Funding Given To The School

The West London Teaching School Alliance (WLTSA) gives money to every school that successfully recruits a trainee with us. You would be referred to as the host school and this money is given to you during the training year.

There is no financial cost to you for requesting a place and no cost throughout the recruitment year, despite the work that we will be doing on your behalf at that time.  There is no financial pressure on you to recruit for the sake of it.  We want you to recruit quality trainees and if you fail to find a candidate of suitable quality you will have lost nothing. You could ask us to close your programme and you would have incurred no financial cost.

WLTSA levies a fee for every trainee that is successfully recruited because we do have to remain financially sustainable (our costs relate mostly to staff salaries but we also have separate auditing fees, some limited marketing costs promoting your programmes, etc). This WLTSA fee however never comes from your school budget. It comes from money that we receive from the university for unsalaried trainees and from the funding we receive from the EFA for salaried trainees. We pass the remainder of this money to you.

The amount of money that we pass to you varies depending on the type of place that you choose (salaried or unsalaried), the university that you wish to partner with, and (for salaried programmes) the ‘subject’ that you request. 

UNSALARIED PRIMARY PROGRAMMES (2018-19 cohort)

On St Mary’s programmes, Sacred Heart High School (as the Teaching School acting for WLTSA) receives £3,000 for every recruited trainee.  We retain the Teaching School fee of £850 and the UCAS fee of £25 and pass the remainder of the money to you.

On Roehampton programmes we have an arrangement with the university to deliver part of the training that is normally delivered by the university (through sessions organised by our strategic lead primary, Fox Primary School). The university therefore passes more money to WLTSA than would normally be the case but WLTSA needs to pay Fox £800 per trainee for this training and then the remainder is passed to you 

As you can see from the table below, there not much difference to the school in terms of the money you receive from different university choices and your decision on which university to ask for may therefore be influenced by other factors such as your familiarity with their staff and paperwork, your preference for when the second placement is or your need for a particular ‘subject’.

*Primary General with Maths trains someone to be a general primary teacher but with a greater focus on maths so that they could lead on maths in a school.  Above normal degree entry requirements, candidates additionally need at least a B at A level Maths to be eligible for this.

It is important to be aware that unsalaried primary, while attractive to schools in terms of the finance that they receive from WLTSA, can be harder to fill than a salaried programme.  Some are filled early on and some mid-year but we have known a few schools not to receive a single application all year.  Part of this is very likely to be related to the cost of living in London. Unsalaried trainees have to pay £9,250 tuition fees to the university and DfE bursaries available to primary trainees have historically always been very low.

We await the announcement of 2018-19 bursaries but for 2017-18 there were no birsaries for a standard primary trainee unless that had a first class degree. £6,000 bursaries were available for those training on a primary with maths programme.

Many WLTSA schools choose unsalaried programmes and hope for the best in terms of recruitment but a few WLTSA schools try to make themselves more attractive to candidates by offering an additional school bursary. In the past schools have offered anything from about £3k to £11k and we can advise schools on appropriate wording for the conditions of any such bursary should they wish to offer one. Recruitment on primary programmes where the school is offering this additional bursary has been good this year.

SALARIED PRIMARY PROGRAMMES

Salaried programmes for primary are relatively expensive, but are chosen by many schools because recruitment is easier.  We filled all our places this year by Christmas. Additional places were released by DfE in April we anticipate filling all of these within the next month. 

Sacred Heart High School (as the Teaching School for WLTSA) receives EFA funding for each recruited salaried trainee.  The level of this funding for 2017-18 is shown below but please be aware that the 2018-19 cohort funding is unlikely to be published until Sept 2017, after the closing date for requesting places!   Requests for places have to be made 'assuming funding remains constant', but you can pull out when we inform you of 2018-19 funding levels if you need to.

From this figure WLTSA deducts our own fee of £850, plus the UCAS fee of £25, plus the university fees/tuition fees which we pay. These fees vary depending on which route you choose, see below.  However whatever money is then left over is passed to you as the host school to help subsidise the trainee's salary and on costs which you pay. You cannot pay less than the lowest notch on the unqualified teacher pay range

See examples of this calculation below:

Salaried Primary QTS with St Mary’s £3,000

The advantage of a ‘QTS only’ programme for the school is that the trainee is in school for more time and the tuition fees paid by WLTSA are less than for a PGCE. The trainee attends 13 days at university across the year on a Monday.  They are with you at the host school for all other time other than the second school placement which is approx. 6 weeks post Feb half term up to the Easter holidays.

Assuming you are in Inner London and you choose a general primary programme (as opposed to ‘with maths’) WLTSA would receive £11,400 from EFA and deduct our own £850 fee and the UCAS fee £25 and St Marys QTS fees. You would receive £7,525 towards the salary and on-costs. Assuming the salary (and on-costs) to amount to c£26k this leaves a residual overall cost to the school of approx. £18,475. 

Salaried Primary PGCE(M)+QTS with Roehampton

Roehampton does not offer any salaried QTS only programmes.  We do not normally recommend salaried primary PGCE(M) + QTS because the university fees would be higher for the PGCE and the trainee would be out of school for much more time making the entire process uneconomic.  However we do have an arrangement with Roehampton that reduces these costs if you particularly want to include the PGCE but the route still remains more expensive than the more common QTS only route, unless you choose Primary with Maths.

We have an arrangement with Roehampton where we deliver part of their training through a series of twilights at Fox Primary School. The university PGCE fees are reduced by more than we pay Fox for this training which represents a saving for our schools should they wish to use this route and we can reduce the number of university days out needed, by providing our extra training after school. 

Trainee attends 21 university training days plus 12-15 Fox twilights + approx. 4 outstanding teaching days. The second placement is in Autumn 2.

For a standard primary programme (not with maths), and assuming Inner London, Sacred Heart as Teaching School for WLTSA would receive £11,400 from EFA.  We deduct the WLTSA £850 fee, the UCAS fee £25 and also the university and Fox fees you would therefore receive £4,975 towards the salary and on-costs. Assuming salary (and on-costs) to amount to about £26k this leaves a residual cost to the school of approx. £22,025. 

The EFA funding is higher for Primary with Maths and all other fees are the same, so the residual cost to an inner London school would be £14,825.