An alarming report by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) shows that teacher vacancies in England have increased by 93% since before the Covid-19 pandemic.  The findings also indicate staff turnover is still rising.  Vacancies in schools in England are up 37% compared with 2021/22. 

Oldham’s Liberal Democrat Leader councillor Howard Sykes said, “We have a huge problem with recruiting and retaining teachers.  The pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have put people off the profession.  Now we see schools increasingly forced to use non-specialist teachers or teaching assistance to fill a gap where a qualified teacher should be.” 

The impact of teaching decline is shown in a new report by the Centre for Social Justice.  Over 140,000 children were “severely absent” from school last summer. “Severe absence” is defined as spending more time out of school than in school. 

Councillor Sykes said, “We are dealing with the ‘Pandemic Generation’.  An entire generation of children are at risk of failing education because of the impact of the pandemic and the tin-eared Conservative government who are refusing to see the problem.”

In some areas, one third of children are consistently absent from school, meaning that their attendance is below 90%. Among the worst affected local authorities, one in 30 children miss more than half of their schooling.”

The total absence rate in summer 2022 was 8%, with 5.1% of missed lessons marked as authorised absences and 2.9% marked as unauthorised. The overall absence rate in the term before the pandemic was 4.7%.