| Dear Colleague,
This week, on 28 January, DfE published its Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy, which outlines the key areas where our focus, reform and investment will have the biggest impact on improving teacher recruitment and retention. As part of this strategy, we have considered ways that we can support the ITT sector to increase trainee recruitment each year. The strategy set out that, with the exception of PE (fee-funded) routes, recruitment to all postgraduate ITT courses will remain unlimited for a further two recruitment cycles. This will give ITT partnerships maximum flexibility to recruit, and the opportunity to forward plan recruitment and delivery activities for future cohorts.We will continue to monitor recruitment throughout this year’s cycle, and will confirm at a later stage the position on recruitment to postgraduatePE (fee-funded), Undergraduate ITT and Early Years ITT leading to EYTS courses for ITT2020 and ITT2021.
In the unlikely event that there is significant over-recruitment to unlimited courses, we continue to reserve the right to stop recruitment in-cycle. We would give School Direct lead schools and ITT providers a minimum of five working days’ notice to process applications in the event of a ‘stop’ notice. We have not used this power to date, and we do not expect to use it over the next two recruitment cycles.
Providers awarded multiple-year allocations in ITT2018 or ITT2019 will continue to benefit from a guarantee of places for all subjects for the three year period from when they received the award. The award of multiple-year allocations protects providers should we need to stop recruitment to a course, allowing recruitment to continue up to the number of training places guaranteed for that course. We will confirm our position for awarding multiple-year allocations for ITT2020 later in the cycle.
Obtaining permission to recruit for ITT2020
As in previous years, we will operate a request window in summer 2019 for School Direct lead schools and ITT providers to request permission to recruit for ITT2020. During this window, you will be required to inform us of the ITT courses you plan to offer for ITT2020 so that we can monitor availability of courses andto understand demand and capacity in the ITT system nationally. You must submit this information to allow you to list your courseson ‘Find Postgraduate Teacher training’ as open for recruitment, and to access any DfE funding associated with training places. Providing accurate data is an important part of complying with the ITT Criteria, as well as DfE funding and reporting requirements. Further details on requirements will be published ahead of each year’s request window.
Maximising recruitment for ITT2019
To further support in-year recruitment for the ITT2019 cycle, we would like to remind you that candidates in all subjects (except PE) can now benefit from free expert support from our Trainee Teacher Advisers in preparing their applications. The advisers have an excellent track record in supporting applicants. Please do refer any potential applicants to our Get into Teaching service, where they can receive this personalised support.
Finally, if you do stop recruiting to a course, you must mark that course as being full on UCAS, so that applicants are only making applications to lead schools and ITT providers that are continuing to make offers.
We thank you for your ongoing efforts in ITT recruitment and wish you all well for 2019.
Yours sincerely,
ITT Recruitment and Allocations
Teacher Recruitment: Initial Teacher Training Operation and Markets Division
Department for Education |
