Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 2 November to Question 110214 on Science: Teachers, what analysis has been conducted to assess the effect of increasing bursaries on the retention of staff in subjects identified as areas where it is difficult to recruit; and will she make a statement.

Bursaries are a recruitment incentive designed to attract the best people into teaching, in the subjects where the need for new teachers is greatest. Though bursaries are not intended as a retention device, the vast majority of bursary recipients gain qualified teacher status and go straight into the classroom. In 2015/16, the latest year for which data is available, 94 per cent of trainee teachers who received a bursary found a teaching post within six months of gaining qualified teacher status.

The Department is piloting a new approach for maths trainee teachers this year to test whether offering a proportion of the bursary as a retention incentive remains as effective in encouraging candidates to train to teach. Maths trainees for 2018/19 will receive £20,000 during training with two further payments of £5,000 in their third and fifth year of teaching.

The Department is undertaking analysis of the effects of bursaries for retention, which will track the progress of bursary recipients from training into the classroom. We will publish our findings later this year and they will be used to shape future approaches to financial incentives.