TTR0022

Written evidence submitted by a Director of a School Direct partnership

I am the Director of a large School Direct partnership of over 100 schools and an Assistant Headteacher for a Trust of 5 schools where I advise on recruitment and appraisal. I am also an ECT facilitator for the local teaching hub.

Feedback from the field:

The impact of several Government changes to ITT and ECT arrangements have had a significant damaging impact which form a perfect storm which you are now seeing the symptoms of in the panic surrounding recruitment and retention of teachers.

Major changes to Initial Teacher Training providers has had a serious impact on the sector. When faced with the application process of the new Accreditation of ITT providers, many providers have simply said they will no longer be offering teacher training. The cumulative weight of new ITT OFSTED requirements and their combative approach, unreasonable expectations on ITT providers under the messy introduction of the Core Content Framework and pressures on schools to meet the requirements of the ECT programme, many small school direct partnerships have simply given up. ITT is driven by a relatively small number of senior school leaders in education who were passionate about training people to be teachers and helping their schools supply new teachers for the system. Many of these school leaders have many other roles which run alongside their ITT responsibilities. When the Government adds unbearable pressure onto those involved, many have simply thrown in the towel.

The massive demands on schools surrounding the ECT programme have med many schools to withdrawn from ITT altogether as the limited number of teachers they had available to mentor have now been taken up with overburdensome training and support of ECTs. Teachers rarely get extra time given to them to support ECTs and don’t get extra payment to do so either; this leaves many to question why they would get involved in mentoring especially in a highly accountable environment such as a school. As a school direct partnership, we have significant trouble in getting school placements for trainees due to the massive demands of both the ECT programme and the ITT Core Content Framework.

With fewer ITT partnerships seeking graduates to train, fewer graduates are likely to sign up. Finding and persuading graduates to join teaching is a slow a careful process. To bring someone into the profession takes resources and many conversations to support them in to teaching. Each partnership has a particular way of marketing which reaches different demographics. This will be lost as each training provider withdraws from the market.

The Department for Education has created a perfect storm that you are now seeing action:

• Fewer people applying to join a profession which is financially unattractive (the public can see beyond the recent divisive Tweets from the DfE which aims to demonise teachers for accepting their insulting pay offer), bad for your mental and physical health resulting from the massive workloads stemming from on OFSTED which is out of touch and unsympathetic to a depleted and damaged profession and schools are unable and unwilling to take in trainees due to the massive imposition of the poorly thought out ECT programme.
• Schools are under massive burden financially which has reduced the number of Teaching Assistants. This has put even more pressure on Teachers. We’ve been sold “quality first teaching” as a panacea to remove the need for Teaching Assistants. As a further insult, “quality first teaching” made it a legal responsibility of teachers to meet the needs of their SEND pupils despite the number of Teaching Assistants in Secondary Schools plummeting.
• Teachers are avoiding being a mentor now that the demands are so great. The requirements on mentors for both ECTs and Trainee teachers are far heavier than they once were. This would be fine if the Government had properly funded the extra demands of the mentors. Schools struggle to release mentors, ECTs and trainee teachers to attend the myriad of extra training requirements which have been passed down. Not only is there no money to pay the mentors for their time but the schools struggle to find colleagues or supply teachers to cover them while they are out of school. The Government desperately needs to talk with mentors and teachers on the ground to understand the demands on their time and how every aspect of the new CCF and ECF impact on the actual working lives of teachers.
• Teachers are leaving the profession following successive changes to education policy made by an array of education secretaries who fail to listen to teachers. Michael Gove planted the seed of the neoliberal capitalist approach to teaching which has resulted in many great teachers leaving the profession. Before this, the context of each school was taken in to account. The background of pupils was considered when making judgements about schools; without this many schools in socio-economically challenging areas struggled to achieve a GOOD OFSTED rating which then leaves the local community with a school which struggles to recruit any teachers. This legacy takes a decade to recover from.
• Well-meaning school leaders have reacted to the changes in education policy under the threat of OFSTED. Many teachers have left the profession from aggressive accountability tactics from senior leaders.
• Teaching Hubs have been introduced with little consultation. Our local hub is led by a Grammar School which would have no real understanding of the pressures on non-selective schools. There are massive conflicts of interest surrounding the Teaching Hub which is part of a large Academy Trust with their own SCITT. They are likely to favour their own ITT programmes over any competing partnership. I suspect that in time, this will further thin the market as recruitment of ITE becomes highly competitive given the unattractive profession open to graduates.

What now?

• The Government needs to talk to those in the field. Find out what the impact is of the many policy changes which have driven us to this desperate state in teacher recruitment.
• Give more money to schools directly to help them with the cost of marketing.
• Give more money to ITT providers and school partnerships to allow them to market their work.
• Give more money to school mentors so that schools can reduce their timetables to work with trainees.
• Reduce the burden on school mentors and back this up by changing the requirements on providers.
• Value to expertise of ITT leaders and allow them to shape their own courses and curriculum. Top down approaches have failed and led us to a likely recruitment catastrophe.
• Limit the power of Teaching Hubs before they drive more ITT providers away from training.
• Increase the pay of teachers and stop the divisive and insulting Tweets from your account.
• Increase bursaries for teaching and have them pay at years 3 and 5 too.
• Remove Teach First as a programme as it is poorly supported in schools and very few stay in teaching for long.
• Stop the introduction of the ITT reforms for 2024. This needs to be immediate.

April 2022