Written question asked by John Pugh (Liberal Democrat) on Wednesday, 10 November 2010, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Friday, 12 November 2010. It was answered by Nick Gibb (Conservative) on Monday, 29 November 2010 on behalf of the Department for Education.

Technology: Teachers

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Education what steps his Department is taking to increase the number of (a) specialist technology teachers and (b) primary class teachers with technology training.

Answer: The Department has several strategies in place to increase the number of specialist design and technology teachers. Training bursaries of £9,000 are available to people taking up postgraduate Initial Teacher Training (ITT) places for design and technology as this is one of the shortage subjects. In addition, the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) are funded to train 400 existing teachers by March 2011 in teaching practical cooking within the design and technology curriculum. Many of these teachers are not existing design and technology teachers.The Department also funds continuing professional development for secondary design and technology teachers to improve their subject specific knowledge and keep them up to date with latest developments.The latest vacancy rate for design and technology posts (at 0.4%) is slightly below the rate for all subjects (at 0.5%) in 2010. A snapshot in 2010 showed that there were 50 advertised vacancies for full-time design and technology permanent appointments or appointments of at least one term's duration.We do not collect information centrally on the number of primary class teachers with technology training.

Secondary information