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Between 2000 and 2007 over 25,000 people qualified but never began teaching, data shows

Hundreds of thousands of qualified teachers are not working in the profession, according to government figures. And at least 25,000 of those who have qualified since 2000 left full-time teaching in state schools without even entering the classroom, the Conservatives have revealed.

The shadow schools secretary, Michael Gove, described it as a waste of talent, costing the public millions of pounds.

Some 404,600 teachers under the age of 60 in England and Wales are not teaching in the state sector as of last March, the official figures obtained in response to a parliamentary question show. Of those not recorded in service, 123,000 are men.

Separate data, say the Tories, shows that between 2000 and 2007, more than 25,000 people qualified but never taught.

The figures come after a survey last month suggested that a third of UK teachers are searching for jobs abroad in the hope of finding better working conditions. A similar proportion polled by the jobsite Eteach said they were open to the idea.

Last year research by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers found that two-thirds of teachers had considered leaving the profession because of aggressive pupils, verbal abuse and threats of violence. In November the union reported that more than half of primary school teachers said behaviour had worsened over the last five years.

Gove said: “This is a tragic waste of talent that is costing the taxpayers millions of pounds every year. We are training thousands of new teachers every year only for many of them to leave within a few years of becoming qualified. But at the same time, there are literally hundreds of thousands who are qualified but have turned their backs on the profession.

“The government must take responsibility for driving so many experienced professionals out of the classroom by tying their hands in red tape and watering down their powers to keep order.We need to strip away the unnecessary bureaucracy and allow teachers to crack down on bad behaviour so they can deal with discipline problems before they spiral out of control.”

The government said the Tories were deliberately ignoring the fact that thousands of the qualified teachers the figures refer to were still teaching, but in higher and further education, independent schools, private tutoring or part-time.

Vernon Coaker, the schools minister, said: “The Training and Development Agency for Schools specifically targets former teachers in its recruitment campaigns, with around 10,000 returning to the classroom every year, and we are recruiting thousands of former teachers to offer one-to-one tuition for children in state schools.

“As in any other profession, people have the right to change careers as they get older, but it is bizarre to infer that a teacher who chooses to change jobs, including within education, after a career of 15 or 20 years is a waste of talent.”

Coaker said England and Wales had the highest number of teachers for several decades, and a record number of teaching assistants, with retention rates rising year on year.

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Move follows school adjudicator’s ruling that the Vaughan’s admissions policy penalised the less devout

The Catholic church has defended a decision to complain about its best comprehensive to the schools adjudicator, Alan Parker, over a points-based admissions policy that penalised the less devout.

In December Parker ordered the voluntary aided Cardinal Vaughan Memorial school, in west London, to change its entry criteria after upholding objections from the Catholic Education Service (CES) and the diocese of Westminster.

It followed a lengthy and public struggle between the governors, who accused English and Welsh bishops of wanting to dilute the Catholic ethos of the school, and the church, which claimed the religious practice test was excluding Catholic children and distorting the social and ethnic demographic of the intake.

Paul Barber, of the CES, said it was with “great regret” that the church had turned to an outside body for intervention.

“It was a last resort as far as we were concerned,” Barber said. “We are disappointed it went to the schools adjudicator. But it was a fairly fundamental point that the admissions code recognised that a bishop was the religious authority in a diocese. It is the church who defines who is Catholic, not the individual school.”

The church and its bishops opposed the oversubscription criteria – a points-based test of religious practice.

There are six applicants for every place at the school, known as the Vaughan. Around 95% of sixth-formers achieve grades A-C at A-level and a similar proportion attain five or more GCSES at grade A*-C.

Boys had to prove that they and one of their parents attended weekly Sunday mass for at least three years, that they had been baptised within a year of their birth, had made their first confession and first holy communion before their ninth birthday, and that they had attended a Catholic school for the whole of their statutory education or that their parents had made formal provision for their Catholic education outside school.

Where there were still too many boys and not enough places parents had to give examples of “regular unpaid commitment” in their parish or a Catholic organisation.

Barber said: “It was the church’s mission that was being harmed by the arrangements being put forward. All our schools serve all of the Catholic community. If one school doesn’t do that in a fair way, it makes it more difficult for other schools to do that.”

He added: “I don’t believe there was any intention of the school governors to have any form of discrimination in its admission, but there was a danger that might be the case, of skewing the intake.”

In his 26-page report, Parker said the effect of the school’s current arrangements was “undoubtedly to ’select’ only the most devout Catholic boys with equally devout and supportive parents”.

The philosophy of the diocese “and indeed the Catholic church itself” was to involve all baptised children regardless of their level of observance and draw the lapsed back into fold through schooling.

Parker concluded: “The position adopted by the school seems to betray a lack of confidence in the strength of its own character, that it fears recruitment of anyone but the most devout will ‘undermine’ its ethos.”

A brief notice on the school website said its legal team was considering the adjudication, and the current chair of governors, Patti Fordyce, said it would be inappropriate to comment before she had met with her colleagues in the new term.

However the former chair of governors, who openly fought with the Catholic hierarchy over attempts to change the admissions policy, described the church’s victory as a “betrayal” of committed Catholics.

