I expect that, like me, most of you have at one time or another found it impossible to get some figures to add up. You subtract here, add there, multiply this, divide that, carry the one, yet still the numbers do not quite balance? Often, you can leave them, walk away, come back and find the solution. Or you ask someone else to take a look and eventually between you the numbers start to make sense.

How many people would it take then to make sense of the numbers being released in the press of the amount of teachers entering and leaving the profession? Having looked at the figures, something for me doesn't quite add up.

For example, a recent report in the Telegraph suggested that nearly 9,000 state school teachers in England quit before the statutory retirement age in 2010/2011. 300,000 qualified teachers aged under 60 were not working in the classroom. 232,000 of these teachers, the report went on to explain, had previously taught, while 80,700 had never worked in the profession after qualifying.

A report in the Guardian last year, said that more than 70,000 teachers have left the UK to teach abroad. A story in the Independent the year before said that just over 404,600 fully trained teachers under the age of 60 were no longer teaching.

A 2011 survey by the National Union of Teachers found that 72 per cent of respondents aged 30 to 50 were likely to quit teaching if they were expected to pay higher contributions to their pension or work longer before retiring.

At the other end of the scale, some news stories suggest that applications for teacher training places in England were up 36 per cent last year. According to figures for 2011 released by the Training and Development Agency for schools (TDA), there was a 30 per cent increase in students training to be physics teachers and the target for mathematics recruitment had been exceeded.

In May 2011, however, the Department for Education revealed that 4,000 university teacher training places were to be axed for the 2012 academic year, dropping from 31,000 to 27,000. Another Telegraph article earlier that year revealed that applications for secondary teacher training courses were down by 9.3 per cent, with applications very down for courses such as design and technology (down 38 per cent), business studies (down 26 per cent) and music (down 27 per cent).

Around the same time, the Scotsman reported that nearly 80 per cent of NQTs in Scotland are failing to find full-time employment, while the Guardian reported that there were 40 per cent fewer full-time jobs available for teachers in England, with a decrease in advertised post of 2,500 between January and August 2011, compared to the same period the year before. The article does make it clear that there are "significant regional variations".

Then, The BBC reported in January that 450,000 extra primary pupils will need extra primary places in schools by 2015, thanks to a 20 per cent higher birth rate in 2010 than in 2002. This could lead, according to a report by Netmums, to 'mega primaries', which hold more than 700.

So given these figures, how many teachers are there exactly?

I am being a little facetious. I have deliberately listed these examples to confuse. I suspect that a proper analysis of the figures will show that the numbers of teachers entering and leaving the profession has fluctuated ever since there have been schools, but in the end there have generally been enough teachers to teach students.

My point is if we in the education system cannot make sense of the numbers being presented to the world at large, how do we expect the next generation of teachers to see past the figures to the uniquely wonderful, incredibly rewarding profession that could await them? How do we entice the experts away from their subjects and into the classroom to create the next set of experts, if the perception of education is a lack of jobs or the likelihood of enforced early retirement?

Yet, with more teachers likely to retire early before the changes to pensions, or quitting because of indiscipline and behaviour, we need to take these misleading figures out of the equation. A career in teaching very often equals a lifelong vocation.