Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to improve the recruitment of qualified (a) science, (b) mathematics and (c) English teachers.

We want to attract the top graduates into teaching. For 2015/16, we are continuing to fund the prestigious scholarship schemes worth £25,000 in mathematics, physics and chemistry; and have announced increases in bursaries worth up to £25,000 in each of these subjects and up to £9,000 for biology. We are also continuing to provide bursaries of up to £9,000 for those training in English.

An additional £6,000 grant uplift is available to schools that want to increase their salary offer for School Direct (salaried) trainees in maths, physics and computing. Funding for subject knowledge enhancement (SKE) courses remains available for trainees in a number of subjects including maths, physics and chemistry. SKE helps trainees to start initial teacher training (ITT) with refreshed, curriculum-specific subject knowledge.

The Prime Minister announced on 11 March 2015 a further allocation of £67 million for the next five years to train an extra 2,500 mathematics and physics teachers and upskilling 15,000 existing teachers. Measures include new schemes to attract more A Level students, undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers, career-changers and overseas STEM teachers into teaching; and classes to upskill 3,000 non-specialist teachers each year.

We have also given greater freedom to schools to pay extra for the recruitment of qualified teachers which can be used for shortage subject teachers.