NowTeach is set to see its income halved this year after the Department for Education (DfE) pulled funding from its flagship career-change programme.
The education charity, which expects to report an income of £1.77m for the current financial year, will lose £900,000 of its annual funding from September.
It employs 24 members of staff, none of which are officially at risk yet as the charity will continue to service a smaller government contract until 2026.
After 2026, the charity predicts that its income could fall as low as £17,000 a year.
DfE is reportedly having to make cuts to fund pay increases for teachers and a £1.5bn shortfall in its budgets.
Charity ‘needs additional funding’
Since it was formed in 2016, the charity reports that it has supported over 1,000 professionals to retrain and become secondary school teachers for STEM shortage subjects in England.
But from September, for the first time in seven years, the charity will not be funded to recruit and support trainee teachers from business and science sectors.
The charity said it would continue to support those it has already helped to change careers and look to “forge a new role in the system and ready ourselves to respond when opportunities arise”.
Now Teach chief executive, Graihagh Crawshaw-Sadler, said the charity “needs to secure additional funding” to continue its work.
“We currently have the resources to recruit trainees starting this September and provide support for two years, but this situation means we cannot recruit new teachers for 2025 and beyond,” she said.
“We’ll continue to work with training providers across England to make sure these people become and remain as great teachers – while also trying to ensure they are not our final cohort.”
The charity’s chair Graham Elton said it was “dispiriting that we’ve fallen victim to budget cuts” despite “overachieving our targets”.
“Over the coming months the trustees will do everything we can to seek alternative funding to maintain this important work,” he said.
DfE: ‘We’d like to acknowledge the contribution’
A DfE spokesperson said: “We’d like to acknowledge the contribution being made by NowTeach in delivering this programme.
“Career changers make a valuable contribution to the teaching profession and bring a wealth of experience and expertise.
“We remain committed to continuing to recruit and support them into initial teacher training, through services such as Get Into Teaching which offers one-to-one support and advice.”
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