Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to improve the recruitment and retention of teachers.

The number of teachers remains high, with over 465,500 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) teachers working in state funded schools across the country. This is 24,000 more than in 2010.

The Department recognises there is more to do to ensure teaching remains an attractive, high status profession, and to recruit and retain teachers in key subjects. Reforms are aimed not only at increasing teacher recruitment through an attractive pay offer and financial incentives such as bursaries, but also at ensuring teachers stay and succeed in the profession.

The Department remains committed to delivering £30,000 starting salaries to attract and retain the best teachers.

The Department is investing £181 million in financial incentives. For those starting initial teacher training (ITT) in the 2023/24 academic year, there are bursaries worth up to £27,000 and scholarships worth up to £29,000 to encourage talented trainees to apply to train in key secondary subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing. The Department has also expanded the offer to international trainees in physics and languages.

The Department also offers a Levelling Up Premium worth up to £3,000 annually for mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who work in disadvantaged schools.

The Department launched its new digital service, ‘Apply for teacher training’ in autumn 2021, enabling a more streamlined, user friendly application route, to make it easier for people to train to become teachers.

The Department is also taking action to enable teachers to succeed through transforming their training and support. The Department will deliver 500,000 teacher training and development opportunities by the end of 2024, giving all teachers and school leaders access to quality, evidence based training and professional development at every stage of their career.

To support retention in the first few years of teaching, the Department has rolled out the Early Career Framework (ECF) nationally, providing the foundations for a successful career in teaching. This is backed by over £130 million a year in funding.

The Department’s reforms are aimed not only at increasing teacher recruitment across all areas, but also at ensuring teachers stay and succeed in the profession. The Department has published a range of resources to help address teacher workload and wellbeing, and support all schools to introduce flexible working practices. These resources include the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter, which the Department is encouraging schools to sign up to as a shared commitment to promote staff wellbeing, and the school workload reduction toolkit, developed alongside head teachers. The Charter is available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter, and the toolkit is available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/school-workload-reduction-toolkit.