The Department for Education has announced bursaries and scholarships worth up to £31,000 to train to teach in subjects including maths, chemistry, physics and computing.
Bursaries for trainee teachers in further education will also be available, with £31,000 for those teaching in key shortage STEM subjects, £15,000 for specialist trainees in special educational needs and disabilities, and £10,000 for people training to teach English.
The government says teacher recruitment and retention have improved, with over 2,300 more teachers in secondary and special schools across England. There has been a 33% increase in those training in physics, and a 42% rise in computing. Languages and maths are also up by around 15% compared to last year.
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said: “Inspirational teachers changed my life and change the lives of millions of children every day – this government is determined that we have more brilliant teachers, in more schools, improving the life chances of more children and young people.
“Through our Plan for Change, we’ve already begun to move the dial, with more teachers in our schools this year than last, and big increases in people accepting teaching training places in subjects including chemistry, physics, and maths.
“But there is more to do, and we need talented people with the passion and drive to inspire the next generation – working their magic, making school a place pupils want to be, boosting outcomes and transforming the lives of our young people.”
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, welcomed the bursaries, but said it is hard to see how they will improve recruitment and retention on their own.
He said: “Improving pay and conditions across the whole of the profession, in all roles and subject areas, must be the way forward. Continuing to boost salaries in order to reverse years of real-terms pay erosion, achieving parity of pay between different parts of the sector and ensuring schools and colleges have the funding they need to pay their staff, are key to attracting recruits and then retaining them.
“We also need to see more sustained action to address workload issues, including lowering the excessive pressures of Ofsted inspections and performance tables. It is only with change of this scale that we can hope to ease such long-standing recruitment and retention problems.”
The Department for Education is also offering schools up to £29,000 to cover the cost of training apprentices in maths, chemistry, physics, and computing, and £20,000 in modern foreign languages. It said the Postgraduate Teaching Apprenticeship (PGTA), has seen 55% growth.
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