Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Canterbury Christ Church University
Summary
This document provides a high level summary of views on the School Direct initiative from Canterbury Christ Church University. The University is working in over 50 partnerships to provide over 300 School Direct places in September 2013. We would be pleased to provide further evidence orally.
1. Positive Impacts of School Direct
The key positive developments from the introduction of School Direct are as follows:
A renewed energy and commitment at a whole school level in good and outstanding schools towards the training of good and outstanding teachers.
Innovative approaches to the recruitment of trainees, including stronger emphasis on encounters with pupils.
A growing understanding of the complexity of training new teachers, and in particular the value and challenge in combining academic and professional aspects of training.
A growing commitment amongst Teaching Schools and larger groups/federations/trusts of schools, towards ongoing accredited professional development, and the critical importance of this being part of the offer to new teachers.
The increasing interest in schools in engaging with research alongside trainee teachers as part of their training.
Increasing numbers of staff in schools becoming interested in being trained as higher educators, as part of their individual and school commitment to award-bearing ITT.
2. Key Challenges
Key challenges have been:
The scale of change and difficulties bedding in the new recruitment processes.
The lack of understanding in some schools of the length of the recruitment cycle and of the key difference in recruiting teachers with potential as opposed to “the finished article”.
The lack of accuracy in many schools’ estimation of the number of trainees that they could recruit.
The lack of clear planning in the way that the recruitment process was set up, which has enabled trainees to hold down multiple offers at the same time and made it very difficult to monitor progress towards targets.
The explicit favouring in DFE publicity of School Direct as a route into teaching, even including messages to trainees who have accepted offers of PGCE places from providers encouraging them to switch to School Direct.
The lack of capacity in the TA/NCTL to respond quickly and efficiently to provider and school concerns/queries and issues.
3. Key Risks
Key ongoing risks of the approach are:
The likely under-recruitment of allocated places, which combined with slower and more volatile recruitment to mainstream places is very likely to lead to a shortfall of teachers entering the profession in 2014–15.
The effect that the speed of change and skewing of the market towards School Direct is having on the capacity of existing good and outstanding providers of ITT, and in turn their ability to plan to support future development in the school sector.
The risks to quality of training with the introduction of so much rapid change and the loss of expertise in existing providers of ITT.
The anticipated increased emphasis on the market, as opposed to teacher supply modelling, driving the allocation of numbers and subject places for training.
4. Recommendations
Recommendations:
Reconsider the scale and pace of movement away from existing provision, in particular the removal of guaranteed allocations to good providers, in order to retain a greater capacity and expertise in the sector to support and quality assure school-led provision.
Retain the use of teacher supply modelling, including at a regional level, in order to retain a more accurate picture of the recruitment needs nationally than one based on the inaccurate predictions of individual head teachers.
Work with the outstanding providers to develop a network of support for new provision, to ensure greater quality assurance.
Reinforce the relationships between schools and universities by introducing the requirement that all teachers work towards Masters level academic accreditation as part of their professional development programme.
July 2013