“Finally! After 385 days in office, Damian Hinds reveals a proper strategy (and it’s actually quite good).”
That was Schools Week’s front page when the recruitment and retention strategy landed in February 2019.
The new early career framework (ECF) was described as the strategy’s “jewel in the crown”. It entitled new teachers to two years of support.
Those involved say the ECF is one of the most successful policies of the past 10 years.
But it relied on a controlling hand from central government, which the education secretary who set the reforms in motion says “fill me with horror”. Schools Week digs into the teacher development reforms…
The golden thread
Justine Greening first proposed the idea of a ‘golden thread’ to “empower new teachers with access to the sustained high-quality training and development that every professional needs”.
A trained accountant, Greening says she “got the most support and training in the early years of my career. It was a juxtaposition to teaching – when you’re suddenly thrown into those early years. I wanted to flip it, so teachers would learn from the new experiences, rather than have to cope with them.”
The 2017 general election put the underfunding of schools on the map, giving the Department for Education a stronger hand with the Treasury.
At the same time, teacher recruitment and retention was bubbling into a big issue. The department made the case that losing lots of teachers early in their careers was wasting money.
The solution came in January 2019. The recruitment and retention strategy, launched by then education secretary Damian Hinds, contained what was billed as the “biggest teaching reform in a generation”.
The ECF was the first strand in the new ‘golden thread’.
A new core content framework for initial teacher training providers followed in September 2020, with reformed national professional qualifications.
Giving teachers access to professional development “at every stage of their career signalled the importance of teaching as a profession, as well as a vocation”, says Becky Francis, then chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF).
‘It wasn’t just Nick Gibb deciding’
Another reason was to “shift teacher training away from what ministers saw as the dominance of ‘progressive’ pedagogy, and towards ‘evidence-based’ practice, as part of their ongoing battle with ‘the Blob,” recalls policy expert Loic Menzies.
“The central argument was that teachers are made and not born, and that teaching teachers how to teach, or school leaders how to lead, should follow the same science of learning principles as any other type of learning,” explains Matt Hood, chief executive of Oak National Academy.
“This was a direct philosophical challenge to the dominant theory of teacher and school training – constructivism and transformational leadership.”
The policy landed well. A key success was getting eight leading sector bodies – including the usually hostile National Education Union – to support it.
It was based on the best evidence – not just Nick Gibb deciding
Also key was using the EEF as “evidence guardians” to “sign-off on what went into the ECF”, says one former adviser. “It was based on the best evidence available – rather than just Nick Gibb deciding.”
Interim chief executive of the EEF Chris Paterson, a DfE policy adviser at the time who led on the strategy, adds: “We were able to get people to buy into that common ground of supporting teacher professionalism.
“There was also a (very unusual) sense of shared commitment and buy-in to the idea that the policy would be reviewed and develop over time.”
Policymakers: ‘screaming success’
The plan was turbo-charged in 2021 when £253 million was provided as part of the Covid recovery plan to deliver a target of 500,000 teacher training opportunities across the “golden thread” by the end of parliament.
“From a standing start, we got 96 per cent of schools using the full [ECF] induction programme – way beyond internal estimates – and more people enrolled on NPQs than every other year combined pre-reform,” says a former DfE adviser. “It has been the most successful thing the department has delivered over the past five years.”
While the number of teachers enrolling in initial teacher training (ITT) and national professional qualifications (NPQs) undershot the target, the number on the ECF overshot – meaning the government fell about 20,000 short of its target, insiders say.
“Given how ridiculously ambitious the targets were – I think it was a screaming success,” says another former adviser.
But just as key to the policy was its implementation.
The model involved whittling 700 teaching schools down to 80-odd teaching school hubs – with only the highest-performing meeting strict criteria. These hubs would work with a handful of lead providers to turn the frameworks into a curriculum. Ofsted was charged with inspecting quality.
“We focused on building a system, rather than an individual programme,” says another adviser. “That is just light years away from the usual DfE approach.”
But it hinged upon “very tight control” from central government. “It is the only way to have a really precise impact from Whitehall on the system,” adds the ex-adviser.
Becks Boomer-Clark, chief executive of the Academies Enterprise Trust, adds: “We now have a framework which is understood, delivery infrastructure across the country and, most importantly, a shared entitlement for teachers which is the envy of many countries across the world.”
Teachers: ‘workload getting in way’
But what was the view from the frontline?
Teacher Tapp found discontent in areas, including training being too prescriptive and heavy workloads, with mentors using weekends to complete their training. One in five new teachers said it was less likely to make them stay in the profession.
Nearly half of primary heads in 2022 said they would consider taking fewer new teachers because of the commitments associated with the reforms, despite funding for the timetable reduction.
