The government’s new approach to allocating teacher training places – where the “best” providers will be awarded long-term allocations – is set to be revealed “in the coming weeks”.
The National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) told all providers today that the government’s “new methodology” for the 2017-18 academic year is close to being announced.
The new approach was first outlined in the Department for Education’s white paper, released in March, which said the “best” initial teacher training (ITT) providers would be given allocations “over several years”.
An update on the NCTL website, from Roger Pope, NCTL chair, read: “We have recently held a number of roundtable meetings in Manchester and London to test our approaches to allocating ITT places to providers for 2017 to 2018.
“These meetings were really useful in helping us to get a practical sense of how our proposed ideas could work and we’ll be releasing the new methodology in the coming weeks.”
News of the announcement will be welcomed by ITT providers, who have previously reported concerns the proposed metrics, such as course completion rates, employability and attainment, would be “biased” towards school-based routes.
It follows an uncertain year for providers, after the NCTL introduced in September a new method of recruitment for university-led providers, which saw them facing national caps on recruitment of trainees in order to provide “moderate growth” in school-led routes.
HEIs have complained this system has caused chaos.
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