Why don’t we have enough teachers in critical subjects?

A sobering reminder of the challenges facing Britain’s education system is the persistent failure to recruit enough teachers in critical subjects. Each year, the Department for Education publishes its targets for teacher training alongside the actual recruitment figures – and this year’s report showed an ongoing tale of two disciplines.

Take the humanities. History in particular has outperformed its targets in the last few years with a healthy pipeline of new teachers. Perhaps that’s a lasting legacy from The Rest is History. English and RE, as well as others like geography, have also fared well.

More concerning is the fall off in teachers of modern languages. Once on track to hit its targets, the recruitment of language teachers has now plunged to less than half of what’s needed.