Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to increase teacher recruitment in (a) Hertfordshire and (b) England.

The Department for Education wants to attract the best and brightest graduates into teaching. Teaching continues to be a hugely popular career with more teachers in England’s classrooms than ever before and record levels of top graduates entering the profession, with 17% of postgraduate entrants to initial teacher training in 2014/15 (one in six) holding a first class degree and 73% holding a 2:1 or better. However, we recognise that we must continue our efforts to attract top graduates, which is why the Department is offering increased bursaries worth up to £25,000 tax free to those training to teach physics, maths, chemistry, computing and languages. Furthermore, the Prime Minister announced on 8 December a range of measures to up-skill 15,000 existing teachers and to recruit up to 2,500 additional specialist maths and physics teachers over the next Parliament.