Tax Free Bursaries and Scholarships up to £31,000 For Aspiring Teachers To Train

Talented people with the potential to become brilliant teachers are being offered bursaries and scholarships worth up to £31,000 to train to teach in subjects including chemistry, maths, physics, and computing that will help boost outcomes for young people across the country.

£31k for those teaching in key shortage STEM subjects in FE, £15k for SEND specialist Trainees and £10k for those training to Teach English in FE

As part of today’s package, bursaries for teacher trainees in Further Education will also be available with:

• £31,000 for those teaching in key shortage STEM subjects in FE.
• £15,000 for SEND-specialist trainees in FE.
• £10,000 for those training to teach English in FE.

This reflects the importance that the government places on supporting colleges and other FE institutions to train and recruit high-quality teachers.

• Aspiring teachers supported into the profession, with bursaries and scholarships worth up to £31,000 tax free on offer to train to teach – as government ramps up efforts to get more excellent teachers into classrooms
• Package will build on thesignificant progress made already to deliver on the government’s pledge to recruit and retain 6,500 additional teachers, after over 2,300 more teachers were recruited in the last year

Postgraduate Teaching Apprenticeship (PGTA)

DfE are also offering schools up to £29,000 to cover the cost of training apprentices in mathematics, chemistry, physics, and computing, as well as £20,000 in modern foreign languages, meaning apprentices pay nothing for their training and will earn a salary while they are training before moving on to a qualified teacher salary.

The Postgraduate Teaching Apprenticeship (PGTA), a popular route into teaching, has seen a 55% growth offering a brilliant way for people to gain the hands-on skills and experience they need in the classroom from day one to become expert teachers and build a successful career in teaching. PGTA funding will for the first time, will be equivalent to the ITT incentives in all subjects.

In May 2025, the government announced that PGTA courses will be slashed from twelve months to nine, aligning to the school year and getting newly trained teachers into the classroom sooner.   

Getting more exceptional teachers in front of every classroom with a passion to inspire the next generation will drive high and rising standards in schools and boost outcomes for every young person, so no child is left behind. Recent data shows that more than one in ten maths lessons in the last year was taught by a non-specialist teacher, whilst only 72.2% of physics lessons were taught by a teacher with a relevant post A-level qualification. Funding announced today will make sure that children and young people have high-quality, specialist teachers in these key shortage subjects.

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.”

Action is already being taken to tackle the systemic challenges that the sector faces which drive high workload and poor wellbeing, with the government announcing teacher pay awards of almost 10% over two years and working with schools and colleges to improve staff wellbeing and workload through the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter, setting out commitments from government, schools, and colleges.

The launch of the new teacher training incentives today, comes ahead of the Education Secretary addressing teachers and school leaders from across the Southwest of England to highlight that there are still groups of children for whom school just isn’t working.  

This includes children with special educational needs and disabilities, children from disadvantaged communities and white working-class children who have historically poor outcomes year on year, with wide variations in outcomes across the country. Too many pupils feel disengaged from school and that education just isn’t for them.

She will call on teachers and leaders to work together to break that cycle and set these children up for success.

Plans to make sure every young person, wherever they grow up, have the opportunity to succeed will be set out in the Schools White Paper later this autumn. This will drive a once in a generation reset between those left behind, pupils and schools, to give every child the opportunities they deserve in life.

Sector Reaction:

Responding to the announcement that bursaries and scholarships worth up to £31,000 will be offered to trainee teachers in some subjects, Pepe Di’Iasio, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said:

“We welcome the fact that the government recognises the need to get more specialist teachers into the classroom. The recruitment and retention system is badly broken, with the majority of schools and colleges suffering from teacher shortages. Bursaries and scholarships may be helpful in some areas, but it is hard to see how they will turn the tide of this crisis on their own.

“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.”

Responding to the Government’s announcement to offer bursaries and scholarships worth up to £31,000 to train teachers in subjects including chemistry, maths, physics, and computing, Jack Worth, NFER Education Workforce Lead said: 

“Our research has shown bursaries are very effective for recruiting more teachers and retaining additional teachers long-term, particularly in shortage subjects such as physics and maths.

“This announcement could go a long way towards helping the Government meet its pledge to recruit and retain 6,500 additional teachers.

“It is also encouraging to see a focus on Further Education as our recent research shows this is a sector which struggles with recruitment and retention compared to schools.

“Additional funding to support the employment-based apprenticeship route in shortage subjects may also enable more teachers to pursue this route.”

However, following the release of DfE guidance showing bursaries for a range of subjects have been cut back, Jack Worth, NFER Education Workforce Lead, said:

“The DfE has reduced bursaries for a range of subjects, including four subjects which we forecast to be below their respective ITT targets this year. Geography and Biology are down by £21,000 while Design & Technology and Modern Foreign Languages are down by £6,000. Art, music and Religious Education are down by £10,000 to zero and English is down by £5,000 to zero.

“We estimate that these cuts, on their own, could lead to around 2,400 fewer trainees next year, which seems counterproductive for the Government’s 6,500 teacher target.

“While these cuts are obviously bad news for schools, it also disappointing that the department yesterday announced and promoted £31,000 of tax-free training incentives for teachers while making no mention of the bursary cuts evident in the DfE guidance released this morning.”