§ Mr. SpearingTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will state the criteria used in his statement at the CLEA conference at Bradford on 18 July, concerning percentages of teacher shortage in local education authorities; if he will now publish similar tables showing the upper and lower-ranking 10 local education authorities respectively using the criteria(a) percentage of children being sent home over a given period, (b) percentage of classes of children who were not being given lessons by appropriate teachers over a given period and (c) any other criteria agreed with local education authorities; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. FallonThe measure of shortage to which my right hon. Friend referred in his speech to the conference of the Council for Local Education Authorities was the level of vacancies reported by local education authorities in response to the Department's regular January survey. The results of the survey for 1990 were published by my right hon. Friend on 17 July in DES News 247/90, a copy of which is in the Library. The percentages quoted were vacancies expressed as a proportion of teachers in post in the authority. The Department does not collect systematically from LEAs any other data relating to teacher shortages.
The Government have acknowledged that there are shortages of teachers in some subjects and in some parts of the country. In both DES News 247/90 and in his speech to the CLEA, my right hon. Friend drew attention to the range of measures that the Government have implemented to combat teacher shortages.