Research and analysis

Teaching teachers during COVID-19

Published 19 May 2021

Applies to England

Executive summary

Context

The initial teacher education (ITE) sector is responsible for training teachers in early years, primary, secondary and college education. It is the main route for aspiring teachers in schools to obtain qualified teaching status (QTS).^{[footnote 1]} There are currently 256 registered ITE partnerships, which this year are responsible for educating over 40,000 trainee teachers.^{[footnote 2]}

In June last year, Ofsted introduced a new framework for inspecting ITE partnerships. This established a one-stage inspection model with a particular focus on the quality of the ITE curriculum and with 2 key judgements: the ‘quality of education and training’ and ‘leadership and management’. Previously, ITE partnerships were inspected in 2 stages across 2 different terms, with less focus on the curriculum and more on trainees’ outcomes.

Ofsted was due to start inspecting under this new framework in January 2021, but we suspended our plans due to the third national lockdown. This means that no ITE partnership has yet been inspected under the new ITE inspection framework.

In spring 2021, Ofsted and the Secretary of State for Education agreed to use research methods to evaluate how ITE partnerships have responded to COVID-19 and how the ITE curriculum has been developed. This involved a series of remote research visits to 75 ITE partnerships (30% of the sector) that agreed to take part, alongside discussion of their curriculum planning. This report presents the findings.

Ofsted will be inspecting ITE partnerships from May 2021. The inspections will evaluate partnerships against the inspection handbook criteria. They will also seek to understand the impact of COVID-19 on each partnership and how leaders have responded.

Findings

While COVID-19 has been an immense challenge for partnerships and their trainees, the move to remote training and remote teaching has, in some cases, stimulated deeper and more connected thinking about the ITE curriculum. Partnerships have generally either maintained or improved access to the ITE curriculum for those with caring responsibilities, and have worked particularly hard to support trainees in their emotional and mental well-being.

The hard work and support for trainees that ITE partnerships have provided have mitigated much of the possible impact of COVID-19. However, some challenges remain, which may have been systemic before the pandemic:

• Too few partnerships have a sufficiently ambitious ITE curriculum. For example, only a minority of partnerships could demonstrate that they had incorporated trainees’ statutory minimum curriculum entitlement into their plans, and very few had gone beyond it.^{[footnote 3]}

• Too many partnerships are overly reliant on the experiences that trainees gain through placements to provide ITE curriculum content in subjects and phases.

• While many partnerships have found innovative methods for enabling trainees to make up for lost time in the classroom due to COVID-19, these efforts are unlikely to be enough to provide trainees with full and rounded ITE.

All trainees are likely to need some additional support in their first year as NQTs, and possibly longer, to make up for COVID-19-related losses.

The ITE sector must now develop stronger and more ambitious ITE curriculums. This means developing curriculums that are better designed around subject and phase, more integrated across the partnership, and more informed by up-to-date and pertinent research.

Methodology

This report uses the concepts and language of the ITE framework to evaluate evidence collected during remote research visits to ITE partnerships. It draws on this evidence to address 2 broad questions:

• What has been the impact of COVID-19 on ITE partnerships and the quality of education and training they provide?

• How well are ITE partnerships developing their curriculums with respect to Ofsted’s concept of curriculum quality?

The remote research visits covered 75 ITE partnerships (30% of all partnerships) across 77 of the following age phases (see Annex):

• 4 early years

• 34 primary

• 26 secondary

• 5 combined

• 8 further education

The 75 partnerships covered every Ofsted region, and were representative of the sector in terms of type, size and phase.

Participation was voluntary and so partnerships are not identifiable from this report. You can find a detailed breakdown of the sample in the Annex.

During each remote research visit, we spoke to most of the following in separate focus groups, chaired by an Education HMI (Her Majesty’s Inspector):

• strategic partnership leads

• programme leaders or their equivalents

• mentors

• trainees, both undergraduate and postgraduate

• NQTs

Participants were asked a series of mostly open-ended questions about the impact of COVID-19 on their partnership, alongside broader questions about the partnership’s approach to the ITE curriculum. Partnerships were also asked to send in curriculum plans relevant to the phase of interest and to distribute an online survey to trainees and staff.

The Education HMI took notes throughout the visit and recorded their overall analysis for the visit in a structured form, which was then coded and analysed by researchers.

