Adam Thompson

I will focus on the removal of private schools’ eligibility for charitable business rates relief. Before I was elected to the House I was a scientist, but before I was a scientist I trained as a secondary school teacher. In school, I saw at first hand the dedication and resilience of my colleagues, but I also bore witness to the challenges that they faced—challenges that led many, many teachers to leave the profession after only a few years. I left after only my training year, citing the unsustainability of marking books at 1 o’clock in the morning, planning lessons at the weekend and never seeing my family as the reasons why I could not continue in the profession, despite loving being a teacher. I chose to leave the profession to do something that I feel is much easier: to take a doctorate in engineering. When I trained 10 years ago, teaching had a profound retention issue, but now it is worse. One in 10 new teachers leaves after just one year in the role; one in four leaves after just three years. Little over half of teachers see their career last more than 10 years. Many are outstanding teachers who do not want to leave the profession. Even now, I miss teaching every day. The picture in our education system gets worse when we look at maths and science, subjects that I know the whole House believes are vital. The maths teacher shortage began in 2012, and in 2023 the intake of new maths teachers was just 60% of the Government’s target. I was a physics teacher, and in 2023 there were six times as many vacancies for science teachers as there were in 2010. In my view, the failures of the previous Government’s education policy led to this abysmal state of affairs, and they are profoundly unacceptable.