Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 11 February 2015 to Question 223692, if she will extend all bursaries to all students focusing on core curriculum on the Initial Teacher Training programme.

The Government provides bursaries in order to incentivise application to initial teacher training (ITT) courses from the best graduates. As such, bursary rates are set based on recruitment performance over recent years by phase and subject. Generally, higher bursaries are provided where a phase or subject has struggled to attract sufficient applicants in recent years. We review the financial incentives for ITT each year in order to respond to recruitment patterns across these phases, subjects and routes. Therefore, we have no current plans to extend bursary eligibility, but we will review this again before announcing bursaries for those starting ITT in 2016/17.

The bursaries for those starting ITT in 2015/16 are published online at:

www.gov.uk/funding-initial-teacher-training-itt-academic-year-2015-to-16