaching profession has been stagnating and figures don’t reflect the diversity of the national population, according to statistics released today.
Figures released by the Department for Education in response to a question by Acting Leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey MP show that progress has been very slow over the past five years.
This is especially evident in primaries and nurseries.
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Only 11.4 per cent of state-funded nursery and primary teachers identified as black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) - an increase of under 1 per cent in five years. This is below the national BAME population of 14 per cent.
Meanwhile just 2.6 per cent of state-funded nursery identified as black, against a percentage of 3.3 per cent in the wider population.
Mr Davey urged Gavin Williamson to remedy the situation.
He said: “The Education Secretary needs to jump-start a recruitment drive that brings diversity into the classroom of our youngest children.
“Progress on diversity in teaching young children is moving at a snail’s pace. Young children need to see teachers in their school’s that reflect the diverse Britain that we know and love.
“We have rightly seen calls to diversify the curriculum and to teach some of the past racial injustices that have occurred. However, we must also recognise the injustices that still occur and that BAME and particularly black teachers are struggling to be recruited into nursery and primary education.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We are working to increase the diversity of the teaching workforce and have improved pathways into the profession, increasing the proportion of teacher trainees from minority ethnic groups.
“We know there is more to do and will continue our work to further increase diversity in the profession.”
According to the department’s figures, there has been progress with the diversity of postgraduate initial teacher training participants. Those belonging to a BAME group made up 19% of all postgraduate entrants in 2019/20, up from 18% last year and 14% in 2015/16.
