§ Mr. Barry JonesTo ask the Secretary of State for Wales (1) if he will call a conference in Wales of local education authorities, teachers unions, parent-teacher associations, trades unions and employers organisations to discuss the shortage in Wales's high schools of teachers of modern languages; and if he will make a statement;
(2) if he will call an all-Wales conference to discuss the shortage of Welsh language teachers with the local education authorities of Wales; and if he will make a statement;
(3) what initiatives he plans to end the difficulties of recruiting to the high schools of Wales sufficient numbers of Welsh language teachers; and if he will make a statement;
(4) what plans he has to enable the recruitment in the high schools of Wales of sufficient teachers of (a) German, (b) French and (c) Spanish before 1992; and if he will make a statement;
(5) what steps he has taken to ensure that there are sufficient numbers of teachers of the Welsh language to meet the requirements of the national curriculum in (a) local education authority secondary schools and (b) private secondary schools.
§ Mr. Wyn RobertsThere are no immediate plans to call a national conference to discuss shortages either of Welsh language or of other modern language teachers. The Department will shortly be consulting each of the Welsh 245W local education authorities about the number of teachers needed, including teachers of Welsh and other modern languages, to meet the requirements of the national curriculum and to discuss how the demand can be met.
Officials are also in close touch with the training institutions and we intend to promote liaison between the Department, the Wales Advisory Body and the Universities Funding Council, over the distribution of initial teacher training places within Wales, to ensure that targets are set as high as demand requires and realistic recruitment expectation justifies. Measures to encourage recruitment both from traditional and non-traditional sources have already been taken in conjunction with the Department of Education and Science. The teaching as a career unit has developed a specific programme to attract more Welsh language and Welsh-medium students.
We have no plans to ensure the supply of teachers to private schools but, in setting overall targets of teacher demand, full account is taken of the numbers of trained teachers expected to transfer to or directly enter the private sector.
However, encouraging teacher recruitment, either direct from training or of teachers returning to the profession, represents only part of our strategy for staffing schools to deliver the national curriculum. A very large part of the demand will need to be met by the re-training of teachers already in service. A framework for delivering the necessary in-service training is in place under the local education authority training grant scheme. My right hon. Friend has made expenditure provision for £223,000 under the scheme in 1989–90 for Welsh language training and a further £2.8 million for other training related to the national curriculum, including that necessary for modern languages. A further allocation of £582,000 for school management is intended to help heads and senior staff to manage the changes arising from the Education Reform Act.
We again expect to give a high priority to these training categories when the scheme allocations for 1990–91 are announced later this summer.