As an Ofsted review put it, teacher workload was “getting in the way”.
The DfE’s evaluation of the scheme’s second year found while provider-led training was “rated highly”, there were “frustrations around perceived inflexibilities” and a “lack of tailoring of content” to teachers’ needs and school context.
Becky Allen, the co-founder of Teacher Tapp, says: “It wasn’t liked because it was seen as a burden and it was delivered, at least initially, in a very non-subject specific way.
“That’s what happens when you try to do stuff in a hurry. Ideally, you’d bring things in more slowly and get them right – like developing courses for individual subjects, or just for primary.”
This is what happens when you do stuff in a hurry
But Tom Rees, chief executive of the Ormiston Academies Trust, who oversaw delivery of the ECF whilst working at Ambition Institute, says “most criticism came from people not with any direct involvement in the programmes themselves, and often those with a market interest or particularly ideological position.
“The perspective we cared most about, was the early career teacher themselves and their experience was overwhelmingly positive’.”
And Menzies says “sometimes in politics, there’s a short window of opportunity in which there’s some cash and political will available. There’s a risk of making perfect the enemy of good. At least the big move has been made now and the door is opened for further refinement.”
In practice, that commitment to ‘reviewing as you go’ allowed ministers to take stock and tweak – with some key changes already made, including rolling the ITT and ECF frameworks into one.
Retention worse than before
If the ECF is judged on retention, then the jury is well and truly still out. Of the 2022-23 ECT cohort, 88.8 per cent were still in the profession one year later. This compares to 87.6 per cent in 2020, pre-ECF – although covid makes comparisons difficult.
It’s also an improvement on the 87.2 per cent in the first year of the ECF.
But Jack Worth, lead economist at the National Foundation for Educational Research, says the “emerging evidence on its impact is that it has not led to transformed levels of ECT retention”.
Just 79.3 per cent of teachers on the first ECF national cohort were still in the profession two years later, similar to the previous cohort.
The wider recruitment and retention strategy was an “utter failure. There was nothing to say ‘this is the gap – and this is how we’ll close it’,” says a former official.
“And that’s because they knew the strategy wouldn’t do that. There was nothing radical on Ofsted, teacher pay or workload – all the things evidence suggests would make a big impact.”
Three of the policies – including a ‘Match.com-style’ website for teacher job shares and piloting sabbaticals for experienced staff – were quietly dropped.
But Jonathan Simons, a partner at Public First, says “other than pay, there’s not many other levers for government”.
“Short of a permanent weak private sector labour market and infinite money – there’s not a lot the department can do. The slightly awkward truth is we know why a lot of people leave – they don’t like their manager, or their school isn’t tackling behaviour or workload. It’s more of a school issue.”
Sir Hamid Patel, chief executive of Star Academies, adds the “real test should be how the reforms are affecting the most disadvantaged children …This should be our measure of success, not how individual institutions or the adults who work in them fare.
“We must demand better, longitudinal evaluation of policy interventions on workforce reforms – there’s too much weight given to partisan opinion around because of the scarcity of high-quality impact evaluation.”
Central control ‘horror’
A particular bone of contention is the central control behind the reforms.
“Speaking as a chartered accountant, it fills me with horror to think that any minister in Whitehall would be deciding what that profession’s training requirements are,” Greening adds.
She originally envisioned a body like the Chartered College of Teaching leading on the reforms.
“I wanted teaching to have more agency, like other professions. [That means] taking more of a role in shaping their own development. If not, it’s completely disempowering.”
Tight control doesn’t send out a great signal about trust
Cat Scutt, deputy chief executive of the Chartered College of Teaching, adds the “tight control doesn’t necessarily send out a great signal to the sector about trust”.
But the reforms took a more controversial turn when the ITT market review was launched in 2021, with the intent to “slim down the sector”.
It forced teacher training providers to apply for reaccreditation.
“People really didn’t like that they had to apply for their own job – and what made you successful was how closely you adhered to the new [ITT] framework,” says Sam Twiselton, who sat on the government’s expert groups across the years.
“Those who had not liked [the framework] before were now incandescent. It was a big, horrible process where people would survive – or not.”
Training curriculum: ‘the new battleground’
Universities had felt particularly threatened since Michael Gove and Gibb launched their assault to end “the Blob’s” supposed “progressive” grip on education, with school trainers favoured.
“The ideological battleground actually wasn’t between universities and SCITTs [school-based providers] – it became [the ITT] curriculum. But it was just as threatening,” says Twiselton.
The University of Cambridge initially refused to reapply, accusing ministers of “prescribing” how it should deliver training.
