Ministers pleased with themselves for solving the teacher recruitment crisis of the late 1990s may want to leave the complacency room now. Figures for February this year from Professor John Howson, a teacher recruitment expert, show that applications for secondary teacher training are falling.

His report, The Labour Market for Teachers, published by the Policy Exchange (April 7), says that there are even fewer applicants in shortage subjects - just 896 would-be maths trainees compared with 1,125 in 2006, 297 for information communications technology recruitment (553 in 2006) and 588 for modern foreign languages (724 in 2004).

Sam Freedman, head of the Policy Exchange education unit, says that the fall might be caused by higher student debt and labour market fears. But most important of all is how teaching as a career is viewed.

In primary schools there are concerns that pupil-teacher ratios are likely to rise at a time when more than 14 per cent of pupils are in classes of 31-plus, the report says.

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Another 18,000 teachers will be needed to teach the extra 500,000 primary-age pupils expected in classes by 2015 if current pupil-teacher ratios are to be sustained. Meanwhile, primary teachers are getting younger - most are under 35 instead of 45-plus.

Who will fill the vacancies? “It is unlikely that the Government will recruit the 18,000 teachers needed by 2015,” Freedman says. “Local authorities will probably use extra per-pupil funding to increase the number of teaching assistants further. Numbers in primary schools have already risen from 41,900 to 105,800 in the past ten years.” And, he says, parents should be worried because only a quarter of teaching assistants have A levels. Who said no one forgets a good teacher?

www.policyexchange.org.uk

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