Initial teacher and early career education reforms: a logistical and over-politicised mess

What a mess England’s reforms of teacher education and early career development are in.

It is hard not to reach this conclusion on learning of the latest development in this ongoing policy controversy/car crash, with the publication at the end of last month of the government’s new “Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework”.

This is the latest part of a series of changes in recent years setting out how the government is now requiring initial teacher education and “early career” teaching to operate.

Arguably the centrepiece was the “market review” of initial teacher education, which forced providers to seek “re-accreditation” from the Department for Education. The latter saw officials conducting reviews of providers’ paperwork and ended with some institutions no longer present in the sector, despite the seemingly increasingly desperate need for new recruits to the teaching profession.

During negotiations with the initial teacher education sector as part of the “market review,” the government conceded that existing documents, which set out in detail what are called “minimum entitlements” for the content of initial teacher education and early career professional development, would be updated. One of the concerns of some within the sector was that these documents had been drafted following input from a very small number of advisers. There was, therefore, the expectation that consultation would be wider, before the publication of revised documents.  

What has happened now?