Initial Teacher Training Providers

Lord Storey Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

If I understood my noble friend’s question correctly, I can tell him that there has been a reaccreditation of all providers in the field. Some providers chose not to apply to be reaccredited, some new providers applied, and the majority of both university and school-based providers were successful—80% of universities and 83% of school-based providers. We have been looking at supporting those successful organisations to work, where appropriate, with those that were not successful, to make sure that we can build those partnerships and ensure we have the capacity we need.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

With those accreditors that lost their accreditation, we are obviously going to lose their skills and subject knowledge. How can we use that effectively? Can the Minister assure us that, in certain shortage subjects—we mentioned physics—accreditors that have been the pipe stream providing those teachers are not ones that have lost their accreditation?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I really am sympathetic to the issues that the noble Lord raises, but our principal focus is on the quality of initial teacher training, and then of course on the whole early career framework, to support teachers in the golden thread of support and training that the noble Lord has heard me talk about many times. That is our number one focus, and we will of course make sure that there is sufficient capacity and that those skills are used in the partnerships that I have already outlined.