Recruitment of teachers onto the government-funded national professional qualifications (NPQs) only hit a fifth of the Department for Education’s three-year target at the end of its first year in operation, new data published this morning has revealed.
The DfE said it aimed to deliver 150,000 NPQ participant places over three years from autumn 2021 until the end of the 2023-24 academic year.
However, there were just 29,425 funded NPQ course starts in the academic year 2021-22 - just under a fifth of the total target.
It comes after the DfE launched reformed courses in autumn 2021, replacing the 2017 programmes.
Since October 2021, fully funded scholarships have been available to teachers and leaders working in state-funded educational settings to participate in NPQ courses.
In the research report, published by the DfE today, NPQ providers said that “recruitment across the first two cohorts was lower than they had forecast”.
Providers said they believed that there were “multiple factors” for the lower recruitment, but that “it was primarily due to Covid-19 and the significant strain that this continues to place upon an already-stretched sector”.
One school leader said: “It’s tough in schools at the moment and it’s quite hard work, so people haven’t got the headspace to think, ‘I want to do a qualification.’”
‘Lack of communication’ from the DfE
Almost one-fifth of teachers (19 per cent) undertaking an NPQ this year said they “were not aware that the NPQs had been recently reformed”.
The survey covered 3,250 NPQ participants in the second cohort.
Awareness was higher among middle leaders, with only 13 per cent not aware of the reforms. Meanwhile, just 8 per cent of those in senior leadership team (SLT) positions were unaware.
The report said that providers and participants blamed “a lack of teacher- and leader-facing communication from the DfE” around the reforms for the low levels of awareness within the sector.
Some providers also suggested that schools had “limited time to process new information” owing to the “ongoing impact of Covid-19, budgetary cuts, the requirement to deliver catch-up initiatives and the introduction of wider changes such as the ECF [Early Career Framework]”.
Among those who did encounter any challenges or barriers when applying for their NPQ, the most common concern was finding the time to complete the qualification outside of working hours, with just under half citing this concern (45 per cent).
