Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many (a) physics and (b) chemistry trainee teachers undertook a pre-initial teacher training subject knowledge enhancement course, broken down by subject and length of course, in each of the last five years.
The subject knowledge enhancement (SKE) programme supports universities and schools in filling teacher training places in priority subjects. It enables candidates who have the potential to be excellent teachers to overcome gaps in their subject knowledge that would otherwise mean that they would not be recruited to a teacher training course.
Tables 1 and 2 contain the number of trainees (by length of course) registered on SKE courses in chemistry and physics from 2011/12 to 2015/16.
Table 1: Physics SKE recruitment for academic years 2011/12 to 2014/15, and claims to date for academic year 2015/16.
| Number of trainees | ||||
Duration of SKE course (weeks) | 2011/12 [1] | 2012/13 [1] | 2013/14 [1] | 2014/15 [1] | 2015/16 [2] |
2 | 187 | 133 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
4 | 53 | 62 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
8 | 29 | 32 | 161 | 151 | 28 |
12 | 55 | 64 | 45 | 43 | 32 |
16 | 58 | 48 | 13 | 27 | 19 |
18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
20 | 4 | 2 | 7 | 12 | 23 |
24 | 51 | 36 | 54 | 49 | 48 |
26 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 1 | 0 |
28 | 56 | 34 | 20 | 3 | 15 |
32 | 6 | 0 | 5 | 4 | 7 |
36 | 57 | 50 | 4 | 32 | 19 |
Table 2: Chemistry SKE recruitment for academic years 2011/12 to 2014/15, and claims to date for academic year 2015/16.
| Number of trainees | ||||
Course duration (weeks) | 2011/12 [1] | 2012/13 [1] | 2013/14 [1] | 2014/15 [1] | 2015/16 [2] |
2 | 172 | 83 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
4 | 63 | 66 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
8 | 7 | 14 | 156 | 161 | 52 |
10 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
12 | 61 | 73 | 69 | 56 | 36 |
16 | 52 | 19 | 24 | 23 | 24 |
20 | 1 | 1 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
24 | 65 | 40 | 28 | 36 | 39 |
28 | 44 | 31 | 0 | 4 | 2 |
32 | 19 | 0 | 5 | 10 | 7 |
36 | 95 | 93 | 17 | 22 | 17 |
[1] Submitted trainee data and accepted claims for the full academic year.
[2] Accepted claims as at 6 May 2016.
The final 2015/16 data will not be available until after the end of the academic year; however, the number of people using SKE in the current academic year is 59% of last year’s total which, if previous years’ trends apply to the current year, would suggest increased use of SKE compared to 2014/15.