Official Statistics

Initial teacher education: inspections and outcomes as at 30 June 2019

Updated 21 September 2020

Applies to England

This release contains:

• data for inspections completed between 1 September 2018 and 30 June 2019
• data for the most recent inspections and outcomes as at 30 June 2019

One-hundred per cent of age phase partnerships are now good or outstanding, a slight increase from 99% at the end of both June 2017 and June 2018.

Nearly half of inspections of age phase partnerships in school-centred initial teacher training (SCITTs) that are part of multi-academy trusts (MATs) were outstanding compared to over a third for those that are not part of MATs.

SCITTs have a higher proportion of outstanding inspection outcomes than HEIs for both the primary and secondary phases.

Figure 1: Most recent overall effectiveness as at 30 June 2019

Teaching in state-funded schools (under local authority control) in England requires specific qualifications, on top of the subject knowledge experience or degree one might have. For example teaching in state-funded primary or secondary schools requires qualified teacher status (QTS). Early Years Teacher Status (EYTS) is available for those wishing to specialise in working with babies and children from birth to five. Initial teacher education/training (ITE) is the training that enables a prospective teacher to gain the required professional status or qualification in ITE in further education (FE).

Types of ITE partnerships

School-Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT)
A consortium of schools, usually in a local area or region, providing graduate training for teachers.

Further Education Training
Training for those entering the further education and skills sector.

Higher Education Institution (HEI)
A university or university college that provides undergraduate or postgraduate teacher training. An HEI usually offers an academic qualification that includes QTS.

Teach First
A charity set up to recruit graduates and train them to teach in deprived areas.

Each of these types of ITE partnership can offer training for up to four different age ranges. These are called age phase partnerships and cover:

• early years
• primary
• secondary
• further education

How Ofsted inspects initial teacher education

Initial teacher education inspections take place over two stages:

1. Stage one occurs in the summer term and allows inspectors to observe trainees at the end of their training. No inspection judgements are formed during this stage.

2. Stage two takes place in the following autumn and focuses on observing newly qualified teachers or former trainees.^{[footnote 1]} Outcomes of inspections are only finalised after the second stage.

Any age phase partnership found to be less than good will usually receive a single stage follow-up inspection within the same academic year. The outcomes for these inspections are also included in this release.

In most inspections a separate set of inspection judgements is awarded for each age phase partnership. Ofsted may produce a combined judgement for both primary and secondary phases if a provider only has a small number of trainees.

Where ‘provision is repeatedly of requires improvement or lower quality’, the Department for Education will often withdraw trainee allocations until the age phase partnership has been judged to be good or outstanding. As a result, some partnerships close all or part of their provision when judged to be less than good. This is one reason why inspection outcomes are so high: weaker providers or partnerships often close, and closed providers are not included in the statistics on the outcomes for all open providers at their most recent inspection.

This release covers the age phase partnerships which had the second stage of their inspection in autumn 2018.

Size of the sector

The majority of open partnerships are either HEI or SCITTs. There are 68 HEIs and 170 SCITTs. Fifty-nine of the HEIs and 52 of the SCITTs have more than one age phase partnership. Out of 418 age phase partnerships currently operating, 155 provide primary QTS and 150 provide secondary QTS.

Figure 2: Number of initial teacher education (ITE) age phase partnerships as at 31 August 2019 and number of inspections carried out in 2018 to 2019

Table 1: Numbers of age phase partnerships by type of partnership

	Number of phases
Type of provider	one	two	three	four	Total
EBITT	1	0	0	0	1
HEI	9	25	21	13	68
ITE in FE	7	0	0	0	7
SCITT	118	51	1	0	170
Teach First	5	4	0	0	9

Main findings

Age phase partnerships at their most recent inspection

Thirty-six per cent of age phase partnerships are outstanding which is the same as at the end of June 2018.

All of the 333 ITE age phase partnerships that have been inspected were judged to be good or outstanding at their most recent inspection. This is a slight increase from 99% at the end of both June 2017 and June 2018.

Of these, 36% of age phase partnerships are outstanding which is the same as at the end of June 2018.

With just two outstanding age phase partnerships out of nineteen, early years has the lowest proportion of outstanding age phase partnerships. Primary and primary/secondary partnerships have the highest proportion of outstanding partnerships where 43% of all partnerships are outstanding.

Age phase partnerships without inspection outcomes

There are 418 age phase partnerships and of these, 333 have a current inspection judgement.

