Cash offer to recruit teachers

Schools are facing another year of teacher shortages

The shortage of teachers is becoming so acute that a supply agency is offering the chance to win £5,000 as an incentive to new recruits.

Teaching Personnel is offering 10 prizes of £5,000 in a campaign to increase recruitment to the agency - with all new teachers who sign up being entered into the prize draw.

"There is such a dearth of teachers we really had to do something dramatic," said spokesman for the agency, Gareth Morgan.

"The teaching profession is under pressure and morale isn't high - and there are areas where schools are crying out for staff.

"There has been a problem for a couple of years, but it's becoming more acute. Schools can't find full-time staff and now agencies can't get enough recruits."

The prize offer, which will run until October, is an attempt to tempt back qualified teachers who are not currently working.

And Mr Morgan says that in the first couple of weeks, they have received hundreds of applications and anticipate the figure running into thousands.

Overseas recruits

Timeplan, one of the country's largest teacher recruitment agencies, dismissed the prize draw as "tacky" - but also reported that the staff shortage was "much worse than last year".

"Without overseas teachers, schools in London would be falling apart," said Timeplan spokesperson, Tish Seabourne, who said that the agency was continuing to recruit staff from countries such as Australia and New Zealand, in an attempt to overcome the shortage.

Although welcoming the launch of a training salary, which has pushed up graduate applications for teaching, Ms Seabourn said that there was a longstanding recruitment problem still to be tackled.

"It's an accumulation of problems ignored by governments for the past 20 years or so," she says, with this year's shortage proving to be among the worst in that period.

Although there were particular shortages in maths, science and modern languages, the recruitment problem now affected the full range of subjects and age groups, she said.

The Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC) has also noted the recruitment problems experienced by agencies - and as a consequence is increasing the number of teacher training places it funds by 12% for secondary and 27% for primary schools.