Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many service leavers have (a) applied to and (b) been accepted onto the Troops to Teachers programme to date.

There are currently two cohorts for the Troops to Teachers programme. The first cohort started training in January 2014 with 41 trainees; the second started in September 2014 with 54 trainees. Cohort one attracted 982 applications, cohort 2 attracted 250. In total 1,232 Service Leavers have applied for the Troops to Teachers programme. The numbers of applications dropped between cohorts because we improved the process to eliminate applications from those who are ineligible.