Implications of the white paper for HEI's working with schools.

On 31 January I attended a UCET (University Council for the Education of Teachers) seminar at Sheffield Hallam University on the implications of the white paper for working with schools. Higher education institutions (HEIs) were well-represented in the audience (several were from new universities), with some school and college leaders, education consultants, and people from education agencies such as the TDA.

The focus of the afternoon was on partnership work, specifically around Teaching Schools, with workshops on how HEIs can respond to the recent DfE white paper “The Importance of Teaching”.

Julie Hughes, from the Teachers’ Development Agency (TDA), outlined the changes and uncertainty about TDA’s funding and future role, and described changes in how they were working with schools. At the end of November, they put out a call for schools who were interested in working with the TDA on leadership and partnership. It was made clear that no funding was available for this, and schools would be responsible for funding their own participation. The response to this call was far greater than the TDA expected – more than 260 school partnerships responded (most with some kind of HEI involvement). In all, 3138 schools were represented (secondary, primary and special schools), with group sizes ranging from 3 or 4 schools up to 30 or more schools. Around 43% of these partnerships were led by Training Schools. Julie felt that schools were very aware that they were now responsible for their own CPD and school improvement, and were looking within partnerships for knowledge and expertise about their own particular context and appropriate models to deal with their own problems.

There was an underlying message that HEIs need to actively promote themselves to schools as training providers. Even though more Teaching Schools are being set up, they will not have the capacity to cope with the numbers of trainee teachers. Furthermore, as members of the audience pointed out, HEIs bring a distinct fund of knowledge that simply is not available in teaching schools particularly around theory and research in relation to practice. The TDA was attempting to promote itself here as a partnership broker, acting as a link between schools and HEIs.

Jonathan Gore from the National College was the final speaker. He did not give much of an indication of the National College engaging with HEIs at all – there was little clarity on what role the National College envisages for HEIs. Perhaps this is because the National College sees itself as a competitor with HEIs when it comes to teacher training?

On the ground, there was little certainty about what the future will hold. There is, as yet, no clear direction on what University Training Schools will be, and how these will sit alongside Teaching Schools. The purpose of the workshops at this meeting was to discuss how HEIs can influence the direction of this to our (relative) advantage. The environment is not yet fixed, and there is much that is able to be influenced, particularly in terms of process. A summary of the points raised at the workshops will be circulated later. For now, though, it is clear that many universities will be pushing to be involved with school partnerships around training schools. We need to be at the forefront of this, leading the way in working with schools, not following others.

Jo Rose, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol