Secondary Education: Teachers

High-quality teaching is the in-school factor that has the biggest positive impact on a child’s outcomes, and recruiting and retaining expert teachers is critical to the government’s mission to break down the barriers to opportunity for every child.

We have now achieved over 70% of the 6,500 additional teachers target. There are 4,654 more teachers, including 3,008 more teachers in secondary and special schools in 2025/26, and 1,646 in further education (FE), compared to the 2023/24 baseline.

We are making progress where teachers are needed most based on changing demographics, with the number of secondary school pupils now starting to fall, and more young people in FE. In secondary schools, pupil-teacher ratios remain stable with a small drop to 16.7 pupils per teacher, meaning there are slightly more teachers per pupil in secondary school in 2025/26 than there were in when this government took over. Leaver rates have also dropped to one of the lowest on record (8.5%).

The future pipeline is also positive, this year (2025/26) we saw a 13% overall increase in secondary ITT applications, and a 22% increase in STEM applications, exceeding our STEM target for the first time.