Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the performance of the National Allocation Scheme relating to initial teacher training as part of National Teaching School programme.

There is no ‘National Allocation Scheme’, but this year we have used recruitment controls for the purpose of recruitment to Initial Teacher Training (ITT). Information on these recruitment controls can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-itt-recruitment-controls

In response to feedback from the sector from previous years, we changed the approach to initial teacher training (ITT) allocations for 2016-17 recruitment. The National College for Teaching and Leadership did not allocate a specific number of places to individual organisations for postgraduate ITT courses due to start in the 2016-17 academic year. Instead, eligible schools, School Centred Initial Teacher Training providers (SCITTs) and higher education institutions (HEIs) are able to recruit (subject to a limited number of controls) as many trainees as they feel they need until the overall system has recruited sufficient trainees.

The Census data which will be published online later in 2016 will indicate the number of trainees recruited by subject.