This chapter covers teacher education in early childhood and school education, higher education, and adult education.
For each of these, it focuses on three major features: initial teacher education and training, conditions of service, and continuing professional development.
It does not cover the many staff in private, voluntary and independent (PVI) early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings who are not trained teachers, although it does address routes to qualifications specific to ECEC.
Early childhood and school education
Policy objectives
The Department for Education’s single departmental plan, updated in May 2018, sets out its vision to ‘provide world-class training, education and care for everyone, whatever their background’. This is underpinned by seven principles guiding the Department’s work, including recognising the importance of the people delivering education and care and striving to recruit, retain and develop the best.
Divided into four main delivery areas, the schools area of the departmental plan includes priorities to:
- ensure there are sufficient high-quality teachers for the long term, by delivering the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy;
- elevate the status of the teaching profession, including by strengthening Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), reducing unnecessary workload, and supporting the Chartered College of Teaching , the professional body for teachers.
The DfE published the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy in January 2019, outlining four priorities:
i) priority 1 focuses on helping leaders to create supportive school structures;
ii) priority 2 aims to improve support for teachers at an early stage in their careers and includes the introduction, from September 2021, of an Early Career Framework providing a two-year package of structured support;
iii) priority 3 intends to ensure that a career in teaching remains attractive to teachers as their careers and lives develop, for example, by developing specialist qualifications to support clearer non-leadership career pathways;
iv) priority 4 focuses on simplifying the process of becoming a teacher and includes the introduction of a new ‘one-stop’ application service for initial teacher training (ITT).
To support priority 1, Ofsted, the inspectorate also launched a draft new inspection framework in January 2019. It has an active focus on tackling teacher workload and aims to reduce the pressures on teachers, particularly where these pressures are associated with inspection.
The Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy links to the Government’s December 2017 national strategy for improving social mobility through education. This included plans to improve support for teachers early in their careers; provide clear pathways to progression and recruit and retain high quality teachers in challenging areas.
Further information on the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy, and on other measures to boost recruitment and retention, is available in this February 2019 House of Commons Library briefing (CBP-7222).
Initial teacher education and conditions of service
There is a diverse range of routes into teaching in schools; consecutive (undergraduate) and concurrent (postgraduate) routes both exist, and training may be school-led or led by a higher education institution (HEI). The curriculum for initial teacher education is determined by individual providers. Qualifying as a teacher involves gaining an academic qualification and the professional accreditation of Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), and passing a statutory induction period. Whichever training route they follow, teachers must meet the same Teachers’ Standards.
Teachers are not civil servants, but employees of the local authority, the school governing body or the academy trust, depending on the legal category of the school. They apply for a specific teaching post through an open application process. The Chartered College for Teaching is the recognised professional body for the teaching profession. Membership is voluntary.
In maintained schools, the qualifications required for appointment, pay, conditions of employment, working time, professional duties and recruitment processes are regulated by legislation. In academies, it is the academy trust that determines these matters.
Continuing professional development
It is regarded as a professional duty for a teacher to undertake continuing professional development (CPD) throughout his or her career. The CPD needs of each teacher are determined by the individual and his or her school, in the context of performance management and the school development plan.
Higher education
Policy objectives
In response to concerns that, in many higher education institutions (HEIs), teaching has been less valued than research, the UK Government introduced the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) in 2016. The TEF measures the quality of teaching in English HEIs and rewards those providing high quality teaching by permitting them to charge a higher level of student tuition fee (‘differentiated’ tuition fees). HEIs in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales may opt to apply for inclusion.
The TEF draws on existing, nationally collected data to provide assessors with a common set of metrics that relate to each of the aspects of teaching excellence:
- teaching on the courses taken by students responding to the National Student Survey,
- assessment and feedback,
- academic support,
- non-continuation of studies,
- highly skilled employment or further study.
The Department for Education’s single departmental plan, updated in May 2018, sets out its vision to ‘provide world-class training, education and care for everyone, whatever their background’. One of the key principles underpinning the Department’s work includes recognising the importance of the people delivering education and care and striving to recruit, retain and develop the best across all sectors.
Initial teacher education and conditions of service
There is no national training programme for teaching in higher education, and higher education institutions (HEIs) have the autonomy to employ teaching staff, organise their own training provision, and supervise the continuing professional development of their staff.
Higher education staff are not civil servants. Their pay and conditions of employment are not regulated, but are negotiated and agreed nationally under a UK-wide framework agreement. Individual HEIs then create their own pay and grading structures using the national framework, in negotiation with local union representatives.
Continuing professional development
While there is no legal requirement for academic staff in higher education to undertake professional development, there is an expectation that they will do so. A number of organisations and frameworks exist to assist higher education institutions (HEIs) and their staff in fulfilling this expectation.
Adult learning
The further education (FE) sector covers a wide range of teaching roles and contexts, as it caters for adults (see the Chapter on ‘Adult Education and Training’) and many 16- to 18/19-year-olds.
Policy objectives
The Department for Education’s single departmental plan, updated in May 2018, sets out its vision to ‘provide world-class training, education and care for everyone, whatever their background’. One of the key principles underpinning the plan is recognising the importance of the people delivering education and care, and striving to recruit, retain and develop the best across all sectors. A priority within the post-16 and skills delivery area is to ‘raise the status of our further education teaching profession’.
Initial teacher education and conditions of service
The regulatory framework for teachers in maintained schools does not apply to teachers in further education (FE) colleges, despite the overlap in the age groups catered for and the programmes provided. Successful completion of a teaching qualification to work in the sector does, however, permit progression to the status of Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills (QTLS). This is conferred through a process called professional formation and is administered by the Society for Education and Training, which is the professional body for those working as teachers in post-16 education and training.
Informed by the Lingfield Review (2012) on Professionalism in Further Education, the Government considers a teaching qualification at Level 5 (of the Regulated Qualifications Framework, RQF) as the minimum standard for teaching in further education (FE), but it is for FE providers to decide the appropriate qualifications required for each position they wish to fill. There is a great deal of flexibility in terms of routes into FE teaching, and guidance on qualification options is available from the Education and Training Foundation (ETF), the national support body for the FE and training sector. The ETF is intending to review FE teaching qualifications in 2019, leading up to the expiry date for existing qualifications in 2020.
Teachers in the FE sector are not civil servants. Their pay and conditions of service are subject to negotiation between the employers’ organisation and trade unions / professional associations. The agreements reached are not binding, but provide recommendations to the employer. Consequently, pay and conditions can vary from college to college.
Continuing professional development
There is no legal requirement for teachers and trainers in further education to undertake professional development, but they do so. There is a national reference point in the Professional Standards developed by the Education and Training Foundation (ETF), the national support body for the further education and training sector. These enable teachers and trainers to identify areas for their own professional development and organisations to support staff development.
Article last reviewed April 2021.