In this report, we use the phrases ‘few’, ‘some’, ‘many’ and ‘most’ to roughly quantify ITE partnerships. We do not have predefined ranges for these phrases because the evidence was not always directly comparable across every partnership. We have, however, made sure that every use of each phrase broadly refers to similar proportions of partnerships, ignoring any missing data.

Methodological limitations

There are limitations to this methodology. Participation was voluntary, which impacted on the range of partnerships we were able to visit. Several partnerships declined to take part due to COVID-related issues. However, we revisited the sample frequently and prioritised contact with partnerships that were under-represented. We are fairly confident that our findings are generalisable, as we were able to visit 30% (75 of 256) of all ITE partnerships.

Partnerships had some control over who took part in the visit, as they were asked to contact trainees, mentors and NQTs to invite them to participate. This is likely to have made the findings slightly more positive than we might have expected.

The findings in this report rely almost solely on the interpretation of evidence gathered from focus groups and the ITE curriculum plans that were shared. We did not, for instance, observe centre-based training, visit trainees on placement or seek documented evidence of training having taken place. Our findings on the ITE curriculum therefore relate mostly to curriculum intent – that is, planning and design of the curriculum – rather than the implementation of the curriculum through teaching.

List of key terms

Term	Definition
ITE partnership	The organisation that is responsible for delivering ITE, typically a higher education institute (HEI) or school-centred initial teacher training (SCITT) centre.
Placement provider	An early years setting, school or college that gives trainee teachers placement opportunities within the ITE partnership.
Mentor	A nominated individual at a placement provider who is responsible for supporting trainees and coordinating their education while they are on a placement.
Tutor	A nominated individual at the partnership who is responsible for supporting trainees during centre-based training and carrying out any summative assessment(s) during placements.
Centre-based training	The education that is given by the lead partner (such as an HEI or teaching school) through lessons, lectures and other means.
Placement	The education that is given by placement providers, where trainees are given the opportunity to practise teaching and receive mentoring.

Main findings

What is working well

Learning and teaching remotely has been an immense challenge for trainees and their partnerships, but in some cases it has stimulated deeper and more connected thinking about the ITE curriculum. In these cases, the ITE partnerships have improved their guidance and support for trainees by providing wider access to ITE curriculum content across the partnership by now routinely sharing this online. Training to teach remotely has allowed many trainees to reflect on the generic principles of how pupils learn and how these apply to methods of teaching remotely. However, this reflection has been largely self-directed. COVID-19 has given trainees space to learn about and train in remote methods before going into their NQT year.

The take up of remote methods in centre-based training has also improved equality of access to the ITE curriculum. It has allowed many trainees to keep learning despite having additional caring commitments, such as childcare. Visiting speakers have been easier to attract because there is no travel time, meaning that more partnerships have the opportunity to learn from those with specific expertise.

In the main, partnerships have been effective at supporting trainees to develop emotional resilience. Many have held joint meetings with mentors, tutors and trainees more regularly, some specifically focused on mental health. Several partnerships have made efforts to provide social interaction for trainees as much as possible, facilitating small and informal online events. Most trainees felt supported and some believed that ITE partnerships were going ‘above and beyond’ to ensure their well-being.

What is working less well

Due to COVID-19, trainees have not yet had sufficient time to apply what they have learned in the classroom. While some partnerships have brought forward centre-based ITE curriculum content this year to allow for the extension of summer term placements, it is unlikely that trainees will have a complete experience this year, despite partnerships’ best efforts. Trainees are particularly behind in their experience of managing behaviour, and many in primary have had limited experience of teaching early reading, including systematic synthetic phonics (SSP). Others have limited practical experience of teaching subjects with specialist equipment, such as music, physical education or science. While some partnerships have found innovative ways around this, it is unlikely to be enough to provide trainees with a full, rounded experience and means NQTs will likely need some additional support next year.

Too few partnerships have a sufficiently ambitious ITE curriculum for their trainees. This is equally true for SCITTs and HEIs. All partnership leaders were aware of the statutory minimum curriculum entitlement for trainees (core content framework’ (CCF)) where this applied to their phase.^{[footnote 4]} However, most had not yet fully incorporated it into their ITE curriculum plans. A small number of partnerships could demonstrate that they had fully incorporated the CCF into their plans, but very few had designed a curriculum that was more ambitious than this minimum entitlement. Many partnerships were still incorrectly relying on the ‘Teachers’ standards’, a summative assessment tool for trainees, as the basis for their curriculum design.

