For the first time for over a century, Oxford's postgraduate training course for maths teachers will begin term without a full complement - choosing to leave eight or so places vacant rather than lower standards to make up the numbers.

Such is the depth of the problem in recruiting teachers, particularly for subjects such as maths, that the course director is calling for student teachers to be paid a salary.

"If we're to take the problem seriously we have to take drastic actions," says Professor Richard Pring, head of the university's Educational Studies department.

"We have students who can't afford to go into teaching. Good mathematics graduates can find well-paid jobs, so many are reluctant to take on the extra expense of another year's training."

If teacher training is not made more attractive, the professor predicted that "the subject will be taught by less and less well-qualified teachers", with consequences for the future standards of maths.

Recruitment crisis spreading

A student salary, which could be set as a proportion of a fully-qualified teacher's rates of pay, would provide an incentive for students to enter teaching.

This would help to stem the spreading problem with recruitment, which the professor says now is affecting modern languages, physics, geography and design and technology, as well as maths.

Professor Pring also believes that the "public rubbishing" of the teaching profession by politicians and pundits has a negative impact on whether students want to become teachers.