Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the effect of tuition fee costs on teacher training applications.

The Government offers student loans for all tuition fee funded teacher training courses, which means that trainee teachers do not need to pay fees upfront. Trainee teachers can also apply for a maintenance loan to support their living costs. This ensures that teacher training is accessible to graduates from all backgrounds.

To incentivise applications in the highest priority secondary subjects, including mathematics, the sciences and languages, we offer bursaries and scholarships of up to £28,000. In each of the last three academic years we have recruited more postgraduate secondary trainees than we did in 2012/13, when the current student finance arrangements were introduced.