Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure more students from less affluent areas are taught by trained maths teachers.

Recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers is critical to the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity. This is why the government’s Plan for Change has committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers in secondary and special schools and in our colleges, over the course of this Parliament.

The department has announced an initial teacher training financial incentives package for the 2025/26 recruitment cycle worth £233 million, including bursaries worth £29,000 tax-free and scholarships worth £31,000 tax-free mathematics.

For 2024/25 and 2025/26, mathematics teachers in the first five years of their careers who choose to work in disadvantaged schools will also receive a targeted retention incentive worth up to £6,000 after tax.

Our High Potential Initial Teacher Training (HPITT) programme, delivered by Teach First, specifically supports schools in disadvantaged communities to recruit the teachers they need. Over the last three cohorts in 2022, 2023 and 2024, an average of 82% of HPITT participants across all subjects have been placed in disadvantaged schools.