Education Secretary Charles Clarke is to offer maths graduates a host of incentives in a bid to increase teacher numbers and head off a recruitment crisis in the subject.

He will announce plans today to lift the cap on salaries for maths teachers, so that the best-performing and most highly-qualified could earn as much as '60,000.

Government bursaries for teacher-training in subjects affected by staff shortages will be increased from '1,000 to '7,000 for maths, a Department for Education spokesman confirmed.

Newly-qualified maths teachers also will benefit from an increase in "golden hello" payments when they take on their first post, from '4,000 to '5,000.

Teachers with qualifications in other subjects are also to be offered training in taking maths lessons to boost the number of available staff.

Meanwhile, GCSE courses are set to be restructured so that more students can aspire to the C grade in maths seen as the minimum acceptable to employers and universities.

At present, students may take one of three maths papers at GCSE - the hardest offering possible results ranging from A* to C, the next B to E and the easiest D to G. Under the new plans, the system would be streamlined into two papers, allowing even those pupils not predicted to do well to achieve a C.

The proposals are included in Mr Clarke's 50-page response, to be released today, to a damning report on the state of maths teaching.

Shortage

Professor Adrian Smith's inquiry into post-14 maths, published in February, estimated that England was short of between 3,400 and 3,800 teachers, equivalent to more than one for every comprehensive in the country.

"The shortage of specialist mathematics teachers teaching mathematics is the most serious problem we face in ensuring the future supply of sufficient young people with appropriate mathematical skills," the report said.

Prof Smith warned that ministers and the teaching profession, which does not like differential pay rates, would have to get used to the idea that "market forces" should dictate salaries for maths graduates, who can earn far more in the City or in professions like accountancy.