Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she has taken to help reduce repetition between initial teacher training courses and the early career framework.

To build knowledge and expertise, novice teachers need to progressively deepen their understanding of a range of concepts and, crucially, be able to connect and apply this knowledge to their practice in any context or situation. This determines the influence a teacher can have on the pupils with whom they work.

The Core Content Framework (CCF) provides the foundation for this and by the end of Initial Teacher Training (ITT), teachers will be familiar with concepts related to teaching and will have started to apply them in their practice. Acquiring knowledge takes time, and familiarity is not the same as long term experience, which allows teachers to do this thoughtfully across a range of contexts. The Early Career Framework (ECF) intentionally returns to these concepts to develop and deepen teachers’ knowledge and expertise and enable them to become more expert practitioners over the first two years of their career.

The Department has committed to reviewing the CCF and ECF alongside each other. Building on the first few years of ECF delivery, there is a plan to review and revise the 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 articulates what trainee and new teachers need to know and need to know how to do.

This revised CCF and ECF will underpin a joined up sequence of training and development over at least the first three years of new teachers’ careers to support them at the start of their new career. The Department aims to ensure that what new teachers study across these early years of their career delivers continuous, coherent and complementary knowledge for all trainees and new teachers and provides the confidence and expertise for a lifelong career in teaching.