Most early career framework (ECF) teacher mentors think the support package for new teachers has no impact on retention, a new report has revealed.
Almost eight in 10 (78 per cent) of mentors involved in the ECF think the support will neither increase nor decrease the retention of ECTs.
And four in five ECTs and mentors alike said the training received as part of the framework was not well-designed.
In a new report from Teacher Tapp and the Gatsby Foundation, a survey of 300 ECTs, around 500 of their mentors and over 1,000 senior leaders, found just 13 per cent and 6 per cent of secondary and primary mentors respectively believed the ECF would increase retention
Just one in 10 ECTs and mentors thought the training was a “good use of time”.
One of the main concerns raised about the ECF since its inception has been workload.
In December 2021, a survey revealed that a third of school leaders feared the ECF would drive people out of the profession.
And the new report published today revealed that in August, 72 per cent of ECTs felt the framework added to their workload.
While the report highlighted that ECTs “arguably do not have a good reference point since they were not in the profession prior to the reform”, it also found that 65 per cent of mentors think the framework “adds too much to the workload of the ECF”.
And almost six in 10 mentors (59 per cent) said their workload is too high as a result.
Prioritise specialised study material
The report also found that half of ECTs thought “further specialisation of self-study material should be a priority”.
Only 2 per cent of mentors and 4 per cent of ECTs said the self-study material was “specialised to their subject or phase”.
Meanwhile, only a third of ECTs said the self-study materials were clear and a quarter felt they gave good advice.
And “further specialisation of external training was also raised by a third of mentors, who also wanted further professional development to help them deliver the ECF”.
More than half of mentors thought a “weakness” of the ECF was that it is not subject- or phase-specific enough.
The report found that 60 per cent of secondary phase mentors held this view. And only 12 per cent of ECTs and 11 per cent of mentors said the materials applied to their context.
And more than half (56 per cent) of mentors said the ECF repeated “too much that is covered during initial teacher training”.
However, the report also highlighted that teachers who responded to the survey “were generally supportive of the concept of the ECF” and wanted to “help refine it further and make it successful”.
Only 9 per cent of mentors and 13 per cent of school leaders thought the government should “entirely scrap the reforms”, despite there being “areas they wanted to see improved”, the survey found.
It also found that respondents believed the ECF had potential to boost early career teacher retention if improved.
Commenting on the findings, Hilary Spencer, chief executive of Ambition Institute, one of the providers of ECF, said: It’s clear that people want and value flexibility, and it’s encouraging that 9 out of 10 respondents want the programme to continue and to keep supporting early career teachers.
“The early career framework has just started its second year of national roll-out and, while it is still early days, we are encouraged by findings from our most recent data: of just under 8,000 participants, 4 out of 5 people are satisfied or very satisfied with the programme so far. ”
She added: “We welcome feedback, and are committed to working with teachers, mentors and school leaders to make sure that the early career framework is effective.”
In March of this year, then schools minister Robin Walker wrote to schools to set out ECF changes, admitting the scheme needed “more flexibility” and promising that the DfE was “making improvements”.
He said that to “help” with the implementation, the DfE would be “reviewing materials to make them as user-friendly as possible” as well as a number of other moves to ease the transfer to the ECF.
