Graham Lane wants schools to be able to offer their own "golden hellos" to recruit staff

The LGA is also submitting proposals to increase London weighting by 10% and to allow teachers to reach the "threshold" to higher pay earlier in their careers, to encourage the retention of staff.

Signing-on fees, which would be one-off payments to teachers, would be allocated by the local authority and would be offered where there were difficulties in recruiting suitably-qualified staff.

Recruitment and retention grants are already available, but not to all schools - and Mr Lane is proposing that grants of between �900 and �3,665 per teacher should be available to every school in England and Wales, under the supervision of their local authorities.

These payments would give schools greater flexibility when trying to attract and keep teachers.

"Where they have been used these grants have been very effective," says Mr Lane.

His proposals are an attempt to tackle the uneven pattern of shortages, with subjects such as science and maths and specific schools facing acute problems.

In an attempt to find more staff for shortage subjects, the government has offered a "golden hello" of �5,000 for recruits for teaching science, maths and modern languages.

It has also introduced a training salary for students during the one-year postgraduate teacher training course, which the government says has had a positive impact on attracting applications to teaching.