Further Education: Teachers

(asked on 21st January 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential need to attract industry professionals in green jobs to teaching positions in the further education sector; and what steps he plans to take to encourage industry professionals to engage with and share their skills with the further education sector.


Answered by
Alex Burghart Portrait
Alex Burghart
Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
This question was answered on 26th January 2022

​​The government is committed to supporting green skills across the country and a crucial part of this is ensuring further education (FE) providers have the best quality teachers and lecturers to teach the next generation workforce.

At the recent Spending Review, we set out investment of £3.8 billion in FE and skills over the course of the Parliament as a whole, to ensure people can access high-quality training and education that leads to good jobs, addresses skills gaps, boosts productivity and supports levelling up. This includes funding for programmes to support green skills crucial to the net zero transition.

In November 2020, we launched the Green Jobs Taskforce, working in partnership with business, local areas, skills providers, and unions, to ensure we have the skilled workforce to deliver net zero and our Ten Point Plan. Following that, and building on the Skills for Jobs White Paper, the Net Zero Strategy was published in October 2021 and set out how the government’s skills reforms will support teachers understanding of sustainability, strengthen links between employers and providers, support workers in high carbon sectors with the transition, and help to build a pipeline of future talent. The government is taking a number of steps to ensure the FE teacher workforce supports the transition to net zero.

We have worked with employers to develop a refreshed apprenticeship standard for FE teaching (Level 5 Learning and Skills Teacher), which came into effect in September 2021. For the first time, all FE teachers training via an apprenticeship will be required to integrate sustainability into their teaching, including through modelling sustainable practices and promoting sustainable development principles in relation to their subject specialism. This standard will soon be incorporated into all future FE teaching qualifications, so that all teachers across all subject areas will be able to embed and promote sustainability in their teaching.

The ‘Teach in FE’ service which launched in January this year, provides a new online service to raise awareness of FE teaching and encourage and support new teachers into the profession. It is supported by a campaign to bring potential teachers to the new service.

Our FE teacher training bursaries worth up to £26,000, are available to support those who want to train in a range of subjects including STEM, engineering and computing that can contribute to the expansion of green jobs

Since 2018, the Taking Teaching Further (TTF) programme has supported over 350 industry professionals to become FE teachers with another 550 places made available in the 2021/22 academic year. This has allowed FE providers across all of the 15 technical teaching routes, including in green and sustainable industries to get technical expertise into the classroom.

The Emerging Skills Electrification pilot is currently supporting providers and businesses to upskill their employees within electrification technology. The pilot funds free upskilling days for trainers at all further and higher education providers which enables them to teach new emerging skills courses in their colleges or universities.

Taken together, and alongside the wider suite of reforms to the skills system being implemented by government in partnership with industry, these measures will help to ensure more people can get the skills they need to enter and progress within green jobs.

Reticulating Splines