Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:44 pm on 5 December 2017.
Yes, I do, and, just to give the Member some idea of what we've been doing: we've been working with regional consortia to actively promote a recruitment and retention offer to support recruitment to initial teacher education in Wales; there's £20,000 available to graduates with a first or postgraduate degree undertaking secondary postgraduate ITE programmes in maths, Welsh, computer science, physics and chemistry; there's £15,000 available for those who are modern language students who fit the same criteria. In Wales, we have seen a 3.9 per cent increase in UCAS applications for Wales ITE providers in 2016 compared to 2015. So, that is encouraging news and shows that the incentives that I've mentioned, along with the other things that we are doing, are proving to be attractive to potential teachers.