Initial Teacher Training

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when talking about teacher training, I am always struck by the fact that schools and the teachers in them are often seen as the answer to all of the world’s problems. I cannot think of a single issue in society for which it has not been suggested, “Oh, put it in the curriculum. Teach it at schools”. This includes everything from household management, various forms of sexual health, sporting activity and manners—bits of society say, “Dump it on the teachers. They’ll take care of it”. We ask a lot of our teaching establishment. However, we ask them for one primary thing: the ability to learn, starting at school but carrying on throughout life, so that people can be trained and educated to give society the raw materials that it needs. This is a big ask.

The noble Baroness has brought forward a very timely debate for the simple reason that, at the moment, we seem to be in a very odd place. We have the idea that you should be trained within a school or classrooms primarily, but you should have some back-up at universities. But both will deliver this—and some can and some cannot, some work and some do not and we do not like what is going on. In the end, I am basically somewhat confused. I am not quite sure exactly what the Government want out of this—possibly changes and different suppliers.

My specifics on this—this will surprise absolutely no one in this debate—will be special educational needs. I must declare my interests: I am dyslexic and I am president of the British Dyslexia Association and chairman of an assistive tech company with origins in educational support. When I look through the problems that the teaching profession faces, I see that one of the biggest is that about 20% to 25% of the pupils whom they are teaching do not learn in a conventional manner. Dyslexia is the biggest group and the one that I belong to, but it ain’t the only show in town, and we have a nasty habit of having our troubles come not once but in numbers, or co-occurring—I think that “comorbidity” is the correct term, but it sounds like you are dying twice.

If someone with attention deficit disorder and dyslexia is placed in a conventional classroom, they are more difficult to teach. The teacher who has to deal with this has a different set of problems from those that they would confront in other pupils, and that is not the only combination that is available: there is the entire neuro- diverse community, autism, dyspraxia and dyscalculia, although we do not officially recognise that one—dyslexia with numbers is the way that it is always described to me by people—all of which will present problems to the teacher.

If the teacher gets it wrong, the pupil usually reacts in one of two ways. First—this is the easiest one to deal with—they try to disappear into the middle of the classroom. I heard a wonderful description of how a girl with attention deficit disorder usually hides, develops tics—playing with hair et cetera—and disappears in the background. But boys with dyslexia or attention deficit disorder tend to be the ones who disrupt the classroom because, if you are doing so, no one will teach you anything and you are not exposed as failing. Telling that child who has to get through the next two hours that their future, in 10 years’ time, will be blighted if they do not work properly does not work. Would it work for any of us?

How do we train people to get through? How do we make sure that the teacher’s day and the pupil’s day are bearable? We give them about two days or a day in the course of their training to deal with these massive, diverse problems, where the academics in the field—certainly in the last meeting I went to—use words that I have never heard, having dealt with this subject for over 30 years.

This is a difficult field. Unless one trains people properly, they cannot reach those groups. They have problems in the classroom that can result in failure. Remember what failure means in the current academic system: if one does not get the right number of people getting the right number of GCSEs, one will lose one’s status, and so on. That pressure is constantly being piled up.

Also, there is a case for taking the budget out of the mainstream to deal with this issue. It is about £6,000. Why do we not invest at least some of that money in making sure that people have better training? That will mean that school staff are trained within the system to be able to deal with issues next time, too. The training is not for the individual pupil but for the staff, and it should make sure that a normal teacher undergoes good awareness programmes whereby they can at least recognise most of the problems. There should be a day’s or two days’ training on four or five of the most commonly occurring conditions. That would take an enormous load off.

Then there should be investment in people who can back up and help those staff—two or three experts higher up in the school. That is not a big ask in a school of, say, 1,000 people. If that is done within the profession, the skills will be kept for the duration of the working lives of those staff. The skills will follow them around and can be redeployed and built on.

My noble friend Lord Storey has pulled me up—it is always annoying when an expert is on hand to correct you—saying that the issue is not that simple because, although courses do not cost that much, one has to take time out to train the staff. However, such training can be done and would still be cheaper and easier than what we are doing now. We have a huge problem of people fighting to get through the education and healthcare plans. They are expensive and usually kick in only once someone has failed. If we intervene correctly, we will be able to do more.

Lastly, let us have a look at the teaching of English. It has now been announced that systematic synthetic phonics is the right way in which to teach someone. It is reckoned that 25% of the school population does not learn well from that method. We are telling someone that this is the right way in which to teach when we know that it does not reach some groups. Should we provide more of the same if we do not have the expertise? Anywhere else would regard using the same method over and again as the definition of madness, but that is apparently not the case in education.

