Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the removal of the Religious Education Initial Teacher Training bursary on the quality of RE provision in secondary schools.

Initial teacher training (ITT) bursaries are offered to incentivise more applications to ITT courses. As such, we review bursaries annually to take account of several factors, including recruitment to date, forecast economic conditions, and teacher supply need in each subject. Between the 2023/24 and 2025/26 academic years, postgraduate ITT recruitment for religious education increased by 68%, one of the largest increases across all subjects.

New teachers benefit from three years of professional development through the initial teacher training and early career framework, which sets out the core knowledge, skills, and behaviours for great teaching, alongside expert mentoring and support. All trainee teachers must meet the Teachers’ Standards for qualified teacher status in full before they qualify, which requires that they ‘Demonstrate good subject and curriculum knowledge’.