With NASBTT celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2025, we are publishing a series of articles from influential figures in the organisation’s history. We caught up with Martin Thompson, who was involved in the early days of NASBTT and served initially as Chair, a role later rebranded as Former Executive Director, until 2017, to discuss his memories of the early years and the evolution of the organisation into the voice of schools-led ITT.
Martin, you were at the heart of the development of NASBTT from its early years and for many years. How did the organisation come about?
“As the Programme Manager of the Shire Foundation, which was established in 1994 and one of the earliest SCITTs, I and other leaders of these early SCITTs used to meet occasionally as members of the National SCITT Council. It was Jim Hudson, Headteacher at Two Mile Ash Middle School, another early example of a SCITT, who rebranded the SCITT Council as the National Association of School Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT) to include in its membership schools involved in the emerging employment-based routes offering what became the Graduate Teacher Programme. The new organisation offered its membership and support to all individual schools or consortia of schools involved in ITT, and held a number of very successful conferences with significant guest speakers including Ralph Tabberer, the Head of the Teacher Training Agency (TTA).”
How did NASBTT evolve during your first year?
“The original aim of providing direct access to network groups and information sharing channels had been very successful. After Jim moved to take up new challenges, his leadership was much missed, and at a small conference in Holborn, a handful of programme managers like myself discussed how to move forward. Volunteers were invited to form an ad hoc steering group which judged our future role needed re-definition and met again at my base in Bedford, where Alan Fowler from West Midlands Consortium became Treasurer, Janet Winder from Kent and Medway SCITT became Secretary, and I became the Chair, largely because the Chair of the Pilgrim Partnership felt it was in Pilgrim’s interest as much as that of other providers to second me from my core responsibilities for half a day a week to support a fledgling NASBTT. We immediately looked to develop support to members through a weekly email focused on the actual day-to-day running of ITT provision, limited casework advice and assistance to programme managers and establishing relationships and influence within DfE, Ofsted and other relevant national organisations.”
Anecdotally, was there a significant or stand-out memory from those very early days?
“Finding myself as a mere teacher talking to the Secretary of State for Education, one Estelle Morris, on the phone in my office at 2pm, gripping the desk in front of me to stop it going up and down as I struggled to find my land-legs after returning from a cruise that morning! She wanted to discuss the status of trainees in relation to clearance checks and how they were not to be allowed into school until cleared. Under the impression that teaching placements would not begin until after half-term I had to advise her that SCITT trainees were due in school within days and together we worked out a plan whereby Headteachers would be able to vouch for them and trainees duly arrived that first week without any issue. It was at that point the responsibility I held on behalf of the sector became apparent.”
What accelerated NASBTT’s support to the sector?
“At that point in time the Quality Assurance requirements were unusually stringent and it was clear that without significant support, providers would fall foul of Ofsted inspections (one in each of the first two years), with future allocations being at risk of reduction or total removal. A need emerged for inspection support for SCITTs. Some of this came from the TTA, too much at times, and the need for advice independent of TTA became clear. Given the inspection regime, providers were often reluctant to ask questions of TTA for fear of exposing their lack of knowledge or understanding. NASBTT provided the bridge, whereby I would be asked questions which I took to the TTA, circulating replies and advice to all members. Much of the support required was with management problems (with which the TTA had sketchy experience) rather than course content, and with our hands-on experience we began to share what actually worked. We engaged a firm of solicitors we would call upon and share advice around trainee contracts etc. At that stage we began charging a low-level membership fee. Noticing that as a national organisation face-to-face meetings and conferences were not ideal we established regional networks both for course managers and separately for providers’ administrators. TTA, which became the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) in 2005, wanted to do something on mentor support, so we took over the administration group for this, then began to host regional meetings and provide administrative support for those. We became more convinced than ever that we as school-based providers needed an independent voice. We responded to every consultation published and I gave evidence in person to House of Commons Select Committees on two occasions.”
How did NASBTT’s external positioning evolve over time?
“It is interesting to look back on this in detail. Reading the minutes from a meeting in 2006, which involved the Department for Education and Skills, Ofsted, TDA, Local Authority employment advisers and UCET, we described NASBTT as a representative body of providers involved in the Graduate Teacher Programme. I have also got a letter on file from 2008 to Ed Balls, then Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, which positioned us as representing providers of both school-based ITT and employment-based ITT. Then, in 2009, we developed a written submission for the Children, Schools and Families Committee inquiry into ITT and CPD for teachers, in which we stressed that we were pleased to have the opportunity to show the Committee that school-based ITT was different to that offered by higher education institutions and not represented by the submission or spokesperson from UCET. We made public data that demonstrated that school-based training outcomes were as good and sometimes better than other routes into ITT. We developed a valuable working relationship with UCET so that in many issues we could speak with the same voice. But essentially we set out to identify how we could become the ears as well as the voice of schools-led ITT, and ensure we were represented at national strategy level.”
Finally, how do you look back on your time at NASBTT?
“I am delighted that I was not really missed when I retired as it showed the strength of the foundations we as a team had put in place. We had worked to acquire support and the management architecture so that we could become the nationally-recognised professional association for school-based teacher training and be proactive in taking forward the issues that concerned us in our day-to-day activities. From the support in the early years that we provided to the TDA and government, we then moved to a place where NASBTT became the voice for the full emergent sector alongside UCET. School-based ITT providers were often treated like second-class citizens for such a long time, but we were clear that the value they brought was putting academic pedagogy into context in the classroom. I do miss the excellent colleagues I had the pleasure to work with, both within the NASBTT and the organisations with which we had dealings. It has been seven years since I retired, and I am pleased that one of the major achievements of my last years, the development of subject related health and fitness criteria and links to genuine occupational health assessment pre-course is still currently being used. But I would again like stress that this was a team effort and express my deep gratitude to everyone who worked with me to establish NASBTT as such an integral part of the ITT landscape. What started as a fledgling organisation now holds its head up high in the sector. I miss them all so much! Finally, in the words of our late Queen Elizabeth II, ”recollections may vary”, and so I apologise for any errors or omissions in my answers!”
Martin Thompson, Former Executive Director, NASBTT