The Department for Education’s (DfE) research report, ‘Are free schools using innovative approaches’, published this week, shows that 21 per cent of primary free schools have employed unqualified teachers that were not working towards achieving Qualified Teacher Status (QTS).
The findings are based on an independent survey of 74 free schools, of which 34 were primary schools.
In total, around a third (32 per cent) of the primary and secondary free schools that responded to the survey reported having hired unqualified teachers at some point.
The reasons the schools gave for not employing qualified teachers included:
‘To plug the shortage of staff with QTS and to provide an alternative route into teaching for highly-qualified people in subject areas’
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