Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what discussions they had with sector representatives (1) prior to, and (2) regarding, the announcement of the review of the Initial Teacher Training market and the creation of a new Institute of Teaching on 2 January; and what steps they are taking to ensure that new provision will exceed the Ofsted judgements on the quality of existing Institute of Technical Education providers.

On 2 January 2021, the Department announced we were resuming our review of the Initial Teacher Training (ITT) market to identify improvements that reduce costs for providers and exploring how we can encourage high quality providers – including high-performing multi academy trusts – to extend their reach, deliver at scale and do more to support the wider system. We started work on this in early 2020 with a series of workshops with ITT sector representatives to understand the current market better. This work was paused so that government, and the ITT sector, could focus on the challenges caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.

We are now resuming the ITT review, building on the opportunities afforded by our Teacher Development reforms, including the ITT Core Content Framework. The department will work with the sector as the review progresses. We expect further engagement to take place in the late spring, and the review to conclude in the summer.

Officials had informed ITT sector representative organisations, the Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers and the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers, that the recommencement of the ITT review and the creation of the Institute for Teaching would be announced. The Chair of the ITT review has substantive discussions with the leadership of these organisations planned in the coming weeks.

The department has held a range of policy development conversations on the proposal for an Institute of Teaching with academics, teacher development providers, representative organisations and teaching unions. The department intends to run a robust procurement exercise to identify a strong organisation or organisations to establish the Institute of Teaching. The successful bidders will need to demonstrate an exceptional track record in delivery of teacher training and development. The new organisation will also be subject to a range of quality assurance measures during its set-up phase to ensure its delivery will be the highest quality.