Education career-change charity Now Teach has secured its short-term future after attracting almost £1m in philanthropic backing, it announced this week.
The organisation, which supports business and science professionals to retrain as secondary school teachers to address STEM-subject shortages, had seen its ability to operate threatened after the Department for Education (DfE) pulled funding in the spring.
While its immediate future was not threatened as a result of the shortfall, Now Teach faced having no means of recruiting and supporting new trainees for the first time in seven years.
But now, the charity has reported attracting £968,000 in emergency funding, which it says will enable it to restart hiring 250 STEM subject-focused teachers and support them through training.
The money has come from a list of individuals, trusts and foundations including the Julia Rausing Trust, which supports UK charities, and education charity backer the AKO Foundation.
“I, and others, stepped in because it would have been a tragedy to lose such a model of focus and efficiency,” said Charles Kirwan-Taylor, trustee at the CHK Foundation, of his decision to offer financial backing.
“It has provided hundreds of STEM-focused teachers for the state school system, which is greatly in need of supply, and has encouraged skilled individuals into a new career later in life.”
Graham Crawshaw-Sadler, Now Teach’s chief executive, said supporters’ generosity meant the organisation would no longer need to “plan for the worst” and that a “healthy number of future teachers” would be able to register to train in September 2025.
‘DfE-shaped’ income gap
But in its announcement of the financial boost, Now Teach warned that there remains a “substantial ‘DfE-shaped’ income gap” as the charity looks to the future.
It said it remained “hopeful” about sustainable long-term growth but planned changes to increase efficiencies and reduce costs while introducing a more flexible programme with tighter entry criteria.
A spokesperson said it was not possible to provide further details at this stage, but added that the potential programme changes had been influenced by some of Now Teach’s new backers.
They admitted that cuts to the charity’s 24-strong workforce could not be ruled out.
Looking ahead, Now Teach expressed optimism based on the Labour government’s commitment to spend £450m recruiting 6,500 teachers over the next academic year.
Before July’s general election, Catherine McKinnell, then the shadow schools minister and now minister for school standards, described the cuts to Now Teach’s funding as the Conservative government finding “fresh ways to fail our children”.
Need for ‘long-term state support’
Lucy Kellaway, the former journalist and teacher who co-founded Now Teach, said the money raised by the organisation “illustrates how shortsighted the DfE’s decision was to axe our funding”.
But she added that “bridging funding is just that, and long-term state support is needed to keep momentum”.
“We have survived the final thoughtless swinging axe of a departing government, but I hope new ideas and ambition from a reinvigorated DfE can help us bring more brilliant minds and experience into the classroom for young people,” Kellaway said.
Crawshaw-Sadler added that renewed government backing for Now Teach would account for only 3% of recruitment budgets set out in Labour’s manifesto, and said the charity intends “to feed into the DfE’s long-term thinking on career changers in education.
Civil Society has approached the DfE for further comment.
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