The impact of training bursaries on teacher recruitment and retention: An evaluation of impact and value for money (by Dawson McLean, Sarah Tang and Jack Worth)

10 November 2023

The key findings of this report are:

• Teachers who are induced to enter the profession due to bursary increases have a sustained impact on long-term supply as they are just as likely to stay in teaching.
• The additional teachers are more likely to teach in schools that tend to struggle most with filling vacancies, such as schools in London and schools serving disadvantaged communities.
• Bursaries offer good cost effectiveness compared to other targeted policy measures such as early career payments, especially where the existing bursary for a subject is low. Increasing bursaries to boost teacher numbers is therefore cost effective where bursaries for a subject are currently low and current high bursaries for shortage subjects, such as physics, are also effective and should be retained.

Please get in touch if you would like to discuss the findings from this report or our wider work relating to teacher workforce.

Please feel free to share this with relevant networks. Our Twitter handle is @TheNFER and the shortened link to the report is https://bit.ly/47lEjk2

Jack Worth, NFER