Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the results of Government-funded schemes to encourage more people to enter the teaching profession.

The latest Initial Teacher Training (ITT) census shows that postgraduate recruitment is at its highest level since 2011/12^[1], with 29,255 postgraduate trainees recruited this academic year. The Department’s financial incentives package makes a substantial contribution to this. We offer bursaries and scholarships of up to £28,000 for priority subjects, working in partnership with professional bodies such as the Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

The Department’s analysis demonstrates the effectiveness of the current financial offer. As the National Audit Office have acknowledged, the Department found that an increase of £1,000 in bursary value led to a 2.9% increase in applications for postgraduate ITT. The vast majority of bursary recipients go straight from training to the classroom. 94% of 2016/17 postgraduate trainee teachers who successfully completed training in a bursary subject were in a teaching post six months later.

To ensure that the Department is spending money effectively, it is piloting two new financial incentives. The first is a phased bursary for mathematics teachers which comprises a lower bursary during training, followed by early-career payments in the third and fifth years of teaching. The second is a student loan reimbursement scheme for languages and science teachers. Both pilots are designed to encourage talented teachers to remain in the profession.

[1] Teach First recruitment has been included in ITT census data since 2015/16.