A university is offering everyone who signs onto a postgraduate teacher training course this year a £500 scholarship payment.
Bath Spa University is offering the payment for the first time this year as schools are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit new teachers.
Professor Kate Reynolds, executive dean of the Institute for Education at Bath Spa University, said: “We are all too aware of the difficulties faced by schools and the challenges in recruiting newly qualified teachers.
“We’ve been supporting schools and teachers for more than 70 years and have seen first-hand the challenges they face, especially in recent years, so this scholarship not only celebrates the profession as a whole, but allows us to encourage, nurture and support the next generation of trainee teachers.”
There are government-funded bursaries ranging from £4,000 to £30,000 for various secondary subjects and scholarships from professional associations of up to £28,000 for five shortage subjects including physics and chemistry. But there are no longer any bursaries for primary teacher trainees.
Bath Spa has said that its £500 payment will be made to every PGCE trainee include primary, secondary, School Direct primary and secondary and early years initial teacher training, but not for Teach First which is a fully funded course. The payment will be made on October 12 - half way through the first term. Bath Spa has around 700 teacher trainees each year.
John Howson, visiting professor at Oxford Brookes University, said: “I think it’s a great idea. I love it. I don’t think it will attract many more people into teaching but it will certainly help those people coming onto the course and it is good for motivation - well worth doing - but I think the government should be doing it rather than individual universities.”
Applications for teacher training places his year have fallen sharply compared to last year. The latest figures from admissions body UCAS show that there has been an overall drop in applicants of 19 per cent, with drops of 31 per cent in history, 29 per cent in RE and 29 per cent in music.