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I cannot speak accurately for what went before but I know the noble Lord will accept that this has been an incredibly disrupted time. I am sure that, had we delayed the consultations further in terms of our response, as we have heard today, there would have been criticism. There is always a risk; we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

I will revert to the important subject of the debate. We know that there are no great schools without great teachers, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for the personal experience that he brings to his reflections. I will do my best to answer his and other noble Lords’ questions. We know that the evidence shows that teacher quality is the single most important factor within school in improving outcomes for children and young people, and reforms to teacher training and early-career support are key to the Government’s plans to improve school standards for all.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, talked about the time that it takes to qualify. I am sure that she recognises the value in the continued support, for two years now, for early-career teachers. The Government share the ambition of the initial teacher training sector that all people training to be a great teacher get the best possible start to their careers.

We published our Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy in 2019, working with key stakeholders to set out a shared vision for the teaching workforce. At the heart of this strategy is a golden thread of training and professional development—the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Watson, raised these points—informed by high quality evidence, which will run through each phase of a teacher’s career. As your Lordships may have heard me say in answer to a recent question, there has been an increase of over 20% in applicants to the profession. The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, had his head in his hands, but I hope that he will share my pleasure to see that increase in applicants.

The starting point of this golden thread is initial teacher training, which is why we developed a new core content framework for this purpose. The new framework was published in November 2019, and, since September 2020, all new teachers have been benefiting from initial teacher training, underpinned by the best independently peer-reviewed evidence.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, asked about initial teacher training in relation to pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. ITT providers must design their courses to incorporate the skills and knowledge detailed in the core content framework to support their developing expertise. This clearly includes the requirement, in standards, that all teachers must have a clear understanding of all the needs of their pupils, including, critically, those with special educational needs. That is also carried forward into the early-career framework, which was designed in consultation with the education sector, including specialists on SEND, of course.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I am hearing that this can be one or two days’ training. Is that adequate to get a rough understanding of even the neurodiverse sector, especially those who are not the most glaring examples? I cannot see how it can be.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The framework obviously focuses on the outcome, which is that teachers are competent in all aspects. Given the percentage of children in the classroom with SEN, that is obviously a core part.

In view of the time, I shall continue. This desire to create the best initial start for teachers is why we asked Ian Bauckham to lead a review of the ITT market, focusing on how we can ensure that the quality of ITT is consistently of a world-class standard. As mentioned, Ian has been supported by an advisory group, and the report making recommendations to government was published in July 2021. As we have heard this evening, government has consulted on the recommendations made in the report, and we are currently considering them in light of the responses that we had to the consultation. We expect to publish our full response shortly.

In making their recommendations, the expert advisory group reviewed the available evidence on initial teacher training, including international and UK evidence. The objective evidence shows that there is clearly much to be proud of, as we have heard from your Lordships, in our current system of initial teacher training, with many examples of world-class practice, delivered by providers of all types. As would be expected, it also shows that there is scope to improve further.

To level up standards in every school, for every child, we need to strive for excellence in all corners of the country. The evidence we have available suggests that there is more we can do to make sure that high-quality training is being consistently delivered across the whole system. We must ensure that all trainees receive the training that they deserve.

The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, raised concerns about the content of the national professional qualifications. The NPQ frameworks have all been independently reviewed by the Education Endowment Foundation, which has her extremely knowledgeable noble friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, in its fan club—I will join her there if I may. That is obviously to ensure that the content is based on the best available evidence. The delivery of the NPQs will be quality assured by Ofsted, which I hope gives the noble Baroness some confidence.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, raised—these may be my words rather than hers—the absolute importance of developing critical thinking skills. We have built that into the framework at a number of levels, including in our consultation around the new specialist NPQs. There was a clear demand for more qualifications at the middle leadership level, for teachers who want to specialise in leading teaching or curriculum in their subject or phase, as well as supporting the professional development of other teachers. I hope that goes some way to addressing her question.

We continue to value the expertise of all types of ITT providers in developing courses that are underpinned by a strong evidence base. All courses leading to qualified teacher status must incorporate the mandatory core content framework in full. However, to be absolutely clear, in response to the suggestion of several noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, the Government do not prescribe the curriculum of ITT courses beyond this and we have no plans to do so. It remains for individual providers to draw on their own expertise to design courses of high quality that are based on evidence and appropriate to the needs of trainees and to the subject, phase and age range that they will be teaching.

