Vocational Education: Teachers
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the press release entitled PM: From today Britain will value the hard hat as much as the graduation cap, published on 28 July 2026, what recent assessment has been made of the availability of suitably qualified teachers in Essex to deliver the new technical education pathways.
Answered by Department for Education
We are at the early stages of development of the new technical awards and will be engaging with school leaders and the wider sector to understand how we can ensure we have the right capacity to deliver these pathways and continue to target workforce growth where it is needed.
We have achieved over 71% of our 6,500 additional teachers target. There are 4,654 more teachers, 3,008 more teachers in secondary and special schools in 2025/26 and 1,646 more teachers in further education, than in 2024/25. The latest School Workforce Census also reported the lowest leaver rate outside the pandemic, and a record number of teachers returning to the classroom.
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