In a week in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer set fire to the economy, it’s clearly no longer a given that a government department should be able to do its job.

I was going to modify this statement slightly: “should be able to do its job in a way that suggests it might consider it as a career when it grows up”, perhaps. But on this occasion no modification is needed: it is no longer a given that a government department should be able to do its job.

All the same, the news that the Department for Education has missed its target for secondary teacher trainee numbers by 40 per cent does cry out for the response: but you had one job.

That job, for avoidance of ambiguity, is surely to make sure that schools are able to function properly. Which means, again, for avoidance of ambiguity, particularly in the era of teachers paying for school toilet paper out of their own pockets – a teacher at the front of the class, pupils on chairs, a roof over their heads and tables that haven’t yet been burnt for firewood.

And yet the DfE appears to be falling at the first of these hurdles. It expected 20,945 secondary trainees to start their postgraduate initial teacher training this month. Instead, there are 12,490.

This may need spelling out, because Maths teachers are hard enough to come by already. It’s near half of the amount we need.

Some subjects are up to 55 per cent behind target, and there are particular problems in Physics and Computing. Overall, the number of secondary trainees accepted onto courses starting this month is 23 per cent below pandemic levels.

Back in the olden days, a terrifying economic outlook tended to be good for teaching. A salary scale with built-in pay progression, a decent pension and minimal chance of redundancy all look rather appealing when times are tough.

Cue hollow laughter. If you’re not sure why, try Googling “public-sector pay” or “teachers’ pensions”. Or consider the fact that many headteachers are now facing a genuine choice between maintaining current staffing levels and heating their schools.

Or, as Mary Bousted, Joint General Secretary of the NEU teachers’ union put it: “Conditions, pay and school funding have so deteriorated that…many graduates are choosing not to enter.”

Still, it’s possibly just as well that there hasn’t been a sudden and dramatic influx of would-be teachers, because it’s not entirely clear that there would be anywhere to train them. Following the government’s review of initial teacher training, 99 ITT providers were accredited this week.

Added to the 80 providers accredited in round one of the process, this brings the total number of accredited providers to  only 179. Last year, there were 240 ITT providers operating in England. This means once again, (where’s a Maths teacher when you need one?) that roughly only two-thirds of the providers previously operating are now accredited.

James Noble-Rogers, the chief executive of the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers, told Schoolsweek that he was concerned that “a number of high-quality, long-established and tried and tested ITE providers have not been successful.”

Though – giving the DfE the benefit of the doubt – perhaps it’s all part of a cunning plan to do away with qualified teacher status entirely. Maybe it wants to go back to the Victorian practice of having pupil-teachers deliver the lesson, thus freeing up teachers’ time to forage for firewood once all the desks have been burnt.

In the context of all this, the news that Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, is to step down from his post three years early feels positively metaphoric.

Barton will step down in April 2024, having been re-elected last year for another five-year term.

It is a loss that many teachers will mourn. Geoff Barton’s career as a voice of sector sanity has earned him a special place in their hearts: in a fantasy DfE, he would be schools minister to Marcus Rashford’s education secretary. If Covid-era education were a film, he would have been the sharply suited Aaron Sorkin hero, striding purposefully down Leicester corridors and telling truth to power.

That said, he may perhaps have forgotten to put in the call to Aaron when composing his statement this week: “Over the next 18 months, it will be business as usual for me, and I look forward to continuing to work with the ASCL team.”

While it’s tempting to see his departure as another cloud in the gathering educational storm, perhaps it need not be so. A tiny glimmer of sunlight emerged at the Labour party conference this week, when shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson announced that she would introduce fully-funded breakfast clubs for every primary school in England.

The clubs would be funded using the revenues raised by reinstating the top rate of income tax, were Labour to be elected.

Initially, teachers were concerned about how these clubs would be staffed. Would they be expected to work longer hours? There are barely enough teachers to go round as it is, and someone needs to forage for firewood.

Once Phillipson had clarified that the scheme would not be staffed by teachers, however, there was a palpable sense of relief. The current government has form in taking food away from poor children; it made a nice change to see a politician pledge to give them more.

It might even be enough to earn Bridget Phillipson a junior ministerial role in Marcus Rashford’s DfE. First item on the departmental agenda: can anyone find any spare teachers?

Click here to read Adi Bloom’s This Week In Education column every week.