Teaching changes children’s lives. The best teachers can enrich students’ learning and inspire their future ambitions – surely a hugely rewarding prospective career for young adults, offering immense job satisfaction.
It seems incongruous, then, that school leaders across all phases are struggling to staff their classrooms.
There were just 20,206 entrants to teaching in state secondary schools in 2024/25 (DfE, 2025), the lowest number since 2011/12, while newly qualified entrants made up just over 9,100 of those, the second lowest number in the same timeframe.
Only once in the past 10 years has the Department for Education (DfE) hit its target for new secondary teacher training recruits.
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