§ Mr. DrewTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what plans he has to put mechanisms in place to support advanced skills teachers who specialise in teacher education. [120230]
§ Mr. MilibandIn 2002–03 the DfES funded ASTs to work in Initial Teacher Training in the context of the Teacher Training Agency-led partnerships project, which was designed to encourage providers of initial teacher training, schools and LEAs to work together to improve provision. As funding at 100 per cent. grant rate would last for only a year we encouraged LEAs to absorb the ASTs recruited in support of the scheme into their cadre of ASTs once the year was up. In order to facilitate this we included sufficient funding in the allocation of the AST match funded Standards Fund grant for 2003–04 to enable each LEA to continue to fund posts previously funded at the 100 per cent. grant rate.