Best Practice Network (BPN) is a leading training provider of National Professional Qualifications, Early Years’ Initial Teacher Training, and Primary Initial Teacher Training (ITT).
In September 2024, the company expanded into the Secondary ITT market, and along with the challenges of setting up a new course came the opportunities offered with being able to design from the ground up. A key priority was to ensure the company’s values were woven throughout the programme, and this meant making a commitment to provide a flexible approach to ITT which also aligned with NASBTT’s call for ‘Flexible working: less talk, more action’ for teachers in The Future of ITT manifesto.
So, how did we design a course with flexibility at its heart, whilst still aligning with the values of the crucial partnership schools that work with us?
Flexible working has become not just a preference, but a necessity, as the profession looks for solutions to the ongoing recruitment and retention crisis. The Government’s pledge to recruit 6,500 additional teachers is ambitious, particularly across the shortage subjects, so BPN has committed to recruit the best student teachers into the profession, whatever their personal circumstances, by providing as flexible a training programme as possible. In a post-Covid world our profession is contending for recruits with those that have flexible practices fully embedded, and we have a responsibility to compete. Simultaneously, we recognise that these practices must be sustainable in allowing for a first-class education for all pupils.
Teachers need to be in front of pupils for much of their time to lead them to success, so many of the deliberations on how to build flexibility into the job have failed to materialise into anything more, hence NASBTT’s battle cry for more action. Nonetheless, if we are going to seriously compete with other professions, particularly those that aim to recruit the same graduates as in our shortage subjects, we must answer the call.
Worryingly, recruitment for ITT remains historically low, with secondary recruitment targets failing to be met all but once in the last five years. In 2023, there was a shortfall of 8,545 trained teachers, missing the combined recruitment target by 38%. Furthermore, the gender balance remains skewed, with far fewer male candidates entering the profession than female. Despite this female dominated entry, we know that it is these skilled, experienced professionals that leave in the largest numbers between the ages of 30 and 39. Flexible working options must be prioritised to combat these retention issues, and to appeal to a broader range of candidates during recruitment.
In response to some of these profession-wide challenges, we have put in place support for our many student teachers who are or will be parents, we sponsor the ‘Missing Mothers’ conference, and all our student teachers receive coaching from the MTPT (Maternity Teacher, Paternity Teacher) project in their last core training session to prepare them for life as an Early Career Teacher (ECT) and beyond. By informing and preparing our student teachers as they go on to become ECTs, we hope to ensure they have clear expectations of what they are able to request from their schools as their lives change, and we are also growing future leaders that will foreground these strategies and expectations as they recruit and retain their own staff.
At BPN our approach to flexible ITT is built on a foundation of real-world understanding and lived experience. Our ITT staff have extensive school and leadership involvement, allowing us to design our courses in ways that directly address school needs and resource constraints. Being flexible begins at the very outset of a student teacher’s journey with us; they book their interview slots at dates and times to fit around their current personal and professional commitments; and are interviewed by highly knowledgeable subject specialist staff, ensuring that they can maximise the opportunity for their own fact finding. Once accepted onto the course, our prioritisation of flexible working includes:
- The choice of either apprenticeship or fee-funded routes to qualified teacher status. Our funded apprenticeship schemes allow schools to upskill high-quality teacher apprentices, removing the need for them to leave their employer, hence easing retention and staffing challenges. With flexible start dates in June and September, schools and trainees can select when their apprenticeship begins and, perhaps more importantly, when they will finish the course.
- Empathy driven mentorship and coaching by our staff, many of whom are also parents and carers, fostering an environment of understanding and support. This includes access to highly qualified subject specialists, personal tutors, and in-school mentors. They may also choose to access additional support from our dedicated additional learning needs tutor and wellbeing champions, who can often suggest small tweaks in the way they are working that make big differences to their lives.
- Flexible learning options such as face-to-face or online, live and recorded learning, mean that student teachers really can learn how they choose. Flexibility is not about forcing everyone online, or everyone face-to-face, but allowing for choice that they can build around their lives. Individual learning support sessions can be scheduled at a time that suits the student teacher. We also have an extensive asynchronous learning library which the student teachers can engage with at a time that suits them.
While many of our trainees experience traditional timetables and working practices during their school-based placements, some are in schools that are piloting flexible working policies such as late starts or early finishes; work-from-home days for PPA time; training and days with online options and online school meetings at times that mean that they can be accessed from home. We encourage our student teachers to fully embrace the culture of their placement school and engage in these along with the wider staff body. By allowing student teachers to train from home one day per week, throughout their ITT year we are trailblazing the work from home days which are becoming more common in schools. We also schedule our wide range of external speakers and additional professional development opportunities during standard working hours, where possible (which suits not only the student teachers, but also speakers).
Of course, the flexible working conversation is an ongoing one and there are many strategies to trial going forward. We encourage feedback from our trainees and have made many amendments because of this ‘student teacher voice’, including revising our session times so that from next year all training will start at 9.15am and end by 3pm to accommodate family responsibilities. In addition, we moved assignment deadlines from Fridays to the following Monday to allow our student teachers greater flexibility in managing their workload.
Time is such an important resource in school, and we know this is where the majority of flexible working policies fall down – there is just not enough of it! At BPN we recognise that the ever-changing number of required mentoring training hours can be a barrier to schools hosting teachers, so we have introduced a flexible mentoring model, whereby we provide the mentors for the placement. Not only does this help schools to meet their requirements for hosting a student teacher, it also opens more potential placement schools to us, reducing our student teachers’ commuting time and improving their work life balance. There are some student teachers who simply cannot fit a long commute into their day alongside caring responsibilities, so without policies such as these we would lose these future teachers from the profession.
It is our belief that flexible working should be considered a necessity, not a luxury, to enable the recruitment of a wider range of individuals and the retention of experienced teaching staff. By embedding flexibility into our ITT programmes, we hope to ensure that teaching remains an appealing and viable career choice for a diverse range of candidates.
Our goal at BPN is simple: to make teacher training work for everyone. We are committed to shaping a profession that values and supports its workforce. In doing so, we hope to not only improve recruitment but also enhance retention, ensuring that high-quality teachers stay in the profession and continue making a difference in pupils’ lives.
Holly Kirkbride is the Biology ITT Subject Lead at Best Practice Network. She has worked in ITT for several years alongside roles in SLT, as Director of Science and Head of Department. Faye Robertson is the Maths ITT Subject Lead at Best Practice Network. She has worked in ITT for many years, alongside working as a Head of Maths, a Lead Practitioner and in various school improvement and consultancy roles.