Are you struggling to find a qualified science teacher or a specialist MFL teacher? Then employing an apprentice might be the perfect solution.

For the postgraduate teaching apprenticeship training route, the DfE gives grants to Initial Teacher Training (ITT) providers to contribute to the apprentice’s salary and training costs.

• £28,000 for chemistry, computing, mathematics and physics
• £25,000 for French, German and Spanish (no other languages)
• £16,000 for other languages, biology, design and technology, and geography
• £1,000 for art and design, English, music and RE.

ITT providers are responsible for ensuring that all grant funding designated to support salary costs reaches the employing school so that it can be used for its intended purpose.

This grant is in addition to funding available from the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), known as the Apprenticeship Levy, which is for training and assessment costs only.

This means that not only are the costs of the apprenticeship covered, so are the salary costs (an apprentice should be employed by your school at the unqualified teacher rate, usually UNQ1 as a minimum).

Benefits for your school

• The opportunity to develop the talent within your school, supporting your recruitment needs and improving staff retention
• Apprentices can start on a higher teaching timetable than other ITT trainees (up to 60% of their in-school time, rising to 80% for the last 6 weeks of the training year)
• On the job training allows apprentices to continue their work in school
• Apprentices are not supernumerary, meaning they can teach their own classes from day one.

Find out more about teaching apprenticeships here.