Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to increase racial diversity in teaching and training workforces, particularly in schools and universities that have large proportions of students from Black and Asian backgrounds.

The teaching workforce is more racially diverse than ever before, with recruitment into Initial Teacher Training (ITT) becoming more representative of the wider population. The Department recognises, however, that we must go further to attract and retain the diverse range of talented teachers we need in our classrooms.

To support recruitment, the Department is building and rolling out a new application service for teacher training. The Apply for teacher training service has been designed and extensively tested with a diverse range of potential applicants to ensure it helps remove barriers to teachers applying for ITT courses. Apply for teacher training is currently in public beta, running alongside the existing application service for teacher training. As the Department rolls out the service, we will continue to develop and test interventions to support people from diverse backgrounds in becoming teachers.

Furthermore, the Department’s ‘Teaching – Every Lesson Shapes A Life’ recruitment campaign is targeted at audiences of students, recent graduates, and potential career changers inclusive of all ethnicities, and we take every effort to ensure that our advertising is fully reflective of this across the full range of marketing materials we use.

Alongside a focus on recruitment, it is important the Department continues its work to retain more teachers from diverse backgrounds. This will be supported by our work to ensure that all new entrants to teacher training have the best possible start to the early stage of their career. From September 2020 onwards, new trainee teachers will undergo training based on the ITT Core Content Framework which sets out a core minimum entitlement for all trainees, describing the fundamental knowledge and skills that all new entrants to the profession need to effectively teach and support all children.

Following on from their training, from this September, all new teachers will be entitled to two years of funded high quality professional development including the support of a dedicated mentor, through the Early Career Framework reforms. Schools will receive additional funding so new teachers can spend time away from the classroom for this extra training and mentoring. Together, these reforms will ensure that all new teachers will develop the skills, expertise, and confidence they need to thrive in the classroom.