27,500 teachers who trained between 2011 and 2015 had already left the teaching profession by 2016. That means that just over 23% of about 117,000 teachers who qualified over the period have left. New research by the Education Policy Institute found that half of full-time teachers work between 40 and 58 hours a week, whilst a fifth of full-time teachers are working up to 60 hours a week, 19% longer than the average elsewhere of 40.6 hours.

These extortionate hours leave teachers no time for quality of life forcing many skilled teachers choosing to take huge pay cuts and work as teaching assistants rather than contend with the vast workload expected of them.These alarming figures add further concerns and pressures to a profession that’s already in crisis and when demands for the government to remove the 1% pay cap that has been placed on teacher salaries until 2020.  

Tory MPs have complained the overall schools budget is too small and needs to be increased. Teaching unions have been urging ministers to lift the pay cap. They also want to make it cheaper for teachers to train and to introduce measures to encourage teachers to stay in post in areas with significant recruitment problems. Over worked and stressed, many teachers are taking lower skilled roles or leaving the profession altogether.   

Following the election chaos Education Secretary Justine Greening, has demanded an extra £1.2bn from the government and is in support of both relaxing the pay cap and increasing public spending on schools. However she is one of a series of cabinet ministers making spending demands on Philip Hammond, the Chancellor.  

Angela Rayner, the Shadow Education Secretary, who uncovered the figures showing the number of teachers leaving the profession, said they highlighted the “sheer scale of the crisis that the Tories have created in teacher recruitment and retention”. “Teachers are leaving our classrooms in record numbers, and the crisis is getting worse year after year. We are now at the point that more teachers are leaving than staying,” she said. “The government has serious questions to answer on the impact of their policies such as the continued cap on public sector pay, and their failure to tackle the issues like excessive workload that affect teachers in the classroom. The shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, said that the statistics were proof of the strain teachers are under, adding that the profession is at “crisis point”. “It is time that ministers finally admitted that we are at a crisis point, and came up with a proper plan of action to deal with it.”

The Department for Education said the rate of teachers leaving after just a year had remained stable for decades, adding that some teachers were returning to the classroom after quitting. A spokesman said: “Teaching remains an attractive career and the latest statistics show that around 90% of teachers continue in the profession following their first year of teaching – this has been the case since 1996. The number of former teachers coming back to the classroom has also risen significantly – from 13,090 in 2011 to 14,200 in 2016.” “We are actively addressing the issues that teachers cite as reasons for leaving the profession, for example by supporting schools to reduce unnecessary workload and improving behaviour management training for new teachers. Teachers play a hugely important role in our society, providing education and guidance for future generations.”  

Pressure is growing on the Prime Minister to abandon plans to cut per pupil funding in years to come by protecting school funding by an additional £1.2 billion. There was no mention of whether schools would receive extra funding in the has requested a public statement over the coming weeks so schools know where they stand before they break up for the summer holidays.

The Telegraph reports Ms Greening has been alarmed at the way Labour was able to exploit the Conservative manifesto on education during the election campaign. "There was no getting away from the fact we were cutting funding per pupil,” said a senior government source. “We need to recognise that in the wake of the election, and we must address the concern."  

The Conservatives promised to increase the schools budget by £4 billion by 2022 in their election manifesto, published in May. However when inflation and rising student numbers were taken into account, the promise amounted to a cut in per pupil funding, a fact attacked repeatedly by political opponents. Ms Greening has told the Prime Minister and the Treasury that she wants to change tack after the election and make sure that per pupil funding does not fall. That means an extra £1.2 billion spending by 2022, according to the Institute For Fiscal Studies [IFS], with similar amounts in the years between now and then.  

Public Services Pay
This demand has led several of Theresa May’s own ministers to speak out in adding more funding into the public sector. Pressure is mounting on the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to relax austerity and put an end to the pay cap after the party disastrously lost its majority in the General Election to anti-austerity Labour, which has pledged to scrap the 1% cap. Theresa May faces a chorus of demands from her own MPs over public spending.  After a decade of public pay freezes, the average pay of teaching professionals has dropped by £3 an hour in real terms, £2 an hour for police officers, £8 per hour for doctors, £1 per hour for prison officers whilst nurses’ wages have stagnated. In a speech to the Confederation of British Industry on Monday night, Chancellor Philip Hammond said the government’s approach to balance the needs of public workers with those who had to pay the bill hadn’t changed. Hammond said he recognised that “the British people are weary after seven years’ hard slog repairing the damage of the great recession.” He also said the time had come for a conversation on the level of funding of public services but it had to be a “grown-up debate” – arguing that borrowing was simply passing the bill to the next generation and that taxes couldn’t always fall on someone else. The governments approach has always been to balance the needs of the public workers with those who had to pay the bill.  

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is set to demand a salary boost for NHS workers who have suffered for years under the Tories’ one per cent pay cap. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is the latest senior cabinet minister to put pressure on the chancellor Phillip Hammond and the PM to change the policy.  

Boris Johnson believes the 1% public sector pay cap can be lifted in a responsible way.  Michael Gove, who has re-joined the Cabinet as Environment Secretary, urged the prime minister and the chancellor to listen to independent bodies that review public sector. He told the Sunday Times: "You've got to listen to the public sector pay review bodies. When they made recommendations on school teachers' pay I think I always accepted them. My colleagues who deal with these pay review bodies would want to respect the integrity of that process." A Number 10 source said the government was responding to the recommendations of public sector pay review bodies which are currently reporting to ministers "on a case-by-case basis.". But 1% rises for dentists, nurses, doctors and the military have already been agreed for this year, it added.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme Nigel Lawson, a former chancellor to Margaret Thatcher, said it was Mr Hammond's job to keep control of public spending to avoid "economic disaster.” “It's not easy but it is necessary. People understand we need to pay our way on the road to economic success." Lord Lawson called on ministers to formulate the policy behind closed doors, adding: "Stop having this debate in public, it's ludicrous." 

