EDUCATION Secretary Damian Hinds will pledge to cut teachers’ hours today to tackle school staff shortages.

Mr Hinds will promise school leaders that the government will “strip away” pointless tasks to allow teachers to “get back to the essence of successful teaching.”

Secondary schools across England have seen an increase in pupil numbers prompted by a spike in the birth rate in the early 2000s, which Mr Hinds will acknowledge makes staff retention difficult.

But Labour’s shadow schools minister Mike Kane said: “The Tories have been promising to solve the workload crisis for years, but the facts are that they have missed their own recruitment targets five years in a row and teachers are leaving the profession in record numbers.”

He added that, if the government were serious about ending the teacher recruitment crisis, “they would match Labour’s fully funded commitment to scrap the public sector pay cap.”

Mr Hinds will make the announcement at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) annual conference in Birmingham.

ASCL general secretary Geoff Barton will say that "only co-ordinated action by school leaders, Ofsted and the government will solve this problem."