Commenting on the new entrant figures for Initial Teacher Training (ITT), as published by the Department for Education today, Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said:
"An increase in teacher trainees is welcome, but there is no room for complacency. A quarter of newly-qualified teachers quit within three years, and a third quit within five.
"The causes are self-evident. Unmanageable workload, low pay, and high levels of stress caused by excessive accountability measures and the toxic Ofsted. The DfE should not kid itself that the recruitment and retention crisis is solved when all these problems continue to exist in our schools.
"The DfE has missed its own recruitment target for secondary trainee teachers by 12 per cent, despite slashing that target by a fifth. This is far from unusual. It is the twelfth time secondary targets have been missed in the last thirteen years.
"The effects are harming education and generations of students. Due to staffing shortages and losses, teachers are having to deliver lessons in subjects outside their specialism. This has become normalised, when it should be seen as a line crossed. Years of governmental neglect has led us to this point.
"This government is in denial. It is making highly optimistic assumptions, that under-inflation pay awards will somehow improve retention.
"The Government's current unfunded and below-inflation pay offer will not turn the ship around, and it is folly if they think otherwise. Locking teachers into a three year pay deal that would see them fall further behind the cost of living will be a disaster for recruitment and retention."