Sir Adrian Fitzgerald said: “We are duty bound to make sure that we are getting the right people in, not fair-weather or occasional Catholics.

“The adjudicator has made the assumption that the church does not mind if lapsed Catholics come in. I am very angry and disappointed. They are going to regret it. I don’t know what they’re playing at.”

It is not the first time the Vaughan has clashed with the Catholic hierarchy. In the 1980s Cardinal Basil Hume attempted to close down the sixth form, but backed down after a parental revolt. Several years later there was a disagreement between him and the then headmaster Anthony Pellegrini about the proposed closure of the Inner London Education Authority.

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The number of pupils receiving fixed period exclusions for violence in 2007-08 rose by 6% on the year before, statistics show

Fourteen children aged five or under are suspended from primary schools in England every day for violence against teachers or pupils, official statistics revealed today.

The number receiving fixed period exclusions for violence in 2007-08 rose by 6% on the year before, to more than 2,600.

Almost two-thirds of the assaults were against adults, the figures show, and 30 of the children sent home were aged only three. There were 830 four-year-olds disciplined for violence and 1,750 five-year-olds.

The figures also show that 10 children aged four, and 20 aged five, were suspended for “sexual misconduct”. Twenty five-year-olds received fixed period exclusions for bullying, and there was a slight increase in the number of suspensions among pupils aged up to 11 for incidents of racist abuse, from 340 to 390.

Last month, a survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers found that more than three-quarters of primary school teachers believed pupils were becoming aggressive at an earlier age.

Fifty-five per cent said behaviour had worsened over the last five years and almost two-thirds had witnessed physical aggression from pupils.

The shadow children’s secretary, Michael Gove said: “Children cannot learn if there are other pupils in the class who are acting violently.

“There is a real and increasing problem with the behaviour of the youngest children in primary schools, and it makes life impossible for their teachers.

“We want to make teachers’ lives easier by giving them more powers to keep order so that, as far as possible, problems with behaviour can be nipped in the bud before they spiral out of control.”

The schools minister, Iain Wright, said the vast majority of infant and primary schools did not exclude any children, and the government had given teachers and heads tough new disciplinary powers.

Home school agreements – which parents must sign with schools when their child enrols – would make sure parents took their responsibilities seriously, too.

“A recent report by the independent inspectors Ofsted on exclusions of young children found that almost all children in the schools they visited knew how to behave properly,” Wright said.

“Ofsted is clear that behaviour standards have significantly improved over the last decade, but we know there is more to do to ensure all children learn in an orderly school where discipline is tough and bad behaviour that disrupts the learning of others is not tolerated.”

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A vice-chancellor, 19 headteachers, 13 principals, three teachers and a classroom assistant are among those recognised

A vice-chancellor, a beauty school founder and a catering supervisor are among members of the education world lauded in the New Year honours list.

Nineteen headteachers, 13 school and college principals, nine school governors, three teachers and a classroom assistant are also recognised, with around 11% of all the honours awarded being for services to education.

Professor Robert Burgess, the vice-chancellor at the University of Leicester, under whose leadership the institution has reached the top 20 in the UK, receives a knighthood, as does Professor John Holman, director of the the National Science Learning Centre, which provides science training for teachers.

Burgess said he was delighted with the honour. “I think it’s a reflection of having many great opportunities in higher education and being supported by a marvellous group of colleagues,” he said. “At Leicester, everybody participates as one big team and that makes it very special, because everybody has the student experience in focus and that the university will do everything it can to the highest quality.”

Holman said: “Quite apart from the personal honour, I see this as emphatic recognition of the importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics to the future of the UK and to the lives of millions of young people.”

There is a CBE for Frances Hartley, until recently headteacher of Deans primary school in Salford. She transformed the school from one of the borough’s worst-performing primaries into one rated “outstanding” by Ofsted and named as the country’s best in 2007.

Eileen Cavalier, who founded the London College of Beauty Therapy in 1995 and has provided training for socially excluded young people and adults, gets an OBE.

And catering supervisor Mary George, who has worked at Crossroads primary school in Keith, Moray, for 27 years, is awarded an MBE.

A sociologist by training, Burgess was the first member of his family to go to university and took over at Leicester in 1998.

In 2008 Leicester was named University of the Year by the Times Higher Education supplement, which praised it for being “elite without being elitist” in the way it widened access to higher education.

“We are a university that tries to extend its reach and widen participation to the students who perform well in school and college, but are from social groups or areas of the country that do not traditionally come to university,” Burgess has said.

More than 90% of its undergraduate intake in 2008 was from state schools or colleges, and over a quarter of entrants were from working-class homes.

In 2007 nearly every 11-year-old at Deans primary school, which serves a relatively deprived area, achieved results normally expected of a 14-year-old in English, maths and science key stage 2 tests. The school got the highest points score nationally at 32.8.

Hartley put its success down to “old fashioned” teaching, saying staff focused on back-to-basics reading lessons from a young age, and managing to “pick and choose” from government initiatives, rather than following them all slavishly.

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