AN inspirational IT teacher who spends his spare time asking firms to donate computer equipment for his school is set to appear in a national recruitment campaign.

Dan Aldred, head of computing at Thirsk School, was selected to star in a Government TV campaign to attract more teachers into the profession after helping his year seven and eight students to win a contest to provide scientific experiments for the International Space Station.

He will appear in the National College for Teaching and Leadership advert, weeks after MPs announced they would investigate whether there is a crisis in teacher recruitment.

Headteachers have recently claimed to be facing unprecedented problems filling teaching roles, while the country's biggest provider of new teachers, Teach First, said England was experiencing its worst teacher shortage this century.

The campaign also follows a YouGov poll finding 53 per cent of teachers are considering leaving the profession in the next two years due to workload and seeking a better work/life balance.

Mr Aldred said he had been delighted to be asked to front the campaign as, after 14 years in the profession, he remained as passionate about it as when he started.

He said he hoped the campaign would attract inspirational teachers as they could have a huge impact on children's futures and that the challenging nature of the job made it rewarding.

Mr Aldred said: "Any job has pressures and demands, but in teaching the pressures are all very different, one minute I can be looking after a £60,000 budget and the next I could be teaching a class of 16-year-olds.

"You are always doing something different, using different skill sets, which makes the job fresh and exciting."

The Your Future Their Future advert, which will premiere on TV on Tuesday (October 27), aims to highlight that teaching is a career for achievers and that record levels of graduates with a first class degree are training to teach.

The latest annual initial teacher training census shows that one in six teacher trainees starting this academic year held a first-class degree, the highest proportion ever recorded.

To help attract the best graduates, the Government has recently published details of increased tax-free bursaries and scholarships available for the academic year 2016 -17, with top graduates being offered up to £30,000 to train to teach key subjects like maths and physics.