Bureaucracy in teaching has contributed to “the biggest drop” in applicants to train in the profession, an education union said.

The number of teacher training applications went down by a third from 19,330 by December 2016 to 12,820 in 2017, according to Ucas figures.

This included around 25% fewer trainees in English, maths and science.

Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary for the National Education Union, said it is “the biggest drop I can remember of applicants in one year”.

“This is a real problem, there are obviously some differences year on year with the application dates – but a third is a huge figure,” he added.

It comes after tens of thousands of teachers left England’s schools before reaching retirement age last year.

The Government has also missed recruitment targets in the profession for the last five years.

Mr Courtney said changes to the curriculum, complicated different routes into teaching and low pay are all contributing to the issue.

Schoolchildren
The Department for Education says there are a record number of teachers in schools – 15,500 more than in 2010 (Barry Batchelor/PA)

The main problem is a high workload caused by over-scrutiny and a “lack of trust” in teachers, he added.

“It’s not the hours but the nature of the work – producing evidence for bureaucrats is taking hours of teachers’ time,” he said.

“The workload is not only causing problems with people leaving, but now with people coming into the profession.

“Every teacher feels like they are under scrutiny the whole time. It’s mind numbing, it’s demeaning and that needs to be addressed.

“It’s about the status of teachers and putting trust back into the profession.”

The figures also found:

:: Citizenship and design and technology saw the biggest declines, both of 67%

:: ICT was the only subject that had an increase, of 10%

:: European languages fell by 29%

:: Music and history dropped by 45% or more

The Department for Education said applications opened a week later in 2017 than in 2016, “so it wouldn’t be right to draw direct parallels” between the two figures.

A spokeswoman said: “There are now a record number of teachers in our schools – 15,500 more than in 2010 – and the fact that more than 32,000 new trainee teachers have recently been recruited in a competitive labour market, with historic low unemployment rates and a growing economy, shows that the profession continues to be an attractive career.

“We want to do all we can to help schools with recruitment which is why we have a range of generous bursaries designed to recruit more teachers in important subjects such as maths and physics.

“We are also creating a free website for schools to publish vacancies to help reduce costs and make it easier for aspiring and current teachers to find new posts.”