The risk posed to schools by Britain’s departure from the European Union is revealed as new figures show that the number of EU nationals who have qualified to teach in England has more than doubled since 2010.

During a time when the government has repeatedly failed to meet its teacher recruitment targets, data suggests foreign nationals have increasingly been drafted in to fill in gaps.

Labour warns of teacher training crisis after targets missed again Read more

Theresa May has refused to give EU nationals in Britain any assurances that they will continue to be welcome. There are also growing concerns in education that the government’s silence will put off possible future recruits from the EU.

Department for Education figures show that close to 5,000 teachers from EU countries qualified to teach last year, up from just over 2,000 in 2010. The largest numbers came from Spain, Greece, Poland and Romania. The number from Greece has shot up more than sixfold – from 88 to 572 – since 2010. Yet, despite the influx, the DfE has failed to hit necessary recruitment levels for a fifth year in a row, it was revealed last week. There were not enough trainee teachers starting courses this September in three-quarters of subjects, with maths, physics, design and technology, computing and business studies all falling.

Meanwhile, more than 50,000 teachers left the profession before retirement last year, the highest number for more than a decade. More teachers are leaving the job than joining, with almost a quarter leaving within their first three years.

Shadow schools minister Mike Kane said he feared that the government’s policy on EU nationals could further jeopardise schools’ ability to fill staff shortages. “The Tories are failing to train enough teachers for our schools and it is EU teachers that are helping to plug the gap,” he said. “It is appalling that the prime minister won’t guarantee the legal status of these teachers that are helping with our skills shortages. It is our children that will pay the price for this shameless politicking.”

Professor John Howson, a government adviser on teacher recruitment, said that in recent years, with pressures on funding, headteachers had looked to teachers from eastern Europe in particular to ease staffing shortages. He said: “I suspect that quite a lot of recruitment agencies have been operating particularly in places like Romania and Bulgaria, where the standards in teaching maths are probably quite high.”

In June, the cross-party public accounts committee of MPs criticised the DfE for having no plan to meet its targets.

The DfE claims to be investing more than £1.3bn over this parliament “to attract the brightest and best into teaching”. While the government admits that there are challenges, recruitment was up by 12% in maths in 2016 compared with 2015 and by 15% in physics.