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?

On January 30^th, this update duly happened. A new document was published, covering both Initial Teacher Training and Early Career development. It is to come into force for provision starting from September next year.

Some relevant background is needed, here. There have been concerns that the current set-up, in which institutions offering initial teacher education provision have to pay attention to the government’s “Core Content Framework,” while provision in schools for those entering the classroom is guided by the “Early Career Framework”, is repetitive.

That is, the criticism is that teachers can be faced with similar content within the ECF to that which they had already been taught as a result of the CCF.

But this new document’s approach, of combining the two frameworks into one, runs an obvious risk. Without it being specified within it which aspects should be taught within initial teacher education, and which to early career teachers, repetition would seem even more of a possibility, while confusion among providers is also a worry.

That, at least, is the view of Clare Brooks, Professor of Education at Cambridge University, who wrote a blog on the new framework, which was posted on the website of the sector body the Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers.

Professor Brooks wrote: “Notably, in conjoining the two previous frameworks for ITE [initial teacher education] and ECTs [early career teachers, in their first two years in the profession], the authors of the new document fail to make clear what new teachers should experience and understand. It is not clear on which parts of the framework apply to their ITE course, and which bits ECTs will cover over the next two years. In fact, it is plausible that the framework is trying to say that they should contain the same material, and for three years, teachers will be learning a narrow set of competencies and repeating them over and over again, as if what they are doing is just muscle memory…

“A key concern is how the framework is tightly linked to the process of accrediting teacher education courses and, of course, inspecting them – a task undertaken by Ofsted…If providers are not clear on which part of the three years’ worth of framework they should cover in their one-year course, how will they be inspected fairly?” Cambridge is reportedly calling for the framework to be delayed.

Just as the “market review” saw what clearly seem serious logistical flaws emerging – the danger of geographical gaps being created in teacher education provision, for example, as providers lost accreditation – so this latest reform development seems to expose glaring problems with how provision might be experienced by teachers at the start of their careers, and by the providers themselves.

Advisory group

It is also notable that any suggestion of a broadening of the advice-giving process for these reforms has had a limited, at best, impact in reality.

What the DfE calls an “External Steering Group” helped draw up the new document. This consisted of a “usual suspect” list of names, who had been involved in earlier aspects of these reforms, including Sir Ian Bauckham, who led a group which produced a report for ministers on its “market review” reforms.

Seemingly as a concession to the sector, there was also an external or “Expert Reference Group,” which I understand was more widely-based. However, this group had very limited power, in terms of influence on this new document.

Wider questions

But beyond logistical concerns, and the narrowness of meaningful influence on the policymaking process, there seem wider questions about this document.  Much of this is not new: it was a concern about the existing CCF and ECF documents. But it does underscore how the DfE has not used this process to address fundamental issues with this approach, as expressed by some of those expected to implement these reforms.

A key, if not the key, issue is one of politicisation.

Cambridge was reported in Schools Week to be arguing for a “more comprehensive and thorough framework” to be developed. This would be led by a non-party-political (my italics), cross-sector expert team.

For it is hard to get away from politics in this document.

The new document sets out what trainee/early career teachers should “learn that…” and “learn how to…” Reading the statements contained under these headings, in places it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is the production of an ideologically-inclined government, seeking to dictate from the centre its own interpretations of evidence which can at least be seen as contested.

For example, the new framework states that teachers should “learn that” “systematic synthetic phonics is the most effective approach for teaching pupils to decode”. Yet the reality seems to be not quite this position: in 2018, I reported how a synthesis of all existing research on the subject had concluded that there was “little evidence” in favour of any one approach to the teaching of phonics over another, including what is called “systematic synthetic phonics”.

Yet the teaching of “systematic synthetic phonics” has been a key policy enthusiasm under this government,* as overseen by the long-standing schools minister, Nick Gibb, who presided over much of this reform process.

Has this document, then, misled teachers on the nature of the research base, in pursuit of a political priority? It is actually hard to be completely definitive about that, for reasons I go into a bit more below. But it surely must be a concern.

