Education (School Teachers’ Qualifications and Induction Arrangements) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022

Motion to Regret

Moved by

That this House regrets that the data supporting the Education (School Teachers’ Qualifications and Induction Arrangements) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022 (SI 2022/1256) suggests that they will not prevent the continued fall in the number of overseas teachers qualifying to work in England over recent years (other than in 2021-22); and that the Regulations therefore demonstrate that His Majesty’s Government lack a coherent, holistic plan for the teaching workforce in England.

My Lords, my regret Motion is in response to the concerning report on this SI from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It should be noted that this is the second iteration of the supporting material, which had to be reissued because there was a

“lack of information in the original”

Explanatory Memorandum

“about many key aspects of the policy, and one error that described one aspect of the policy as the opposite of what it actually is.”

This lack of rigour and thoroughness from the Department for Education is extremely concerning. I urge the Minister to investigate the factors that led to such poor material being published in the first place and to ensure that this does not happen again. The DfE is not the only department that has been subject to a flurry of regret Motions on concerning issues, but I would appreciate some assurances from her on the steps that she will take to prevent these happening again. Transparency and full information are crucial to our role as a revising and scrutinising Chamber. We simply cannot do this without being given the data we need—ideally, first time round.

Although process is important, my main source of regret concerns the detail of the policy in these regulations: first, that they will fail to prevent the continued fall in the number of overseas teachers qualifying to work in England and, secondly, that there is currently no coherent holistic plan for the teaching workforce. Can the Minister commit to ensuring that there is a workforce plan for schools and that it will be developed urgently and implemented in time to avert the growing crisis in teacher training, recruitment and retention?

It is quite clear that teacher recruitment is falling far behind what is required. Retention is also an issue, with nearly one in three who started in the profession in 2014 having left within just five years. What is the Government’s assessment of why this is the case? Have they looked into whether inflationary pressures and comparatively falling teacher pay is an issue?

The truth is that, last year, more teachers left our schools than new recruits started initial training. People qualifying to be teachers are at an all-time low; since 2019, recruitment outside London is down by 33%. This is especially true for some of the subjects critical to our economic competitiveness. Compared to the Government’s targets, we are missing well over 3,000 maths teachers, 3,500 modern language teachers and a massive 6,367 physics teachers.

As the Financial Times has recently reported, we desperately need a determined effort to improve numerical and mathematical ability; to generate the maths graduates we need in the 2030s, we need more motivated and qualified maths teachers now. The Government have missed their secondary maths initial teacher training target every year for the last decade. It is not clear how this will change.

This goes beyond the life chances of students, which is enough of an issue in itself, to the heart of our country’s economic recovery and UK competitiveness in the decades ahead. A new route to qualify is all well and good, but it will not rectify these huge shortfalls and does not form part of a much-needed holistic workforce strategy to get the teachers we need into classrooms.

We also need to ensure that the intended approach does not undermine developing countries. It would be useful to understand whether the Government have done an analysis of any adverse impacts that the changes from this SI might have on developing countries that also need good teachers. Anecdotally, I understand that the level of advertising by schools for teachers in the next academic year is far in excess of what is considered normal. Have the Government undertaken an analysis of the current levels of vacancies and what the pinch points are likely to be in the next academic year? How will the Government stop existing teachers sinking under the unbearable workload of fewer people doing more work and leaving the classroom due to burnout?

If money is the main issue to resolving the issues we face, the Government are very welcome to borrow Labour’s proposal to end the madness of the private school tax loophole, to fund the teachers we so desperately need.

The ongoing pay dispute is also likely to exacerbate this issue. Can the Government update us on how talks with the education unions are progressing and whether the Secretary of State will approach them with a more empathetic approach than one of her Conservative predecessors, who claimed that teachers

“really really do just hate work”?

My Lords, the regulations must be seen against a backcloth of startling falls in the number of domestic teacher training recruits. In the last five years, 102,588 teachers have given up teaching before reaching their 40th birthday. One in eight maths teachers is not a trained mathematician. Some 400 schools will not have a trained A-level physics teacher.

We remember the Government’s initial teacher training accreditation programme, which saw 68 trainers lose their expertise and capacity to train. In some areas, it led to a reduction in the number of trainees who were going to gain an ITT place at a time when subjects were already struggling to recruit suitably qualified teachers. The effects will be felt in particular in the east and north-west of England.

With regard to overseas students, the current legislation allows teachers who qualified in some countries to be treated as qualified in England, while others are not, even if they have the equivalent skills and experiences. Under the new policy, a new professional recognition system will be introduced that will set consistent standards, so that the qualifications and experience of suitable, qualified teachers from all countries can be fairly assessed for overseas teaching status, the intention being to create a consistent and fair approach for applicants from any country. We support that—of course we do.

The Government argue that the changes will increase the number of overseas teachers obtaining teacher status. The Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has challenged that conclusion, stating:

“The data suggests that the policy will only increase the number of overseas teachers if compared to 2021-22, when overseas QTS approvals were unusually low—compared to other recent years, overseas recruitment is expected to fall”.

It said that inadequate information was provided and that the department omitted

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, for bringing forward a debate on this important issue; what a pleasure it is to stand across the Dispatch Box from her. I look forward to many more debates with her in future. I also thank the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its role in considering these regulations, which are a part of my department’s efforts to ensure that there is an excellent teacher for every child.

Both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, referred to the criticism from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee about the quality of, in particular, the initial Explanatory Memorandum prepared by the department. I absolutely acknowledge that the original version of the Explanatory Memorandum did not meet the committee’s needs. My officials responded promptly and in full to the committee’s queries and re-laid the Explanatory Memorandum when those issues were raised. We committed to publish our projections in response to the committee’s original request and were in the process of doing so when the committee wrote to my right honourable friend Nick Gibb, the Minister for School Standards, to request them—so I do not accept the assertion made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that the department hindered this. There was absolutely no intent to hinder.

It is not my assertion; it is the assertion of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.

Well, I would just like to put on record that, although the department absolutely regrets the quality of the initial Explanatory Memorandum, there was no intent to hinder.

I turn to the wider issues and the content of the statutory instrument. As your Lordships know, qualified teacher status is seen as a gold standard globally. When fully rolled out, these regulations will introduce a level playing field in the recognition of overseas professional teaching qualifications. They will replace a system where some teachers can have their qualifications recognised with ease while others who may be equally qualified cannot. We initially projected that up to 1,200 more overseas teachers could be awarded qualified teacher status through these changes, but it is already clear that this is likely to be a conservative estimate; I will talk more about that in a moment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, said that she regretted the impact that this could have on the teaching profession overseas. We are taking a more cautious approach to the rollout of our policy and will initially allow applications only from teachers who are qualified in mathematics, the sciences and languages in certain countries. Of course, we will monitor very closely the actual level of migration to teaching posts in England by teachers from newly eligible countries. We are in close contact with the regulators in those countries to monitor and discuss the impact of this.

Since we launched the Apply for QTS service on 1 February, we have seen a very high number of applications from many teachers able to apply for the first time. This has been driven by news coverage of the scheme overseas, some of which has been inaccurate and led to some misunderstanding of the scheme as offering candidates a job directly. Our initial review suggests that there will be a large number of candidates who do not meet the eligibility criteria, which rightly prioritises quality and subject need. But the significant level of interest from those who will meet the eligibility criteria is positive and shows that international recruitment can help boost teacher recruitment in shortage subjects. We will be able to provide a fuller picture of award numbers in the coming months, once applicants have gone through our assessment process. That will mean that the information we provide gives a true picture of the numbers of teachers who may apply for jobs in our schools.