New postgraduate teacher training bursary rates for academic year 2010/11

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and TDA will continue to give greater priority to recruitment to specific science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects than to other secondary subjects for the academic year 2010/2011. Eligible postgraduate trainee chemistry, physics, design and technology, engineering, information and communications technology (ICT) and mathematics teachers will continue to be entitled to a £9,000 training bursary.

The current threshold postgraduate training bursary is £4,000 for eligible postgraduate primary trainee teachers. The TDA is not intending to reduce this. However, strong recruitment performance across all secondary subjects, linked to reducing demand for newly qualified secondary teachers, means that TDA will now reduce the postgraduate training bursaries for some secondary subjects from £9,000 to £6,000 and for others from £6,000 to the current threshold of £4,000.

The key changes are:

• £9,000 to £6,000 for modern languages, music and religious education
• £6,000 to £4,000 for art and design, business studies, citizenship, dance and drama, history, physical education and a range of other smaller sized secondary subjects.

The training bursary rate for postgraduate trainee biology, combined/general science will reduce from £9,000 to £6,000 in order to balance the proportions of total trainee science teachers between those that train to teach chemistry or physics and those that train to teach biology or combined/general science. 

New postgraduate teacher training bursary rates for academic year 2010/11 (PDF 46KB)