Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure there is an adequate number of religious education teachers.

Teacher numbers are at an all-time high; there are over 457,000 FTE teachers in state-funded schools throughout England. There are 15,500 secondary phase religious education (RE) teachers, and this number has remained broadly stable since 2010.

We recruited 405 trainee RE teachers in 2017/18. To recruit even more RE teachers, we are continuing to offer a generous bursary of up to £9,000 for RE trainee teachers. There are also School Direct salaried places for RE trainees, where trainees can receive a salary during their training year.