Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the impact of trends in the level of specialist teachers on the educational attainment of students in (a) primary, (b) secondary and (c) further education.

Teacher quality is the most important in-school determinant of pupil outcomes. This is why the Department is taking action to attract more people to teaching and enable them to succeed through transforming their training and support.

9 in 10 hours taught in English Baccalaureate subjects in state funded secondary schools in 2021/22 were taught by a teacher with a relevant post-A level qualification. The Teachers’ Standards specify the subject knowledge required for the award of Qualified Teacher Status.

Information on teachers’ post-A level qualifications and the subjects taught in secondary schools is published in the annual ‘School Workforce in England’ national statistics. Details can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england.

The Department does not hold or publish data linking subject specialist teachers with attainment.

The Department has introduced a range of measures to attract teachers for the 2023/24 academic year, including tax-free bursaries worth £27,000 and tax-free scholarships worth £29,000 tax-free, to encourage talented trainees to key subjects such as chemistry, computing, mathematics, and physics. There are also bursaries of £25,000 for languages and scholarships of £27,000 for French, Spanish and German. The Department has also introduced an initial teacher training scholarship in modern foreign languages from 2023 to attract the most talented language graduates to teaching.

The new national further education (FE) recruitment campaign and Teach in FE service will support prospective FE teachers into jobs. It is expected to reach millions of prospective teaching staff, and target those with valuable experience in industry to train the next generation of technical experts.

The Department also funds the Taking Teaching Further programme which supports industry experts to move into FE teaching, and the Department is providing bursaries worth up to £26,000 in 2022/23, matched to school scholarship values, to support FE teacher training in priority subject areas such as science, mathematics and engineering.