It ended up in. But smaller SCITTs closed, or merged with bigger organisations, as a quarter of providers were culled.
Was it worth the uproar?
One adviser involved says: “The challenge was ‘this is going to kill sufficiency’ – there wouldn’t be sufficent places available where needed. But it didn’t. You could challenge whether it’s made a difference – but I think it’s focused minds.”
However Twiselton says it constituted “a huge pendulum swing away from the Govian ideology [of autonomy and a school-led system] towards government controlling things”.
Ed Vainker, chief executive of the Reach Foundation, adds: “When we look at the past ten years more broadly – we’ve seen a Conservative government who are supposed to be skeptical about the role of the state, playing a very prominent role in a lot of areas where they haven’t before.”
Gibb’s puppet institutes?
Another issue has been the few, cherry-picked sector experts inside the tent – either sitting on groups to inform the frameworks, or the same national providers being chosen to deliver the schemes. Particularly when the two overlapped.
Twiselton says it made the reforms “cliquey, group thinky and more vulnerable to being blamed when things don’t go quite as well”.
However a treadmill of civil servants means “if you’re doing something that is systematic and strategic over time – like the golden thread – you need people involved from the beginning.
“The civil service wasn’t able to do that – but we did get things done in a way we otherwise wouldn’t.”
It was a horrible process where people would survive – or not
The government has also relied on big national providers such as the Ambition Institute or the National Institute of Teaching to deliver the programmes.
Sources say the latter was apparently born from an idea by Gavin Williamson, the former education secretary, to put Katharine Birbalsingh, who leads Michaela School in north London, in charge of ITT. It didn’t progress and instead the institute was set up to become an “exemplar” of teacher training.
But David Spendlove, professor of education at the University of Manchester, says “holding the power to award contracts to providers gives the government unprecedented leverage to manipulate this ‘market’”.
“We are witnessing the structural reconfiguration and transformation of teacher development in favour of outsourcing to tight-knit, ideologically aligned organisations, operating under the ‘respectable’ cover of low-cost imitation puppet institutes.
“The decade-long attack on academics led by obdurate minister Gibb makes little sense if it isn’t precisely and cynically about control.”
Some are also concerned over the conflict of people writing the frameworks belonging to the big providers, who then went on to make financial gains by winning contracts to deliver them.
But Marie Hamer, the executive director of strategy and impact at Ambition Institute, the largest ECF provider, and who was involved in writing the frameworks, says the system meant roll-out could be done “at scale, without any cold spots – and in the middle of a pandemic.
“There was quality oversight which meant we were really confident of consistency and that every new teacher would get to become good on these core set of skills.”
What next?
Labour has promised to stick with the ECF – perhaps a sign of success in itself – although it plans to “update” it.
But the last government scaled back its funding for NPQs, leaving Labour with a decision as to whether they make use of the existing infrastructure to roll out its promised “teacher training entitlement”.
“People have accepted the concept [of the golden thread] is a good thing, even if they don’t like the details. But now is the time to loosen it up – and give back more ownership and agency to teachers,” says Twiselton.
“If we don’t, we’ll end up with this really dry, dusty thing that, at its worst, might be adding to the retention problem because it’s seen by teachers as ‘yet another thing I’ve got to do, and nobody’s trusting me either’.”
She also urged central government to hand some of its power to a professional body such as the CCT.
“That’s what happens in other professions. Where we went wrong was having a small number of sometimes quite junior civil servants having to make really expert judgments that they were just not equipped to make, like closing ITT providers.”
Education is so political, DfE does have to play more of a role
But Rees says sector bodies or groups are open to “capture by market and ideological interests, rather being independent or representative of the interests of trainee teachers or pupils.
“Given that education is so political, a lot of perspectives are ideological and so DfE probably does have to play more of a role until we have a stronger system architecture.”
Scutt wants a wider review into “what teacher job roles look like” to ensure there are pathways that encourage people into mentoring roles – and recognise and reward expert teachers for staying in the classroom.
Melanie Renowden, chief executive of NIOT, adds the “profound challenges … clearly indicate we need a new approach to making teaching an attractive profession”.
“The school system needs a long-term workforce plan so it can focus on retention, the employee offer, professional development and leadership pipelines as well as recruitment,” she adds. “Other complex sectors, like the NHS, are working to build plans that span decades, not just years.”
A huge drop in pupil numbers could lessen the stress on teacher numbers.
But Allen says that if you believe there’s a bigger, systemic problem – “which is that teachers in England do not stay in the profession as long as they do in other countries” – then the “why” had to be taken seriously.
“Ultimately, this isn’t anything to do with teacher development – it’s accountability, workload and behaviour of pupils.”
