Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to encourage language teaching in the UK.

The Government offers financial incentives, including scholarships and tax-free bursaries, for trainee teachers. These are typically worth up to £26,000 for trainees in priority subjects, including modern foreign languages (MFL). The Department has also developed a number of measures to encourage more MFL specialists into initial teacher training (ITT). These include targeted marketing campaigns, providing support to potential ITT applicants across priority subjects to increase the proportion of successful applications; and providing seed funding to higher education institutions to develop an offer for languages degree students to opt-in to complete qualified teacher status alongside their undergraduate degree.

The Department has developed programmes including the ‘Teacher Subject Specialism Training’ (TSST), to attract existing teachers into MFL. TSST aims to enhance the MFL expertise of current teachers and provide more targeted support to help returning teachers and career changers into the profession.

The Department is creating expert hubs for languages that will share best practice in pedagogy among schools. These hubs will improve access to high quality, modern MFL teaching. Further details will be announced in due course.