Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to help support recruitment of teachers in further education colleges.

The department has launched the national Further Education (FE) Recruitment Campaign and Teach in FE Digital Service, a recruitment campaign that aims to deliver simple, accessible information and comprehensive support for prospective teachers. The campaign is expected to reach millions of prospective FE teaching staff, and target those with valuable experience and skills in industry to train the next generation of technical experts.

The department is also increasing the level of overall investment in the FE sector, which will help colleges to recruit, retain, and develop the staff they need. The 2021 Spending Review made available an extra £1.6 billion for 16-to-19 education in 2024/25 financial year compared with 2021/22. In the 2023/24 financial year, the department will be using £125 million of available funding to invest an extra £85 million to support all institutions’ costs by increasing the national funding rate by 2.2% from £4,542 in 2022/23 to £4,642, along with investing £40 million in subject specific funding, including through uplifting 16-to-19 programme costs weights for engineering, construction and digital sector subject areas. This will support additional costs of recruiting and retaining teachers in this high value, vocational provision.

The department is providing bursaries worth up to £26,000 tax-free per individual, to support FE teacher training in priority subject areas for 2022/23.

A teacher training apprenticeship for those planning to work in the FE sector has recently been updated and strengthened, and employers can use levy funding of up to £7,000 per apprentice to put their new teachers through a high quality work-based training programme.