Initial Teacher Training update - November 2023

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Why should schools be involved in ITT? 

The Department for Education is working on a communication pack for schools on the importance and benefits of school engagement in Initial Teacher Training. This communication not only highlights the benefits to schools of training teachers from the very start of their journey, but also offers schools an insight into how to ensure recruitment and manage their teaching pipeline, as well as being seen as an employer who values training and development of early career teachers. It also references schools’ engagement in ITT as a way of offering valuable professional development to staff through ITT mentoring and ITT leadership roles. We will share the DfE communication pack with all our schools when it is published. 

If you would like to talk to Saffron Teaching School Hub about your engagement with ITT, please contact us to set this up.

What do schools need to know about hosting a trainee teacher?

Those schools keen to find out more about hosting trainee placements should read the DfE's recent guidance:  https://www.gov.uk/guidance/offer-a-trainee-teacher-placement 

What does the DfE want Teaching School Hubs to be doing in the ITT landscape? 

Delivery of ITT 

As school-led centres of excellence for professional development, Teaching School Hubs already play a significant role in delivering and supporting Initial Teacher Training in our region. 

Recommendation 10 for Teaching School Hubs from the DfE as part of the ITT Market Review set out that: 

“Teaching school hubs should partner with an accredited provider to play a role in the delivery of ITT (unless they are operating at accredited provider level). DfE should place a requirement on teaching school hubs to support local ITT delivery in specific strategic ways as required, for example through building school capacity for ITT by building an active mentor network in the local area, providing specific support for schools serving disadvantaged communities to enable them to engage with ITT, or modelling high quality intensive practice placements for other schools undertaking this aspect of ITT for the first time.”

ITT Market Review report, July 2021

The ITT delivery role detailed in Recommendation 10, with Teaching School Hubs acting as either an accredited provider or Lead Partner, will commence from September 2024. 
 
This means that the DfE expects that all Teaching School Hubs:

• Will recruit trainees as agreed with the accredited ITT provider

• Will deliver courses on behalf of the accredited ITT provider, with courses inspected by Ofsted as part of the accredited ITT provider’s inspection (with the inspection outcome resting with the accredited provider)

• Teaching School Hubs can work as a Lead Partner with more than one ITT provider

Teaching School Hub Strategic Roles in ITT 

From September 2023, all Teaching School Hubs are expected to deliver the new strategic roles to support local ITT delivery across their TSH area. This will be primarily focused on measuring and supporting school engagement in ITT. The DfE have outlined two strategic roles, which support the ITT market ahead of the ITT reforms in September 2024: 

1) Increase school engagement in ITT across their TSH region

Activities such as: 

• Map school involvement in ITT within their local area, making use of local ITT networks and DfE data to identify schools who are fully engaged, have limited engagement, or are not engaged in ITT to understand local issues.  
• Complete targeted engagement by promoting the benefits of ITT, discussing the new ITT reforms and requirements, and supporting schools with any barriers to ITT engagement. Engagement is focused on schools not involved in ITT and on developing high quality placement opportunities to grow capacity in other priority areas such as shortage subjects, disadvantaged areas, and cold spots.  
• TSH will support schools that want to be involved in ITT by providing examples of how this works in practice. 

2) Find and support Intensive Training and Practice (IT&P) across their TSH region

Teaching School Hubs have been given a role to support all ITT providers to ensure that the new Intensive Training and Practice placements (ITAPs) are in place. ITAPs are intensive periods of time where trainees focus on learning one area of their training curriculum in depth with opportunities to work with experts in this field, learning and applying their theory through modelling and trying out their new learning in a school placement with excellent practice in this area.