Full- and part-time teacher vacancies have increased by 20 per cent since last year, and have more than doubled in the past three years, government data has revealed.

Vacancies increased from 1,098 in November 2020 to 2,802 in November 2023. The rate of vacancies also increased, meaning they would have only been partially offset by teachers joining the workforce.

The data published today also shows a huge 90 per cent jump in the number of classroom teacher posts filled temporarily, from 1,790 in 2020 to 3,396 last year.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said the figures are “stark evidence of the recruitment and retention crisis facing our schools and the need for whoever forms the next government to commit to urgent action to address this.”

Meanwhile, Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the data shows it is “becoming increasingly difficult to fill teacher vacancies”, warning that heads are often having to “advertise roles several times [while] making use of supply staff in the intervening period, all of which has a financial cost attached”.

Concerns over rising teacher shortage

The government figures also revealed there was an 8 per cent fall in the number of qualified state teachers who joined the profession to 44,002, compared with last year.

However, there was a very slight decrease in the number of those with qualified teacher status (QTS) who left the sector. One in 10 of all qualified teachers - equal to 43,522 - left the state-funded sector in the academic year 2022-23, compared with 43,897 last year.

The majority of these were leaving the sector rather than retiring, according to the government figures.

The data comes amid increasing concerns over teacher supply, with experts recently predicting that the government is “at risk of under-recruiting” secondary trainee teachers for 10 out of 17 subjects for next year.

• Previous stats: Teachers leaving at highest rate in four years
• Long read: Why do we have a teacher recruitment and retention crisis?
• Workforce survey: 1 in 3 heads and teachers consider quitting

Mr Whiteman said that government interventions such as the introduction of the Early Career Framework (ECF) programme have failed to “get to grips” with the recruitment and retention crisis.

Mr Di’Iasio added that teacher vacancies “are a consequence of the government’s neglect of the education system over a much longer period” and that “implementing real-terms pay cuts for staff, while failing to adequately address longstanding concerns around funding, workload and accountability, has driven people away from teaching”.

He also called on the future government to introduce a “comprehensive plan to address the recruitment and retention crisis”.

Daniel Kebede, general secretary for the NEU teaching union, said that “pay cuts and sky-high workload have driven this recruitment and retention crisis”. He added that the union had called “on all political parties to commit to a reversal of the cuts to education funding and improving pay and workload to tackle soaring vacancies and retention problems”.

“As can be seen from these latest figures this is no longer a choice but an absolute necessity for any incoming government,” he said.

The vacancy rise reflects an ongoing increase in the number of unfilled posts for classroom secondary school teachers, said James Zuccollo, school workforce director for the Education Policy Institute.

Mr Zuccollo added that the increased retention rate for newly qualified teachers may suggest the new Early Career Framework has had some success.

Support staff at record high

The number of full-time equivalent support staff has increased each year since 2019-20, reaching 510,400 this academic year and passing the previous peak in 2015-16, the data showed.

The figures revealed there has been a particular increase in teaching assistants that are aged 60 and over, which now represent 9.9 per cent of the teaching assistant workforce - up from 7.3 per cent before the Covid-19 pandemic.

At the same time, the percentage of teaching assistants aged 40-49 has been steadily declining over time. It was 40.3 per cent in 2011-12 - and has since dropped to 27.2 per cent for this academic year.

Gender pay gap remains for school leaders

A gender pay gap remains in leadership salaries, according to the data, with men earning 3 per cent more in nursery or primary headteacher roles, 4 per cent more in secondary headteacher roles, and 2 per cent more in other secondary leadership roles.

Female nursery and primary classroom teachers used to earn slightly more than men, but this gap has now closed, the figures show.

Female teachers are still less likely to be in leadership positions than men, according to the latest statistics, though this difference is gradually reducing. Nearly seven in 10 (69 per cent) of leadership teachers were female in 2023-24, up from 66 per cent in 2010-11.

The data also shows that those from ethnic minority groups are not equally represented in leadership positions. For this year, 10 per cent of Black teachers were in leadership roles, as were 8.3 per cent of Asian teachers and 11.1 per cent of white-minority teachers.

This is compared with 15.9 per cent of white British teachers.

Median teacher pay this year is £46,525, up from £43,685 last year - which reflects the pay increase that teachers received.

The data is based on the School Workforce Census, which is conducted each November.

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