The country’s only university solely for education research and teacher training is to merge with University College London (UCL).
The Institute of Education (IOE) will join forces with UCL from Tuesday, creating a new institution of more than 35,000 students.
Last academic year, IOE had 7,975 students; 2,255 were for teacher training places.
The IOE will join UCL as a single faculty school, and will be known as the UCL Institute of Education. Both have confirmed there will be no redundancies at either institution.
The IOE said the merger will enable it to strengthen its teacher education provision and could help to recruit teachers in shortage areas such as maths and science.
Katharine Vincent, secondary PGCE programme leader at IOE, said: “We are obviously building on very strong foundations: the IOE is the biggest single provider of initial teacher education (ITE) in the country and all our ITE programmes are rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted. We also have very strong partnerships with schools and colleges in London and the south east of England, and work with them to deliver a wide range of programmes including the PGCE, School Direct and Teach First.
“The merger will bring many additional benefits, including the opportunity to build stronger relationships with UCL undergraduate programmes.
“This could have advantages in relation to progression from undergraduate programmes and could help with recruitment to ITE, especially in shortage subjects such as maths and science.”
Professor Michael Arthur, UCL president & provost, said: “There is genuine excitement within both institutions as we believe this merger will deliver significant advances in the fields of social science and education, whilst further advancing the work both universities undertake to develop education across London.”
Professor Chris Husbands, director of the UCL Institute of Education, said: “The merger offers the IOE huge prizes: the opportunity to extend global influence, to work with our traditional stakeholders in schools and colleges in new and more imaginative ways, and the chance to build cross-disciplinary work across the full range of higher education.”
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