There are 255 ITE partnerships, each of which has one or more age phase partnerships.^{[footnote 2]} In total there are 418 age phase partnerships and of these, 333 have a current inspection judgement. The 85 age phase partnerships that have no inspection judgement, are distributed amongst 69 different partnerships, with the biggest group (55) being SCITTs. There are a number of reasons why a partnership may not have been inspected and is therefore not included in this dataset.

Twenty-three of these age phase partnerships were previously EBITTs that had an Employment-based route (EBR) inspection between 1 September 2012 and 31 August 2013.^{[footnote 3]} As a result, they have no inspection outcome shown in the most recent inspection data.^{[footnote 4]} A further 12 age phase partnerships had their first stage one inspection in summer 2019 and the inspections will conclude in autumn 2019. Seventeen age phase partnerships are relatively new, and have only had trainees in the uninspected phase for a year.

There are 52 SCITTs with more than one age phase partnership, and of these, there are 33 where not all of the age phase partnerships have been inspected. There are 59 HEIs with more than one age phase partnership, and of these, there are 11 where not all of the age phase partnerships have been inspected.

Outcomes by type of partnership

SCITTs have a higher proportion of outstanding inspection outcomes than HEIs for both the primary and secondary phases.

Teach First partnerships have the most positive inspections outcomes with 9 out of the 11 age phase partnerships inspected having been judged outstanding for overall effectiveness.

SCITTs have a higher proportion of outstanding inspection outcomes than HEIs, for both the primary and secondary phases.

Figure 3: Most recent overall effectiveness as at 30 June 2019, by type of partnership and age phase partnership

SCITTs that are part of a multi-academy trust (MAT)

Outcomes of inspections for SCITTs in MATS are slightly more positive than those SCITTs that are not in a MAT.

There are over 7,000 state-funded academies in almost 1,200 MATs. Of these 1,200 MATs, 93 manage ITE partnerships. There are an additional seven MATs that manage ITE partnerships where the MAT currently has only one school.

The average size of the MATs that manage ITE partnerships is 10 schools, compared to an average of six schools for all MATs nationally.

One-hundred SCITTs are part of a MAT which is the same number as in both July 2018 and July 2017.^{[footnote 5]} Despite the overall number remaining the same, there have been some changes:

• three SCITTs that were part of a MAT last year have since closed
• two SCITTs have moved to another MAT since last year
• three SCITTs have become part of a MAT this year

The 100 SCITTs that are currently in MATs have 136 age phase partnerships.

Eighty-four of these SCITTs have had an inspection of at least one of their age phase partnerships. Of these, 23 SCITTs have one age phase that has not yet been inspected. In total, 87 of the age phase partnerships have been inspected.

Of these 87 age phase partnerships, 40 were judged to be outstanding, and 47 were judged to be good.

Outcomes of inspections for SCITTs in MATs are slightly more positive than those SCITTs that are not in a MAT. Nearly half of inspections of age phase partnerships in SCITTs that are part of MATs were outstanding compared to over a third for those that are not part of MATs.

Figure 4: Most recent overall effectiveness as at 30 June 2019, by MAT SCITTs and Non MAT SCITTs

Most MAT SCITT partnerships are part of MATs that contain schools in the same phase as the age phase partnership of the MAT SCITT. However there are 6 MAT SCITTs that have primary QTS trainees but have no primary schools within their MAT.

SCITTs that are managed by a local authority

There are 12 SCITT partnerships that are managed by a local authority. These SCITTs have 15 age phase partnerships, nine of which have been inspected. Four out of these nine age phase partnerships were judged to be outstanding. The proportion of age phase partnerships that are outstanding is slightly less than SCITTs that are part of a MAT but higher than SCITTs that are not part of a MAT.

Regional inspection outcomes

The Ofsted region with the most ITE age phase partnerships is North East, Yorkshire and the Humber. The Ofsted region with the least age phase partnerships is South West.

Around a quarter of age phase partnerships in the West Midlands, East of England and North East, Yorkshire and the Humber regions are outstanding compared to around half of age phase partnerships in the South West and London regions.

Figure 5: Most recent overall effectiveness as at 30 June 2019, by Ofsted region

Inspections between 1 September 2018 and 31 August 2019

Only one age phase partnership was judged to require improvement, and none were judged to be inadequate.

Ofsted conducted 50 inspections of 49 different partnerships in the 2018 to 2019 academic year. Following a less than good judgement, one age phase partnership received a re-inspection and was therefore inspected twice within the reporting period.

The 50 inspections, conducted in the 2018 to 2019 academic year, resulted in 62 separate inspection outcomes. This is because most partnerships have more than one age phase partnership. Of these, 29 were outstanding, 32 were good and one was judged to require improvement.

