Guidance on teaching internship scheme: summer 2020

Overview

Grants are available for school-led partnerships to design and provide teaching internships targeted at science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) undergraduate students.

The aim of the scheme is to let STEM undergraduates experience mathematics or physics teaching before they commit to it as a career.

Schools are invited to apply for funding to provide opportunities in summer 2020.

As part of the development of the programme, we aim to improve the availability of internships across England. View the List of 2019 teaching internships schools by RSC region (PDF, 134KB, 3 pages) . We encourage applications to provide internships in geographic areas where there are gaps in provision, for example, the East of England and South West.

We welcome school partnerships covering wide geographical areas. To reduce duplication, schools in close proximity are encouraged to work together to submit an application with one lead school responsible for the administration and grant relationship with the DfE.

Funding is for the 2020 cohort only.

Who can apply

The programme is school led. Only school-led partnerships can apply for funding. School partnerships can choose to collaborate with an accredited Initial Teacher Training (ITT) provider to develop and deliver their programme.

The partnership lead should submit the application as they will have overall responsibility for the budget. However, they should work in collaboration with partners to develop the proposal.

Applications should be for a minimum of 10 participants.

Programme recruitment

The programme will take place towards the end of the academic year and should last for 4 weeks.

The programme should offer interns the chance to gain a deep experience of teaching and may include:

• a combination of teaching, running science projects, offering intensive support for children who are struggling, and helping with experiments and laboratory work
• structured training, shadowing and lesson observation followed by a chance to jointly plan and deliver lessons
• access to one-to-one mentors who are good or outstanding classroom teachers in their specialism
• opportunities to network with qualified subject specialists

We expect the design of the programme to include measures to support and encourage interns to apply for teacher training. This may include:

• continued contact with their mentor
• support for the intern to make an application for ITT
• guarantee of an interview for any ITT places that they apply for at your partnership

All interns should register with Get into Teaching so they can get additional support.

Funding

For the minimum cohort size of 10 interns, the grant funding would equate to £20,000.

The funding is for £500 per week for each student. Of this £500 per week:

• £300 will be used to cover the intern’s expenses
• £200 will go directly to the school to cover co-ordination costs and overheads

Funding will be paid through a grant funding agreement which will need to be agreed and signed by all successful bidders.

The funding does not cover costs or expenses incurred in preparing your bid.

The grant funding will be provided on the strict understanding that none of the funding is to be used for advertising, marketing, communications and consultancy, or for any costs associated with maintenance, technical development or updating or existing websites or for the development/creation of new websites.

If you are successful in your application, you will commence the scheme in 2020. The grant will be available until 31 August 2020.

Assurance and value for money

All successful applicants will be required to submit a ‘certificate of expenditure, which is outlined in annex G of the grant funding agreement, at the end of the grant cycle as assurance of expenditure.

Payments will be staged and subject to assurance that programmes are developed and recruitment is progressing to support viable programmes.

Funding will not be provided for participants interested in teaching subjects other than mathematics or physics.

Reporting and evaluation

You must submit documentation to deadline in the templates provided as set out in the Grant Offer Letter to receive payment.

You must also comply with all obligations and requests from DfE relating to participant data including retention of evidence confirming identities. A standard data set of management information that we expect you to collect from applicants will be issued upon successful award of any grant funding.