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Ministers are facing sharp criticism over scrapping funding for a teacher recruitment programme targeting older career switchers, as schools in England grapple with a vacancies crisis.
The Department for Education has confirmed it will no longer fund the career changing scheme, provided by the charity Now Teach, to recruit new cohorts of teachers from other lines of work.
The government had provided funding for each of the past five years, including £1.4mn last year, which accounted for about 85 per cent of the scheme’s funding.
The programme has successfully recruited more than 1,000 professionals — including a hostage negotiator, a Nasa scientist and a former monk — to enter teaching since its creation in 2017.
The opposition Labour party heaped censure on the government’s decision to withdraw funding, which leaves the future of the scheme at stake, highlighting official statistics that showed there were 2,100 teacher vacancies across England last November, up from 355 in November 2010.
Catherine McKinnell, shadow schools minister, said the decision to end funding for the programme was “hard to believe”, adding: “Schools are crying out for recruits.”
Teacher vacancies have increased almost sixfold since 2010 and “more than ever before, we need to be encouraging people to consider changing to a career as a qualified teacher,” she said.
Even senior Tories have questioned the move. Baroness Nicky Morgan, a former Conservative education secretary, said: “The scheme to recruit older people with other careers behind them always seemed eminently sensible. Given ongoing teacher recruitment challenges I hope the government can fill this gap without delay.”
Former Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway, who left journalism to retrain as a maths teacher and set up the Now Teach charity seven years ago, said she was “bitterly disappointed” by the decision.
She said the DfE appeared to be slashing all parts of its budget that were not ringfenced because the Treasury had refused to provide extra money to fund the 6.5 per cent pay rise offered to teachers last year, leaving the ministry with a £1.5bn hole in its budget.
Hopeful that a philanthropist might step forward to replace the government grant and allow the programme to continue, Kellaway said: “We’re in the middle of a recruitment crisis . . . It’s really important that we don’t go under.”
The charity’s scheme has exceeded its recruitment targets, while the government has missed its own teacher hiring goals by 50 per cent, she pointed out.
The DfE said: “Career changers make a valuable contribution to the teaching profession and bring a wealth of experience and expertise.”
The government will seek to continue to recruit and support career changers into initial teacher training through alternative services, including a programme called Get into Teaching that offers advice, the DfE added.
