Is this really the best Labour can offer teachers?

Bridget Phillipson was appointed Labour’s shadow education secretary in November 2021. After 18 months in the role, she has now finally unveiled Labour’s ambitious new idea to help tackle the teacher retention and recruitment crisis: use the tax raid on private school fees to fund a £2,400 welcome bonus to every teacher who has completed their two years of training.

This is a classic case of copying someone’s homework, except – no surprises – it wasn’t very good the first time round. The Conservatives have already increased the starting salaries of newly-qualified teachers to £30,000. Teaching unions have already overwhelmingly voted to reject a one-off payment. The government has already tried giving bonuses to maths teachers, chemistry teachers, physics teachers, modern languages teachers, on top of generous, ever-growing training bursaries.

Yet still teacher vacancies have doubled in the last two years. Still nearly one in five teachers who qualified in 2020 have since quit. Even the behemoth Teach First has just signed up its smallest cohort in five years.