TTR0012

Written evidence submitted by Wigan and West Lancashire Catholic School Direct

I am Director of Wigan and West Lancashire Catholic School Direct.  We are a partnership of 10 Catholic schools in the Wigan, West Lancashire, Warrington, Chorley and Halton area in the NW of England.  We have been recruiting trainee teachers as a School Led fee paying partnership since 2014.  We have trained over 150 trainees in all subjects.  We are currently working in partnership with Liverpool Hope University and in September will be working with Liverpool John Moores University.

The ITE reaccreditation process has completely thrown all of our work up in the air and meant that we now have to concentrate on re-branding and changing what we do rather than on just training teachers well.  The uncertainty generated by the changes to school direct fee-paying routes has definitely led to new difficulties.  I am in a position where I am advertising for school direct for September but will have to completely rebrand before September to allow for the new changes with very little definite information from the DFE so far.

There are too few people wanting to train to teach and the changes to apply to allow them to apply for 4 places has not helped the situation.  It just means that four organisations are now chasing the same few candidates.  There are some organisations who are telling them they have to make a decision within a couple of days (against the regulations) and pushing them into a decision before they have had the other interviews.

We are seeing a shortage particularly in English where the subject content is so huge.  We are also facing shortages of DT, Physics and Biology – as the lower bursary for biology is pushing candidates who can into applying for chemistry.  Even subjects like Drama, Art and PE have not had the same numbers applying for the positions.

The lack of a ‘science’ SKE means that candidates can only get support in the subject they apply for rather than across all of the subjects and this is often their stronger subject.

Students are ending up with staff who do not have a subject specific degree training to teach with SKE’s and this will impact the disadvantaged schools and schools where recruitment is more difficult. 

The ECF has made it harder to retain teachers as the programme is too heavy and it then takes away mentors from the ITE provision.  Headteachers have to prioritise their staff for the mentors.  We have created our own bespoke programme for the ECF but it is still onerous and the mentors have to engage with it in their own time as it is not seen as CPD for them in many schools.  There is no longer the hook of staying to the end of your first year to get your QTS year finished as they now need to complete two years.  For the first time this year I have had three trainees in their first year quit at Easter with no intention of +-continuing to teach.  A number of ECTs feel that there is crossover in their programme from ITE and it is repetitive as it assumes that they have not had good ITT.  Where they have it is felt to be repetitive.

I don’t believe the new bursaries have made any difference to the applicants apart from pushing people in biochemistry to chemistry.  We certainly are not seeing physics graduates choosing to teach – what it has led to is people with unsuitable degrees applying for subjects with higher bursaries.  The scholarships are great but they are mainly taken by people who wanted to teach anyway.  The lack of bursaries in every subject means than many who would like to career change can’t.  I think a far more fair way to encourage people into teaching is to fund everyone’s training course (£9250) and to remove the bursaries.  There is no evidence that gaining a bursary is keeping people in teaching as it is not connected to any length of service in school.

March 2023