Teacher training - Primary school bursary

Primary school paid bursary payments

Why offer a school paid bursary ?

There are currently no government bursaries in place to support an individual wanting to train to teach in primary.

Trainees may be eligible for student loans to pay their tuition fees (tuition fees maximum £9535) and may be eligible for maintenance loans to help with living costs.

In most cases though (and especially for individuals who are looking to change career) neither of these provide sufficient financial incentive to encourage applications to train to teach primary.

Schools can offer talented individuals the opportunity to receive a school paid bursary if they train to teach at your school on a fee-funded route.

Where schools offer an incentive for individuals to train to become a teacher at their school, there is evidence to suggest this helps to attract a greater number of high caliber applications from potential primary trainees.

Costs to the school

Here is a breakdown of costs to the school of a fee-funded trainee receiving school paid bursary:

• fees: N/A – trainees pay their fees
• salary: No salary payment
• placement school payment: £1,000 Paid by Teach West London to placement school
• School paid bursary payment: £2,000 - £10,000 - Amount is a school decision
• Total cost: £1,000 - £9,000.

The process

• primary schools willing to offer fee-funded placements with a school paid bursary incentive inform Teach West London of the amount they would be willing to provide as a school paid bursary to a trainee
• Teach West London manage the application process including DBS, qualification, and reference checks
• joint interview process (Teach West London and the school) and a joint decision is reached
• if the applicant is successful, the school discuss the school paid bursary payments and put in place a bursary agreement (this is between the school and the trainee)
• trainee will have QTS from 30 June assuming they are successful in their course.

School paid bursary in detail

• payments by the school to the trainee must not go through payroll as this makes the trainee ineligible for government loans to cover tuition fees. The trainee is not an employee of the school but is under a training agreement managed by TWL.
• school paid bursaries are exempt from tax, provided conditions are met. See here for more information.
• from speaking with other providers, a bursary of £9,000 or more has the greatest impact on application numbers although they have seen an impact of smaller bursary amounts (typical range £2000 - £10000). The amount can be decided on by the individual school. The ELP recruitment and development committee supported by the ELP board would recommend schools considering this option to pay £10,000 so there is consistency across Ealing schools. (NB. Schools receive £1,000towards training so really schools will only pay a total of £9,000).
• the bursary agreement would outline the payment amounts and frequency of payments. We would recommend schools consider similar arrangements to government bursaries for example in the case of sickness, withdrawals / deferrals and frequency of payments.
• the agreement would outline what expectations would need to be met for bursary payments to be made. Bursary payments would be made over the academic year in arrears i.e., 1 October, 1 November etc. in equal payments usually ten payments until the end of the period. If a person leaves the programme or is long term sick, then the monthly payment can be withheld. In addition, the school can choose to make 10 smaller payments and then an 11 payment at end of July to ensure the commitment of the person to stay until end of academic term, which may be useful for a school to have a QT working for last few weeks of term at no additional cost.
• the agreement on end date / payments schedule would be made as part of the offer to the applicant after interview and would be the decision of the school. The school needs to consider the mentor/ support needs of the trainee and factor this into the costs for this arrangement.

Further information

For further information please contact Teach West London – lmackenney@teachwestlondon.org.uk