Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has plans to reintroduce the bursary for religious education teachers.

The bursaries the Department provides for initial teacher training (ITT) are intended to incentivise applications to ITT courses. The Department reviews the bursaries available each year to take account of factors including historic recruitment, forecast economic conditions, and teacher supply need in each subject. This provides flexibility to respond to the need to attract new teachers, and means the Department is spending money where it is needed most.

In the 2020/21 academic year, the Department exceeded the postgraduate ITT target for RE (129%), whilst in the 2021/22 academic year, the equivalent target was narrowly missed (99%). The Department will review the need for bursaries across all subjects before announcing what will be available for the 2024/25 academic year.