Too few teacher trainers have a “sufficiently ambitious” curriculum, and too many are “overly reliant” on experience gained through placements, Ofsted has found.

The watchdog also concluded that, while many initial teacher education (ITE) providers - “partnerships” - found “innovative” ways of engaging trainees to make up for lost time in the classroom during the pandemic, these efforts were “unlikely to be enough to provide trainees with full and rounded ITE”.

In a new research report published today, Ofsted evaluated how providers responded to the Covid crisis, and how the teacher training curriculum has been developed.

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Among Ofsted’s main findings were:

• Too few partnerships have a sufficiently ambitious ITE curriculum. For example, only a minority of partnerships could demonstrate that they had incorporated trainees’ statutory minimum curriculum entitlement into their plans, and very few had gone beyond it.
• Too many partnerships are overly reliant on the experiences that trainees gain through placements to provide ITE curriculum content in subjects and phases.
• While many partnerships have found innovative methods for enabling trainees to make up for lost time in the classroom due to Covid-19, these efforts are unlikely to be enough to provide trainees with full and rounded ITE.

Ofsted said all leaders were aware of the statutory minimum curriculum entitlement for trainees, as set out in the new Core Content Framework (CCF). 

Ofsted concerns about teacher training

However, “most had not yet fully incorporated it into their ITE curriculum plans”, the watchdog found.

“A small number of partnerships could demonstrate that they had fully incorporated the CCF into their plans, but very few had designed a curriculum that was more ambitious than this minimum entitlement. Many partnerships were still incorrectly relying on the Teachers’ Standards, a summative assessment tool for trainees, as the basis for their curriculum design,” it added.

The inspectorate raised particular concerns about a lack of time dedicated to training teacher hopefuls in the use of systematic synthetic phonics (SSP).

“In early years, some partnerships said they had revised their ITE curriculum content to include more subject-specific training in teaching early reading, including SSP and early mathematics,” the report said.

“In other partnerships, trainees did not gain a sufficient understanding of, or competency in, teaching early reading, including SSP, either before or during their placements.

“In one case, the partnership spent only two to three hours covering SSP before trainees went on placements, under the broad umbrella of ‘debates in early reading and writing’. In many partnerships, insufficient time was given to SSP, and so trainees were not clear what sounds children should know and by when.”

There was a similar pattern with training in foundation subjects at primary level.

“Not only was little thought given to subjects such as modern foreign languages and music, but many of the partnerships only dedicated one day of centre-based training for each foundation subject,” the report said.

“Centre-based training for these foundation subjects is generally provided later in the academic year. However, many trainees are expected to teach foundation subjects across the academic year in line with the placement school’s ITE curriculum. This means that trainees have to teach the foundation subjects before receiving any training in them.

“To mitigate this, some course leaders have provided online resources and literature to review, to help trainees prepare to teach lessons in the foundation subjects. In other cases, placement schools wait for trainees to be trained in the foundation subjects before they start teaching them.

“However, this training is sometimes squeezed in at the end of the year, which means trainees do not have sufficient opportunities to practise in the classroom.”

Building on its concerns about a heavy reliance on in-school experience, Ofsted warned that some curricula “contained very little subject-specific content to be taught during centre-based training, and so the quality of education depended mainly on what happened during the school or college placements”.

“Trainees were sometimes asked to teach subjects before they had any training in them at all,” it said.

In other cases, Ofsted said, “mentors relied on trainees to let them know what they had already learned and what they wanted to work on”.

It added: “This was particularly apparent in early years and primary, where learning the fundamentals of phase and subject (for example, early reading) is essential.

“Not only is this placement-reliant approach to the ITE curriculum unlikely to give trainees a high-quality education, it has also left the ITE sector particularly vulnerable to the impact of Covid-19, which has significantly narrowed the range of teaching experiences trainees have had.”

The watchdog said that the sector “must now develop stronger and more ambitious ITE curriculums”.

“This means developing curriculums that are better designed around subject and phase, more integrated across the partnership, and more informed by up-to-date and pertinent research,” it said.

Responding to the report, James Noble-Rogers, executive director of the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers, said: “We welcome Ofsted’s recognition of the ITE sector’s outstanding response to the pandemic in respect of supporting student teachers and partner schools.

“Both SCITT [school-based initial teacher trainer] and HEI [higher education institution] providers deserve a lot of praise for this. Covid-19 necessitated a refocusing of priorities, including those in relation to the Core Content Framework, which was introduced during the height of the pandemic in September 2020.

“This is acknowledged by Ofsted when it refers to 2020-21 being a transitional year in respect of curriculum implementation. As we, hopefully, emerge from the pandemic, the sector will move forward and rise to new challenges as it always has done.”

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “There is food for thought...in Ofsted’s finding that too few providers have a sufficiently ambitious teacher training curriculum, and this will clearly need to be an area of increased focus given the vital importance of ensuring that prospective teachers receive the best possible preparation for the classroom.”