Teachers (London) (Hansard, 31 January 1989)

§ 2. Mr. Boateng
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he proposes to help the new borough education authorities in London to overcome the problems of shortages of qualified teachers in London.

§ The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mrs. Angela Rumbold)
My right hon. Friend and I are aware of the need to ensure a sufficient supply of teachers in all local education authorities.

§ Mr. Boateng
Is the Minister aware that one of the main problems in recruiting teachers in inner and outer London—particularly in my own borough of Brent—is the high cost of housing in Greater London? What steps do she and her colleagues intend to take to encourage schemes such as the scheme in my constituency which involves hostels and to encourage equity-sharing to ensure that London gets the teachers it deserves?

§ Mrs. Rumbold
On the general point about teacher recruitment in London, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has invited the interim advisory committee on teachers' pay and conditions to advise him on measures to tackle the high-cost housing areas, such as inner and outer London, and to consider the London weighting issue when it reports to him. A number of interesting ideas are coming forward from local authorities that have put together packages to retain and recruit teachers in areas where there are problems with housing.

§ Mr. Harry Greenway
What steps does my hon. Friend's Department propose to take to overcome teacher shortages in the 1990s in key subjects, such as mathematics, physics and the others outlined in the Select Committee last week? Will she note that some local authorities in London are failing to recruit teachers through sheer ineptitude? In Ealing, 44 steps have to be gone through before a teacher can be recruited into a classroom, because the local authority is so obsessed with equal opportunities and similar procedures.

§ Mrs. Rumbold
I understand my hon. Friend's frustration at the bureaucratic nonsense that some education authorities impose on schools trying to recruit teachers in shortage subjects. I sympathise with my hon. Friend, and I hope that my right hon. Friend's proposal for licensed teachers will go some way to alleviate the problems faced by the teaching profession in that regard. My hon. Friend will be aware of the measures that the Department already has up and running for recruitment in shortage subjects. We are offering bursaries to graduates who enter and remain in shortage subjects—physics, mathematics, CDT and, as announced by my right hon. Friend only last Friday, chemistry—in an attempt to address some of the difficulties.

§ Mr. Cohen
Is the Minister aware that in my borough of Waltham Forest primary school vacancies are running at 10 per cent. of the teacher establishment? Many worried school governors are asking what the Government propose to do about it. There is a crisis in London and the Government are held to blame for not training enough teachers, for the housing problem, which means that teachers cannot afford housing, and for demoralisation in the teaching force. When can parents in my borough expect their children to have teachers?

§ Mrs. Rumbold
The fault must lie more with Waltham Forest than in the recruitment of teachers. We have more student entries into primary teaching than we have had for a considerable number of years, so there cannot possibly be any shortage of primary school teachers, although Waltham Forest may well have difficulties in recruiting teachers because of its policies.

§ Mr. Nicholas Bennett
As a former education officer in an outer London borough who had responsibility for recruiting supply staff, may I suggest to my hon. Friend that the quickest way of recruiting more teachers in London and other areas where there are shortages is to allow the market to play a part, first, by introducing differential pay rates for London and other shortage areas as well as in shortage subjects?

§ Mrs. Rumbold
I am grateful to my hon. Friend who speaks from great experience. I notice the derision from Opposition Members whenever market forces are mentioned in this context. It is very much a matter of whether teachers fancy working in particular authorities because of the opprobium that attends those authorities or whether good teachers prefer to go to authorities which are more stable in their policies and their administration of education generally.