Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to improve rates of teacher (a) recruitment and (b) retention.

In January the Department launched the Government’s first ever integrated strategy to recruit and retain more teachers in schools, developed alongside teachers, education unions and leading professional bodies.

This landmark strategy includes the biggest teaching reform in a generation, the Early Career Framework (ECF), providing the solid foundations for a successful career in teaching, backed by at least £130 million a year in extra funding when fully rolled out. As part of the ECF’s package of support, the Department has committed to funding and guaranteeing 5% off-timetable in the second year of teaching for all early career teachers; early career teachers will continue to have a 10% timetable reduction in their first year of induction. The Department will also fully fund mentor training and fund time for mentors to support early career teachers.

The Department recognises it needs to take significant action on starting salaries and early career pay over the medium-term to address our pressing recruitment and retention challenges. This is why the Department has set out plans to significantly raise starting pay to £30,000 by September 2022.

The Department has also put in place a range of measures, including bursaries worth up to £26,000 for priority subjects, to encourage graduates to teach key subjects such as languages and physics.

The Department is also offering retention incentives in priority subjects to ensure we are keeping those teachers in the classroom. These include early-career payments for new chemistry, languages, maths and physics teachers and a student loan reimbursement scheme for languages, science and computing teachers.