Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many (a) pre-ITT and (b) post-ITT Subject Knowledge Enhancement courses were taken in (i) chemistry, (ii) biology and (iii) physics in the last five years.

The National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) (and its predecessor) have not allocated places or funding to support Subject Knowledge Enhancement (SKE) for the subject of biology meaning only physics and chemistry can be reported on.

Although the academic year 2013/14 has now concluded, the recruitment data for this period will not be collected until November 2014. The table at Figure 1. below is, therefore, limited to recruitment data supplied by SKE providers for each of the four academic years prior to the academic year 2013/14. Furthermore, funding for post-ITT SKE only began in the academic year 2011/12 and so is not applicable to academic years 2009/10 or 2010/11.

Fig. 1 Pre and post ITT recruitment from the academic year 2009/10 to the academic year 2012/13 in SKE for physics and chemistry.