In December 2021, the Department for Education (DfE) financial incentives team announced a new bursary of £15,000. This bursary is for successful candidates on an ITT course that includes at least 50% ancient languages.
Ancient languages subjects include:
- Latin
- Ancient Greek
- Ancient Hebrew
There were not any ancient language subjects in the drop-down list on the subject selection page in the ‘Add course’ flow when DfE introduced the policy. The missing subjects meant that providers could not publish courses in ancient languages.
Providers who wanted to publish a course with an ancient language would have to create a ‘Classics’ course and either:
- include ancient language details in the course description - 15 providers had published a ‘Classics’ course for ITT2022
- get in touch with the support team to change the course name manually to include an ancient language - 3 providers had a published ‘Latin with Classics’ or ‘Classics (Latin and Ancient Greek)’ course for ITT2022
Adding ancient languages to the list of subjects
We added Latin, Ancient Greek and Ancient Hebrew to the available list of subjects in the service, ensuring that:
- the service reflected the new policy, and relevant courses included financial incentive information for the relevant courses
- we distributed the ancient language financial incentive information correctly to Find, Manage and Register
- candidates were made aware of the new financial incentive for ancient languages
- we removed the unnecessary burden on our developers and support team
Getting in touch with providers
In January 2022, we emailed the 15 providers who offered Classics courses to tell them that we could update the course information to reflect the financial incentive policy (if their course included at least 50% ancient languages).
- Subject
- Reminder: we need more information about your Classics course
Dear colleague,
We’ve not yet received weighting information from you for your Classics course.
As this course may contain ancient languages as part of its curriculum (such as Latin, Ancient Greek and Ancient Hebrew), candidates applying to this course may be eligible for a bursary of £15,000 if the ancient language makes up at least 50% of the course (and the course is identified as an ancient languages course).
For example, you may have published a course named ‘Classics’, which has a curriculum showing 50% Classics and 50% Latin. Candidates applying for this course are eligible for the bursary in the ancient language (Latin).
Or, you may have published a course named ‘Classics’ which has a curriculum showing 70% Classics and 30% Latin. In this case, candidates applying for this course are not eligible for the bursary in the ancient language (Latin).
To make sure we are presenting candidates with the correct information on Find, please let us know the weighting for this course by emailing us at becomingateacher@digital.education.gov.uk.
Bursaries for ancient language courses
The Department for Education offers bursaries and scholarships for trainees completing ITT courses in ancient languages, as outlined in the funding manual for ITT 2022 to 2023 at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-itt-bursary-funding-manual/initial-teacher-training-bursaries-funding-manual-2022-to-2023-academic-year.
Course titles
When a course has two subjects in its title, the subject with the heavier weighting should be placed first. Where the two subjects are equally weighted, the bursary subject should be placed as the first subject. If you need to change your course title, let us know.
Get in touch
If you have any questions, contact us at becomingateacher@digital.education.gov.uk. If anyone else in your organisation needs to be aware of this email, please forward it to them.
Regards,
Becoming a Teacher team
To change your notification settings, go to https://www.publish-teacher-training-courses.service.gov.uk/notifications.
We also emailed the 3 providers who offered either Latin with Classics or Classics (Latin and Ancient Greek) to apply the financial incentive information to their courses.
- Subject
- Reminder: we need more information about your Latin (with Classics) course
Dear colleague,
We’ve not yet received weighting information from you for your Latin (with Classics) course.
To make sure we are presenting candidates with the correct information on Find, please let us know the weighting for this course by emailing us at becomingateacher@digital.education.gov.uk.
Bursaries for ancient language courses
The Department for Education offers bursaries and scholarships for trainees completing ITT courses in ancient languages, as outlined in the funding manual for ITT 2022 to 2023 at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-itt-bursary-funding-manual/initial-teacher-training-bursaries-funding-manual-2022-to-2023-academic-year.
As this course contains an ancient language in its title, candidates applying to this course may be eligible for a bursary of £15,000, where Latin makes up at least 50% of the course (and the course is identified as an ancient languages course).
Course titles
When a course has two subjects in its title, the subject with the heavier weighting should be placed first. Where the two subjects are equally weighted, the bursary subject should be placed as the first subject. If you need to change your course title, let us know.
Get in touch
If you have any questions, contact us at becomingateacher@digital.education.gov.uk. If anyone else in your organisation needs to be aware of this email, please forward it to them.
Regards,
Becoming a Teacher team
To change your notification settings, go to https://www.publish-teacher-training-courses.service.gov.uk/notifications.
Responses from providers
In January and February 2022, we received responses from nearly all providers we contacted.
Out of the 17 ‘Classics’ courses offered by 15 providers:
- 13 courses were made up of at least 50% ancient languages
- 2 courses were withdrawn
- 2 providers did not respond
Out of the 3 ‘Latin with Classics’ or ‘Classics (Latin and Ancient Greek)’ courses offered by three providers:
- all courses were made up of at least 50% Latin or Ancient Greek
Changing the subjects for these courses
For the 16 courses made up of 50% ancient language, we used the support console to:
- change the first subject of the course to the relevant ancient language so that candidates can accurately find the course and financial information
- add ‘Classics’ as the second subject of the course so that candidates could also find the course when filtering for Classics
Analysing our impact
For the 16 courses that had financial incentives added, we analysed the impact of 15 of these (1 provider got in touch with us later in March 2022).
- 5 saw an increase in applications in the 30 days after we made the change compared to the 30 days before the change
- 6 saw a decrease in applications in the 30 days after we made the change compared to the 30 days before the change
- 4 saw no change in applications in the 30 days after we made the change compared to the 30 days before the change
When looking at any change in application levels, we need to consider that:
- levels of submitted application forms are highest in the period after Apply opens, i.e. in October and November, with levels then steadily reaching a more stable level as time goes on
- for 6 of the 15 courses, the 30 day period before the change encompassed Christmas day and the following week, where overall application levels were down
- whilst 5 courses saw an increase in applications in the 30 days after the change and 5 courses that saw a decrease, none of the increases or decreases was more than 4 applications, indicating no significant impact
- 11 of the 15 courses that had financial incentives added had less than 10 applications in total; any change in application levels was so small as not to have any significant impact