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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 16 November 2021

Welcome, introductions and minutes of the previous meeting

Colleagues were welcomed to the first meeting of the academic year. The note of the meeting held on 8 June 2021 was agreed. There were no matters arising not included elsewhere on the agenda.

Discussion

A range of issues was discussed, including:

An update from JNR on non-primary related issues, including the publication date of 11 May 2022 for the results of REF 2021; the development of a new teaching qualification for the FE and skills sector; and the recent on-line UCET conference.

Feedback from the morning symposium on the assessment of student teachers which had been led by: Louise Atkins; Martin Smith; Nicola Smith; and Maggie Stephenson & Vanessa Shaw. Key themes and points included: alignment of assessments with the CCF (but not using the CCF as an assessment tool); the alignment of assessments made during school and centre-based training; the appropriate balance between formative and summative assessments; the links between academic and assessments made against the ITE curricula; identifying themes and cross-theme components of assessments; links between ITE and ECF assessments; the identification and use of domains of competence; the respective responsibilities of HEIs and partner schools; and the assessment of foundation as well as core subjects. It was agreed that the net morning symposium would cover teaching and assessment in relation to foundation subjects.

An update on the results of inspections carried out under the new ITE inspection framework, where in excess of 40% of provision had be found to be either ‘inadequate’ or ‘requires improvement’. Concern had been expressed about the hostile nature of the inspection visits, and questionable suggestions made by inspectors about compliance issues. The importance of ITE providers having a detailed knowledge and understanding of the ITE requirements, and being in a position to challenge dubious compliance claims, was stressed. It was agreed that DfE would be asked whether requirements relating to the 2-schools requirement and age-range experiences related to programme design or the experiences of individual student teachers. A report was also given about FOI requests made by UCET in relation to the May 2021 OfSTED ITE ‘research’ report, in response to which OfSTED confirmed that ‘it is very difficult to make a precise read-across between the raw evidence gathered during the visits and the high-level findings’. A further FOI request had led to OfSTED revealing that, of those student teachers who answered the relevant question, 96% felt that their ITE was preparing them well for their first teaching role.

An update of the DfE review of the ITE Market, the results of which were expected to be published before the end of the calendar year.

Working with teaching school hubs, where the potential benefit to providers of developing close working relations in the context of any Market Review related ITE accreditation process was stressed.

Mentoring support and paired placements. Paired placements, which were allowed under the ITE criteria, could be used to help address difficulties in securing a sufficient number placements, and had some benefits in terms of the emotional and other support that each pair could provide to the other. They could also help to reduce mentor workload, particularly in respect of students at the beginning of undergraduate programmes where mentor support was sometimes of a more generic nature. Care should however be taken to matching the right student teachers in pairs, and in ensuring that students do not observe their pair’s teaching in place of that of the actual teacher. There were also reports of paired placements being made more difficult to arrange because of the understandable concerns of some schools about the number of adults on the premises. Concerns about the availability of placements generally (because of ECF pressures and the ongoing impact of Covid) were being shared with DfE, and an encouragement on schools to offer placements was expected to be issued soon. A number of colleagues were considering creative ways to address placement shortages, and were invited to share these with UCET and, through UCET, with DfE.

Recruitment to ITE, where the Covid ‘bounce’ had tailed off, although in some cases recruitment was still above pre-Covid levels.

Early years issues, where DfE was reported to have instigated regular meetings with sector representatives. The implications of the new NPQ for early-years practitioners, as well as the Graduate Practitioner Competencies, for EYITT was noted with potential concern, particularly as it would cover both the publicly funded and private sectors. Although EYITT provider numbers had been rolled-forward by DfE, there were concerns about the continued financial viability of programmes. Colleagues were invited to contact UCET with any questions or concerns about early years provision for it to raise with DfE.

iQTS, where an invitation for accredited ITE providers to apply to deliver pilot programmes from September 2022 had been issued the previous day.

Items for information

The summer UCET newsletter was noted.

Any other business

None.

Future meetings

The next meeting would take place on Tuesday 1 March via Zoom. Opinions on whether the subsequent meeting should be face to face or on-line would be invited.