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Vague 6,500 recruitment target unlikely to be met without ‘new policy action’

Recruitment & Retention Pay and conditions Teaching staff Early Career Teachers Workload Government policy
Significant increases to teacher pay will not be enough on their own for the government to meet its election pledge to recruit 6,500 new teachers, an analysis suggests.
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An analysis (Worth & Tang, 2024) finds that ministers will need to use pay incentives alongside other strategies including training bursaries, retention payments, and workload reduction to meet its target.

The report, published by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) says that if the Department for Education (DfE) uses pay alone, then salaries would need to increase by 9.55% a year for the next two years in order to attract this many new teachers.

During the election campaign, the Labour Party pledged to recruit 6,500 new teachers “in key subjects”. But little detail has been forthcoming about how it defines this 6,500 target and how it intends to meet it.

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