The “best” teacher training providers will be given allocations over “several years” in a bid to improve planning in the system, the government has announced in its White Paper today.
The commitment to longer-term planning comes six months after a new method of recruitment for university-led providers was introduced by the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL).
Since September, higher education institutions (HEIs) have faced national caps on the number of trainees they can recruit in a bid to provide “moderate growth” in the school-led routes, such as School Direct and SCITTs. HEIs have complained this system has caused chaos.
In the White Paper it says: “Providers often find it difficult to build sustainable courses when they only have certainty about the next year’s cohort of trainees. We will therefore explore ways to allocate training places to the best providers for multiple years, giving them greater confidence to plan their delivery in the years ahead and invest in the staff and infrastructure they need.
“We will also withhold future allocations of training places from providers unable to meet the quality criteria.”
James Noble-Rogers, director of the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers, welcomed the longer-term planning proposal, adding: “We need a model of schools-led teacher education that meets the needs of all schools, not only those involved in School Direct or SCITTs.”
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