An organisation representing more than 200 teacher training providers across the country has warned of “a catastrophic risk to the teacher supply chain” as a result of government plans to shake-up the initial teacher training (ITT) market.
The National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT) says smaller providers will be disproportionately affected by the proposed changes, which would involve providers having to get reaccreditation and the market being “centralised” in the hands of a smaller number of larger providers.
In a response to the Department for Education consultation on the proposed changes, which launched last week, NASBTT states: “We are extremely concerned that the language throughout the report leans towards a suggestion that the quality requirements can only be delivered effectively if they are developed at scale.”
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NASBTT adds: “Rural schools, schools in hard-to-reach areas and schools in disadvantaged areas are unlikely to be attractive to applicants who have applied to a large provider who is geographically local to them, but at a distance to those schools. If local providers were to lose their accreditation, they are unlikely to be able to partner with larger institutions who are located at a distance from them.”
Warnings over planned teacher training reforms
NASBTT questions how a reaccreditation process would be more effective in identifying quality than the current Ofsted inspection process.
It states: “We would wish to see the plans for where the capacity exists within the DfE to undertake such an enormous process at such short notice, and seek to understand how this process will be designed to identify quality ITT provision from a paper-based exercise more effectively than Ofsted are able to do through their full inspection process.”
Today, Ofsted published findings from 11 ITT inspections carried out under a new framework, which highlighted findings in five providers and downgraded two to “inadequate”. Previously, all providers were rated “good” or “outstanding”.
Meanwhile, 35 out of 40 university initial teacher training providers have already said they may pull out of the market amid fears that the government is about to introduce a new system of short-term contracts under the plan.
Together they train more than 10,000 new teachers a year, representing at least a third of current provision.
Teaching union leaders also expressed concern about the plans at this week’s meeting of the Commons Education Select Committee.
Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said he was worried about the DfE “rushing” the review. He said: “We’re worried about universities pulling out because they won’t want to be dictated to by other universities, and that we might be putting too much demand on schools and they might pull out of the training.”
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said “Doing any review over a summer holiday isn’t great.”
Committee member Ian Mearns, Labour MP for Gateshead, said that, of 87 training hubs, none were based in either Kent or Sussex, and that Oxford and Cambridge universities were among the providers that had expressed concerns about the plans.
In a letter to the education secretary, Emma Hollis, executive director of NASBTT, said: “We have a number of grave concerns about some of the recommendations around structures and partnerships, the speed of implementation and, in particular, the recommendation for all provers to undergo reaccreditation.
“Our primary fear is that these recommendations, taken collectively, represent an immediate and catastrophic risk to the teacher supply chain and to the quality and availability of provision.”
Under the plans, all teacher training providers would need to be reaccredited in order to continue recruiting from September 2022.
School standards minister Nick Gibb said: “We want this country to be the best place to become a great teacher, and that starts with high-quality initial teacher training.
“The proposed changes would build upon the ambitious reforms the government has implemented to create a golden thread of training, support and professional development, informed by high-quality evidence, which will run through each phase of a teacher’s career.”
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