asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what steps he is taking to recruit people to train or retrain as teachers of shortage subjects.

A Government advertising campaign, to recruit applicants to training and retraining courses in 1980–81 and to make known the availablity of financial support, was launched on 6 January. It will run for a month. The aim is to recruit men and women to train or retrain to teach mathematics, the physical sciences, business studies, and craft, design and technology in secondary schools. Copies of an explanatory booklet are being sent to every local education authority in England and Wales and also to those who reply to the advertisement.