THE effects of a national teacher shortage are being felt in Swindon schools, say some of the town's head teachers.

A report by spending watchdog, the National Audit office says teacher shortages are increasing in the UK and the government has missed its recruitment targets for four years.

The shortage of teachers means that some teaching posts remain vacant for extended periods of time, leaving the gaps to be filled by expensive agency staff.

And local heads say have noticed a decrease in applications for teaching posts.

Wendy Conaghan, head teacher at Kingsdown School and chair of head teachers association Swindon SASH, said she had at times found a dwindling pool of candidates in response to job ads.

“When I first started out, there could be anything up to 30 applicants for a job, now I’ve had times where I have advertised jobs for a year and had no applicants,” she said.

“I recently hired a head of Spanish and found I was getting a lot of applicants from abroad and overall a really limited response. One year later, I got 10 applicants and have hired a brilliant person but it wasn’t easy."

Wendy said she believed location played a part in the problems recruiting fresh teaching talent.

“Swindon has always had a notable problem attracting teaching talent, because they may be more attractive places to work," she said.

“It also varies with the different types of jobs we see. Something like maths and science we would always find it difficult to recruit for because it is a dwindling skillset. "And the other problem is retaining people with those skill-sets because they have the pick of jobs they want.”

Clive Zimmerman, principal at Lydiard Park Academy said young teachers didn’t get enough support from the government.

“It’s heart-breaking that the support isn’t given to younger teachers in this day and age. Teaching is long hours but it is the most rewarding job in the world.

“Sometimes we’ll have to choose from a pool of one candidate and hope they’ll be okay for the job. You want to be able to pick and choose staff but when you get one applicant for a job, you have to hope they will be good enough.

“Recruitment also depends on the timing. Fortunately the culture here is that when we get teachers they tend to want to stay because of the support and care we give them."

Deirdre Fitzpatrick, head teacher at Uplands School said the environment for young teachers was less competitive now than in the past.

“Teachers for subjects such as a maths and science have seen a significant decrease in applicants and they would always be more difficult to recruit for.,” she said.

“Recruitment is problem in many secondary schools across Swindon. The government needs to work on retaining teachers and supporting them in the industry. Teaching is hard anyway, particularly when you first start.”

According to the report, more than half (54 percent) of head teachers in schools with large proportions of disadvantaged pupils find attracting and keeping good teachers is "a major problem", compared with a third (33 percent) of those in other schools.