Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support her Department provides to help maintain staffing levels in small rural schools in Fylde constituency.

To ensure we have sufficient, high quality teachers, the department has increased the core schools budget by £3.7 billion in 2025/26, totalling £65.3 billion. This is alongside the near 10% pay award for teachers over the last two years to ensure teaching is once again a respected and attractive profession.

In addition to improved teacher pay, the department is also providing additional financial support for trainees and teachers. For 2025/26, we announced trainee teacher bursaries worth up to £29,000 and scholarships worth up to £31,000 tax-free. We are also offering a targeted retention incentive (TRI) worth up to £6,000 after tax for teachers of key subjects in the first five years of their careers who work in disadvantaged schools, including rural areas. Three schools in Fylde constituency are eligible for the TRI.

Our interventions are having impact with 2,346 more teachers across secondary and special schools in 2024/25. In Fylde, there were 14 more teachers in secondary and special schools. We are also helping schools recruit and retain support staff, with support staff numbers increasing by 42 to 668 in Fylde in 2024/25.