Teenage teachers won’t fix Britain’s classroom troubles

Teaching in the UK is in trouble. Less than half the number of secondary school teachers required this year, a record low, have been recruited, according to government figures released last week. STEM (science, engineering, technology and maths) subjects are particularly struggling: we only have 17 per cent of our target number of physics teachers and 63 per cent of maths teachers (down from 88 per cent last year). Yet this is a problem across the curriculum: the only subjects where the government met its targets were classics, PE and history.

Teach First, the largest teacher training programme in the UK, announced this weekend that in order to tackle this recruitment crisis it will consider being part of a new apprenticeship scheme for trainees as young as 18. The idea is that these trainee teachers would pay no tuition fees and earn a salary as they worked, thereby hopefully attracting school-leavers who are put off by the cost of a degree.