Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to address the problems affecting poorer students in accessing A level computer science, as identified by Teach First on 8 May.

All children and young people should have every opportunity to succeed, no matter their background. However, the department knows that disadvantaged pupils are more likely to face barriers which hold them back from the opportunities and life chances they deserve.

Whilst it is ultimately for individual schools to decide which courses to offer their students, the best way of supporting schools to offer A level computer science, including those in deprived areas, is to ensure high-quality computing teaching by helping schools to recruit and retain good teachers.

For the 2024/25 and 2025/26 academic years, the department is offering a targeted retention incentive worth up to £6,000 after tax for computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who choose to work in disadvantaged schools. This will support the recruitment and retention of specialist computing teachers in the schools and areas that need them most. There are also bursaries worth £29,000 tax-free and scholarships worth £31,000 tax-free, to encourage talented trainees to teach computing.

In the 2024/25 academic year, there were 496 new postgraduate entrants to computing initial teacher training (ITT), a 21% increase on the number of entrants in the 2023/24 academic year (411). The number of postgraduate entrants in 2024/25 was broadly in line with the average across the last ten years.

As of April 2025, we are seeing positive recruitment trends regarding postgraduate ITT recruitment in computing. So far, there have been more candidate submissions (+10%), offers (+42%) and acceptances (+47%) compared to the same point in the previous recruitment cycle.