By Helen Matthews, Senior HMI for Teacher Development
Recruiting, training and retaining high-quality teachers and
leaders is fundamentally important. It forms the foundation for
giving pupils the very best experience in education.
In March, we published our new framework for
inspecting lead providers of the early career framework (ECF) and
national professional qualifications (NPQs). These programmes
complete the ‘golden thread’ of professional development for
teachers. This golden thread is made up of: high-quality initial
teacher education (ITE), support for early career teachers
through the ECF, and professional development qualifications
(NPQs) for experienced teachers and leaders.
The ECF is designed to help early career teachers develop their
practice, knowledge and working habits. NPQs enable teachers to
develop their expertise in specialist areas of teaching or
leadership.
Under this framework,
we inspect the lead providers who are delivering the ECF and NPQ
programmes. We evaluate the lead providers’ curriculum design,
and how well they ensure the effective delivery of the
programmes.
Lead provider monitoring visits (LPMVs)
In the first year of delivery of these programmes, lead providers
receive a monitoring visit known as an LPMV. During the summer
term, all 10 lead providers had a LPMV. The visits check how well
the lead providers are implementing the programmes. The 10 LPMV
letters are on our reports website.
We were encouraged to find that almost all the lead providers
were taking effective action to establish and deliver
high-quality training programmes.
We saw some common features of good practice:
- strong communication and collaboration between the lead
providers, delivery partners and the ECTs or NPQ participants
- a curriculum that ensures the course content is consistent
with the materials specified by the Department for Education
(DfE)
- well-chosen and high-quality examples of how the ECF
statements relate to different subjects, phases and/or settings
Most ECTs and NPQ participants we spoke to were positive about
the training. They believe that it is delivered effectively and
builds on what they already know. NPQ participants found that
what they were learning was highly applicable to their role and
was helping them improve their practice. Some ECTs said they
would like further examples of how what they were learning
related to their own subject or phase. We were encouraged to see
that most lead providers had noted this and were responding.
Some school leaders had concerns about the workload of the ECF
programme for ECTs and school mentors. Our inspections did find
that workload pressures affected the quality of mentoring.
Mentors need to have the curriculum expertise and experience and
be given appropriate time to provide effective support. This will
help ECTs become confident and competent to teach their chosen
subjects and phases.
Some lead providers could have given more support to mentors.
This would enable mentors to use their knowledge and experience
to contextualise what ECTs are learning. This would help those
new to teaching make the link between theory and what they find
in their schools.
Preparing for full inspections
During the summer term, we ran a series of evaluation events with
lead providers and inspectors. The events reflected on the LPMVs
and considered any aspects of the inspection process we needed to
change or improve. For example, we have now streamlined the
information we require before inspection. This will help to
reduce the burden on the lead provider.
Following this, we conducted 2 full inspection pilots, one for
ECF and one for NPQ, in the autumn term. We wanted to test some
revisions we have made to make sure the inspection process works
well for everyone involved. Both inspectors and lead providers
were positive about our updated approach.
Changes we are making ahead of full inspections
As a result of this testing and engagement, we have made some
updates to our inspection handbook. We have refined the
outstanding criteria to draw a greater distinction between good
and outstanding. For instance, we have made it clear that
outstanding providers must demonstrate meticulous curriculum
planning.
We have also added further clarification to the notification
letter to lead providers. The letter explains how to share
information about the inspection with stakeholders. This includes
how to distribute our 4, survey links. The views we gather
through the surveys provide valuable insights, and we received a
high number of responses during the LPMVs. The responses help
inspectors to form an accurate picture of the quality of the ECF
and NPQ programmes.
Looking ahead to full inspections
We will begin full inspections of the lead providers delivering
ECF and NPQ programmes from the spring term 2023.
To help with preparation for this, we will be holding webinars
during December. These will be for delivery partners, trainers
and facilitators, mentors and programme participants. We would
like to encourage school leaders to join one of the webinars. You
can get in touch with your delivery partner or lead provider for
details of how to attend these events.
