Just two people responded to a national consultation about the administration of early career payments to maths teachers.

However, the Department for Education says it is not planning to repeat the consultation which was hosted on the gov.uk pages for two weeks at the end of July as well as emailed out in its Teacher Recruitment Bulletin.

Maths teachers today said the consultation should have been better promoted, including through social media, especially in light of teacher shortages in the subject.

Corinne Angier, honorary secretary of The Association of Teachers of Mathematics (ATM), said there was “downright inequity” in the current incentive for recruitment. She said that those who train through the longer undergraduate route received a tiny subsidy compared with graduates taking a PGCE.

She said: “The DfE would have done better to ask the subject associations to publicise the consultation and to use Twitter. 

“It might have been better targeted at heads of department and senior leaders who are responsible for recruitment. I am not surprised serving teachers are uninterested in new people receiving more money than they have!”

She added: “But the DfE needs to do more than this. It needs to properly engage with all stakeholders to evaluate what has been done so far. There needs to be a model which shows where the trainee teachers are coming from as well as how they are going to be supported and how they are going to get ongoing support.”

The pilot early careers payment scheme began this term. Under the scheme, PGCE students on the postgraduate secondary mathematics initial teaching training (ITT) are receiving a tax-free “phased bursary” of £20,000 (or a £22,000 scholarship) followed by two tax-free payments of £5,000 (or 7,500 for some local authorities) in their third and fifth year of teaching.

This compares to up-front payments of £26,000 (without further payments in subsequent years) to teachers in other key subjects such as science and languages.

The results of the consultation, and the comments made by the two respondents, can be viewed here.

The DfE refused to comment to Tes on whether it was disappointed by the number of respondents, and said it would not repeat the consultation.

The ATM also said this week that teaching assistants were teaching maths in some schools.

A new report by the Education Policy Institute states that half of maths teachers leave the profession within five years of qualifying.