Commenting on Teacher recruitment, training and retention, a report by the House of Commons Education Committee, published today (Friday), Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education Union, said:
"As this report shows, the Government has created a crisis in the recruitment and retention of teachers which is having a significant detrimental impact on pupils' learning.
"In its utter failure to get a grip of teacher numbers, the Government has only succeeded in distorting the quality of education available to young people. As this report shows, teachers are teaching outside of their specialist subjects and schools are dropping subjects entirely.
"Teacher recruitment has fallen sharply over the last few years. More teachers are leaving the profession for reasons other than retirement than at any other time on record. This is a catastrophe of the Government's own creation.
"The education system is on its knees. Thanks to a debilitating lack of school funding, excessive workload and pay that has fallen way behind both earnings and the cost-of-living, many graduates have turned their backs on choosing teaching as a profession. The very same factors are driving those who enter it out.
“Teacher shortages are system-wide and they need system-wide corrections on both pay and workload. Piecemeal responses such as bursaries will never resolve these shortages on their own.
"Increased child poverty and the decimation of mental health support services and SEND provision has also impacted heavily on the workload of schools who have been left to pick up the pieces of a broken society.
"The measures proposed by this report are insufficient and too piecemeal to meet the challenge of teacher recruitment and retention. The next Government must address this issue with the seriousness that is required. A complete review of the system needs to be undertaken to ensure every child gets the education they deserve."