The Department for Education has been warned that it should “take its hands off and trust the profession” over the development of the initial teacher training framework.
Emma Hollis, CEO of the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT), told the Schools and Academies Show yesterday that there is too much pressure on initial teacher training (ITT) to “sort out” the sector’s challenges.
“We can’t be constantly firefighting and expecting continued professional development to solve the problems we’re facing,” she told the event in London.
Ms Hollis was concerned that the sector is constantly doing “more and more”, and “the answer is always that ITT will sort that out”.
She said: “ITT providers are doing a fantastic job with the tools they have, but the tools are already behind.”
ECF ‘could become a straitjacket’
When asked whether the Early Career Framework (ECF) has been successful in improving teacher retention, Gareth Conyard, CEO of the Teacher Development Trust, said that it had had reached a point “where it can now evolve”.
The ECF, launched in 2021, provides mentoring on a one-to-one basis for new teachers in order to “improve support”.
Along with the ITT curricula, the ECF is now being rolled into a single framework from September.
Mr Conyard said that while the ECF is good at supporting teachers with “tangible” issues that they often struggle with, and using evidence to help them, he saw room for development.
He warned that the end of their ECF period should not become a “cliff edge” for new teachers: “One of the benefits of the ECF is that...it is supposed to create this sense of lifelong engagement, and the frameworks have been the central part of helping us understand that.”
However, Mr Conyard warned there is also a point at which the ECF and evidence could “become a bit of a straitjacket, and we don’t allow people to move on from them and do enough contextualisation that really matters”.
He called for the ECF to allow for more “contextualised learning” and “application in classrooms”.
ITT providers want to offer more SEND training
Annamarie Hassall, CEO of the National Association for Special Educational Needs (nasen), warned of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) training becoming an “add-on” in ITT rather than being “built into the conversation”.
She called for prospective teachers to be given a “real sense of reality of what they are going to be facing in schools”.
Tes previously revealed how a lack of SEND training could threaten the government’s plans to boost inclusion in schools.
In response, Ms Hollis said that ITT providers are “desperate” to build in further SEND and inclusion training, but that frameworks come with “such high stakes there was fear to do anything that felt or looked innovative”.
She added that the “government needs to take its hands off and trust us, because we know the frameworks inside out. We know what works, we know what doesn’t”.
Mr Conyard agreed that teacher training frameworks must allow “greater flexibility” and that that “we need to trust teachers”.
‘Bite-sized’ CPD
Meanwhile, Ms Hassall said that short, “bite-sized” CPD that a teacher could do in 20 minutes while out for a walk is “missing from the portfolio” of broader CPD offers.
Ms Hollis added that “in an ideal world, we would ring-fence time and money for every teacher to have a certain amount of CPD”, saying that other professions have this approach to career development.
The Labour government has promised to introduce a new teacher training entitlement to ensure that teachers stay up to date on best practice with CPD.
Ms Hollis also said that schools need more support to identify good CPD, but without restricting CPD offers to a limited number of providers.
“There are lots of people trying to sell stuff into schools. Some which are great quality, some which really aren’t...As a busy headteacher, sometimes it is the person with the flashiest website that might attract you,” she said.
For the latest education news and analysis delivered every weekday morning, sign up for the Tes Daily newsletter
