“Colleagues, we’ve reached that time in the year when we must sadly offer our thanks and farewells to school titles, acronyms and abbreviations, heading off to pastures new. 

Though, I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t always been sorry to see them go. When, for instance, our school followed the national trend and replaced the passive-sounding “SMT” (senior management team) with the far more pioneering and Indiana Jonesy “SLT” (senior leadership team), it completely changed everything around here, even without the team itself having to change at all. I think we’re all agreed on that? 

Others will recall the collective celebration when we all replaced the hopeless, self-centred “PPD” (personal professional development) with the much more driven “CPD”: continuing professional development. Ever since that small but incisive change, few teachers have looked back. 

But this summer’s leaver, my friends, was a name that we have all loved and cherished from the day it first arrived. I am deeply sad to see it go. Yes, it’s a regretful end-of-term end of term for “NQT”.  

New teachers: Farewell, then, NQT

“NQT” joined us way back in 1999, this new name bringing much-needed light into our world following the overdue dismissal of the long-serving but slightly dubious “probationer teacher”. 

“Probationer” lasted throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s - I was one myself - but there was always something slightly destabilising about operating under that name. Then, as now, it was a term that parents and children would more readily associate with crime than with creative new talent. 

The name long outstayed its welcome. I never heard people shorten it to “PT”, which says it all, really. You know something’s seriously wrong when schools don’t abbreviate. It had to go. Though I am happy to say that the term “probationer” is still popular in schools North of the border.

“NQT” seemed the perfect bright and wholesome contrast. The mere utterance of those letters created a smile, the whole sound somehow suggestive of fresh hope, energy and fun. It made us think of those old TV adverts for Timotei shampoo, with visions of happy NQTs all running aimlessly through meadows, luxuriant manes of hair flowing behind them. 

The NQT is dead. Long live the ECT

So, “NQT”, I am genuinely heartbroken to see you go and all that you meant to us. It has been an absolute delight to use and hear your name all these years, and I’m still not quite sure why you’re leaving us. 

But, as we know, even the best names have to be sent packing sooner or later. That’s what we do in schools. 

From September, we welcome in its place “ECT”, short for “early career teacher”. Some of you may question whether it was necessary to have a new name and to add on an extra year to the induction process, but let’s at least be civil. 

Do at least get used to the new term “ECT”, and cast to the back of your mind any thought of those ECG crises you may have sat through watching Casualty, Holby City, House, etc. (And try not to confuse it with “etc” either.) 

Let’s give this young new name a chance. As I have illustrated, if you look back at the track record of new names in education, you’ll see what absolute life-changers they can be.”

Stephen Petty is head of humanities at Lord Williams’s School in Thame, Oxfordshire