BRADFORD has been chosen by the Government to pilot a scheme to attract more teachers into the profession, it has been revealed.

The Department for Education has chosen the district to trial a more localised version of its Get Into Teaching campaign, using advertising to try and convince more people to become teachers.

Bradford was one of two districts chosen because of past difficulties recruiting and retaining teachers.

It is just the latest in a number of innovative schemes being trialled to prevent a drain of teachers from the district’s schools.

Recently released figures show that Bradford has a higher than average “wastage” rate of teachers leaving its schools. In the 2015/16 academic year, 485 teachers left Bradford schools, 14.7 per cent of the total number of teachers in the district.

The national average wastage rate is 10.6 per cent.

Along with Norfolk, which has also experiences difficulties recruiting teachers in the past, Bradford will pilot the programme, run by the National College for Teaching & Leadership.

It started late last year, and will roll out further in the coming weeks. The pilot will test whether “additional regionalised marketing” will boost the number of people wanting to become teachers.

The campaign will include local advertising, “geo-targeted social media,” increased advertising around Bradford, and events for potential educators.

Separately, there are numerous other schemes to improve teacher recruitment and retention, including encouraging teachers in challenging schools to take “secondments” in other schools rather than leave the profession, and sharing details of impressive teaching candidates between schools.

Bradford Council’s Children’s Services Scrutiny Committee will discuss teacher recruitment tomorrow.

In the last academic year, 58 per cent of primaries and 63 per cent of secondaries were facing recruitment issues due to smaller numbers of applicants, and a shortage of specialist teachers, particularly in the secondary sector in science/technology and English.

Bradford Council recently ringfenced £660,000 over a three year period to help tackle teacher recruitment and retention.

Sara Rawnsley, former head of Princeville Primary and recruitment and retention strategy manager for Bradford, has written a report for the committee detailing what can be done to both train more teachers in Bradford, and prevent more teachers from leaving the district’s schools.

The report reveals that, of the teachers leaving, 19 per cent left schools that were judged “inadequate” by Ofsted.

And 22.3 per cent of the teachers who left departed from schools that had either recently opened or recently become academies. Mrs Rawnsley’s report says Bradford is the only local authority offering a district-wide recruitment and retention service, and through working with various different teacher training providers in Bradford and Leeds, the district’s schools have access to over 600 graduating teachers.

She has held a number of “bus tours” of the city to market Bradford to these new graduates, with the next tour taking place next month.

She told the Telegraph & Argus it was important to keep new teachers in local schools, adding: “This is talent we don’t want to lose. I’m working with council leaders to se how we can do things like over staff schools so they can share staff.”

Ian Murch, Bradford spokesman for the National Union of Teachers, said: “A big priority is to make people feel like they will be valued as a teacher. Don’t blame them if a school doesn’t get the best results. Bradford has a bit of a bad reputation for its schools, and that needs to change.”

Councillor David Ward, Lib Dem spokesman for education, said it was important that any new recruitment schemes also looked at getting more men to become teachers. He added: “There is a lot of good work going on here to recruit teachers. We need to make Bradford a more attractive place to be a teacher.”