A leading expert on teacher recruitment has estimated that between 500 and 1,000 primary teachers finishing college next month will be unlikely to gain immediate employment.
Professor John Howson explained that the situation was due to a declining birth rate coupled with high levels of recruitment for teacher training courses.
There will be 50,000 fewer primary pupils in schools next year as the UK birth rate continues to fall.
This problem is exacerbated by an ever-increasing number of people taking one-year PGCE courses, which attracted 8,760 new attendees last autumn, compared with only 7,586 the previous year.
Professor Howson, a director of Education Data Services and a visiting professor of education at Oxford Brookes University, has accused ministers of 'bad planning'.
He told the Independent: "If newly-qualified teachers find it impossible to find jobs this year, it will have a knock-on effect and reduce recruitment in 2007-08, when figures show we will have an increase in the numbers reaching retirement age."
A spokesman for the Government's Teacher Training Agency responded: "The TTA has been attracting a record number of recruits, but it is too early to say how many will qualify this summer or how many will find jobs." |