Too many partnerships relied too heavily on placement experiences for learning the curriculum and this was a problem for both HEIs and SCITTs. Some ITE curriculums contained very little subject-specific content to be taught during centre-based training, and so the quality of education depended mainly on what happened during the school or college placements. Trainees were sometimes asked to teach subjects before they had any training in them at all. In others, mentors relied on trainees to let them know what they had already learned and what they wanted to work on. This was particularly apparent in early years and primary, where learning the fundamentals of phase and subject (for example, early reading) is essential. Not only is this placement-reliant approach to the ITE curriculum unlikely to give trainees a high-quality education, it has left the ITE sector particularly vulnerable to the impact of COVID-19, which has significantly narrowed the range of teaching experiences trainees have had.

The impact of COVID-19

This section explores the impact that COVID-19 has had on the operations of ITE partnerships, including their ability to recruit and place trainees, their methods of teaching trainees, and their systems and capacity to support and coach trainees on placements.

Trainee recruitment and placements

Most partnerships received more applications for teacher training in the academic year 2020/21 than in previous years, which aligns with the national data.^{[footnote 5]} Leaders had mixed views on the quality of applications: some received good applications from a more diverse pool than in previous years, while others found applications generally weaker.

Around half of partnerships had increased their intake as a result of receiving more applications. Some partnerships maintained their existing number of places to ensure that they did not exceed their mentoring or placement capacity. A minority reported no notable impact of COVID-19 on recruitment.

All partnerships had adapted their trainee recruitment processes in response to COVID-19 restrictions. Like most other organisations, online interviews and assessments took the place of in-person interviews and observations. For example, some applicants were asked to make a video about themselves or to record themselves reading a story.

Partnerships considered remote recruitment to have some advantages over typical recruitment procedures, such as saving travelling time. A few leaders have decided to continue some online elements of recruitment in the future. Others were initially nervous about the lack of human interaction in an online interview for teaching roles, but said that their concerns were later allayed.

Most partnerships had secured school or college placements for all, or the majority, of their trainees during the autumn term of 2020. SCITTs were marginally more likely than HEIs to have secured placements for all of their trainees, and attributed their success to well-established partnerships with schools.

Some placement providers had less capacity to offer placements due to COVID-19. Some other placements were arranged and later cancelled due to school ‘bubbles’ closing or the trainee contracting COVID-19 themselves. In most cases, leaders successfully found alternative placements for trainees. In others, trainees were asked to share placements, which meant they shared a mentor and their teaching time with another trainee. Others completed virtual placements, where they were linked with a host school and observed and sometimes contributed to lessons taught online. During the visit, we were not able to compare the quality of education of a virtual or shared placement with that of a normal placement.

In a minority of cases, partnerships had been unable to place some of their trainees. They instead devised additional centre-based training, but were aware that this was not an adequate substitute for practice through teaching.

In anticipation of further COVID-19 restrictions at the start of 2021, most partnerships working with schools had arranged to delay second placements and extend first placements until schools returned in March. This allowed trainees to continue teaching remotely in a school context that they were familiar with, helping them develop more confidence before teaching fully face to face in their second placements.

Learning theory remotely

Since the first national lockdown, all trainees have been learning from home instead of attending training centres. Partnerships are using various online platforms and tools to deliver the ITE curriculum remotely. Many had developed their online materials in response to feedback from trainees earlier in the academic year and were now using blended approaches with a mix of synchronous and asynchronous sessions. Subject leads from several partnerships described using break-out room functions on group calls to facilitate discussion.

Many partnerships found it easier to attract speakers for online lectures than they would have ordinarily, because there was no need for the speaker to travel. Having the flexibility of pre-recorded sessions also helped trainees continue to learn despite additional commitments caused by COVID-19, such as childcare. The ability of mentors, tutors and subject leads to access ITE curriculum content online has, in some cases, strengthened teaching and subject knowledge across partnerships.

Most partnership leaders planned to teach their normal ITE curriculum this academic year, with some introducing new content on remote education. This additional content mostly covered the use of online platforms and tools, and the extent to which it was taught within a subject or phase context was unclear. The development of the ITE curriculum is explored more fully in the next section.

