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Promoting Quality in Teacher Education

Note of the meeting of the UCET ITE primary & early years forum held on-line at 1pm on Tuesday 9 June 2020

Welcome, introductions and minutes of the previous meeting

Colleagues were welcomed to the final meeting on the 2019/20 academic year. The note of the meeting held on 3 March 2020 was agreed. There were no matters arising that were not covered elsewhere on the agenda.

Discussion

A range of issues was discussed, including:

An update from JNR on non-primary related issues, including PCET, the REF and developments in Northern Ireland and Wales.

Covid 19 related issues, including:

Relaxations made by DfE (following discussions with UCET) to the ITE criteria for both 2019/20 and 2020/21 covering, amongst other things: flexibilities on GCSE entry requirements; the two school requirement; consecutive age-phases; and assessing current students on the basis of QTS trajectories. It was also confirmed that flexibility already existed in terms of the number of days students spend in school, provided that programmes were designed to allow for the required number of days.

Funding in respect of 2019/20 students not deemed to be on a trajectory to achieve QTS and who would have to go back into school in 2020/21. Exceptions made on a case by case basis might, it was reported, be made to allow funding to be accessed after December 2020. Forum members reported that this was likely to be required because of placement issues.

Anticipated placement difficulties in 2020/21, and the need for clarification on the status of student teachers (‘key-workers’, visitors’ etc.)

The tension between OFS and CMA expectations about clarity of what students could expect from programmes and the difficulty of providers making firm commitments because of issues concerning placements, school closures and the possibility of subsequent Covid 19 spikes.

The redesign and restructuring of ITE programmes, with more blended and on-line delivery, paired placements, and the development of smaller on-line learning communities. The importance of face to face contact, personal contact and the provision of pastoral and well-being support must nor however be overlooked.

The implications of the broader financial issues facing the HE sector.

On-line interview and recruitment processes, with forum members reporting that it allowed more in-depth interviewing and had aspects which they might want to retain post-Covid, notwithstanding the value of group discussions and collaborative tasks.

Inspection and regulatory issues, including: UCET’s call for the CCF and OfSTED inspection framework to be delayed to allow ITE partnerships to focus on more immediate priorities (it was expected however that they might both be launched to existing timetables); and the importance of ITE providers being allowed to engage critically with the CCF and to cover ways of teaching early reading in addition to systematic synthetic phonics.

The need for targeted and funded support for NQTs in 2020/21.

Recruitment to ITE for 2020/21, which was generally considered to be buoyant, although there were concerns about applicants wanting to defer for a year, and the reluctance of some schools to engage with School Direct.

Early years issues, where the availability of placements, the status of students within e/y settings; the need to support ‘non-trajectory’ students in 2020/21; and the implications of social distancing were all noted.

The development of the new UCET strategy, building on the work of the IBTA group.

The 3-4 November on-line UCET conference.

Items for information

The Easter UCET newsletter was noted.

Any other business

It was agreed that a morning symposium would be held prior to the next meeting or on a different date. Possible topics included: on-line delivery & blended learning; NQT support; the OfSTED inspection framework.

Colleagues were invited to contact Jackie Moses (j.moses@uct.ac.uk) if they would be interested in joining the research & International forum’s Covid 19 sub-group.

Date of next meeting

17 November 2020