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Bursaries are 'cost-effective' way to boost teacher recruitment

Recruitment & Retention Pay and conditions Government policy
Training bursaries are a cost-effective strategy for increasing recruitment to teacher training and boosting long-term teacher supply, researchers have concluded.
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While a cohort of 100 trainee teachers will translate (through attrition) into 41 who stay in teaching beyond five years, researchers estimate that a £5,000 bursary increase could up this figure to 47 teachers.

The study from the National Foundation for Educational Research (McLean et al, 2023) says that teachers enticed by bursaries to enter the profession tend to complete their training and are just as likely to still be teaching after five years.

The study says that the additional teachers attracted by bursaries are “more likely” to teach in schools that struggle to fill vacancies, such as those serving disadvantaged communities.

Furthermore, bursary spending can be targeted at priority subjects, the report emphasises, which allows “good value for money compared to undifferentiated spending on all phases and subjects”.

The report concludes that the government should keep training bursaries in place and use them as one of a number of tools to boost recruitment, alongside strategies such as early career payments and teacher pay.

Responding to the report, teacher trainers have urged that attention also be given to student loan forgiveness as a recruitment strategy, while for their part school leaders have warned that bursaries can "only ever be a partial answer to teacher shortages" (see later).

The findings come as the teacher recruitment crisis continues apace. In March, the NFER reported that the government is on track to recruit just 79% of the primary teachers and 58% of the secondary teachers it needs for 2023/24, including 17 secondary subjects which were on course to under-recruit.

For 2024/25, the Department for Education has increased the number of post-graduate bursaries on offer to cover 12 subjects (DfE, 2023):

  • £28,000 in chemistry, computing, mathematics and physics.
  • £25,000 in biology, design and technology, geography and languages.
  • £10,000 in art and design, English, music and RE.

The latest report finds that the biggest impact on teacher recruitment could be had by further increasing financial incentives in subjects that have low or no bursaries.

However, the research also suggests that current high bursaries for shortage subjects, such as physics, are also effective and should be retained.

In particular, the report recommends maintaining the existing high bursaries for maths, physics, chemistry and computing, and that they should be raised over time alongside the level of the teaching starting salary.

It adds that additional spending on bursaries (including the extra indirect costs such as teacher training costs) in shortage subjects would have a positive impact on overall teacher supply. This impact would be similar to a same-cost increase in early career payments and greater than a same-cost increase in teacher pay.

The report states: “Overall, bursary increases are associated with a sustained increase in long-term teacher supply. Currently, a starting cohort of 100 teachers will translate, through attrition, into 41 teachers that stay beyond their fifth year in teaching. However, a £5,000 bursary increase, all else equal, leads to 115 teachers entering training and 47 teachers staying beyond their fifth year in teaching.

“The additional teachers are also more likely to teach in schools that tend to struggle most with filling vacancies, such as schools in London and schools serving disadvantaged communities. Bursaries are therefore an effective policy tool for addressing national teacher shortages and the associated staffing challenges in the most affected schools.”

The researchers have three recommendations for government:

  1. To keep training bursaries in place to ensure teacher training recruitment is supported “to be higher than it otherwise would be”.
  2. To continue raising bursaries for subjects experiencing teacher supply challenges and where bursaries are low: “Increasing bursaries where there is a small or no existing bursary is more cost-effective than when the existing bursary is already at a high level.”
  3. To maintain high bursaries for maths, physics, chemistry and computing, raising them over time with the level of the teaching starting salary.

The NFER’s study was funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.

 

Commentary

Jack Worth, co-author of the study and school workforce lead at NFER: “Our evidence shows bursary spending offers good value for money because it can be targeted at priority subjects and at prospective teachers, whose behaviour tends to be highly responsive to financial incentives.

“The findings show bursaries are one of a range of effective financial tools available to policy-makers to tackle recruitment and retention issues. The current severe shortage of teachers across many subject areas and tight public finances means that cost-effective policy measures are needed to support the teacher pipeline wherever possible.”

 

Emma Hollis, executive director of the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers: “While bursaries tend to attract more people into ITT than otherwise would have entered, they also change the characteristics of those who apply. In some cases, these composition changes from bursary increases promote greater equality (e.g. increasing the proportion of men) while in others it appears to reduce it further (e.g. reducing the proportion of BAME trainees). 

“Labour has already said it proposes to review bursaries to ensure the £181 million a year the government spends on incentivising people into teaching is being best used to attract and critically to retrain teaching staff. A bigger game changer – although this needs to be modelled – would be student loan forgiveness for new teachers working on state schools up to a certain amount of years.”

“Earlier this year the independent School Teachers’ Review Body set out its objective to start to address the structural deterioration in the pay of teachers relative to comparable professions and the inadequate recruitment of graduates. The government cannot afford to bank on bursaries and other targeted payments to patch up a broken system. It must address the underlying problem of inadequate teacher pay and excessive systemic workload and it must ensure that schools have the funding they need to pay their staff.”

 

Professor Becky Francis, chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation: “We know that recruitment and retention is one of the biggest obstacles impacting schools today and the knock-on effects this is having on staff wellbeing, their job satisfaction, and the quality of teaching and learning for children.

“Schools serving high numbers of socio-economically disadvantaged children tend to face the greatest challenges in this regard, leading to a disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable pupils.

“The NFER findings are mirrored by our research (EEF, 2023), which indicates that financial incentives – particularly those given directly to teachers – could be an effective approach to solving staffing issues in our schools. This is a complex problem that is likely to require a multi-pronged solution.”