§ Tony CunninghamTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what plans there are to recruit more lecturers to further education colleges in craft subjects. [85462]
§ Margaret HodgeAs independent organisations it is for individual colleges to recruit their own staff within the context of the overall resources available to them.
We are making a £1.2 billion investment to increase expenditure in FE over the next three years. That is equivalent to a 19 per cent. real terms increase. Colleges will use this investment to increase participation in learning and to improve student outcomes. They will be able to raise standards of teaching and learning, improve the capability of the workforce and become more responsive to the demands of both employers and students. Importantly, they will also have the flexibility to use the resource to meet specific local or subject recruitment needs.
We will continue to fund a range of recruitment and retention initiatives to attract new FE teachers into the profession. These include teaching bursaries for people undertaking post graduate certificates of education and certificates of education to enter FE and golden hellos and the repayment of teacher loans for new teachers in identified shortage subject areas. Although "craft" subjects are not a priority for golden hellos or the repayment of teacher loans, we are keeping the list of shortage subjects under review.