Training to teach during COVID-19 may have given NQTs an advantage over others in their workplace who have not been specifically trained in using online platforms. In some cases, trainees had been encouraged to reflect deeply about the generic principles of how pupils learn (for example, about metacognition or cognitive load theory) and how they apply to both remote and face-to-face teaching methods.

Some partnerships had ‘front-loaded’ centre-based ITE curriculum content in anticipation of further lockdowns and disruption later in the school year. A few had arranged a block of teaching time during September 2020 when face-to-face teaching remained an option. While this may have been the best course of action for that context, it unavoidably meant that trainees were teaching without a firm grounding in generic teaching principles, the subject or phase.

When the third national lockdown was announced in January 2021, some partnerships brought forward centre-based training originally planned for the summer term, so that trainees could have maximum time on placement when lockdown restrictions were lifted.

Learning to teach remotely

Most trainees taught face to face as well as remotely during the autumn term 2020. This generally continued in spring 2021, as trainees and those assigned to work with them were often included in the staff rota for teaching key workers’ children. A few placement providers did not include trainees in the rota, and so these trainees were only teaching and receiving feedback remotely between January and March 2021.

Those trainees teaching face to face were still affected by the use of ‘bubbles’ in their placement schools. This often prevented them from teaching or observing as many different classes and key stages as usual. For example, many primary trainees did not have as many opportunities to teach early reading, including SSP in key stage 1. In some cases, partnerships had found additional opportunities to teach or observe SSP teaching by providing online videos and coordinating sessions for trainees to rehearse SSP teaching with each other. When trainees were able to teach face to face, they did not have full flexibility in managing the classroom, as public health guidance encouraged them to stay at the front of the class and maintain social distancing from pupils and other teachers.

A few partnership leaders were aware of these knowledge gaps and had planned a mixture of additional content, teaching time and support for trainees in the summer term. However, many were either not aware of these issues, or were aware but had made no plans to address them.

Trainees in subjects requiring specialist equipment to practice, such as science, music, physical education and technical courses, were also prevented from developing subject knowledge and putting it into practice. They were not always able to deliver their school or college’s intended ITE curriculum because pupils could not practise or apply theoretical knowledge without access to equipment normally held on the school or college site.

Some partnerships had found other opportunities for teachers to learn about weaving practice into subjects, such as arranging for trainees to observe video lessons recorded before COVID-19. Others received support from their placement schools to film themselves completing experiments in school without pupils present. While these are innovative responses to the challenges posed by COVID-19, they cannot fully replace the experience of teaching pupils to apply knowledge through practice.

Feedback, mentoring and assessment

Schools and colleges have moved most feedback, mentoring and assessment online. In some cases, this led to higher attendance of mentors at online training sessions than in previous years, and several partnerships plan to continue this in future. Many had introduced virtual feedback observations for trainees teaching online, which allowed subject leads or more experienced teachers to continue coaching. Several partnerships commented that they plan to continue providing some elements of training online in the future.

Partnerships have adapted the assessment of trainees in various ways due to COVID-19. Some have been more flexible about written assessments, for example by extending deadlines and allowing trainees to collaborate with each other. Some partnerships have asked mentors or subject specialists to complete teacher observations rather than the designated assessor, and others have allowed the tutor to assess trainees virtually. However, in all cases, partnership tutors remained in regular contact with trainees throughout their placements.

Partnerships described how they have offered various forms of additional support to trainees and mentors since the start of COVID-19. Many leaders had decided to hold online mentor and tutor meetings with trainees more regularly, and some of these meetings specifically included mental health checks. Some trainees had been offered additional sessions to support their emotional health and well-being, and some had been given access to external support such as counselling. Trainees said they felt well supported by their partnerships in managing the additional emotional strain of training through COVID-19.

Several partnerships had also made efforts to provide social interaction for trainees as much as possible, facilitating online events and break-out rooms to encourage informal conversations. Trainees said that partnerships had been very flexible and understanding, which was of particular value to those directly affected by COVID-19 and those with caring responsibilities. A few partnerships had provided food and support parcels to trainees during lockdowns. Most trainees felt very supported and some believed that partnerships were going ‘above and beyond’ to ensure their well-being.

