Welsh Government to introduce financial incentives to recruit BAME teachers

The Welsh Government is to introduce financial incentives to help recruit more ethnic minority teachers.

The latest Annual Education Workforce Statistics, published by the Education Workforce Council, revealed that only 1.3% of school teachers in Wales identified as being from an ethnic minority background, compared to 12% of learners.

Incentives currently exist for subjects where there is a high demand for teachers, such as Mathematics and sciences, as well as the Iaith Athrawon Yfory scheme to attract more Welsh-medium teachers.

This forms part of a wider plan that will focus on increasing diversity among applicants into Initial Teacher Education courses. It will target promotion of teaching as a career to more people from ethnic minority communities. There will also be a requirement for Initial Teacher Education courses to work towards the recruitment of a percentage of students from ethnic minority backgrounds.

The work is part of the Welsh Government’s response to the recommendations from the working group which has advised on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Communities, Contributions and Cynefin in the new school Curriculum.

Jeremy Miles, the Minister for Education and Welsh Language, said: “It is vital that we increase the diversity of our teaching workforce to better support our learners. To do this, we must understand the barriers which are preventing more people from ethnic minority backgrounds from going into teaching, and take action to ensure those barriers are removed.

“It is simply not good enough that fewer than 2% of teachers are from an ethnic minority background. That is why we are launching this much needed plan, so that we have a workforce that better reflects the population of Wales.

“Importantly, increasing diversity in schools should not only apply to areas where there is a higher proportion of people from ethnic minority backgrounds, but across the whole of Wales.

“This work is the first phase in the important work to increase diversity in our education workforce.”