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Promoting Quality in Teacher Education

Note of the meeting of the UCET ITE secondary forum held on-line at 1pm on Tuesday 23 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 15 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-secondary 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; developments in Wales and Northern Ireland; and the recent on-line UCET conference.

Regulatory issues, building on discussions on that morning’s morning symposia which had been led by Terry Russell and Tracy Wallis. Inspections carried out under the new ITE inspection framework had found that 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, the CFF, and being in a position to challenge dubious compliance claims, was stressed. 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 said 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. Another FOI request, submitted by Warwick Mansell, led to OfSTED reporting that ‘some’ (in the context of some ITE providers basing their curricula on un-identified ‘out of date and discredited’ theories) referred to ‘more than a few ’but ‘less than many’.

Forum members would be canvassed about the topic for the next morning symposium. Options would include: the development of ‘ambitious’ curricula; student teacher assessment; and the outcome of the ITE Market Review.

An update of the DfE review of the ITE Market, the results of which were expected to be published soon, and had been the subject of a recent debate in the House of Lords

Working with teaching school hubs, where the potential benefit to providers of developing relationships with TSHs in the context of any Market Review related ITE accreditation process was stressed. Several colleagues reported the development of good partnerships with TSHs, while others reported that hubs would take decisions on their ITE involvement in the context of the outcome of the Market Review, and once they had got to grips with their ECF and other non-ITE responsibilities. The challenges associated with the geographical spread of TSHs were noted, as was the negative impact of net placement availability if hubs insisted on exclusive relationships with ITE providers.

The shortage of school placements because of, for example, Covid and the pressures being placed on mentoring capacity because of the ECF. Feedback on placement issues received by UCET was being shared with DfE, who were monitoring the situation closely and were expected to encourage schools to offer placements and remind schools about the ‘key-worker’ status of student teachers. The shortage of placements could, it was noted, have an impact on the quality of the experience of student teachers and, as a result, retention on programmes.

Recruitment to ITE, where the Covid application bounce had come to an end, although in some cases applications were still above pre-Covid levels, although not as high as at the peak. Recruitment to MFL was suffering because of bursary changes and the liability of students from EU countries to pay fees at overseas students’ rates (although some providers were continuing to charge UK rates). Short term changes to bursaries were reported as leading to deferred applications and other year on year fluctuations in applications.

The new DfE Apply system, from which applications and recruitment data was not being published as regularly as UCAS data had been. It was confirmed after the meeting that the ’10 day’ rule, which meant that applicants had 10 days to accept an offer after their final offer had been received had not been changed.

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

SKE, where the lack of confirmed funding post 31 March 2022 meant that provision could not be guaranteed for prospective students requiring 8-week SKE for the period immediately leading up to the beginning of the 2022/23 academic year. The lack of funding for second-science SKKE subjects was also noted.

Items for information

The summer UCET newsletter was noted.

Any other business

None.

Future meetings

The next meeting would take place on Tuesday 8 March via Zoom. Opinions on whether the subsequent meeting should be face to face or on-line would be invited.

UCET

November 2021

https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/700ce9be-ce88-4e37-a6ed-f028e27672a3?in=16:16:09