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<p>The Government is committed to supporting schools in recruiting specialist teachers
in chemistry. Specific support is provided for individuals interested in teaching
chemistry through targeted marketing, personal advisors and securing school experience.
We have significantly increased tax-free bursaries for chemistry trainee teachers
from £9,000 in 2012/13 to up to £20,000 in 2014/15. In addition, we continue to work
jointly with the Royal Society of Chemistry to offer scholarship awards of £25,000
in order to attract the most talented chemists into initial teacher training (ITT).
We have surpassed our target for trainees entering chemistry teacher training in each
of the last three years, recruiting 121% of the target in 2011/12, 108% in 2012/13,
and 127% in 2013/14.</p><p>We are continuing to fund subject knowledge enhancement
(SKE) courses, which are an important tool to ensure all chemistry trainees have specialist
subject knowledge. Around a quarter of accepted places for chemistry ITT in 2014/15
are being supported by SKE.</p><p>The latest annual School Workforce Census (2013)
shows that 19.6% of chemistry teachers who teach pupils from years 7 to 13 have no
relevant post-A Level qualification, down from 24.3% in the 2012 census, demonstrating
the impact of these incentives.</p><p>The Government also recognises the vital importance
of subject-specific development for in-service teachers. We have made almost £7 million
available to fund a network of Regional Science Learning Centres and we are funding
teaching schools to develop and deliver a range of post-ITT SKE provision in specific
subjects, including chemistry.</p>
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