As can hardly have been missed, the schools white paper was published today, 24 November 2010, setting out the policy direction of the Coalition Government, including some radical proposals for changing the nature of initial teacher education (ITE) in England.
Drawing heavily on Michael Barber’s 2007 report for McKinsey and the think tank Policy Exchange’s 2008 report ‘More Good Teachers’, the white paper focuses on improving the quality of teaching through recruiting high-achieving academic graduates to the profession and shifting the balance of teacher education from universities to schools.
Graduates who do not have at least a 2:2 will not receive funding for initial teacher education from September 2012 and the recruitment process will include a more rigorous basic skills test with fewer opportunities for retakes, while assessments for aptitude, personality and resilience may also become part of the selection process. Incentives for recruiting good graduates in shortage subjects could take the form of paying off student loans or sponsoring degrees in return for a commitment to teach following graduation as currently happens in the armed forces.
More initial teacher training is to take place ‘on the job’, with school-centred initial teacher training (SCITT) and the graduate teacher programme being expanded, despite yesterday's report from Ofsted that a greater proportion of higher education-led partnerships were found to be outstanding than SCITT partnerships or employment-based routes. The paper envisages a national network of Teaching Schools, on the model of teaching hospitals, which would see schools leading initial training as well as continuing professional development of teachers and head teachers, with the National College providing quality assurance of Teaching Schools. Three key initiatives will be used to deliver this school-based training. First, the existing Teach First programme – which recruits academic high-flyers to teach before starting other careers – will be expanded, to train over 1000 teachers over the next five years. Alongside this will be ‘Teach Next’, recruiting professionals from other careers into teaching, offering a fast-track route to leadership roles, producing 200 new teachers by September 2013. Finally, the ‘Troops to Teachers’ programme will provide funding for graduates leaving the armed services to train as teachers. The key functions of the Teacher Development Agency in recruiting and training teachers will be transferred to the DfE by 2012.
Exactly what this means for universities and university-led courses such as the B.Ed., M.Ed. and PGCE is not explicitly spelt out, though the direction suggests that PGCEs may become more school and teacher-led while B.Eds may see their support reduced. A consultation on funding initial teacher education will open in early 2011 which should provide more detail on the future funding arrangements of these courses. With the predicted number of new teachers produced by Teach First and Teach Next relatively modest at fewer than 1,500 over the next five years, university education departments may continue to have an important role to play, though perhaps in quite a different way. Some higher education institutions will be invited to open University Training Schools, based on the Chicago ‘lab schools’ model.
A review of teacher performance standards and codes of conduct and new QTS standards will also have important implications for the content of initial teacher education programmes, likely to see the foregrounding of synthetic phonics, early mathematics, behaviour management and SEN. Universities may also be asked to work with the National College to develop new qualifications for the National Professional Qualification for Headship from September 2011.
As the recent Ofsted report showed, universities working in partnership with schools provide outstanding initial teacher education. Strengthening and developing these partnerships with schools, possibly through models such as Lab Schools may support strong programmes that draw together experience of ‘on the job’ teaching with a toolkit of knowledge and practices. A programme of continuous professional development that allowed teachers to learn from their peers as well as accessing useful evidence and support from universities and other providers should also be welcomed. Removing universities from the equation altogether would seem unlikely to raise the status of teachers, and would cut off the teaching profession from the latest evidence and understanding in education. At present, schools can already be reluctant to take part in teacher training partnerships due to time and finance constraints and their priorities of teaching the learners in their care; schools that are outstanding at teaching children are also not necessarily equipped with the resources, time, knowledge and skills to provide all of a new graduate’s initial teacher education. Schools working in partnership with higher education institutions can provide a more thorough and balanced initial teacher education than a purely school-centred route.
ESCalate will continue to support and work with university and FE education departments to provide initial teacher education programmes.
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