§ Mr. HobanTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills (1) how many teacher vacancies there were at(a) January 2001 and (b) January 2000 in each local education authority; and if she will place these figures in the Library; [4931]
(2) if she will place in the Library the teacher vacancies statistics for January 2001. [5371]
§ Mr. HobanTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills why the number of vacancies for(a) mathematics and (b) information technology teachers changed between 1997 and 2000. [5370]
§ Mr. TimmsThe additional funding of £350 per pupil in real terms that the Government provided for schools in England between 1997–98 and 2000–01 allowed more teaching posts to be created. Although the total number of teacher vacancies rose by 867 between January 1997 and January 2000, the number of full-time equivalent regular teachers also rose, by almost 5,500. Between January 2000 and January 2001, there was a further increase of over 5,500 in teacher numbers. Data on how many of these additional posts were in mathematics and information technology are not collected centrally.
Since January 2000, new Government funding for teacher training bursaries, Golden Hello incentives and the Graduate Teacher Programme have been introduced to encourage more new teachers into the profession, especially in secondary shortage subjects like mathematics and information technology.
§ Mr. HobanTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills for what reason teacher vacancies as a percentage of teachers in post changed from 1997 to 2000(a) in the south-east and (b) in London. [5376]
§ Mr. TimmsBetween 1997–98 and 2001–01, funding per pupil rose in real terms by £550 in London and the south-east. These extra resources allowed more teaching posts to be funded. The number of teacher vacancies in London and the south-east rose by 480 between January 1997 and January 2000. In the same period, the number of full-time equivalent regular teachers employed in the region rose by 2,168.