Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Bishop Grosseteste University

We support the submissions of UCET, TEAG and the Cathedrals Group.

We wish to expand on our concerns regarding teacher supply in the current context of School Direct.

1. The Great Teachers report focused almost exclusively on the quality of teachers. We have contributed to and support the submissions from UCET, TEAG and the Cathedrals Group which we will not repeat in detail here. In particular we are concerned about the mistaken premise that university teacher training is not school based; the practical failings of school direct (unrealistic timescales; lack of systems to support applicants and schools); and the challenge of persuading applicants to consider this new route. In common with other providers we have made strenuous efforts to make the new route work, despite the problems inherent in the rushed introduction of the system, but have found it challenging both to encourage qualified applications to school direct rather than our own routes, and to support our school partners to move through the necessary recruitment checks in the demanding timescales required, absent national systems support.

2. Less attention has been paid to the issue of teacher supply and the impact of recent changes in this area. We also have significant concerns that current arrangements are not sufficient to provide the supply of trained teachers the system requires.

3. The present Government has in some respects relaxed its control of teacher supply, tasking the TA with ensuring teacher supply only for shortage areas and then, with the formation of the National College for Teaching and Leadership, removing any requirement for the new body to ensure the supply of a sufficient quantity of teachers (see remit of NCTL on DfE website). Whilst some new routes to qualified teacher status, notably School Direct, are not subject to number control, other routes remain tightly controlled with the emerging result that insufficient trainees are coming through the system.

4. The NCTL continues to control the number of new teachers emerging through some routes (primarily those operated by universities) whilst effectively leaving number control overall to the determination of market forces.

5. The current partial deregulation threatens the supply of qualified teachers in several ways:

(i)School Direct only involves a relatively small proportion of schools at this point and even were it to reach the government target of supplying 50% of teachers by 2015 the market forces element would only be affecting half of the teacher supply. Without the parallel operation of a national and/or regional teacher supply model, without a body charged with overseeing the quantity of teachers being trained, and with politically motivated pressures on the NCTL to reduce the influence of universities on the supply of teachers, the levels of teacher supply through the centrally controlled sector will be unpredictable.

(ii)School Direct is essentially a short-term market-driven system. Schools are training teachers for their own employment and do not have the data to see more than two years ahead in most cases. School Direct schools do not, nor are they encouraged to, see their role as to bring teachers into the profession as a whole. The consequence of this is that the system is unstable and unable to provide long term planning.

(iii)School Direct is based on the schools we have now. Demographic changes mean that many new primary schools are needed over the next few years and secondary schools will return to growth in pupil numbers. To ensure there are sufficient teachers in the system for even the near future requires growth in trainee numbers outside of School Direct.

(iv)School Direct has demonstrated this year that it is not able to recruit to target. The targets are based on market need (identified by the schools) but the schools are unable to meet that market need. With the refusal of the NCTL to allow transfer of training places to other non-School Direct providers, this creates real concern about supply of qualified teachers in the short and longer term.

6. Taking School Direct together with the traditional ITE sector and other recently established routes (such as Teach First and Troops to Teaching) there is evidence that there is sufficient appetite within the system to train enough teachers for the needs of the nation. But one part of the system (university based routes) is subject to artificial constraints on numbers. In a more fully deregulated system schools could decide for themselves which training routes they most valued through their employment decisions. This approach would have the advantage of reducing administrative costs currently incurred in minutely controlling the distribution of training places and of encouraging innovation from the front line as well as from the agencies of Government.

July 2013