Oxford and Cambridge respond to DfE consultation on teacher education reforms saying they will pull out of the sector unless plans are “halted”

The government is facing a huge revolt over its planned reforms to teachers’ training and development, with Oxbridge and Cambridge Universities today re-iterating their threats to pull out of teacher education and warning that other universities stand to join them.

In its formal response to the Department for Education’s summer consultation on its “market review” of initial teacher training, Cambridge castigated the plans, saying they would undermine the quality of both its provision and that of the teaching profession as a whole, and urging ministers to halt the review.

Cambridge’s response suggested the proposals, which would see universities having to teach to what both it and Oxford said was a “national curriculum for teacher education” and to apply for re-accreditation to continue their provision, were loaded with both practical and conceptual problems, with the reform’s proposed timetable described as “unworkable”.

Cambridge criticised as “narrow” the group of five advisers – all DfE policy insiders, with only one currently working in higher education – who came up with the report on which the plans are based; said the proposals lacked evidence; and said that there was “consensus across the sector” that the government’s current reforms to teacher education and development as a whole were based on evidence which was “at best restricted and partial”.

Meanwhile, publicising its own response Oxford describing the plans as “fundamentally flawed” and that they would “risk de-stabilising teacher education in England, with inevitable consequences for teacher supply”. Its response added: “The proposals as they stand would force the University of Oxford out of initial teacher education.”