When the matter was raised in the Commons, a minister said the government wanted to ensure "frontline public service workers" were "paid fairly for their work." Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth said reports on the divisions within government over public sector pay revealed there was "turmoil" in the Conservative Party. "They're saying 'Wait for the pay review bodies', even though they're the ones insisting on a 1% cap," the Labour frontbencher told the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday. "We're saying to the pay review bodies: 'Get rid of the 1% cap and give a fair pay rise.'" Asked what level of pay rise Labour thought was fair, Mr Ashworth said the pay review bodies should consider one in line with the rise in average earnings across the economy.  

Since Theresa May backlash and criticism from Conservative MPs and most of the opposition parties. And, now Education Secretary Justin Greening has confirmed the plans have been scrapped after it was excluded from the Queen’s speech last week. “There was no education bill in the Queen’s Speech, and therefore the ban on opening new grammar schools will remain in place” concluded Ms Greening.          

Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner condemned the £500 million plan as a “vanity project” and said there was “no evidence it will help children move on from socially deprived background.” With such high opposition it would have been difficult to pass legislation to introduce them. The original plan was put in by the Labour government in 1997 when Tony Blair was Prime Minister. 

Justine Greening confirms the ban on grammar schools will remain. The Queen’s speech stated the government will “look at all options for opening new schools and would continue to work to ensure that every child has the opportunity to attend a good school and that all schools are fairly funded." She concluded the government would publish a Green Paper on Children and Young People’s Mental Health "focused on helping our youngest and most vulnerable members of society receive the best start in life." The notes said: "This will make sure best practice is being used consistently and will help to accelerate improvements across all services so that children and young people get the right mix of prevention and specialist support." The bill also omitted the plans to scrap universal free school lunches for primary school children, meaning no new major changes will be put forward for education within the next two years. This takes away the biggest source of extra funding promised for schools in the Conservative manifesto.  

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said that the Queen's Speech was an unambiguous decision not to go ahead with creating more grammar schools.

• No new grammar schools
• Plans dropped to stop free lunches for all infants
• No legislation announced for education
• School funding plans to be put forward at a later date
• Changes to how individual school budgets are allocated will go ahead
• Technical education to be upgraded

Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) said the Queen’s Speech was a “missed opportunity” for the Government. “An investment in education now is an investment in our future, post-Brexit. There is no suggestion that the Government will properly fund the major overhaul to technical education promised in today’s Queen’s Speech.” “After seven years of brutal cuts, further education colleges have been forced to make wave after wave of redundancies, and a serious recruitment and retention crisis has been exacerbated by excessive workloads and real term pay cuts.” “These issues need to be addressed if the Government’s reforms are to have any chance of delivering the skilled workforce needed for a post-Brexit economy.”  

Responding to the Queen’s speech, Kevin Courtney, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), said the Government had made a “grave mistake” in not addressing the school funding crisis. “[Grammar schools] are an unnecessary and unwanted distraction,” he said. “It is now time that Theresa May turns her attention to the real and pressing issue of school funding.” “This was a major issue in the General Election. Schools are not crying wolf, there literally is not enough money for head teachers to run their schools properly.” School spending plans outlined in the Conservative manifesto last month indicated a cut of 7 per cent per pupil, the IFS calculated. Teaching union heads have called for an immediate five per cent increase in funding for “cash starved” schools, college and early years providers, as many providers face having to cut staff due to shortages.  

The government says it will bring forward its proposals on school funding at a later date.    

Applying for a job let alone being offered a job that you were not qualified in would have been unheard of a few years ago. However, this the stark reality facing many schools in England today; teachers teaching subjects they do not have a relevant degree in. Nearly 37.5 per cent of Physics teachers do not have any post-A Level qualification despite the fact thousands of children rely upon them to help them pass exams. This figure has risen by 4 percentage points in just 2 years and there are no signs of it stopping.

The recruitment crisis in Education has seen its biggest teacher shortages. 27.1 per cent of chemistry teachers and 26.3 per cent of maths teachers do not have a degree in the subject, both rising 3.2 and 3.9 percentage points respectively in two years.    

Computer Science/ICT, English, History, Geography, French and other languages are also the top subjects facing shortages. More than half of Spanish teachers did not study the language yet were teaching a class full of optimistic pupils. On a positive note subjects such as Drama, Media Studies and Citizenship have seen a rise in the number of teachers qualifying. John Pugh said: “The Government need to get a grip on this crisis. We need to stop allowing schools to be able to grab virtually anyone off the street and allow them to teach anything from physics to advanced maths.” “We need to support teachers rather than what the Government currently do – finding every opportunity to do the profession down.”

According to a survey by the National Union of Teachers (NUT) 68 per cent of staff said in the past year the number of professionals teaching subjects they were not qualified in had increased. The reason for this is down to a combination of the school funding crisis, lack of support and training particularly for Newly Qualified Teachers, shortage of teachers and growing class sizes. Schools are desperate and going to any lengths just to keep a float. As a result, the quality of teaching drops and the pupils learning begins to suffer. Members of the NUT have threatened to hold a national strike next term over budget cuts, job losses and pay caps.