LONDON: Hundreds of teachers are being forced into begging a charity for cash handouts because they can no longer afford to pay housing and transport costs, The Independent can reveal.

Many are falling into rent arrears and are simply unable to afford to get to work, with the number of teachers applying for help from the UK’s main education support charity rising by 40 per cent in the past year, figures show.

Labour described the figures as “devastating,” while the Liberal Democrats said they showed teachers were being “abandoned” by the government.

It comes as the number of new teachers joining the profession are plummeting amid stalling wages. Salaries for teaching staff in England are worth 12 per cent less in 2015 than they were in 2005.

One primary school teacher in London, a single father of two, admitted he would have been made homeless without financial help from the charity, saying he was “down to the last few quid” each month and had “nothing to fall back on.”

Figures provided by Education Support Partnership (ESP), the UK’s only charity which provides financial support to education staff, show the number of applications for grants from teachers has surged by almost half in the past year alone.

The charity received 494 applications for grants in the 2016/17 financial year, while the figures available for this year so far - received in the eight months between April and November - already stand at 531.

The spike marks a 40 per cent increase on the same period last year, and the charity expects to award a record number of grants to teachers by April.

Separate figures provided by Turn2us, a charity which helps people in financial hardship to access charitable grants and support services, show the proportion of grants they give out to those working in education has doubled since 2010 - from 11 per cent to 22 per cent.

Public sector wages were frozen for two years by the coalition government in 2010. Then in 2013 the freeze turned into a one per cent annual cap for those earning more than £21,000 a year.

While firefighters and police officers were given an immediate bump in September, and there has been some movement in Scottish schools, the fate of English teachers’ salaries remains unclear. Calls from teacher unions for a 5 per cent pay rise last year have so far gone unanswered.