Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to increase the numbers of chemistry teachers with a subject-specialist background.

The Government is committed to supporting schools in recruiting specialist teachers in chemistry. Specific support is provided for individuals interested in teaching chemistry through targeted marketing, personal advisors and securing school experience. We have significantly increased tax-free bursaries for chemistry trainee teachers from £9,000 in 2012/13 to up to £20,000 in 2014/15. In addition, we continue to work jointly with the Royal Society of Chemistry to offer scholarship awards of £25,000 in order to attract the most talented chemists into initial teacher training (ITT). We have surpassed our target for trainees entering chemistry teacher training in each of the last three years, recruiting 121% of the target in 2011/12, 108% in 2012/13, and 127% in 2013/14.

We are continuing to fund subject knowledge enhancement (SKE) courses, which are an important tool to ensure all chemistry trainees have specialist subject knowledge. Around a quarter of accepted places for chemistry ITT in 2014/15 are being supported by SKE.

The latest annual School Workforce Census (2013) shows that 19.6% of chemistry teachers who teach pupils from years 7 to 13 have no relevant post-A Level qualification, down from 24.3% in the 2012 census, demonstrating the impact of these incentives.

The Government also recognises the vital importance of subject-specific development for in-service teachers. We have made almost £7 million available to fund a network of Regional Science Learning Centres and we are funding teaching schools to develop and deliver a range of post-ITT SKE provision in specific subjects, including chemistry.