Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to improve recruitment and retention of teachers in STEM subjects.

The department is making good progress on our pledge to deliver 6,500 more teachers. The workforce has grown by 2,346 FTE between 2023/24 and 2024/25 in secondary and special schools, the schools where they are needed most. Additionally, 12% more trainees have accepted offers to train as secondary teachers, and in STEM, acceptances are up 25% compared to last year.

Workforce shortages are more acute in some subjects, which is why the department is offering bursaries worth up to £29,000 tax-free and scholarships worth up to £31,000 tax-free, to encourage more talented people to train in key subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing.

The department is also offering a targeted retention incentive worth up to £6,000 after tax for teachers of these subjects in the first five years of their careers who choose to work in disadvantaged schools or teach technical subjects in further education colleges.

The department undertakes regular reviews to ensure we are prioritising the subjects where teachers are needed most, for example, through our bursaries, which are evaluated annually.