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Good education policy depends on good evidence.

Yet while the government publishes detailed data on suspensions, exam results and attendance, finding equivalent data on teacher recruitment to the fifth most popular A level is almost impossible.

The subject in question is economics. Despite entries for this A level rising by 10.7 per cent this year to 46,365, data on how many teachers are recruited each year - or even how many currently teach the subject - is in short supply.

Lack of data on teacher recruitment

Trainee numbers for economics were only identifiable in the published initial teacher training statistics until 2013-14, and only then through accompanying footnotes.

From 2014-15 onwards, economics stopped being reported separately in the statistics.

Since 2019-20, the figures have been reported within business studies, a subject that met only 30 per cent of its recruitment target last year.

Currently we have no way of knowing how many of the trainees reported within business studies are training to teach economics.

If we then want to know how many teachers are actually teaching the subject, and turn to the school workforce data, we find a similar problem.

The published workforce statistics do not identify specialist economics teachers as a distinct group. To understand why, I submitted a freedom of information request to the Department for Education, asking how economics had been treated in the first three school workforce censuses (2010-2012).

The DfE confirmed that when the school workforce census data was collected, economics was “listed as a separate subject”.

However, “in analysing and reporting the data, it was combined with other subjects”. This means economics data was collected separately but not reported separately in the published statistics.

Questions over teacher supply

Taken together, the ITT and workforce data reveal a broader pattern. Across both teacher recruitment and workforce reporting, specialist economics teachers are not identifiable as a distinct group in the published statistics.

This matters because demand for economics education continues to grow. Yet the published statistics still cannot tell us whether England has enough specialist economics teachers to meet that demand.

A similar issue exists with other subjects, such as psychology. Despite being more popular than history, physics, chemistry and English, psychology is listed within a category called “Other” that also includes media and communication studies, social studies and citizenship.

This lack of visibility has important consequences. The National Audit Office (NAO) has highlighted the importance of robust workforce data for understanding teacher shortages and evaluating whether recruitment strategies are working.

Yet, despite long-standing concerns about the supply of specialist economics teachers, the subject is not mentioned in the NAO report.

This is not a criticism of the NAO. Rather, it illustrates a wider consequence of the way subjects are reported.

Shortage of evidence

When a subject is not readily identifiable in the published statistics, policymakers, researchers and teacher educators lack the evidence needed to understand whether specialist teacher supply is keeping pace with demand.

Reliable evidence is essential for effective workforce planning because it helps to answer key questions:

• Where is specialist teaching expertise located?
• How is the specialist workforce changing over time?
• Is recruitment keeping pace with growing demand?
• Which schools rely most heavily on non-specialist teachers?

Recognising all subjects, particularly those with substantial student demand, as distinct categories in published teacher recruitment and workforce statistics would be a relatively modest change, but one that would allow policymakers, researchers and teacher educators to answer some basic questions that we currently cannot answer with confidence.

Given the growing demand for economics, we owe it to students, schools and policymakers to make the specialist teaching workforce visible in the published data.

Sonia Strnad is a teacher educator at the UCL Institute of Education. She taught economics across state and independent secondary schools for 11 years

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