Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to promote STEM subjects in state-maintained secondary schools.

High quality teaching is the factor that makes the biggest difference to a child’s education, and therefore ensuring we have sufficient science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) teachers is crucial to the department’s efforts to promote STEM subjects. That is why we have pledged to recruit 6,500 new expert teachers and have taken the first step towards delivering this by agreeing a 5.5% teacher pay award and nearly £1.1 billion additional funding for schools.

The department is also offering bursaries worth £29,000 tax free and scholarships worth £31,000 tax free to encourage talented trainees to become mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing teachers. Additionally, we offer a Targeted Retention Incentive, which is worth up to £6,000 after tax, for teachers of the same subjects in the first five years of their careers who work in disadvantaged schools.

Bursaries and scholarships are available to non-UK national physics trainees. Non-UK teachers of physics moving to England to start work in the 2024/25 academic year may also be eligible for the international relocation pilot payment worth £10,000.

Additionally, the department supports a range of programmes to improve the teaching of STEM subjects, including Maths Hubs programme, the National Centre for Computing Education which also supports uptake of computer science qualifications, and the Advanced Mathematics Support Programme, which delivers high quality teacher professional development for Level 3 mathematics.

Further, the STEM Ambassadors programme and Stimulating Physics Network promote STEM across our schools boosting the quality of teaching and enabling young people to explore and develop their skills and interest in STEM.