Commenting on the government press release on a renewed focus on
teacher training, Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the
Association of School and College Leaders, said:
“While we welcome the government’s action to provide free
training programmes and associated support for schools, we remain
gravely concerned about the fact that there are not enough
teachers in the first place. Many schools experience significant
difficulties as a result of teacher shortages, and this
particularly affects those schools which face the greatest
challenges. This is because the government frequently misses its
own initial teacher training targets and too many teachers leave
the profession early in their careers. The government must
significantly improve salaries across the board after a decade of
pay erosion in real terms, improve funding to schools and ratchet
down the pressures of an excessively harsh accountability regime.
“We congratulate the trusts which will run the National Institute
of Teaching and wish them well. However, we remain concerned
about exactly how the institute will work alongside established
teacher training providers where there are regional campuses
competing for the same pool of graduate trainees. It is going to
be important that the institute complements the existing system
rather than leading to a muddle of teacher training routes.”
