Stephen Timms – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen Timms on 2016-04-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the Answer of 18 April 2016 to Question 33689, how many teachers of GCSE (a) English and (b) mathematics were employed by the armed forces in each of the last five years.

Mark Lancaster

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) does not hold figures on the number of teachers employed to teach GCSE English and Mathematics. The Ministry of Defence provides Service personnel with a range of educational, learning, development and resettlement opportunities through a number of training centres and apprenticeship programmes. The main learning centres have English and Mathematics tutors who are employed to teach functional skills in numeracy and literacy and can also support GCSEs. However, teachers are not employed specifically to teach GCSEs.

Over 95% of recruits are enrolled into an Apprenticeship Programme each year, regardless of their age, which ensures that Service personnel gain a Level 2 in numeracy and literacy. This is the equivalent of a GCSE. In addition, there are Functional Skills Deliverers who work as part of apprenticeship delivery in the training establishments and can support learning for GCSEs. However, they are more focused on providing functional skills.