Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to improve the (a) recruitment and (b) retention of specialist maths teachers in schools.

Recent data shows that there are now over 468,000 full time equivalent (FTE) teachers in state-funded schools in England, an increase of 27,000 (6%) since 2010. This makes it the highest number of FTE teachers on record since the School Workforce Census began in 2010.

The Department has announced a financial incentives package worth up to £181 million for those starting initial teacher training in the 2023/24 academic year. The Department is providing bursaries worth £27,000 tax-free and scholarships worth £29,000 tax-free, to encourage talented trainees to teach mathematics. A Levelling Up Premium worth up to £3,000 tax-free is also available for mathematics, as well as physics, chemistry and computing, teachers in the first five years of their careers who work in disadvantaged schools nationally, including within Education Investment Areas (EIAs).

The Department has also raised starting salaries outside London by 8.9% to £28,000 and remains committed to the Government’s ambition of delivering £30,000 starting salaries to attract talented people to teaching.

To support retention, the Department has worked with the education sector and published a range of resources to help address staff workload and wellbeing and support schools to introduce flexible working practices. This includes the School Workload Reduction Toolkit and the education Staff Wellbeing Charter. More information is available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/school-workload-reduction-toolkit, and: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter. More than 2,700 schools have signed up to the Charter so far.

The Department is launching a new fully funded mathematics National Professional Qualification (NPQ) for those leading mathematics teaching in primary schools. The Department will work with NPQ providers to make this available to primary schools from February 2024. Alongside this, an updated Targeted Support Fund will be offered for the 2023/24 academic year, providing additional funding to incentivise primary school teachers and leaders, including in the smallest schools.

The Department is providing funding to support and enhance mathematics teaching across the country. Reform of the mathematics curriculum and examinations system was accompanied by the introduction of a National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics, which is now working with a network of 40 maths hubs to help local schools improve the quality of their teaching based on best practice from East Asia. On 17 April, the Secretary of State announced plans to extend the support available from maths hubs from academic year 2023/24. This was accompanied by plans to provide more intensive maths hubs support to schools that need it most.