Primary teachers needed to cope with immigrant pupils now and 500,000 English-born in future. By Irena Barker and Jonathan Milne
Extra primary staff are being urgently recruited because of Eastern European immigration and rising birth rates. And university admissions officers have accused ministers of short-termism for cutting secondary training when the rise in population will affect the sector.
Jim Knight, schools minister, will review funding for teacher training next year in order to increase recruitment. He has already provided extra cash for schools with an influx of immigrant pupils, but ministers have not previously admitted the more pressing problem of the lack of teachers.
Projections from the Office for National Statistics show rising birth rates will mean an increase of half a million more English-born children in primary schools by 2015. But secondary trainee places are being cut by more than 1,200 per year over the next three years.
Now, ministers are having to increase primary training places by 600 a year. But as they make cuts to secondary training numbers, they know the new baby boom will hit secondaries in a few years’ time.
To complicate matters further, previously falling rolls have been blamed for closure of small, rural primary schools: 219 with fewer than 100 pupils have shut since 1997. Protests have prompted Mr Knight to write to local authorities this week saying they must keep successful village schools open as a “top priority”. Population figures show councils may be forced to reopen them when the next baby boom hits schools.
The Government cannot predict how many immigrant children will arrive in the coming years. It has underestimated immigrant numbers every year since Poland and seven other countries joined the European Union in 2004.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families, lacking confidence in official projections, will reassess pupil numbers in autumn 2009. “This three-year recruitment period will be affected by significant demographic changes,” Mr Knight said in a letter to the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA).
