This table provides information about the subjects studied by students enrolled on Initial Teacher Training (ITT) courses leading to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) provided through Welsh higher education institutions.
To teach as a qualified teacher in a maintained school or non-maintained special school in Wales or England, students need to obtain QTS. Students can do this by either undertaking a first degree course which combines a degree - usually a BEd, BA or BSc - with QTS or by completing a PGCE course which leads to QTS. There are alternative employment-based routes to obtaining QTS but these are not covered in this bulletin.
Figures represent all year enrolments and have been rounded to the nearest 5. From 2007/08 the registration population will not include those students on sabbatical or writing-up.
Source: Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) Student Record.
Contact: HigherEducationAndStudentFinance.Stats@gov.wales
Annual
The HESA standard registration population is a count of all enrolments within the reporting year 1 August to 31 July. Students who leave within 2 weeks of their start date, or anniversary of their start date, and are on a course of more than two weeks duration, are not included in the standard registration population. Dormant students, incoming visiting and exchange students from overseas and students studying for the whole of their programme of study outside of the UK are also excluded from this population.
The presentation of figures in this table follows the principals of the HESA rounding strategy. The strategy is intended to prevent the disclosure of personal information about any individual. This strategy involves rounding all numbers to the nearest 5. A summary of this strategy is as follows:
• Counts of people are rounded to the nearest multiple of 5.
The Open University currently records all students on ITE courses in the Welsh national centre of the Open University as training to teach in Welsh. This resulted in an over-reporting of students training to teach bilingually in 2020/21. These figures have since been revised following work with HEFCW and the Open University. The Welsh government now obtain information regarding students training to teach bilingually directly from the Open University to provide amended figures annually.
Care should be taken when comparing data on all students over time since courses lengths can vary. For example, many previously 4 year first degree courses are now 3 year courses.
The underlying subject data for the Initial Teacher Education (ITE) course subjects has changed from 2019/20 due to a change from JACS subject coding to HECOS subject coding. More details on the HECOS subject coding can be found on the HESA webpage:
https://www.hesa.ac.uk/support/documentation/hecos
First years on secondary school ITE courses in Wales by subject and year
2014/15