Good report masks PGCE gloom

Cash, commercials, and even television dramas have helped teacher training to renewed popularity, it would appear. But Nicholas Pyke finds that the figures mask an array of shortfalls

Judging from the raw figures, the Government and its Teacher Training Agency look to have pulled off a minor miracle. Teaching became seven per cent more popular last year with more than 23,000 students enrolling on Post Graduate Certificate in Education courses, the highest number at any time in the last 12 years. This may, however, mask a more sobering reality.

According to the TTA there are many reasons for the turn-around, including the "Those Who Can, Teach" campaign of television adverts and changes which have made training courses more flexible to people with other commitments. And then there is the array of schemes offering financial relief, particularly to those willing to train in shortage subjects. In the loan-dominated world of university finance, PGCE students are practically millionaires. They receive £6,000 bursaries. Then, when trainees in hard-to-fill areas such as science, maths and languages start work, they get £4,000 more. PGCE students, in addition, do not have to pay tuition fees.

While few doubt money has been a major help, it is not the only change for which TTA would like to take credit. It has tried to tap the pool of students taking interesting but non-traditional degrees – oceanography for example – which would not normally make them eligible for teacher training. It has created booster courses so that graduates who covered some physics and chemistry can reach teaching level: they will be paid £150 a week for the privilege, the same wage offered to language graduates willing to learn a second tongue. For trainees reluctant to go back to university life, the number of school-based training schemes is continuing to rise. In addition the fast-track training scheme for potential high-flyers is still recruiting and offering enhanced wages.

While the number of initiatives is impressive, the results are slightly less so if you look beyond the headline figures. A number of important targets were missed. The perennial glut of biologists wanting to teach masked a dearth of physicists and chemists (official figures lump them together as "science"). Maths fell short of the recruitment target again, despite the fact that more than half a million secondary school pupils were being taught by maths teachers who had, at best, a weak knowledge of the subject, according to a recent Open University survey. Languages, RE, music and design and technology courses all had more than 100 places left unfilled.

Figures released last week by Professor John Howson, of Education Data Surveys, which tracks teacher recruitment, threw up some good news. Training institutions are attracting more applications from maths graduates in this recruitment cycle, for example. It also emerged that applications from men are rising faster than those from women (although in the secondary sector there is no great shortage of men).

But overall Professor Howson is gloomy. The total number of candidates who have so far enrolled for postgraduate courses starting in September remains down on this time last year, and a shortage of potential music teachers is raising concern. He divides secondary PGCE courses into three groups: "Those where recruitment is buoyant and there is never any problem filling the places available – PE, ICT, business studies and history for example; maths, by itself, doing much better; and a third group where recruitment so far this year is sluggish, such as geography and, in particular, music where applications are the lowest at this time of year for a decade.

He feels ministers are failing to take the continued lack of interest seriously. "They're still letting the situation drift," he says, pointing out that the £6,000 training bursary has been at the same level for three years. "Either the government doesn't really believe in it or there's a battle going on between the Department for Education and Skills and the Treasury."

The TTA is working on a new round of television adverts for September. Perhaps it should also be banging on the doors of commissioning editors in television drama. As the agency acknowledges, one of the biggest factors boosting the number of trainees last year was Channel 4's late night series Teachers.