The ITE curriculum

This section explores the quality of ITE partnerships’ curriculum, as far as we could evaluate this through focus groups and looking at curriculum plans. The four sub-sections take the names of key sections within Ofsted’s ITE framework that are about ITE curriculum intent – that is, the ambition and design of the ITE curriculum. Implementation of the curriculum is discussed in relation to the integration of centre-based training and placements.

Ambitious

One of the criteria for receiving a ‘good’ judgement under Ofsted’s new ITE framework is that ‘the curriculum is ambitious in scope and rigorous in content choice’.^{[footnote 6]} This is made explicit throughout the rest of the section on curriculum intent in the framework.

Having an ambitious ITE curriculum means that, at the very least, primary and secondary partnerships should be planning and teaching a curriculum that incorporates all the material set out in the CCF, which is a minimum entitlement for all primary and secondary trainees.

While all partnerships were aware of the CCF and familiar with the concepts within it, many had not considered how the principles fit into the ITE curriculum design. This meant that their ITE curriculums did not include or align with the content set out in the CCF.

Some partnerships had redesigned their ITE curriculum either before or since the introduction of the CCF in September 2020. They had thought carefully about how the CCF should inform their curriculum and weaved its principles throughout using mapping exercises. Trainees at these partnerships often referred to aspects of the CCF when discussing what they had learned and could illustrate how the ITE curriculum covered these aspects with examples from their training.

A small number of partnerships demonstrated a clear understanding that the CCF was a minimum entitlement rather than a curriculum model, and had more ambitious expectations for what trainees should know and be able to do. Leaders gave examples of how they had continually reflected on ITE curriculum plans in response to rigorous academic research. These included arranging visiting speakers including academic experts, offering training in a wide range of subject areas, and providing a tutoring programme so trainees could experience teaching one to one.

Many partnerships were still using the teachers’ standards as a guide to the content and structure of their ITE curriculum plans. Some partnerships had started with the teachers’ standards and devised content around them, while others had designed a curriculum and mapped each element to the standards. The teachers’ standards are a tool for summatively assessing teachers at the end of their trainee and NQT year, and should not form the basis of the ITE curriculum.

Designed around subject and phase

This section explores the extent to which curriculums were designed around subjects for each phase we visited.

Early years

In early years, some partnerships said they had revised their ITE curriculum content to include more subject-specific training in teaching early reading, including SSP and early mathematics.

In other partnerships, trainees did not gain a sufficient understanding of, or competency in, teaching early reading, including SSP, either before or during their placements. In one case, the partnership spent only 2 to 3 hours covering SSP before trainees went on placements, under the broad umbrella of ‘debates in early reading and writing’. In many partnerships, insufficient time was given to SSP, and so trainees were not clear what sounds children should know and by when.

More generally, partnerships appeared to rely too much on practice-based experiences in the early years. There was often no clear structure for introducing ideas and concepts in taught sessions, such as across the 7 areas of learning in the early years foundation stage, which trainees could then apply and explore on placements. The approaches instead relied on guidance from the placement or the interests of the trainee. There was a perception from trainees that ‘we learn by doing’ and that the training centre ‘assumes we have experience of the areas of learning’. This was an issue in both HEIs and SCITTs.

Primary

In primary training, all partnerships taught early reading, including SSP, regardless of whether trainees were on the 3 to 7 age route or the 5 to 11 age route. There was no evidence of ITE partnerships teaching competing approaches to SSP. As described in earlier sections of this report, the opportunity to receive training and teach the SSP scheme used in schools was severely limited due to COVID-19.

The primary curriculum in English, mathematics and science appears to be well developed in many partnerships and taught as a priority in the autumn term. Some partnerships had recently appointed additional subject specialists to lead training in these subjects.

However, there was very little depth in the ITE curriculum in foundation subjects. Not only was little thought given to subjects such as modern foreign languages and music, but many of the partnerships only dedicated one day of centre-based training for each foundation subject.

Centre-based training for these foundation subjects is generally provided later in the academic year. However, many trainees are expected to teach foundation subjects across the academic year in line with the placement school’s ITE curriculum. This means that trainees have to teach the foundation subjects before receiving any training in them. To mitigate this, some course leaders have provided online resources and literature to review, to help trainees prepare to teach lessons in the foundation subjects. In other cases, placement schools wait for trainees to be trained in the foundation subjects before they start teaching them. However, this training is sometimes squeezed in at the end of the year, which means trainees do not have sufficient opportunities to practice in the classroom.

