Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure that skilled mathematics and science graduates are attracted to careers in teaching; and if he will make a statement.

The Government is committed to supporting schools in recruiting specialist teachers in mathematics and science. Specific support is provided for individuals interested in teaching these subjects through targeted marketing, personal advisors and securing school experience.

To attract graduates to teaching these subjects, we have significantly increased tax-free bursaries for mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing trainee teachers from £9,000 in 2012/13 to up to £20,000 in 2014/15. In addition, we continue to work jointly with the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Institute of Physics and BCS, the chartered institute for IT, to offer scholarship awards of £25,000 in order to attract the most talented graduates into initial teacher training.

For the academic year 2014/15, we have extended our salaried School Direct training programme to encourage more experienced graduates to enter teacher training across a range of subjects, including mathematics and science. School Direct (salaried) is an employment-based route for high-quality, experienced graduates who earn a salary whilst training.

We are also continuing to fund subject knowledge enhancement courses, which are an important tool to ensure trainee teachers without a first class degree in the subject they will teach have sufficient specialist subject knowledge.