Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure teacher training colleges have enough funding to teach new trainees British Sign Language.

Initial teacher training (ITT) is predominantly funded by tuition fees (with a small proportion of trainees completing a programme on a salaried route). It is for ITT providers to determine how they allocate the income they receive from tuition fees to training provision.

The government does not prescribe the curriculum of ITT courses. It remains for individual providers to design courses that are appropriate to the needs of trainees and for the subject, phase and context that the trainees will be teaching.

Since September 2020, all courses offered by ITT providers have been aligned to a mandatory core content framework (CCF), which was published in November 2019. The framework sets out a minimum entitlement for all trainee teachers and is underpinned by the best available evidence about what works in teaching. The ITT CCF has been designed around how to support all pupils to succeed and seeks to widen access for all, including those pupils identified within the four areas of need set out in the special educational needs and disabilities code of practice.