Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what assessment he has made of the possibility that organisational changes resulting from further education area reviews may reduce the number of teachers employed to teach (a) mathematics and (b) English language subjects in the further education sector in England.

This Department does not hold this information. The Further Education (FE) sector is independent of government and responsible for its own operations. We therefore do not collect information about the numbers of English or mathematics teachers employed by FE institutions.

This Department has ongoing discussions with FE stakeholder organisations about the importance of increasing the number of teachers of mathematics in the sector, as set out in our FE Workforce Strategy published in 2014. The government, through its support of bursaries and other workforce programmes, provided 199 bursaries to individuals to become maths teachers in the Further Education sector in 2013/14 and 2014/15, and also supported 2450 existing teachers to take maths enhancement programmes.

Area Reviews of Post-16 education and training are aimed at delivering a skills system that meets the economic and educational needs of areas. All reviews will include consideration of the need for sufficient, high quality maths and English teaching. As independent organisations, colleges and providers will determine the number of teachers they need to deliver this provision.