The latest UCAS figures show that training providers in England and Wales received applications from around 46,000 people for teacher training in 2016/17 – down from 47,200 applications during 2015/16.
In England, 24,950 applicants were accepted onto training courses, compared to 26,900 in 2015/16 (a fall of 7.1 per cent), while in Wales, 1,010 were accepted (compared to 990 in 2015/16).
Of the teachers accepted in England, 14,040 are secondary and 10,350 are primary. In Wales, 440 are primary and 550 secondary.
Targets for teacher recruitment continue to be missed, with the latest government figures from November showing that the Department for Education had missed its initial teacher training (ITT) target for the fourth year running.
At secondary level, only four subjects hit their targets, with key disciplines such as computing, physics and maths falling well short.
School leaders have called once again on the government to recognise the recruitment problems they are facing.
Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), said: “We know that school leaders are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit the right staff. The government still refuses to recognise that there is a recruitment problem in teaching and is falling short of its core responsibility to guarantee enough teachers of a high enough standard to meet the needs of our growing school population.
“Teachers’ pay is not keeping pace with other graduate professions. The STRB last year recommended that the teaching profession needs an increase ‘significantly higher’ than one per cent to address recruitment problems. But school leaders know that the crisis in school funding will make this impossible.”