Problems with recruiting and retaining maths teachers were widely known about, but this week research carried out by Tes has laid bare the worrying scale of the crisis.
Together with the National Governance Association, Tes found that a staggering two-thirds of secondary schools are struggling to recruit maths teachers, and that this is the second most important issue facing schools after funding.
The research also found that 51 per cent of secondary school governors have difficulties recruiting physics teachers and 40 per cent say the same for chemistry.
Another Tes exclusive this week has revealed there are also staffing issues at Ofsted - and that it has lost the equivalent of 71 per cent of its school HMI inspectors in the last three years amid warnings of an inspection “treadmill”.
Figures obtained by Tes show that since September 2015, a total of 125 school HMIs have left, from an inspectorate that currently employs a total of 175 school HMIs.
Another 154 new school HMIs have been recruited since 2015 but former staff warn that the “high turnover” of senior inspectors means Ofsted is losing valuable experience and knowledge.
Mark Williams, who left the inspectorate in 2015, said that the creation of the shorter inspections had made the HMI’s job “a treadmill” and was contributing to people leaving.
“After the shorter inspection came in, the volume of inspections that Ofsted was looking to do meant HMIs were expected to do two inspections a week,” he said.
On Tuesday, Drew Povey - the headteacher who became a TV star with the Channel 4 series Educating Greater Manchester - announced his resignation.
The executive headteacher of Harrop Fold School in Salford, who was suspended in July, posted a letter on Twitter, in which he revealed that his school had been accused of “deliberately ‘off-rolling’ students and coding attendance incorrectly”.
He said two to three pupils had been incorrectly coded as “off-roll”, and that this had happened in each of the past three years.
Mr Povey said this had a “negligible” impact on exam results and that he was “fundamentally opposed to off-rolling and condemns it as a practice”.
He said: “I maintain that whilst there may have been errors made, these are administrative errors, involving only a tiny percentage of our school cohort,” his letter said.
Finally, teachers Down Under are much happier, it appears.
While teachers in England came last in a survey about job satisfaction - their counterparts in Australia, New Zealand and the US were much happier, according to research from the UCL Institute of Education.
Only Latvia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic had teachers who are as dissatisfied as those in England.
Job satisfaction was measured through combining the answers to questions including whether they enjoyed their work, whether they would recommend their job to others, and whether they would like to leave their school.
“These results are a real wake-up call. It is not surprising that so many teachers are leaving the profession when morale is this low,” said report author Dr Sam Sims.
