NAO questions DfE spend on teacher bursaries

The National Audit Office (NAO) has questioned the Department for Education’s (DfE) spending on teacher training bursaries without measuring whether they are effective.

Speaking before the Commons Education Committee, Mark Parrett, audit manager at the NAO, said that while there was evidence that bursaries attract graduates into teacher training, there needed to be greater monitoring on whether the large spend was worth it.

The current spend on bursaries is around £620 million, with some teachers able to get as much as £30,000 to train to teach. Parrett criticised the lack of evaluation regarding wether the trainees attracted by the bursaries stayed in the profession, as well as a lack of measures to monitor how well they performed in the classroom.

He said that the NAO expects a greater deal of evaluation on how effective the bursaries really are at improving education standards to allow for a more more comprehensive understanding of their cost-effectiveness.