Education Bill

Baroness Sharp of Guildford Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

Can I trouble the Minister just a little further? I was grateful for his response about ensuring that there is a high-quality mentor for trainees. If he had a little bit of time to drop me a note on how the mentors will be selected—both for the teachers in initial teacher training and for those in the qualified teacher year—I would be grateful to him for that.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

I, too, apologise for intervening at this point, but there is one issue on which I would be grateful to have a little bit of clarification. My noble friend the Minister talked about the substantial changes that are being made in teacher training provision. The biggest change is the switch from training teachers in ITT settings, within a higher education environment, to training teachers within schools. Am I right in thinking that there is no legislation—certainly there is nothing in the Bill—that covers that change? Does it require legislation?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I do not believe that legislation is required for that, but we will come on to that issue in a later group, where we have some specific amendments on the role of the HEIs.