§ Mr. HepburnTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what incentives the Government offer to aid the recruitment of teachers. [105854]
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§ Mr. MilibandSince September 2000, £6,000 teacher training bursaries have been offered to students taking Postgraduate Certificate in Education courses at institutions in England. For those students who train as specialist teachers of mathematics, science, modern languages, technology or English, and who go on, after induction, to teach those subjects in maintained schools in England, a further £4,000 "golden hello" is available. From September 2002, these incentives have been supplemented by Repayment of Teachers' Loans Scheme, a three-year pilot to increase the numbers of new teachers of priority subjects by paying off their student loans over time. With better pay for teachers, and the new measures to reduce workloads and provide more support in the classroom that we have proposed, these initiatives have raised the numbers of teachers in schools to their highest level for 20 years and brought about a 20 per cent. rise in the number of recruits to initial teacher training courses since 1999–2000.