PEOPLE who enter the teaching profession to teach Welsh or teach through the medium of Welsh will be able to apply for a bursary and grant.

It is a move introduced by the Welsh Government to help with increasing the number of teachers who can speak Welsh.

A £5,000 bursary will be available to teachers who gained Qualified Teacher Status from August 2020 onwards as long as they have been teaching Welsh or teaching through the medium of Welsh for three years.

The bursary will be available until the autumn of 2028, and this will allow ministers to assess the impact it has on encouraging teachers to enter and remain in the profession.

There will also be a second round of the Welsh-medium workforce capacity building grant has opened, with a total pot of £800,000. This scheme will provide small grants to schools to develop innovative ways of resolving the recruitment challenges they face.

During the first year of the grant, these projects were found to have been successful:

  • Apprentices appointed to train towards becoming teaching assistants.
  • 12 secondary schools working together to deliver joint provision for year 10 and 11 learners who were resitting GCSE exams.
  • Professional learning to upskill teaching staff to teach extra subjects like sciences.
  • Welsh-medium secondary schools working together to recruit undergraduates in shortage subjects to work part-time to share their subject expertise and gain experience in teaching.

Jeremy Miles, the minster for education and Welsh language, said: “One of our biggest priorities for achieving a million Welsh speakers is making sure we have enough teachers to meet the demand for learning in Welsh.

“This package of support will strengthen our Welsh-speaking education workforce and ensure more people can take advantage of the exciting career opportunities on offer.”

The Welsh Government is increasing the number of teachers who can teach Welsh and through the medium of Welsh to realise the Welsh Government’s vision for a million Welsh speakers by 2050 and to achieve the ambitions of the white paper for the Welsh Language Education Bill.