Secondary

In secondary training, many partnerships consider what subject knowledge trainees need in order to teach their subject. They ensure there is a plan for trainees to build cumulatively sufficient knowledge across the year.

However, some trainees only receive a small amount of centre-based training in subjects. As with early years and primary, a trainee’s understanding of how to teach a particular subject, and what to teach, therefore depends mainly on what happens on their school placement and how strong the ITE curriculum for the subject is within that school. Even in schools with particularly strong ITE curriculums, mentors have rightly focused on supporting trainees to plan and teach ITE curriculum content, rather than consider a coherently sequenced subject curriculum and an understanding of the practices and debates within subjects.

This means that too many trainees are not clear enough about what curriculum content should be taught in their subject for each key stage, and how this content could be structured and taught within the school context. This is likely to have been the case before COVID-19, but it has made ITE trainees particularly vulnerable to the wider variability of school experiences during COVID-19. Placing so much emphasis on learning through practice means that, when trainees have less opportunity to teach or when placements are of variable quality, they miss learning about important concepts in their subject.

In some partnerships, generic teaching principles were not sufficiently integrated with what trainees were learning about their subject’s content. For example, trainees spoke about generic pedagogy they had learned but could not demonstrate how to use it in their particular subject.

Further education

Most further education courses begin with an intensive block of teaching over the first few weeks, intended to provide trainees with core teaching strategies.

Some partnerships find it challenging to deliver subject-related content at the centre, as trainees are learning to teach a wide range of different subjects (often each one is learning to teach a different subject). This means that centre-based training usually focuses on general pedagogy and teaching English and mathematics. Partnerships are giving particular attention to English and mathematics in recognition that pupils are likely to have fallen behind in these subjects due to COVID-19.

There is therefore an emphasis on trainees maintaining and developing subject-specific knowledge and skills while on placement. This makes the role of placement mentors critical in developing subject knowledge. Some trainees had good support and direction in their subject from mentors, but others had very little interaction with them. Some had their emails ignored and queries left unanswered by their mentors and felt unsupported in both the subject and more generally.

Purposefully integrated

This section explores how the ITE curriculum in centre-based training is integrated with that taught on placements, including the crucial role of the mentor in this process.

Integration between the centre and placements

Many partnerships appear to be delivering an ITE curriculum that is coherent across centre-based and placement-based training.

Some partnerships co-produce their ITE curriculum with a sample of mentors from placement providers. However, a number of partnerships do not work closely enough with placement providers when developing their ITE curriculum. Not only is it likely that the ITE curriculum plan will be poorer as a result, but mentors and subject leads in these partnerships are less likely to teach trainees content relevant to their course or in the right sequence.

Despite this, most partnerships share their planned ITE curriculum with placement providers so that they know which aspects of general pedagogy, or the subject, trainees should learn at any given time. A small minority do not do this, and it is highly unlikely that mentors and subject leads will be able to teach or support trainees sufficiently well in these partnerships.

Overall, communication within partnerships has improved in recent years, and particularly over the last year, largely because they have introduced online platforms. In many partnerships there are now regular, focused discussions between mentors, trainees and professional tutors on how to apply the explicitly taught elements of the curriculum to teaching.

The transfer to virtual learning environments and electronic portfolios and portals has been a major force in ensuring synergy and integration across the curriculum. In many partnerships, mentors and subject leads in placement providers are now more easily able to access curriculum content. They report that this has strengthened their own teaching and subject knowledge.

The role of mentors

The role of mentors is critical for effective integration between partnerships and their placement providers. Many trainees mentioned the high level of support for emotional and mental well-being provided by mentors.

Most mentors appeared to know and understand the partnership’s ITE curriculum and how the placement helps trainees progress through it. However, some mentors rely on the trainee to let them know what they have already learned and what they would like to work on. We do not know whether this is because the partnership had not shared the course content (which, as discussed above, does happen) or because the mentor had not sought this information.

Some partnerships described an established quality assurance process, whereby they reviewed the work of mentors and tutors through regular sampling. In a minority of partnerships, it was unclear how mentors’ feedback was monitored. This meant that they did not know whether the mentors’ assessments were accurate and reliable. These partnerships were relying on strong relationships with partnership schools and belief in the robustness of the mentors’ training.

