Teacher Vacancies (Hansard, 26 October 2001)

§ Chris Grayling
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many teaching places in the United Kingdom are vacant. [8834]

§ Mr. Timms
In January 2001, local authorities reported that there were 4,980 vacancies for full-time teachers in the maintained schools sector in England.
Responses to a sample survey of schools conducted by my Department in September 2001 indicated that there were about 2,000 vacancies in maintained nursery, primary and secondary schools in England, the comparable January figure was 4,700.
The supply of teachers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is the responsibility of the devolved Administrations for those countries.
The figures quoted from both sources use the standard DfES definition of a teacher vacancy, which excludes posts filled by a full-time teacher on a contract of one term or more.

§ Mr. Damian Green
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many teacher vacancies there were in(a) primary and (b) secondary schools across the country in September. [8898]

§ Mr. Timms
[holding answer 19 October 2001]: There were about 1,000 (0.6 per cent.) full-time teacher vacancies in maintained nursery and primary schools, and about 1,000 (0.6 per cent.) in maintained secondary schools in England in early September 2001.
These figures were obtained from a telephone survey of nearly 1,500 schools conducted by DfES. Teacher vacancies are measured using the standard DfES definition, which excludes posts filled by a full-time teacher on a contract of one term or more.
The survey shows that the vacancies in secondary schools were similar to those recorded in a telephone survey of a sample of secondary schools in September 2000.