Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will extend the current additional financial incentives for modern foreign language teachers in secondary schools to language specialists entering the teaching profession in primary schools.

Financial incentives for initial teacher training (ITT) are designed to attract applicants to certain subjects. We have increased bursaries for secondary languages ITT trainees for 2016/17 in response to growing demand.

We have no current plans to extend these generous financial incentives for secondary language trainees to primary trainees. Primary ITT courses continue to be popular with applicants, and we are confident that we can recruit enough trainees nationally to meet need at the bursary rates announced for 2016/17.