Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what was the annual breakdown, beginning with the academic year 2020–21, of the number of secondary school trainee teachers aged 40 and over working in (1) science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and (2) non-STEM, subjects who began training but were not working as a qualified teacher in a state school two years later; and what was total annual cost of training bursaries and scholarships paid to those same trainees.

In the attachment, table 1 shows the total numbers of Initial Teacher Training (ITT) trainees aged 40 and above with course outcomes for the academic years 2020/21 to 2022/23 and for each secondary subject. The table also shows the number of such trainees who did not go on to teach in a state-funded school within 16 months of the end of the academic year.

Information on the outcomes of trainees in receipt of bursaries and/or scholarships is not readily available and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

However, postgraduate salaried trainees are ineligible for bursaries and scholarships and the number of undergraduate fee-funded trainees over 40 who are eligible for bursaries is negligible.

In the attachment, table 2 shows, as a proportion of ITT trainees on postgraduate fee-funded ITT routes only, the number that were aged 40 and over and did not go on to teach in a state-funded school within 16 months of the end of the academic year. These proportions are applied to total bursary and scholarship spend, for each academic year and secondary subject. A small minority of trainees are ineligible for a bursary or scholarship, so this assumes that those over 40 who did not teach in a state-funded school within 16 months were as likely to be eligible for a bursary or scholarship as the overall trainee cohort in each year.