The age phase partnership that was judged to require improvement was re-inspected in the summer term and judged to be good.

Figure 6: Overall effectiveness judgements between 1 September 2018 and 31 August 2019^{[footnote 6]}

The changing landscape of ITE provision^{[footnote 7]}

SCITTs are beginning to offer more age phases.

Trainee teachers can take different pathways to gain QTS. These pathways, or routes, can be grouped into school-led or university-led routes^{[footnote 8]}.

On school-led routes, trainees are placed within a school from the first day of training, where they receive practical, hands-on teacher training delivered by practicing teachers.

In university-led courses, the university or college delivers the pedagogy of teaching. This is supplemented by at least two placements in schools, where trainees put theory into practice.

Four years ago, just over half of all inspected partnerships were based in universities. This has since decreased to around a third of inspected partnerships being university based currently.

This change is mainly due to the growth of SCITTs. This growth was particularly notable between 31 August 2017 and 31 August 2018, where the number of school-led partnerships inspected increased from 98 to 133.

As figure 7 shows, the number of inspected school-led partnerships has increased year-on-year since 2015 and 68% of all inspected partnerships are now based in schools. Conversely, the number of inspected university-led partnerships has seen a decrease across the same period, from 80 to 73.

Figure 7: Number of open inspected partnerships, by type, over time^{[footnote 9]}

When including partnerships which have not yet been inspected, the current total number of school-led and university-led partnerships are slightly higher, at 180 and 75 respectively.

School-led partnerships offer fewer age phases and take fewer trainees than university-led partnerships. Currently, nearly 8 in 10 university-led partnerships offer multiple age phases, and almost half offer at least three age phases.

In recent years, school-led partnerships have begun to offer more age phases, with 26% of those inspected in 2018 to 2019 offering multiple phases, compared with just 5% in 2014 to 2015.

The average number of trainees in a school-led partnership in 2018 to 2019 was around 50; for university-led partnerships it was approximately 530. This means that although fewer than a third of partnerships are based in universities, over four fifths of trainees are still training in university-led partnerships.

The quality of training is equally high in both school-led and university-led partnerships, with 100% of age phase partnerships for both partnership types judged to be either good or outstanding at their most recent inspection.

There does however remain a difference in the proportion of age phase partnerships judged outstanding between the two types. The proportion of university-led age phase partnerships judged outstanding is lower than for those which are school-led, with 28% and 44% judged outstanding respectively.

These figures do represent a slight narrowing of the gap between the two provider types over the last few years. Since August 2017 the percentage of school-led age phase partnerships judged outstanding at their most recent inspection decreased by one percentage point, whilst university-led age phase partnerships increased by one percentage point.

Revisions to previous release

There are no revisions to the previous release.

Glossary

This can be found within the Methodology and quality report

If you have any comments or feedback on this publication, please contact Louise Butler on 03000 131 457 or inspectioninsight@ofsted.gov.uk

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the following for their contribution to this statistical release: Clair Simpson, James Jordan, Fiona Lewis, Issa Mohamed and Matthew Spencer.

1. Qualified teacher status is only awarded for primary and secondary routes, not for ITE in FE or Early Years. ↩

2. See the introduction for more information about age phase partnerships. ↩

3. Ofsted has reported on inspections and inspection outcomes as official statistics since 2012. ↩

4. From 1 September 2013, Ofsted no longer judged the Employment-based route (EBR) as a separate provision of ITE. Some Employment-based initial teacher training partnerships (EBITTs) have converted to school-centred initial teacher training (SCITT) partnerships. No judgements for EBR partnerships are included in the most recent inspection figures. This means EBITTs that converted to SCITTs are not included in this data unless they have been re-inspected since they converted. ↩

5. These are MATs as defined by the DfE and include trusts which have been established as MATs but which currently only have one school. This is different from the definition used by Ofsted in our other publications, which is based on MATs which have two schools or more. ↩

6. Figure 6 combines the outcomes of each type of inspection this year and includes an age phase partnership more than once if a partnership was inspected more than once during the year. ↩

7. Data used within this section is sourced from Ofsted ITE inspection official statistics and the annual Ofsted partnership survey used for inspection planning purposes. ↩

8. ‘School-led’ is defined as partnerships within the following categories: SCITT, Teach First, and EBITT (Employment Based Initial Teacher Training). ‘University-led’ is defined as providers within the following categories: HEI, and ITE in FE. ↩

9. As this covers open inspected partnerships only, the numbers for each year are lower than they would be if we were to consider the total number of open partnerships irrespective of their inspection status. This data is at partnership level, and so a single partnership offering multiple age phases would be counted only once. ↩