Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to section 2.28 of the White Paper, Educational excellence everywhere, published in March 2016, by what criteria her Department will assess which higher education institutions are assessed as the best universities for education and teacher training.

Our recent White Paper made a commitment to raising the quality of initial teacher training so that teaching continues to be a profession that attracts the brightest and the best. We want to ensure that training places are allocated to providers – both schools and universities – with a proven track record of effectively recruiting high-quality trainees, delivering high-quality programmes of training, and securing the best possible outcomes for trainees.

We will be setting out further detail of our plans to implement these reforms shortly. This will include confirming details of the quality criteria that we intend to use to inform the allocation of places to universities and schools for the training year 2017/18. We are currently holding discussions with stakeholders, including ITT providers and their representative bodies, to inform the development of appropriate criteria.