Robin Walker – 2022 Speech on the Initial Teacher Training Reform Programme
The speech made by Robin Walker, the Minister for School Standards, in the House of Commons on 16 May 2022.
Today, the Department for Education (DfE) informed applicants of the outcomes of the first accreditation round of the Initial Teacher Training (ITT) reform programme. Eighty applicants have been awarded accreditation so far, and a second round will open for applications on 23 May and close on 27 June. We will announce the successful applicants of both rounds when the process is complete in the autumn.
In December 2021, the Government announced a set of reforms to ITT that leads to qualified teacher status. The reforms, which centre around a new set of “quality requirements”, aim to ensure greater quality, consistency and coherence in ITT, building on earlier reforms to teacher development.
To deliver ITT from September 2024, both existing and prospective providers of ITT must pass a new accreditation process. This process has been designed to assess applicants’ capability and capacity to deliver the highest quality ITT in line with the new quality requirements, which will become part of the ITT criteria from the 2024-25 academic year.
From the autumn, accredited providers will proceed to the quality assurance stage. In this stage, providers will work with the DfE to ensure that all ITT courses are fully developed in line with the new 2024-25 ITT criteria. The DfE will also work with accredited providers ahead of 2024 delivery to ensure that they have strong partnerships in place to provide sufficient training places in the subjects, phases and geographies in which they are needed. Further details will be published in due course.
The accreditation process was designed to be rigorous but proportionate, and I am confident that the evaluation of applications for accreditation has been thorough, undertaken jointly by trained DfE and Ofsted assessors.
Applicants who were not awarded accreditation in round one have been given feedback on their application to help them understand the areas they need to address, should they wish to re-apply in round two. Both existing and prospective providers who did not apply in round one are being encouraged to do so in round two.
If an applicant decides not to re-apply, we are encouraging them to consider partnering with newly accredited providers to build strong families of providers ready for 2024 delivery and ensure a high-quality and sufficient ITT market.
I am confident that these reforms will help create a truly world-class teacher development system that makes England the best place in the world to become a great teacher.
