Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was in his place earlier, but one hon. Member has already asked about this and I mentioned the £20 million Salix scheme, which has led to considerable savings in energy in English schools.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

There has been a 15% increase in the number of students enrolling at sixth-form colleges without a GCSE in maths, yet these post-16 education providers are excluded from the £20 million golden hellos available to attract maths teachers to further education. Given that maths skills are so crucial to young people’s futures, what is the Department doing about that?

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

We introduced the golden hello scheme to support the recruitment and retention of well-qualified maths teachers in the publicly funded further education sector who can teach at GCSE level and above. Sixth-form colleges are not included in the scheme, because, along with school sixth forms, they are eligible for the recruitment support and incentives offered by the National College for Teaching and Leadership, which are not available to FE colleges.