Schools could face teacher shortage

12 April 2012

Hundreds of schools face a shortage of teachers under a Government crackdown on the employment of foreign staff, experts have warned.

Rules coming into force in September will stop state schools employing staff who lack official Qualified Teacher Status in a drive to boost standards.

But academics at London's Institute of Education (IoE) believe one in six of the capital's school workforce could be affected as many staff have qualified overseas but not in the UK. This could lead to a teacher recruitment crisis in London in autumn, they warned.

Professor Peter Earley and Sara Bubb, from the IoE, said a large share of London's teachers appeared not to be officially registered with the General Teaching Council.

"Although there are 69,200 teachers in the capital's state schools, only 57,773 London teachers have registered and that total includes independent school teachers," they said. "That is a matter for concern because it looks as if over 11,000 teachers - a sixth of the capital's workforce - aren't registered, presumably because they aren't qualified."

The researchers said London schools already had twice as many teacher vacancies as the national average.

"Some schools could therefore find it desperately hard to recruit enough qualified staff for September," they said.

"It is good that the employment rules are being tightened because London children need fully qualified teachers. However, the short-term consequences are worrying, if pupils are without teachers."

From September 1 this year, all newly-trained teachers will need to have been awarded qualified status before they can be employed as teachers in state schools.

They must have completed their courses and passed skills tests in English, maths and information technology.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in