The new Initial Teacher Training strategy

On 27 June 2011, the government published its proposals for reforming teacher training, building on the previous white paper The Importance of Teaching. This strategy document is intended to provide the basis for discussion with providers, teachers, head teachers, pupils, parents and the general public before the final policy is announced later this year and changes are put in place for courses starting in 2012. A brief summary of some of the key points is provided below.

You can make your voice heard by going to the DfE's consultation page by 29 July.

The TDA are hosting a series of consultation meetings about the strategy for current and potential providers of ITT. These meetings run between 4 and 12 July, and you can sign up on the TDA's website.

Funding

The fees for both PGCE and undergraduate teacher training programmes will be set on the same basis as other undergraduate courses, so up to £6,000 or £9,000 where a Fair Access agreement is in place. From 2012, providers will not receive grants from the government for running ITT courses, but the strategy envisages that funding per trainee from all sources will remain stable between 2011/12 and 2012/13. The Teaching Agency (which will replace some of the functions of the TDA) will provide some direct funding to support ITT programmes in parts of the country where tuition fees may not fully cover progamme costs where this is in the public interest.

Bursaries will be available for students, differentiated by the potential achievement of the trainee and the priority of the subject or phase. Trainees could be classified as having "outstanding", "good" or "satisfactory" potential (mapping to whether they have a first, upper second or lower second class degree) and the level of their bursary would reflect this. There will be no DfE funding for trainees who do not have a second class degree or higher. Consideration is also being given to provide higher bursaries to trainees who are recruited and selected by schools with high levels of free school meals.

Recruitment of trainees

There is a strong emphasis in the strategy on improving the quality of students recruited onto teacher training courses. The strategy document notes that currently more teachers are trained than go into the profession, and aims to reduce this wastage and raise entry criteria by becoming more selective, a move that is also reflected in differential bursary rates. Pre-entry tests in literacy and numeracy will be required for PGCE trainees, though ICT tests will no longer be required.

A single application gateway will be introduced that allows parallel applications to all providers. The allocation of numbers of places will be determined by quality of provision as judged by Ofsted inspections, as it is now, but also by the use of employability data, published by provider and subject.

Undergraduate ITT courses will continue to be allocated places from 2012/13, but recruits must be of “at least the same quality” as those on typical PGCE courses.

Partnerships and providers

The vision over the next five to ten years is of schools increasingly taking much of the responsibility from government for managing the system of initial teacher training. Universities are nevertheless expected to continue to play a role in most teacher training through their partnerships with schools, acting as providers to teaching schools, and the best universities will be encouraged to form University Training Schools. Reflecting this, the strength of partnerships between universities and schools will have a stronger emphasis in inspections, with shared staff between HEIs and schools, and representatives of HEIs on governing bodies to be applauded.

Teach First will be expanded and plans for Teach Next – for professionals with a few years work experience – will be developed. This strategy document sets out an aim to expand the Graduate Teaching Programme but recognises that the higher cost per trainee of this programme makes this difficult without asking for a greater contribution from the school. The requirement that GTP trainees are ‘supernumerary’ to a school’s core staff may therefore be removed and trainees allowed to take on more teaching responsibilities, allowing schools to include funding for trainees in their core staff budgets.

Finally, the content of teacher training programmes will have a greater focus on behaviour management, and for primary teachers, the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics.