Teachers

Mr Whittingdale: To ask the Secretary of State for Education what assessment his Department has made of shortages of qualified teachers in each region. [29422]

Tim Loughton: The numbers of qualified and unqualified⁽¹⁾ teachers, by region, are published in table 3 of the School Workforce statistical first release (SFR). Tables 7 and 9 of the SFR provide further information on the vacancy rates, for full-time and part-time teachers separately, in local authority maintained schools by region. The most recent publication, containing this information for January 2010, can be accessed via the following link:

http://www.education.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000927/index.shtml

Table 1 provides the proportion of the total regular teachers in each region who are qualified. The north-west of England has the highest proportion of qualified teachers, the north-west and Yorkshire also have high proportions for the nursery and primary and special, PRU and other non-school education sectors respectively.

London has the lowest proportion of qualified teachers, the east of England also has a lower proportion of qualified teachers working in the secondary sector.

⁽¹⁾ Unqualified teachers include instructors, overseas trained teachers without Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) and to QTS.