Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the impact of the levelling up premium payments for school teachers on recruitment of teachers in shortage subjects.

Mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing secondary school teachers in the first five years of their career who work in eligible schools have been able to claim Levelling Up Premium (LUP) payments of up to £3,000 after tax since September 2022. For the 2024/25 and 2025/26 academic years, the department is doubling the LUP payments to eligible school teachers to up to £6,000 per year after tax and extending the offer to key science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and technical subject teachers in all further education colleges for the first time.

A new school teacher receiving a £6,000 LUP will have an income equivalent of at least a £38,570 starting salary next year, even before accounting for the next pay award.

The number of teachers that have received LUP payments by region are below:

The number of teachers that have received LUP payments by subject are below:

The LUP is primarily designed to incentivise the retention of specialist teachers in the disadvantaged schools it targets, but it may also support recruitment by encouraging teachers to take up posts in these schools.

It is too early to fully evaluate the impact of the LUP, but it is possible to draw on evidence from the predecessor pilots which informed it. For example, a University College London (UCL) evaluation of the Mathematics and Physics Teacher Retention Payments pilot found that teachers who received these £2,000 after tax payments were 23% less likely to leave teaching. Furthermore, an evaluation of Early Career Payments assessed they reduced the likelihood of teachers leaving by 37% for the £5,000 payments, and 58% for the £7,500 payments.

Mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing trainees starting school initial teacher teaching (ITT) in the 2024/25 academic year can already benefit from tax free bursaries worth £28,000 and scholarships worth £30,000. These ITT incentives are a national offer and are not differentiated sub-nationally. This is because teachers often teach in a different school or area to that they trained in. The Levelling Up Premium is paid to school teachers once they are qualified and is therefore targeted sub-nationally to incentivise them to work in the schools most in need.