Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the University of Sheffield
1. The University of Sheffield has actively engaged with the introduction of School Direct. A part-time member of staff has been employed to focus entirely on making School Direct a success, and his work has helped take us to our current strong position with a range of school clusters in the local area working in partnership with the University.
2. It is encouraging to realise just how strong our existing partnerships are. Almost all of the schools now working with us on School Direct have been involved in PGCE with The University of Sheffield and have specifically chosen to work with us because of the high quality of our trainees and their positive experiences of working with us in previous years. We welcome the opportunity to continue to strengthen and develop these relationships.
3. Nevertheless there are a number of issues which have arisen from the introduction of School Direct which will have a significant impact on the development of high quality teachers in the future.
4. One key issue following the introduction of School Direct is the difficulties it presents in terms of planning from year to year. For example, when bidding for places for 2014–15 we have to take into account the need for enough core places to ensure that courses run, whilst helping schools in our clusters to estimate how many new teachers they may need in two years’ time. Even with this information, there is no guarantee of the places that we request or that the schools request. We may then negotiate for additional places through the year. This makes planning for staffing and budgets very difficult given that we may not have a firm idea of our places until six months before the course start. This affects staff retention, and the ability of the University to invest in long term posts, and will therefore impact on our ability to recruit and retain the best teaching staff.
5. Our experience in recruiting this year (AY2013–14) suggests that applicants have a strong preference for the GTTR route as opposed to the School Direct route. This may be in part because School Direct is a new option which will take time to become established, however it also reflects the fact that potential students who do not know the local area are reluctant to commit to a particular set of schools with which they have no connection, preferring instead to train in a University with a good reputation and a wide range of schools in its partnership. The main way in which we have been able to help fill places for School Direct has been to redirect applicants from the standard PGCE route. We have been oversubscribed in all subjects, so this has not been a major problem. However, it seems strange to have to direct students away from their preferred route. We feel it is essential to maintain a substantial amount of ITE within universities in order to attract enough high quality trainees to meet the demand for teachers in South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire.
6. Whilst the introduction of School Direct is intended to meet demand for teachers on a local level, there is a great risk that the opposite will happen. Many schools in South Yorkshire do not have the capacity to engage with School Direct, and as core places are being reduced their chance of securing high quality trainee teachers on placement will also be reduced. As a result these trainee teachers are very unlikely to choose to work in the very schools that need them. At present, almost 70% of the PGCE students at the University of Sheffield secure employment locally. Tutors are aware of schools where teachers are needed and can actively promote recruitment to those schools through joint activity.
7. It has become clear that a significant number of schools in the local area do not wish to engage with the School Direct route, but as there are only “good” providers in the region (and thus vastly reduced core places) schools feel that the only way to ensure their continued involvement with ITE is by becoming involved with School Direct.
8. Through 2012–13 we have worked as accreditor with the School Direct pilot at a local Sheffield school. This has given us an insight into some of the challenges we may face when working with School Direct on a larger scale. In this case, the training led to a QTS qualification, and all training completed in school, the main issue that will be relevant for the future is that neither of the two students involved has secured teaching posts within their School Direct cluster, as intended at the start of the course. These students have entered the same job market as student teachers from any other route, and have not contributed to the teaching capacity of Barnsley schools as was originally hoped.
9. There are inefficiencies that come with the introduction of a system that works in small groups rather than large partnerships. The two main issues so far have been managing the interview process and selecting suitably contrasting placements for students. Interviewing procedures are extremely time-consuming for both schools and the HEI, especially as applications occur throughout the year often in small numbers; this has meant huge increases in workload for all concerned this year, and the same issue is likely to be present next year.
10. Offering two contrasting placements is easily achieved with a partnership of over 40 schools, but much more challenging in a cluster of six to 10 schools. In order to overcome this issue, we have offered to place some students on School Direct through our standard PGCE for their second placement. Whilst this in some ways defeats the object of School Direct, it seems to be the only pragmatic solution to provide the best experiences for the students.
11. Whilst we support a stronger role for schools in ITE, we are concerned about the pace of change without allowing time to recognise and solve problems as they arise means that we are currently in the position of having to make an impractical system work in order to ensure that the students’ experiences are positive, and that they choose to join the teaching profession.
July 2013