Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of employing veterans in schools to provide courses on leadership and resilience for (a) teachers and (b) students.

A key principle behind the government's plan for education is to give teachers and school leaders the freedom to use their professional judgement to do what works best for their pupils. As such, headteachers are ultimately responsible for employment in their schools and the department trusts them to take decisions about the right mix of qualifications, skills and experience that they expect teachers in their schools to have.

The department recently reviewed the Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Core Content Framework (CCF) and Early Career Framework (ECF) alongside each other and revised the ITT CCF and the ECF into the combined and updated Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework (ITTECF). This now covers the first three years or more at the start of a teacher’s career, and sets out the entitlement of every trainee and early career teacher (ECT) to the core body of knowledge, skills and behaviours that define great teaching. The ITTECF is universal and designed to work for all teachers, across all phases and subjects.

Beyond this, school leaders are responsible for ensuring their workforce has appropriate training to meet the needs of all pupils, which is in line with the department’s position on school autonomy and school leaders being best placed to assess the needs of their pupils and workforce.

The government remains committed to supporting veterans with a passion for teaching to enter the profession, both in schools and the further education sector. The department is working with the Ministry of Defence to ensure veterans are aware of the range of programmes and support available through the department’s services and bursaries.

Veterans are eligible for a tax-free undergraduate bursary of £40,000 if they are:

• A veteran who has left full-time employment with the British Army, Royal Air Force or Royal Navy no more than 5 years before the start of the teacher training course.
• Training to teach secondary biology, chemistry, computing, languages, maths or physics.
• Doing an undergraduate degree leading to qualified teacher status (QTS) in England.

Graduate veterans may also be eligible for a postgraduate scholarship or bursary if they are training to teach priority subjects.

More information on how the department support veterans to become teachers, including the offer of one-to-one support from a teacher training advisor, can be found here: https://getintoteaching.education.gov.uk/funding-and-support/if-youre-a-veteran.