How Will Government Meet Its 6,500 New Teachers Pledge?

Whitehall London, UK. July 23rd 2024. Minsters entering the Cabinet Office through the Whitehall entrance.

4 min read29 October

The pledge to recruit 6,500 teachers was a major element of Labour's General Election manifesto.

However, months on there are questions over when exactly the Government hopes to meet this goal, as well as whether it can actually be achieved amid a chronic recruitment and retention crisis in the education sector.

Here is the current state of play.

What is the 6,500 teachers pledge?

Keir Starmer in May set out a policy of recruiting 6,500 new teachers as one of his first "steps" he would take in power. It was then included in Labour's election-winning manifesto.

Labour said prior to polling day on 4 July that the recruitment push would cost £450m, paid for by ending tax breaks for private schools.

The pledge came amid increasing concerns over a spiraling recruitment and retention crisis in the country’s schools, with the sector struggling to fill vacancies.

Given that the previous Conservative government missed its target for postgraduate secondary recruitment by a whopping 13,000 last year, following a similarly large miss the year before, there are doubts over whether the 6,500 target is sufficient to address the sector's needs.

And while the new Labour Government has set out its own target, there is still some confusion in the sector over how exactly it will decide to define the ambition.

What have ministers done so far to meet the pledge?

The Labour manifesto policy lacked some details about it would be achieved and didn't set out a specific timeline.

However, since being elected the party says it is making steps towards the figure earlier, announcing it would be resuming and expanding the teacher recruitment campaign Every Lesson Shapes a Life.

Speaking to the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said the commitment was for over the course of this parliament.

And she added that the pay award made over the summer is also "crucial".

"It's about the wider pressures our schools are under and that's the job of government to take action on those areas like child poverty, like mental health."

What is needed to hit the target?

Over the last decade, apart from a momentary boom during the Covid pandemic, governments have consistently missed their own targets for teacher recruitment.

Last year, the Tory administration missed the target for secondary teachers by half, with just 13,102 trainees recruited out of the 26,360 the Department for Education said was needed.

While the picture for this year is looking slightly more positive, experts have forecast recruitment ambitions will still be missed by more than a third.

The same experts blame pay and conditions and workload for workforce problem, as well as the high cost and lack of flexibility in teaching training putting off potential candidates.

What do schools feel like they need?

School leaders have called for higher starting salaries, reduced workloads, and improved pay and conditions, without which the leader of heads’ union the Association of School and College Leaders says it will be difficult to meet the pledge.

While Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said 6,500 additional teachers will not cover the whole shortfall, “it is at least a starting point”.

But Di’Iasio added that there is currently “very little detail on how…this target is going to be achieved” and a strategy will be needed in order “to raise the status of the teaching profession in order to attract a wider range of graduates”.

Ultimately, to increase recruitment, James Noble-Rogers executive director of the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers (UCET) feels the Government needs to look at financial incentives and make sure all teacher trainees get a "degree of financial support".

"To increase recruitment they need to look at financial incentives and make sure all student teachers get a degree of financial support, [this] will help stop shortages," he told PoliticsHome.

The Government could look at expanding early career payments as a way of encouraging people to get into teaching, according to Jack Worth, school workforce lead at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER). Early career payments are currently offered to teachers in key shortage subjects in the poorest schools.

He believes Labour will have to think outside the box to boost its chances of meeting the 6,500 target, saying ministers will have to consider "other levers government can pull."

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