Recommendation 44

HM Government Accepted

For 2024/25 and 2025/26, the Department is offering a Targeted Retention Incentive worth up to £6,000 after-tax for mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who work in disadvantaged schools. This is a doubling of the previous Levelling Up Premium payments of up to £3,000 after-tax offered to the same teachers in 2022/23 and 2023/24. Early Career Payments were offered to those completing ITT up to 2020/21 and will cease after 2024/25. For 2024/25 and 2025/26, the Department is also offering Targeted Retention Incentives to eligible FE teachers for the first time. The Targeted Retention Incentive is worth up to £6,000 after-tax for teachers in the first five years of their career teaching mathematics, physics, chemistry, computing including digital and ICT, building and construction, early year and engineering and manufacturing. The Targeted Retention Incentive is currently targeted at subjects with persistent teacher shortages and where graduates of these subjects have the highest earning potential outside teaching and are often the most difficult to recruit and retain. It will help to ensure our young people receive high quality specialist teaching to equip them with the STEM and technical skills the UK needs. The Targeted Retention Incentive also targets the most disadvantaged half of schools across England so is not restricted to Education Investment Areas (EIAs). Teachers working at an eligible FE provider that has higher levels of disadvantage will receive a higher payment. We will keep the eligibility criteria under review and consider the case for expanding the offer. We are completing full evaluations of the Targeted Retention Incentive and previous Levelling Up Premium offers. As part of this, we will attempt to evaluate any postponement effect after teachers become ineligible for the payments. We will also evaluate the geographical impact of targeting certain schools and areas where possible.