Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to recruit more teachers from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds.

In October 2018, the Department set out its commitment to increasing the diversity of the teaching workforce across all protected characteristics when it launched the Statement of Intent.

This commitment to increasing teacher diversity was made alongside 10 co-signatories from the sector (including unions and grassroots organisations) who set out their own individual commitments.

The Department has been making progress against its commitments, including:

• Providing £2m of funding to nationwide Equality and Diversity regional ‘hubs’ to support aspiring leaders into headship. The hubs focus on providing coaching and mentoring to increase representation across all protected characteristics in senior leadership roles.
• Reflecting the importance of diversity in the Department’s Recruitment and Retention Strategy published in January 2019 to ensure people from all backgrounds are supported and that barriers to their progression are removed.
• Ensuring that recruitment for National Professional Qualifications (NPQs) is representative through key performance indicators
• Continuing to engage with signatories of the statement, including through holding a roundtable to gather progress updates and showcase best practice in July 2019.

We have made significant progress in improving the diversity of postgraduate initial teacher training participants. Those belonging to a BAME group (i.e. any non-White ethnicity) made up 19% of all postgraduate entrants in 2019/20, up from 18% last year and 14% in 2015/16.