How's the DfE doing with its recruitment pledge?

A recent report from the Public Accounts Committee has assessed the Department for Education’s approach to teacher recruitment and retention—and found that it has significant shortcomings. With growing concerns over workload, pupil behaviour, pay and widening inequalities between schools, what measures does the report recommend to improve teacher recruitment and retention?

A new report from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has exposed the shortcomings in how the Department for Education (DfE) is responding to England’s teacher recruitment and retention crisis. 

Its assessment concludes that the DfE lacks a coherent plan, fails to set meaningful targets, and has insufficient evidence to determine which strategies are most effective in keeping teachers in the profession.

Workload remains the number one reason teachers leave the classroom, but the issue of pupil behaviour is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. According to the inquiry, the proportion of former teachers citing pupil behaviour as a reason for leaving the profession rose dramatically from 32 per cent to 44 per cent in just one year, between 2023 and 2024. The Committee noted that, while the DfE is aware of these challenges, it lacks a deep understanding of the causes. It does not, for example, have reliable insight into where workloads are particularly high or why pupil behaviour is deteriorating in some settings more than others.

To address these problems, the DfE has introduced measures such as Attendance and Behaviour Hubs and a voluntary Staff Wellbeing Charter. However, the PAC pointed out that only 17 per cent of schools and colleges have signed up to the charter, suggesting limited impact and low engagement with this initiative so far. The Committee has recommended that the government urgently consider changes to contractual and working conditions, including offering more flexible working arrangements and implementing serious measures to reduce teacher workload. If Behaviour Hubs prove effective, the PAC advises they be expanded more widely across the country.

The recruitment pledge

The Committee also raised pressing concerns about how the government intends to deliver its pledge, announced in July 2024, to recruit an additional 6,500 teachers across schools and further education colleges over the life of this Parliament. The report criticises the lack of clarity around how this figure was calculated, what it is intended to achieve, and how progress towards meeting it will be tracked. In its evidence to the PAC, the DfE was unable to clearly explain how the additional teachers would be deployed or how this would help address existing subject and regional shortages.

Nowhere are these shortages more urgent than in the further education sector. The PAC report highlights that just over one in twenty FE teaching posts were vacant during the 2022–23 academic year – a figure that raises serious concerns given the central role of FE in delivering skills and training aligned to national priorities. The Committee is calling for the DfE to publish detailed information on how the 6,500-strong teacher recruitment target will address these gaps, and for a comprehensive update on recruitment and retention plans in further education specifically.

Teacher pay also came under scrutiny. While the DfE acknowledges that pay is an important factor in both recruitment and retention, the PAC found little evidence that the Department has seriously assessed the comparative value of increasing salaries versus other interventions. The DfE has invested heavily in professional development, including £131 million in the Early Career Framework in 2024–25, yet it has not compared the impact of this investment with the possible outcomes of a more generous pay structure. The PAC believes the DfE must now assess this properly so that future decisions are grounded in evidence and value for money, and so that the government can make a transparent choice about whether to increase teacher pay further.

Teacher distribution

The report draws attention to sharp disparities in teacher distribution between schools serving the most and least disadvantaged communities. In the most deprived schools, 34 per cent of teachers have less than five years’ experience, compared to just 20 per cent in more affluent areas. These schools also face the greatest difficulties in filling specialist teaching posts. The shortfall is most acute in subjects that are vital for the future economy. For example, Computing has a vacancy rate of 1.4 per cent in disadvantaged areas, compared with 0.8 per cent across secondary schools generally. Access to certain A-level subjects is also severely limited. Thirty one per cent of schools in the most disadvantaged areas do not offer Computer Science at A-level, compared to only 11 per cent in the least disadvantaged, and nine per cent do not offer Physics A-level, compared to just one percent in more affluent areas.

This unequal access to education risks locking young people out of future opportunities – especially in high-demand STEM careers. It also undermines the government’s ambition to “break down barriers to opportunity,” according to the PAC, by entrenching educational inequality.

Sector needs urgent attention

Commenting on the report, PAC member Sarah Olney MP praised the dedication of teachers across the country but warned that their work is becoming ever more difficult. She noted that while the DfE insists teaching quality is more important than quantity, that argument becomes less convincing when schools are unable to offer certain subjects at all due to staff shortages. Olney stressed that although the PAC does not make policy decisions, it has clearly stated that the government should thoroughly examine how improvements in working conditions, including greater flexibility and higher pay, might offer better value than current approaches.

Sarah Olney said: “The Committee is calling for the government to take a serious look at working conditions, flexible arrangements and increased pay for teachers. It is important to stress that this Committee’s role is not to make recommendations on policy – our report makes clear that government should be exploring conditions and pay as value for money measures alongside the other recruitment and retention initiatives it is carrying out. 

“The debate around these issues has a long history, and is far from over. If the recommendations in our report are followed, the government will have an explicit answer, based on its own analysis and evidence, on whether it is time to offer teachers more flexibility, and/or to pay them more.”

The broader message from the PAC is that the teacher workforce is at a tipping point. Without urgent action to address workload, behaviour, flexibility, pay and working conditions, schools and colleges will continue to lose skilled professionals – and students, especially those from disadvantaged communities, will suffer as a result.

Read the full PAC report here