Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether the Government's commitment to ensure the ITT Core Content and Early Career Frameworks are up to date and fit for purpose includes an amendment to add specific reference to dyslexia to those frameworks.

The Department knows that quality teaching is the most important in-school factor in improving outcomes for all children, particularly those with additional needs. From September 2020, all new teachers have benefited from at least three years of evidence-based professional development and support, starting with Initial Teacher Training (ITT) based on the new ITT Core Content Framework (CCF), and followed by a new two-year induction underpinned by the Early Career Framework (ECF). These reforms support the Department’s ambition that all new teachers starting in the profession learn how to meet the needs of all pupils, including those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).

Both the CCF and ECF were based on the most up to date research into excellent teaching practice and have been independently reviewed by the Education Endowment Foundation.

All ITT courses and ECF-based training programmes are designed to support trainee and early career teachers to demonstrate that they meet the Teachers' Standards at the appropriate level. This includes the requirement in Standard 1, that teachers must set goals that stretch and challenge pupils of all backgrounds, abilities and dispositions, as well as Standard 5, that all teachers must have a clear understanding of the needs of all pupils, including those with special educational needs, and be able to adapt teaching to respond to those strengths and needs.

When launching the CCF and ECF, the Department committed to updating the frameworks as research progresses. The Department is reviewing and revising the ITT CCF and ECF into more closely combined frameworks which cover the first three years or more at the start of a teacher’s career and articulate what trainee and new teachers need to know and how to do it. The Department is building on what we have learned from the first few years of CCF implementation and ECF delivery and this will include identifying opportunities to improve how the frameworks can support new teachers to be more confident in meeting the needs of pupils with SEND, including those with dyslexia.