Please support our campaign to reverse the decision to remove the ITT bursary for RE.

The Department for Education has confirmed that the £10,000 Initial Teacher Training (ITT) bursary of £10,000 for Religious Education will be withdrawn from 2026-2027. This will intensify the national shortage of RE teachers and seriously undermine the future of the subject.

This decision comes despite RE recruitment standing at only 53.6% of the national target – one of the lowest rates of any secondary subject. The Department has missed its RE recruitment target in 13 of the last 14 years.

Please adapt the attached template letter to write to your MP about this and/or use the infographic on social media to raise awareness of our campaign – tagging your MP if you can. If your MP responds – we can offer a letter for them to send to the Secretary of State and a briefing document which sets out the issues in more detail.

This is an urgent matter as more recruitment has put more higher education led courses at risk and this announcement will likely seal their fate.