Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the level of availability of courses in design and technology in schools.

The majority of state funded state secondary schools offered GCSE courses in design and technology in 2017. In 2016/17, 2,922 state funded secondary schools (85% of all state funded secondary schools) had one or more pupils taking a Design and Technology (D&T) GCSE. Data for 2018 will not be available until October 2018.

The Department does not provide financial support or training to existing D&T teachers in relation to the new GCSE. Training is available, however, from the GCSE awarding bodies, and from other organisations such as the Design and Technology Association.

The Government continues to support D&T teacher recruitment through bursaries of up to £12,000.