The Further Education Teacher Workforce in England Annual Report 2026
12 March 2026
The Further Education (FE) sector plays a crucial role in ensuring young people and adults have education and training opportunities to gain skills. The Department for Education (DfE) recognises that a high-quality FE teaching workforce is a critical underpinning for the quality of FE.
However, the FE sector has struggled to attract and retain the numbers of highly skilled teachers it needs over the last decade.
This report is funded by the Nuffield Foundation as part of an expanded series of annual labour market reports. The aim of this report is to provide an overview of the FE workforce in England and identify risks and challenges for recruitment and retention.
The report summarises the key trends in recruitment, retention, pay, working conditions and wellbeing within the FE workforce, and points towards actions that are likely to have the greatest impact on addressing the workforce challenges identified.
Key Findings
- The number of teachers working in General FE colleges and Sixth Form Colleges has been relatively stable in the last three years, following a decade of falling teacher numbers.
- However, the FE sector is still suffering from a significant shortage of teachers and FE will need to be a core focus of the Government’s ambition to recruit 6,500 more teachers by the end of parliament.
- FE teaching is a critical pipeline for providing the skills needed in the Government’s priority sectors, but high vacancy rates in key subjects may be a barrier to their ambitions.
- Relative to other groups, FE teachers’ pay has declined markedly in recent years.
- FE teachers do not appear to work particularly long hours, but low pay and a lack of overtime may be contributing to dissatisfaction with workload.
- FE teacher retention rates could potentially be improved by increasing their agency and opportunities for progression in the workplace.
