Requiring all teacher trainers to undergo a reaccreditation process could help ensure providers have “upfront quality” from the outset, according to the chair of the expert group advising the government on sweeping reforms to the sector.

Asking providers to reapply for the right to bring in new recruits would also make sure the “evidence base” for initial teacher training (ITT) was “hardwired in from the beginning”, Ian Bauckham said - adding that he believed there were no “obvious ways” of achieving this by other means.

Speaking at a event held this morning by the Department for Education, Mr Bauckham insisted that the proposals borne out of the government’s controversial ITT review would not “destroy...what is already there” in the sector.

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But he also indicated that the DfE had not finished costing the review’s proposals, with “impact assessments” yet to be fed back to ministers.

The expert group appointed to draw up plans for a more “effective and efficient” ITT market set out 14 key proposals for reform in its long-awaited report last month, including the suggestion that all providers should go through a “rigorous” process of reaccreditation.

Guided by a new set of “quality requirements” for the sector, the DfE said this reaccreditation process could be completed by September 2022 - with successful applicants set to launch their “new” ITT courses the following year.

Asked today about the reasoning behind putting all providers through reaccreditation, Mr Bauckham said: “I think there probably is an argument that can be made about the importance of designing in upfront quality. So in other words, ensuring that the evidence base for initial teacher training is hardwired in from the beginning.

“And I’m not sure that there are obvious ways other than ensuring that it’s there at the points of accreditation, to make sure that happens.”

He added: “Of course you can have a kind of accountability framework, you can have an Ofsted framework which asks for these things, but that’s not quite the same thing as designing in the expectation that ITT is evidence-based from the start. So I think those are two slightly different things.

“But I understand the point that’s being made about workload, time and potential disruption, and we’re alive to that challenge and really interested in what people have got to say about the best way of doing that.”

Reacting to the event on social media, Rachel Lofthouse, professor of teacher education at Leeds Beckett University, called the comments “insulting”.

“So now we are told it’s essential ‘to design in upfront quality to ITT’,” she wrote. 

“I do find that insulting...This is the answer given when the question [is] about the risks of demanding reaccreditation off all ITT providers at short notice.”

Ok. So now we are told it’s essential ‘to design in upfront quality to ITT’. I do find that insulting #ITTMarketReview. This is the answer given when the question about the risks of demanding re-accreditation off all ITT providers at short notice.

- Rachel Lofthouse (@DrRLofthouse) August 11, 2021

Mr Bauckham was also asked by the event’s chair and head of the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT), Emma Hollis, why the expert group had opted for “system-wide reform” that could “destroy what is already there”, rather than “building on the excellence” in the sector.

He said: “It is absolutely about building on excellence, and none of this is going to, I don’t think, destroy - as you put it - what is already there.

“This is about building on everything that has been achieved, not only in the last decade but obviously before that, because initial teacher training goes back many, many decades in this country.”

But when asked if the expert group did an “impact assessment” to determine how the reforms would impact on certain communities, Mr Bauckham said this would fall under the DfE’s remit - and that “costing” of the proposals was still underway.

“Our job as a review group was to use the evidence to make recommendations,” he said.

“The implementation and the testing of the proposals and the costing of the proposals is a job which is being done now by the department. And we’re interested to hear what respondents say about that.

“And the department will in due course be feeding in its impact assessments to ministers to help them make their decision.”

Mr Bauckham also said he made “no apologies” for setting a “challenging bar” for the training of mentors.

“Any report on ITT which claimed to make recommendations about how to achieve quality, consistency and coherence right across the piece that didn’t set a high bar for the training of mentors quite honestly wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on,” he said. 

“So I’ve got absolutely no apologies for setting a challenging bar there.”

The proposed reforms are currently out for consultation - with responses due during the summer holidays, on 22 August.