What measures does the Welsh Government have in place to ensure the effectiveness of its plans in relation to a) initial teacher education incentives; b) teacher training incentives: PGCE students (FE); and c) the bursary to retain Welsh-speaking teachers in education?
We are working with the EWC to look into the longer-term retention of teachers that received an incentive (specifically the Priority Subject Incentive scheme). We also utilise data and feedback from the ITE Partnerships alongside both HESA and SWAC data and any relevant research to monitor the incentives annually. The Welsh in Education Teacher Retention Bursary launched as a pilot in 2023 and will be available initially for 5 years. We will continue to track bursary recipients with EWC on an annual basis during the pilot period to see if they are still teaching. We will also commission an independent evaluation in 2026 once we have sufficient data to determine whether the bursary achieves its objective of retaining Welsh and Welsh-medium secondary teachers in the profession.
We are also in the process of considering the findings from the review report published in March 2023 on a new vision for initial teacher education in the post compulsory education and training sectors. To support that work the Welsh Government in partnership with Medr, will review and monitor the effectiveness of the current PGCE FE pre-service incentive programme to ensure it meets our and Medr’s future policy objectives.