The Initial Teacher Training (ITT) landscape should be driven by market forces like every other employment market. This is an argument we hear time and time again. There is a shortage of physics, maths, geography teachers (add or delete as appropriate) therefore we need to recognise the market forces at work that draw them away from choosing teaching as a career. STEM is vital for the future of our country, and so the argument is made that we need to attract graduates of such subjects into the profession with higher training bursaries and even higher starting salaries. There is evidence that bursaries work, recognising the value graduates in these subjects command on the open jobs market and making the switch to teaching easier.
Meanwhile some subjects/ primary phase which have traditionally still recruited strongly, despite a 20% drop overall in ITT applications since before the pandemic, have seen bursary insecurity resulting in reductions and withdrawal altogether. This is market forces in action and something these subjects need to accept.
Except…
This year I interviewed an applicant for the PGCE course who had applied to teach history knowing there was a bursary for English of £10k and assuming this was the case for history too. When I explained that there was no bursary for history, the colour very literally drained from their face, and they exclaimed:
“Well how am I meant to do it then? I worked 30 hours a week during my undergrad degree because my loan only didn’t quite cover my rent let alone other expenses. I know I won’t be able to keep that up while I train to be a teacher.”
They were an incredible applicant. I made them an offer on the spot. A week later they emailed to say thank you but no thank you. They’d done the sums, and they just couldn’t make it work – perhaps they would come back another year once they’d saved some money.
But what will happen while they wait to save their pennies? Will they begin a different career path? Will they ever return to teaching?
Unable to make ends meet. Unable to stay the course.
Across the country, primary and history colleagues (and I’m sure those in other subjects with no bursary) have seen unprecedented numbers dropping out of their ITT year due to issues related to financial pressure. In my role as Co-Chair of HTEN (the History Teacher Educators Network) I have heard this story time and time again. Invariably, these beginning teachers have been trying to hold down part-time jobs while also undertaking placements and trying to study. For many, student loans no longer even cover rent (in 2023 the average means-tested maintenance loan paid to students living away from home outside London was £5,820, meanwhile average student rent outside of London was £6000-£6500 for the academic year). They are burdened and distracted by financial concerns.
It is unreasonable to expect training teachers to be in full-time school placements minimally from 8am-4pm AND study for their qualification AND work for 20-40 hours per week in a job to make ends meet. Yet this is the reality for some students without significant savings or financial support from family – bear in mind that the majority of postgraduate ITT students are independent adults (except where student loan calculations apply) and may even have dependents themselves.
The inevitable outcome for some beginning teachers has been not being able to meet the demands of the course and maintain part time jobs. For some the calculation of whether persisting in their training felt worth it, in light of the financial challenges it was creating for them, just didn’t come out in teaching’s favour. Even if they did make it to the end and begin their career as an ECT, in a subject like history where you inevitably end up teaching Geography, RE and sometimes English, they have found themselves wondering why they have more debt and financial stress than their close colleagues who received a bursary but are now on very similar timetables. This breeds resentment, and it doesn’t help retention.
As a first-generation university attender who ended up a teacher by accident rather than design, I know how important the bursary is as an access point into the profession. If not for the £6k ‘training salary’ (the terminology we used at the time) I would not have taught thousands of children across my 11 years in the classroom. And I would not have trained hundreds of beginning teachers to teach even greater numbers of pupils across their careers. I quite simply couldn’t have afforded to take the risk.
Equity of access
The issues of recruitment into teaching is about far more than market forces. It is about equity of access. Subjects with no bursary at all are in real danger of becoming the preserve of the wealthy – or at least those who have the opportunity to save the significant funds required to study and simultaneously undertake placements. 69% of 8993 teachers responding to a 2023 @TeacherTapp survey were first generation university attenders (Teacher Tapp Results, 13.08.2023). We need ALL types of teachers from a full range of backgrounds in our classrooms, including those who cannot afford an unpaid year-long internship. The realities of the cost-of-living crisis and inadequate student finance are making teacher training in non-bursary subjects a ‘luxury’ option.
We should be proactively seeking to construct a diverse teacher workforce representing the full breadth of our communities and reflecting pupils in our schools. In a subject like history this is all the more important. Lack of bursaries in some subjects creates an unnecessary barrier to entry to the profession and prevents this. It also creates geographical cold-spots in parts of the country that do not generate sufficient numbers of home-grown graduates to sustain their teacher workforce. Subsistence bursaries must be reinstated, even in non-shortage subjects.
Ultimately, it’s our children who will lose out on highly motivated, well qualified teachers if we do not address this issue. Schools are not a market. Our children deserve better.
Read more about HTEN and HA’s bursary campaign
Further reading:
DfE (2019). Teacher recruitment and retention strategy, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-recruitment-and-retention-strategy
DfE (2024). Measures announced to boost teacher recruitment and retention, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/measures-announced-to-boost-teacher-recruitment-and-retention
McLean, D., Tang, S., & Worth, J. (2023). The impact of training bursaries on teacher recruitment and retention: An evaluation of impact and value for money, NFER, https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/the-impact-of-training-bursaries-on-teacher-recruitment-and-retention/
Universities UK (2024). University helps three quarters (73%) of ‘first-in-the-family’ graduates get over their imposter syndrome but, without financial support, over 4 in 10 couldn’t have afforded to go at all, University helps three quarters (73%) of ‘first-in-the-family’ graduates get over their imposter syndrome but, without financial support, over 4 in 10 couldn’t have afforded to go at all
Becoming a History Teacher 
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