Some mentors and trainees had no knowledge of the CCF and very few were familiar with the concepts within it. This appeared to demonstrate a lack of exposure to the CCF from the partnership leaders.

Informed by up-to-date and pertinent research

Some partnerships use up-to-date and/or pertinent research to inform their ITE curriculum choices. Those that do strongly emphasise the way pupils learn from the start of their programme, basing this on research literature that is well designed and up to date. This introduces trainees to general concepts from cognitive science, such as cognitive load theory, metacognition and retrieval practice. In these partnerships, research material is taught at the start of the programme and is sometimes, though not always, drawn on in subject-specific research and teaching content later in the course.

Some, but not all, partnerships can demonstrate that trainees learn about up-to-date, pertinent research. For example, some require trainees to read research papers before and after centre-based training. Some send weekly emails covering articles from academic literature, including relevant and rigorous research. Others present extensive reading lists, although it is not always clear which sources are the most relevant and pertinent to the subject or phase, how they relate to the wider ITE curriculum or whether the lists are used by trainees.

Some trainees were able to discuss how they related what they learned from academia to their teaching practice. For example, one mathematics trainee said Haylock’s research had informed their understanding of the importance of addressing misconceptions in the subject. A history trainee spoke about reading Jones’ work on retrieval practice, which influenced how she addressed issues of functional dysfluency in pupils’ chronological knowledge. Others were able to discuss elements of Rosenshine’s principles such as modelling and providing new information in small steps to avoid cognitive overload. They were able to reflect on how this had influenced their practice in the classroom.

A small number of partnerships have an ITE curriculum where there is limited emphasis on a range of research or education theory. Theories that had been taught were used more as a teachers’ toolkit and were not taught in depth or detail.

Some ITE curriculums are underpinned by outdated or discredited theories of education. One trainee related some of her teaching strategies to theories of learning that have been discredited by recent research. This was fed back to partnership leaders, who were unaware of the research on curriculum quality in their subject.

Conclusions

This report highlights the challenges caused by COVID-19 that ITE partnerships and their trainees have overcome during the last year. Over this period, partnerships have been particularly supportive of trainees’ emotional resilience. The move to teaching and learning remotely has given trainees opportunities think differently about their practice.

However, there remains more for the ITE sector to improve, particularly in relation to partnerships’ curriculum development. Many partnerships need to develop a more ambitious curriculum that is better designed around subject and phase, more integrated across the partnership, and more informed by up-to-date and pertinent research.

Trainees have had a very different ITE experience over the last academic year. Despite the best efforts of many partnerships, too few have been able to have the full, rounded education that they would normally. In primary, too few have been able to teach SSP, and more generally trainees have not had the opportunity to develop classroom management skills. They will likely require some additional support next year and possibly further into the future.

Annex – the sample

The sample of 75 partnerships for this study was broadly representative, across key indicators, of the whole population of 256 ITE partnerships.

Partnership type

	SCITT	HEI	ITE in FE	Total
Sample	49	24	2	75
National	175	70	10	256

Trainee numbers enrolled at partnership

	<=41	42-72	73-210	211+	Total
Sample	21	15	20	19	75
National	67	62	64	63	256

Age phase covered across partnerships

	Early years	Primary	Secondary	FE	Combined*	Total**
Sample	4	34	26	8	5	77
National	26	151	147	38	59	421

^{* These are the numbers of combined partnerships that we visited where we collected evidence about both phases. Partnerships where we only collected evidence about one phase have been counted under the relevant phase.}

^{** There were 7 visits where we went to more than one phase. Five are classified as combined primary/secondary and a further 2 are double counted under different phases.}

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1. See: ‘Teachers’ standards’, Department for Education, July 2011. ↩

2. This marks a 20% increase from last year; ‘Initial teacher training census’, Explore education statistics, December 2020. ↩

3. This is set out by the Department for Education’s ‘Initial teacher training (ITT): core content framework, which was a requirement from September 2020, and is described later in the report. ↩

4. The CCF only applies to primary and secondary phases. ↩

5. See UCAS teacher training statistical releases. ↩

6. Initial teacher education inspection framework and handbook, Ofsted, June 2020, page 38. ↩