The document also places considerable emphasis on cognitive science. It states, for example, that teachers should learn how to use “retrieval and spaced practice to build automatic recall and application of key knowledge” and “avoid overloading working memory”. There was no sense in this document that some approaches might be more suited to some subjects, or more evidence-based in relation to some subjects, than others.

But a review for the Education Endowment Foundation, published in 2021, found: “The evidence for the application of cognitive science principles in everyday classroom conditions (applied cognitive science) is limited, with uncertainties and gaps about the applicability of specific principles across subjects and age ranges.”

It added: “Even approaches with indicative evidence of promise like retrieval practice, spaced practice and the use of worked examples are, as yet, only supported by a few studies that examine their impact in everyday classroom conditions.”

The DfE’s new document also states: “Teacher attitudes towards inclusion and SEND are a key determinant in the school experience of pupils with SEND.”

The thrust of that statement appears laudable – that teachers need to care about inclusion and the provision for pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities, and that, if they do, this can be important for the experiences of those young people.

However, as a statement of universal fact it appears to me to be incorrect: I am certainly covering cases where the key determinant seems not to be teacher attitudes but what can on occasion be a particular stance on SEND taken at the level of the school or, particularly, perhaps, the trust. That is, if the organisation is not disposed to be inclusive towards such pupils – as is now a frequent claim – the dispositions and attitudes of individual teachers may have limited effect on that approach.

Other statements within this document appear contestable. For example, it states that: “In order for pupils to think critically, they must have a secure understanding of knowledge within the subject area they are being asked to think critically about.”

This seems like an endorsement of an argument used by those on the traditionalist/conservative side of education’s culture wars. This attacks the teaching of “critical thinking” when not taught as part of a subject-specific discipline. Arguably, it would suggest that young people need to be taught facts first, before they are allowed to think analytically. That seems questionable to me, as a journalist who has to use non-subject-specific skills, including critical thinking, in order to uncover facts.

It may be possible to argue against any case I have made in the examples used above (I think other than the one about SEND, where the document’s statement is demonstrably untrue as a universal assertion).  But, crucially, the way this document has been written makes it hard to be sure of the evidence base on which the statements used sit.

Evidence base for what might be questionable statements insufficiently clear

So, for example, when as above I cite a study published in 2018 which had said there was no definitive evidence in favour of "Systematic Synthetic Phonics,” is there more recent research, or conflicting research which had, in fact, showed exactly this?

But it is not possible to know if this is the basis for the statement in this document, since none of the statements is directly referenced: all the document does is produce a list of studies which, together, make up “the evidence related to the ‘learn that’ statements in each section”.

So specific references are not produced for each statement, as would happen within academic research itself - possibly because to do so might expose this document more clearly to the criticism that the research base on which the statements sit may be more contested than the statements that teachers must “learn” implies.

Instead, the reader interested in each statement has to hunt through what is quite a lengthy list of references at the end of each section of the document, and try to think for themselves which study might apply to each statement. (The phonics study I referenced above, by the way, does not feature in the list of references at all).

Ironically, this document includes the statement that teachers should “learn that”:

“Research evidence can vary in its level of reliability, which is determined by how the research was conducted and other factors that might introduce bias, such as the level of independence. High quality research communicates methods and limitations transparently.”

How true this is. But this document has not, itself, followed through on that principle: it has not communicated the “limitations” of its statements by disclosing transparently the nature of its research base. This leaves itself very open to concerns about bias. On its own terms, then, it seems not to be modelling the qualities it says teachers should be looking out for in high quality research.

Overall, there seems a fundamental tension between on the one hand what that paragraph indicates might be an ideal in those engaging in research, including teachers, which is the ability to think critically, and to interrogate a research base. Set against that is what the government seems to want with this document: a workforce which can take on board what it says without thinking too deeply.

Like other aspects of this particular reform process, this seems dubious-verging-on-the-incoherent.

Would/will an incoming Labour government be more thoughtful about teacher education and development? Should it look again at what, as argued above, strikes me as a really poor document? Well, as with so many areas of education policymaking in England, this is a set of reforms urgently in need of attention from fresh sets of eyes.

*And arguably under the previous Labour government, too, though perhaps not pursued with quite such commitment.