Who Aspires to Become a Teacher? Findings from a Cohort Study Tracking Young People from Age 10/11 to Age 21/22

Against a backdrop of severe and long-standing teacher shortages, in this paper we present analyses of over 60,000 survey responses collected via a cross-sectional cohort study that sampled young people in England over a period of 11 years; at ages 10/11, 12/13, 13/14, 15/16, 17/18, and 21/22. These methods allow us to explore how common teaching aspirations are amongst young people at different ages, and who aspires to become a teacher as a future career. Analysing both free-text and Likert-scale data, we find that many more young people express an interest in becoming a teacher than is reflected in teacher recruitment data, and that teaching aspirations are patterned by gender and ethnicity. Girls and young women, as well as young people who identified as White, were significantly more likely to be open to teaching than their peers. Our findings suggest that teaching is a common back-up, or second-choice career aspiration, and that many individuals who report an earlier interest in teaching do not go on to become teachers. We end the paper with reflections on how these findings might be used to increase and diversify teacher recruitment, as well as recommendations for future research.