The Guardian view on teacher shortages: the trouble with data | Editorial

Damian Hinds' plan to reduce workload is sensible - but schools need more money too

The government's teacher recruitment and retention strategy for England contains much that is sensible and desperately needed. Key recruitment targets have been missed for six years in a row. In some subjects, and some parts of the country, shortages are acute. In physics, for example, the number of trainees last year was just 47% of the number sought. Bursaries trialled on maths graduates appear not to have solved the problem. A third of new teachers give it up within five years, while nine in 10 heads struggle to fill posts in the core subjects that make up the GCSE Ebacc. Last year, 10% of all secondary teachers left teaching. Meanwhile, the population bulge that followed the spike in the birthrate in the 2000s means the secondary-school-age population is expected to rise until 2025. The situation is accurately described as a crisis.

The education secretary, Damian Hinds, has come up with a package of measures that he hopes will ease it. Efforts to reduce workload dovetail with the priorities set out in the new Ofsted inspection framework. Ministers and inspectors now acknowledge the "unintended consequences" of a system that has accountability as its overriding objective. One idea is that requirements for data collection should be relaxed, giving teachers more time to think about the substance of what they are teaching. Specific support for new teachers, which the government has promised to fund, includes mentoring and time outside the classroom. Inspectors, in future, will take a broader-brush approach, less focused on the minutiae of individual pupils' measurable achievements and more on the big picture.