What does the pledge mean? 

Labour’s manifesto stated: “Labour will recruit an additional 6,500 new expert teachers. We will get more teachers into shortage subjects, support areas that face recruitment challenges, and tackle retention issues.”

Education is a devolved matter, so this pledge refers to state-funded schools in England, which fall within the control of the Westminster government.

The manifesto commitment did not explicitly state whether the target was for a 6,500 increase among all teachers, or only some types, and this has led to the Conservatives accusing the government of “fiddling the figures” by not looking at the overall number of teachers, including primary school teachers.

As we’ve written elsewhere, unclear commitments may confuse people, at best, and risk fuelling cynicism among voters. As we said in our manifesto standards before the election, manifestos should define things clearly and consistently and be phrased in a way that a reasonable person is likely to understand.

However the government has since been clear that the target relates to secondary, special school and further education teachers specifically. And crucially, the fact that primary and nursery schools were not part of the target was made explicit prior to the election—during the campaign the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer referred at least twice to recruiting 6,500 teachers in secondary schools, while Schools Week also reported that the target referred to secondary schools.

The government’s “Plan for Change”, launched in December 2024, restated the commitment, saying it would focus “on subjects with shortages and areas with the biggest recruitment challenges”.

Some further detail came in a written ministerial statement in May 2025, in which Ms Phillipson said the target was to recruit 6,500 additional expert teachers “across secondary and special schools, and our colleges”.

However, the government did not set out full details until February 2026, when it confirmed that its target was for there to be “at least 6,500 more teachers working in our secondary, special schools and colleges at the end of this Parliament, than at the start”.

It also confirmed that the baseline for the target would be the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) teachers in the 2023/24 academic year as measured by the School Workforce Census (for secondary, special and pupil referral unit (PRU) schools) and the Further Education Workforce in England publication (for further education colleges, sixth-form colleges and schools-based providers).

In 2023/24 these sources showed there were 245,805 secondary and special school teachers and 38,821 further education FTE teachers respectively, for a total baseline figure of 284,626, suggesting the pledge would be achieved if the total number of teachers in secondary, special schools and colleges is at least 291,126 by the end of the parliament.

However, these figures have subsequently been revised, producing a new, higher total for 2023/24 of 284,891, according to our own calculations. Based on these figures, the new target would be at least 291,391—265 higher than the original baseline.

A progress update published by the government in June 2025 suggests that it is using this revised baseline, rather than the figure originally set out in the delivery plan—we’ve asked the Department for Education to confirm whether this is the case.  

What progress has been made?

We’re currently rating this pledge as “appears on track”.

The School Workforce Census for 2025/26 shows that in November 2025 there were 218,543 FTE secondary teachers, and 30,277 teachers working in special schools and PRUs—a total of 248,820.

This is an increase of 3,008 compared to the revised figures for 2023/24.

We only have data for the further education workforce for 2024/25, which shows that there were 40,725 FTE further education teachers.

In its latest Schools Workforce Census release, the DfE has combined these figures together to produce a total of 289,595, and compared this to the revised 2023/24 baseline, to produce a figure of 4,654 additional teachers that count towards its target.

This is approximately 72% of the 6,500 additional teachers the government has promised to recruit by the end of the parliament.

It’s worth noting that the overall number of FTE teachers in state-funded schools has decreased over the same period, primarily due to a fall in the number of nursery and primary school teachers which the government says is taking place “in the context of a decreasing nursery and primary pupil population”.

The government has announced measures to increase the number of teaching entrants.

In July 2024, the Department for Education announced it would relaunch and “expand” its main teacher recruitment campaign, “Every Lesson Shapes a Life”, as part of its efforts to recruit the additional 6,500 new teachers. And in May 2025 it announced it would shorten the duration of postgraduate teaching apprenticeships, a key route into the profession, from 12 months to nine, in a bid to drive up numbers.

In February 2025 the government set out a number of other measures it says will improve teacher recruitment and retention in its delivery plan.