Interest in the teaching profession is on the increase

The Department for Education and Skills said there would be 35,800 places - 1,125 more than this year.

Much of the increase was attributed to a need for early years, special needs and primary modern languages teachers.

But some say the policy of training more staff when pupil numbers are falling in primary schools could increase graduate unemployment.

'Risen to the challenge'

There are 16,300 places available for trainee primary school teachers in 2004, compared with 15,200 this year.

The number of secondary school training places will rise from 19,475 to 19,500.

The School Standards Minister, David Miliband, said: "Training providers, supported by the Teacher Training Agency, have risen to the challenge the government has set them by funding over 6,000 more places this year than were available in 1999-2000.

"In the four years since training bursaries and 'golden hellos' were introduced, the sector's efforts have raised recruitment to teacher training courses by over 30%.

"There have been especially large increases in priority areas like maths and science that had previously been hard to shift from stubbornly low recruitment levels."

But Professor John Howson of Oxford Brookes University said: "It's difficult to see where the need to employ the extra trainees as teachers is going to come from.

'Cynical'

"It's also not clear that the government has solved the schools funding crisis.

"There's no doubt we will be needing more primary school teachers in 2006-7, when a lot of their predecessors are set to retire.

"But at the moment, there is a danger of creating a load of unemployed teachers. They will have to work for less pay as classroom assistants, who can only hope they will get jobs a few years down the line.

"If that's the intention, it's nothing short of cynical."

Prof Howson asked the government to raise teacher-training grants, to compete with recruiters from other professions at a time of improving graduate employment.

If the Workload Agreement, which takes certain administrative tasks out of teachers' hands, were properly funded, the extra trainees would be justified, he added.

Prof Howson also said: "One has to ask questions about the quality of these graduates being taken on."

The secondary school figures show increases in the number of trainee places in RE and maths.

There are falls in history, geography, art and music, but places remain the same in foreign languages, which have been removed from the compulsory national curriculum for 14 to 16 year olds in England.