Why schools still cannot recruit RE teachers.

By Nikki McGee Subject Specialist Lead for RE, Inspiration Trust and Hethersett Academy; Member of the NATRE executive

Why schools still cannot recruit RE specialists.

 Walk into most secondary schools and ask to see the RE department and you are highly likely to be shown one. Ask to see a student timetable and you will see RE timetabled in most schools and there will be a teacher’s initials on the RE slot. On paper, the subject is staffed. The problem is that “having RE teachers” and “having RE specialists” have quietly become two different things, and the gap between them is the story ministers need to understand before they act on recruitment targets again.

What “we have RE teachers” means.

In too many schools, RE is staffed the way a rota is filled, rather than the way that other subjects are resourced. Too often the subject is taught by whoever is free, this means a history teacher picks up two year 8 groups because they have gaps on their timetable. A geography teacher, also with a few gaps on their timetable, finds themselves being handed a scheme of work and being told that the exam board is AQA and the students are studying Christianity and Islam but not to worry because the course include topics such as wealth and poverty and responding to natural disasters and that is almost the same as geography. 

There is no attempt to recruit a specialist teacher and therefore no vacancy is showing. It shows up as a fully staffed RE department because every RE lesson has a qualified teacher in front of it, just not a qualified teacher of RE.

This is not a fringe practice. DfE School Workforce Census data, analysed by NATRE, shows that 51 per cent of those teaching RE mainly teach another subject, and only 44 per cent of RE teachers hold a post-A-level qualification in the subject, compared with 78.5 per cent for history, 76.6 per cent for maths and 80.3 per cent for English. RE is the subject schools solve by redistribution, not by appointment.

Why this matters.

Recruitment targets are set and monitored using Initial Teacher Training figures, how many trainees start, how many complete and how many go on to teach the subject. Judged against that measure, RE looks like a long running but potentially fixable problem. Training targets are being missed year after year, but a bursary or recruitment campaign could close the gap. The latest UCAS data shows RE recruitment for 2025-6 sitting at just 54 per cent of target, amongst the lowest of any secondary subject.

That is the headline shortfall. It does not capture the schools quietly running RE departments without anyone trained to teach it. A department can look adequately staffed on a spreadsheet and still have no specialists teaching the subject at all. If ministers treat “schools have teachers of RE” as evidence the crisis is being managed, they are reading the wrong signal. The rota is not the same as the profession.

The bursary decision repeats the same mistake.

This is precisely why the removal of the RE bursary from September 2026 is so damaging, and why it reads as evidence policy is being made on the wrong data. Bursaries for RE, currently £10,000, are being withdrawn entirely for trainees starting in 2026. NATRE has noted that ministers responsible for the decision are justifying it by pointing to the recent increase in trainee recruitment. But that increase was 40 per cent growth in applications, and RE was still short of target even at its peak, and the subject had failed its recruitment target for nine of the last ten years before that. The effect of the withdrawal is already visible: trainee numbers for RE have fallen by a fifth so far this year following the bursary cut. The RE Policy Unit has warned the decision risks triggering the closure of more university training courses, and the University of Birmingham has already announced that 2025–26 will be its final year offering a PGCE in Religious Education. A subject that fails its recruitment target nine years out of ten, then finally gains ground, is not a subject that has stopped needing support. It was a subject where support was working, and the fall in trainee numbers since the cut suggests withdrawing it is already reversing that progress.

What school leaders see that national data does not.

Ask any RE lead what “specialist” means in practice and the answer complicates the picture further. It is not simply about a theology degree. PGCE and School Direct routes are open to graduates from a wide range of disciplines, and rightly so. Specialism is built through training, subject knowledge, and sustained classroom experience in RE specifically, and not conferred by a degree title alone. That distinction matters because it means the shortage cannot be solved by redefining who counts. A history graduate teaching RE full time and developing real expertise over several years is a different proposition from a history teacher covering two lessons a week because the timetable needs filling. National workforce data currently has no reliable way of telling these two situations apart, which is exactly how a subject can look staffed by being hollowed out.

The message for ministers

Reducing RE recruitment targets on the basis that schools have “teachers of RE” misreads what the phrase describes. It describes a timetable that has been filled, not a subject that has been resourced. The data ministers rely on measures training pipeline outcomes and not what is standing in front of pupils in the classroom. Thise two things have drifted a long way apart and RE is the subject where the gap it at its widest.

If government wants an honest picture of RE provision, it needs data that distinguishes between a specialist teaching their subject from a generalist covering it, and it needs to stop treating a full timetable as proof of a solved problem. Until then the safest assumption for any minister looking at RE staffing figures  is that the true shortage is worse than numbers suggest, not better.

Practical Takeaways for School leaders.

• Audit RE staffing by specialism, not just by timetable coverage. A “fully staffed” department can still be running entirely on goodwill cover. 
• When a specialist RE teacher leaves, treat the replacement as a distinct recruitment priority and not a gap to be absorbed elsewhere on the timetable,
• Keep and share your own data on specialists versus non specialist delivery so we have real data.
• Push back in SACRE and MAT forums on any policy argument that treats “we have RE teachers “as equivalent to “we have RE specialists”