In response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about training, child development and dyslexia, the core content framework sets out a minimum entitlement of knowledge, skills and experiences that trainees need to enter the profession in the best position possible to teach and support pupils to succeed, including pupils identified within the four areas of need set out in the SEND code of practice.

On a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, and others, I reassure the House that the Government have no plans to remove certain types of providers from the ITT market. The market is formed from a rich tapestry of provision and partnerships, as we have heard this afternoon, including higher education institutions and school-based providers, and we want to retain this diversity in the future. We value the choice this offers trainees, and our objective is not to reduce the range of ITT providers but to ensure that supply is of the highest quality it can be.

There have been some calls to pause the review or, from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, to cancel it altogether. He will not be surprised that that is not in the Government’s plans. We know that there have been particular pressures and we are very grateful to ITT providers for what they have achieved during the pandemic. However, we believe that supporting our teachers with the highest-quality training and professional development is the best way that we can improve pupil outcomes.

That said, as we develop our response to the report, we are considering the timescales for implementation and will ensure that we allow reasonable time for ITT partnerships to implement any of the review’s recommendations that we take forward.

My noble friend Lord Lexden asked about the compulsory reaccreditation of suppliers. The review report recommends that an accreditation process is the best way in which to implement the recommended quality requirements. If any of the recommendations are accepted, we will proceed carefully to maintain enough training places to continue to meet teacher supply needs across the country. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that the accreditation process will indeed be open, transparent and equitable.

There is agreement across all involved in initial teacher training that mentors play a pivotal role in providing trainees with strong professional support and subject-specific support—points that my noble friend Lord Kirkham made. Ian Bauckham’s report identifies effective mentoring as a critical component of high-quality ITT and makes a number of recommendations about the identification and training of mentors. Alongside mentoring, school placements are critical to teacher training. It is right that people training to become a teacher spend the majority of their time based in schools. That is why having enough high-quality school placements is fundamental to ensuring the quality and sufficiency of teachers entering the system each year.

I am puzzled by the suggestion of the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, that schools will be put off from employing early-career teachers. Certainly, in my conversations with schools that are involved in initial teacher training and the teaching school hubs, they feel that this is a fantastic opportunity to build the culture of their school or multi-academy trust into that initial training. They believe that this will help give those teachers the best start to their careers and improve retention.

As we consider our response to the recommendations we are, of course, very aware of the need to protect teacher supply. Many noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, raised concerns about that. We will ensure that the ITT market has the capacity to deliver enough well-trained newly-qualified teachers to the schools and ultimately the pupils who need them. This will include ensuring that there is good geographical availability of initial teacher training.

The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, asked about the criteria used for awarding bursaries. Initial teacher training bursaries are offered in subjects where recruitment is the most challenging. In the academic year 2020-21, we exceeded the postgraduate ITT targets in art, in which it was 132%. In response to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, regarding music, the figure was 225%.

The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, asked about the recruitment of modern foreign language teachers from abroad. As she pointed out and is well aware, EEA and Swiss citizens with settled or pre-settled status under the EU settlement scheme can continue living, working and studying in the UK. In England, that also allowed continued eligibility for home fee status, financial support from Student Finance England and ITT bursaries on a similar basis to domestic students, subject to their meeting the usual residence requirement. There is no limit on the number of international students who can come to the UK to study. For modern foreign languages in 2020-21, 29% of new entrants to postgraduate ITT were from the EEA or Switzerland and 5% were from outside. That overseas/ UK split for modern foreign languages has remained broadly consistent for the past few years.

The noble Baroness, Lady Blower, asked about the new Institute of Teaching, and it will, from September 2022, be England’s flagship teacher development provider. As the first organisation of its kind, it will design and deliver a coherent teacher development pathway, from trainee through to executive headship. It will base its teacher development on the best available research evidence about what works, as set out in the ITT core content framework. There are so many acronyms here—the ECF and NPQ frameworks and the NLE development programme—but I know noble Lords are familiar with all these TLAs. We really believe this will ensure that teacher development in England goes from strength to strength. In answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, I say that we are running an open procurement to identify the suppliers that will allow us to establish the institute next year.

I thank all noble Lords for their thoughtful and constructive challenge to the Government’s plans. The response to the ITT review will be published later this year, and I look forward very much to debating this further once that has happened. We also look forward to working with the ITT sector and its partners to ensure that all ITT in England is of the highest quality possible.