Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department has taken to recruit more trainee teachers for secondary school subjects for which recruitment targets have been missed.

The latest published figures from UCAS show that teaching remains a hugely popular profession. Over 27,000 people have been recruited to postgraduate teacher training courses in England in 2016/17.

To support recruitment in 2017/18, we have announced a new package of financial incentives – including increases to bursaries and scholarships to attract top graduates in priority subjects. We have expanded the scholarship scheme, introducing two new scholarships in languages and geography, in partnership with the British Council and the Royal Geographical Society.

Our 2017/18 teacher recruitment marketing campaign commenced on 4 October and features a new television advert, alongside print, online and social media advertising. Forty Train to Teach recruitment events will take place across the country and further activity will take place on university campuses, including over thirty graduate fairs where our advisors will meet with students, setting out the benefits of a career in teaching.

In addition, we are spending up to £67 million on a programme of measures to upskill the existing maths and physics teaching workforce, and increase the number of new mathematics and physics specialists entering teaching. This package aims to recruit up to 2,500 new teachers and upskill up to 15,000 existing teachers over the term of this parliament. We have increased bursary rates in the subjects that leading universities say are most commonly required at A level for entry onto their degree courses.