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Written question asked by Shivani Raja (Conservative) on Friday, 28 August 2026, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 2 September 2026. It was answered by Georgia Gould (Labour) on Tuesday, 8 September 2026 on behalf of the Department for Education.

Religion: Education

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to prevent secondary schools from using Religious Education lessons primarily to fill non-specialist teacher timetable capacity.

Answer

High-quality teaching is the in-school factor that has the biggest positive impact on a child’s outcomes, which is why we committed to recruiting 6,500 additional secondary, special school and further education teachers over the course of this parliament.

The department uses the teacher workforce model to estimate postgraduate initial teacher training (ITT) recruitment need, although ITT recruitment is not limited by the trainee need set.

We significantly increased recruitment need for Religious Education (RE). Between 2021/22 and 2025/26, the highest growth (percentage change) in recruitment need by subject was for drama, followed by RE. Since then, as a consequence of more favourable supply forecasts, driven by increased RE ITT recruitment, the recruitment need fell for 2026/27.

There were 492 postgraduate RE ITT trainee entrants in 2025/26, the highest number of postgraduate ITT entrants since 2020/21.

School leaders are responsible for employment and deployment decisions within their schools as they best understand their own pupils and school context.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
22512
Session
2026-27
Grouped for answer
Yes
Subjects
Education Teachers Religion
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk