People and culture at the heart of recruiting 6,500 additional teachers - but is it achievable?

As HR consultants working within the education sector, the government’s newly published 6,500 Additional Teachers Delivery Plan carries significant implications for workforce strategy. The plan commits to recruiting 6,500 new expert teachers, prioritising mainstream secondary schools, special schools, and FE colleges where demographic changes and longstanding shortages are most pronounced. High‑quality teaching remains the most influential in‑school factor shaping pupil outcomes, and targeted investment aims to place expertise where it is needed most. 

However, while the ambition is welcome, it is impossible to ignore a sense of uncertainty about whether this pledge is truly achievable. The plan follows a decade marked by consistent missed recruitment targets in secondary postgraduate initial teacher training (PGITT) , with the target met only once between 2013/14 and 2023/24, during the exceptional circumstances of the COVID‑19 pandemic. This context will leave many in the sector understandably cautious about the likelihood of delivering such a substantial uplift within the timeframe of this Parliament. 

The government highlights investment in financial incentives (over £330 million) alongside efforts to reduce workload, support flexible working, and boost pay, with nearly a 10% pay increase since the government came into power. These measures represent a positive shift in acknowledging the full employee experience, but workforce challenges run deeper than financial levers alone can address. Teachers continue to report high workload, wellbeing concerns, and a need for more accessible professional development. 

From a people and culture perspective, this matters enormously. Recruitment targets can only be met and sustained if the sector addresses the cultural foundations that determine whether staff feel valued, supported, and able to grow. The broader ‘Every child achieving and thriving’ white paper reinforces themes of belonging, inclusion, and engagement across the system, signalling recognition that a strong workforce culture is essential to achieving educational reform.

Yet even with this recognition, the plan remains another in a long line of major government initiatives introduced with urgency. Schools and colleges, having navigated successive waves of reform, may question whether this strategy will be supported with consistent policy, adequate funding continuity, and attention to long‑term cultural change, rather than short‑term metrics.

As HR professionals, our role is to guide leaders in interpreting this national strategy realistically: focusing not only on recruitment but on retention, wellbeing, leadership capability, and the development of healthy organisational cultures. These cultural drivers ultimately shape whether staff stay, thrive, and feel a sense of purpose in their work. Recruitment targets can be set centrally, but people‑centred culture is built locally.

The delivery plan sets out a framework for strengthening the workforce. Whether it can be fully realised depends on the sector's ability—and the government’s willingness—to invest not just in numbers, but in people.