State schools rely on unqualified teachers

State schools rely on a hidden army of unqualified teachers to run their classes, research revealed today.

The number of unqualified teachers has surged by 500 per cent since Labour came to power, according to recruitment agency Select Education.

Many comprehensives now depend on graduates with no formal training to teach crucial subjects including maths and science, the company said.

The latest government figures show that the teaching force increased in size by more than 4,000 to top 431,000 this year.

But unqualified "instructors" such as music tutors, trainees and recruits from overseas accounted for a quarter of the rise.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said that during the election campaign Labour had "exaggerated" its claim to have recruited 30,000 extra teachers over the past four years, counting instructors, trainees and foreign teachers on temporary visas towards the overall total.

Select, one of the largest agencies offering temporary "supply" teachers to schools, analysed Department for Education and Skills recruitment data going back to 1997. It showed that the number of British-trained, fully qualified teachers has increased by only one per cent since then.

In contrast, the number of unqualified teachers has jumped from 2,500 to 12,300 during the same period, said Select chairman Bob Wicks.

Mr Wicks warned the shortage of fully qualified teachers in subjects where schools are most desperate to recruit, such as maths and science, is likely to get even worse in the near future. The Teacher Training Agency has failed to meet targets for attracting maths and science graduates to teacher training courses.

Meanwhile, schools need even more staff in order to comply with the new legal requirement to give teachers time for marking work and lesson preparation during the school day so they are spared performing such tasks in the evenings and at weekends.

Mr Wicks says that the solution is for schools - and ministers - to come clean about the role socalled unqualified staff play in many schools, often very effectively.

He said: "Until more maths, science and IT graduates are persuaded to gain QTS (qualified teacher status) and, just as importantly, remain in the teaching profession throughout their lives, there is no choice but to accept the current reality in many schools - which is that there is an increasing number of teaching staff who do not hold a teaching qualification."