‘Clear signals of a looming recruitment crisis’

Given that Nicky Morgan recognises that good-quality teachers are of “vital importance” to education (A World Class Teaching Profession, DfE consultation, December 2014), you would imagine one of the urgent priorities for our reappointed secretary of state for education would be to ensure we are training sufficient numbers of well-qualified teachers for the future.

It therefore seems extraordinary that initial teacher education (ITE) barely featured in the recent election campaigns by any of the major parties, particularly given the way in which the training landscape has been transformed in recent years.

In my own subject area of geography, school-led ITE routes, which accounted for only 20 per cent of new geography trainees in 2011/12, have expanded rapidly, while the proportion of places allocated directly to universities has reduced by a third.