The government has missed its overall teacher training targets at both secondary and primary level, new statistics show.

The overall number of people starting teacher training in 2019 has risen from last year, with 29,580 new entrants to postgraduate initial teacher training (ITT) courses in 2019-20, compared with 29,215 in 2018-19, according to the Department for Education.

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For secondary, recruitment targets were exceeded in biology, history, geography and English. Despite this, only 85 per cent of the overall target was met with a total 17,098 trainees taken on. This is the seventh consecutive year the secondary target has been missed.

In primary, 96 per cent of the recruitment target was met, with 12,482 trainees taken on, compared to12,888 last year. However, the DFE points out that the targets were increased by 4 per cent this year.

In secondary, the subject that saw the greatest shortfall was physics, where just 43 per cent of the recruitment target was met, followed by MFL (62 per cent), maths (64 per cent) and chemistry (70 per cent).  

However, recruitment for biology exceeded target at 166 per cent as did history (127 per cent), geography (119 per cent) and English (79 per cent).

There were also 4,963 new entrants to undergraduate initial teacher training this year, a drop of 1 per cent,  but broadly in line with previous years.

In total, there were 34,543 new entrants to ITT in 2019-20 compared to 34,244 in 2018-19