Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reason his Department has cancelled the further education teacher bursaries scheme.

The bursaries scheme for maths and English teacher training in further education (FE) was launched in 2013/14 and was initially intended to run for 2 years, to support providers in meeting additional recruitment needs arising from the condition of funding around GCSE resits. We subsequently extended the programme over a total of 6 academic years. Funding for the scheme, secured through the last Spending Review, has now come to an end.

We have been working closely with FE providers and representative organisations to understand the current challenges faced around teacher recruitment and retention in the sector. We are looking carefully at how best we can support the FE sector to meet existing and emerging workforce challenges, and will be making the case for the necessary investment as part of the forthcoming Spending Review