Meon Valley MP Flick Drummond has endorsed an education committee report asking the government to put in place policies to recruit and retain secondary school teachers.
Flick sits on the committee that investigated the deepening shortage of teachers.
It found the Department for Education has missed targets for recruiting teachers in key subjects like business studies, physics, music, modern foreign languages and computing.
It found evidence teachers were taking classes outside of their subject specialism and some schools were dropping subjects entirely as vacancies go unfilled.
The committee made a series of recommendations to reverse the shortage including new funding for bursaries in subjects where there is a shortage and an expansion of retention payments.
It also suggested a reverse to cuts in career development programmes, a focus on less bureaucracy to ease teacher workloads and more investment in children’s mental health and behaviour hubs.
“The report is very clear there needs to be a comprehensive look at how to recruit and crucially keep secondary school teachers and I hope the government will act on the committee’s sensible recommendations,” said Flick.
“It is worrying teachers are taking classes they are not qualified to take because of this shortage. This must be adding to stress and workload - two major reasons teachers are leaving.
“But most worrying of all is that we are leaving our children without the best teaching available from specialists in key subjects.
“This must be addressed with some urgency otherwise the situation will not improve.”
The report can be found here: Education Committee publishes report on teacher recruitment, training and retention - Committees - UK Parliament
