All schools must be “mandated” to provide placements for trainee teachers, school-based initial teacher training (ITT) providers say.
The National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT), in its manifesto document focusing on the future of ITT - published today and seen by Tes - says that schools and trusts “must be required to open their doors to trainee teachers” in the “short to medium term”.
And the organisation is calling for any future government to implement a “reward scheme to incentivise schools to fully engage in ITT”.
Trainees must complete at least two school placements over 24 weeks during their ITT course, but these placements are currently only offered by schools on a voluntary basis.
The NASBTT manifesto comes as schools continue to battle a teacher recruitment and retention crisis, with the government missing its target for the recruitment of secondary teacher trainees by 50 per cent this year.
Teacher training policy proposals
NASBTT has published its policy wishlist as voters head to the polls in the general election today. Labour has pledged to recruit 6,500 new teachers, while the Conservative government was seeking to refresh its workforce strategy before the election was called in May.
The manifesto document also says that teacher training “needs to be affordable and free to everyone”.
However, it recommends that those teachers who choose to leave the state sector for the private sector or move abroad to teach should repay training fees.
NASBTT is also calling for the Department for Education to commission research into “why undergraduates are not choosing teaching as a career option”.
“We need to understand why young people are not considering or choosing a career in teaching, and use the evidence from that to inform action. This would be a major step forward,” says the NASBTT document.
The manifesto also claims that when discussing recruitment, it is important to “not ignore the fundamental issue of funding for ITT and what providers need going forward”.
“Income for ITT providers has not risen above the cap of £9,250 for many years (or in line with inflation) whilst salaries and the cost of goods and services have increased dramatically in that timescale,” the document says.
“We cannot continue to be asked to deliver more with ever less resource. A hard and realistic scrutiny needs to be undertaken to ascertain what funds are really needed to continue to deliver high-quality ITT.”
Extending retention payments
The NASBTT manifesto repeats calls for any teacher retention bonuses to be distributed over years three, four and five to “encourage retention over a longer period”.
Labour has said that it would review the way bursaries are allocated and the structure of retention payments if it is elected to form the next government.
NASBTT also calls for the introduction of a fully funded teacher professional development lead in schools “to ensure that mentoring becomes an integral part of every school”.
And amid increasing pressure on teachers to be “social workers and mental health professionals alongside a whole other host of roles outside of teaching”, NASBTT says that if schools are to be expected to take on these roles, “then a fundamental re-evaluation of the system needs to take place and schools will need to be funded and staffed differently”.
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