Is your school working with a local ITT provider?
Working with a local ITT provider offers several benefits to schools, including developing strong connections with training offers for staff, having additional adults to support young people, and the ability to build a sustainable and responsive teacher pipeline.
All the ITT providers in our area – Five Counties SCITT, Universities, the National Institute Of Teaching, and other national providers – will be looking for placements for next year’s cohort of trainees. Recruitment is good in our area, slightly above this time last year, which is great news for filling future teaching vacancies.
In addition to offering a placement, there are other ways your school can be involved in ITT. It may be that you are unable to offer a long placement, but could offer a short, specialised or complementary experience. Or perhaps you have a subject specialist teacher who could contribute to trainees’ subject training or offer to host trainees to observe demonstration lessons.
Offering school experience days for prospective applicants can bring people in and give you an opportunity to showcase your school, which can be helpful in future recruitment and building your school’s positive reputation. Promoting ITT to the community around your school is a significantly helpful contribution to the national recruitment challenge and the Government’s ambition to train 6,500 additional teachers. Promoting teaching, as a rewarding, respected and valued career choice, to the young people in your school is a long-term recruitment strategy.
You may be working with one ITT provider currently and have some concerns about managing trainees and relationships with different providers, different dates and assessment processes. However, this may be limiting the range of specialist subjects and niche routes that you are involved with and ultimately may be limiting you from accessing a wider diversity of high-quality future teachers and subject leaders. Trainees can bring recent and relevant subject-specialism into school, particularly useful if you have struggled to fill a gap and had to use non-specialists. Or perhaps you can see the benefit of having an extra teacher in the classroom to give additional resource for pupils experiencing disadvantage. Or the excellent professional development opportunity for the staff you select as mentors, supporting their career progression.
Schools’ role in shaping the next generation of teachers is vital. We recognise and appreciate this. We know the time and commitment people in our partnership schools put into supporting trainees to thrive and develop – this is an investment in the long-term stability and quality of our teaching workforce.
To find out more, contact us via email: [email protected]