Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by THE CATHEDRALS GROUP

1. This submission comes from The Cathedrals Group (CG), an association of 16 universities with Church foundations. CG institutions provide a significant amount of England’s initial teacher training (30% of Primary ITT, 16% of Secondary and 40% of Key Stage 2/3 programmes)1 as well as offering continuing professional development for teachers.

Executive Summary

2. CG institutions work in close partnership with schools across all teacher training routes and are committed to developing School Direct training with partner schools. We are concerned that the speed and scale of the shift to School Direct provision for 2013–14 is destabilising the nation’s teacher education system overall. In particular our Members report the School Direct recruitment process this year demonstrated:

inadequate preparation of the new applications portal, with operational failures and frustrations that could have been avoided through better planning and understanding the particular needs of applicants, schools and higher education institutions (HEIs);

insufficient guidance to applicants, schools and HEIs; and

failure to coordinate entry opportunities across all training routes, for the benefit of applicants, schools and HEIs, to optimise recruitment and ensure regional provision and subject balance are maintained across the country.

Introduction of School Direct Application Process

3. CG institutions reported that the lead-in time for introducing the new 2013–14 process was inadequate and led to operational challenges for schools and HEIs. There was insufficient guidance on the process or time to prepare for the new requirements. A major concern for CG members was the lack of integration between the Schools Direct applications portal and other national application systems. In terms of postgraduate teaching applications, for 2013–14 the School Direct portal operated in parallel with but entirely separate from the GTTR, the traditional route for postgraduate teacher training applications, leading to confusion and duplication of applications across both routes. It was therefore difficult to identify overall trainee numbers and recruitment shortfalls in time for HEIs to respond appropriately. Although the new single admissions system planned for 2014–15 will address some of the issues experienced this year, additional changes will in the short-term add further complexities.

4. Late confirmation of ITT places to HEIs, from whom significant training places were cut in 2013–14 to enable growth of the School Direct route, reduced entry numbers to popular courses and made some subjects in some HEIs unsustainable. For some CG ITT providers, large numbers of ITT qualified applicants for popular courses had to be refused at a stage when other HEI routes were full, leaving applicants the choice of a School Direct route as their only option. Some high quality applicants have withdrawn from teaching as a result.

Issues Reported with the School Direct Application Portal

5. CG members report a large number of detailed operational inadequacies and system failures with the application portal this year. These include:

developmental limitations within the School Direct system that mean insufficient information is gathered from applicants for schools and HEIs to assess applications. This significantly exacerbated the administrative workload (eg no automatic request to referees for references requirement; no restriction on number of applications submitted by each applicant; inability to “close” subjects and signal to applicants that although places in some subjects were filled others were still open; no automatic alert to applicants when decision made by provider; no possibility for HEI partners to manage applications for separate School Direct partnerships separately on the system). Many of these operational difficulties, which created very significant additional administration burden for HEIs, could have been avoided by linking the School Direct portal to GTTR or by mirroring the applicant process requirements of GTTR in the School Direct system; and

technical problems with the School Direct system that created particular problems for schools and HEIs. These included problems: with identification of lead schools by postcode only, leading some schools within an alliance or trust to receive very few applications; sequencing of the steps in the application process (lead school first and phase second) enabled applications for primary places at lead schools without a primary allocation; and applications portal sometimes exported wrong application information.

Reported Applicant Experience

6. Applicants have been frustrated with the technical limitations of the School Direct portal which has made the application process slow and difficult to use. Lack of functionality has resulted in significant delays for applicants because applications have been time-consuming to process.

7. The applications portal has been very limiting for some students, eg overseas applicants were not able to list their qualifications, only what they think are the UK equivalents.

8. There has been a marked preference for two school placements within different schools (the PGCE route) as opposed to one school experience (the School Direct route).

Positive Comments on Operation of Application Process

9. Some CG Members reported positive outcomes from the 2013–14 School Direct application process:

Partner schools have established rigorous recruitment and selection processes, and now recognise the complexity of the work HEIs undertake in this area.

Partnerships between schools and HEIs have been strengthened.

Without the portal it is unlikely School Direct recruitment could have reached the levels it has.

July 2013