Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment the Government has made of the merits of funding tuition fees for prospective teachers to encourage more teachers into the teaching profession.

The Department is committed to ensuring that we recruit the best graduates into the teaching profession, which is why generous bursaries and scholarships are offered to trainees in priority subjects. In addition to this, teachers will benefit from the newly announced student loan repayment threshold rise and, from September 2018, the Department is piloting a new programme to reimburse student loan repayments for languages and science teachers in the early years of their careers.

The Department is developing a recruitment and retention strategy which will make recommendations on the best way to attract graduates into the teaching profession, and will publish the outcomes of this in due course.