As the very first administrator for the then newly-fledged NASBTT organisation it’s astounding to look back and see where it has come since those early days of manually collated lists of the original members on an Excel spreadsheet and me, at my desk, hand-making name badges for the inaugural conferences!
My involvement with Initial Teacher Training (ITT) started initially alongside my role as school librarian at Two Mile Ash School in Milton Keynes, where Jim Hudson, founder of NASBTT, was the Headteacher at the time. We had just become a Designated Recommending Body (in the period before full ITT accreditation took place) and I took on the role of answering enquiries from the public about teacher training.
This was followed by Two Mile Ash School becoming home to a Skills Test Centre for the delivery of the (now defunct) Professional Skills Tests, which I was asked to administer and manage. This led to an eventful few years, not least because the tests themselves would often fail to load properly, or candidates would turn up without the required ID and, on a couple of momentous occasions, the ear-piercing burglar alarm would accidentally go off, causing everyone to rush out of the room apart from myself (being profoundly deaf does, only very occasionally, have its perks!).
Two Mile Ash School, when I started work there in 1999, was already hosting trainee teachers from the National SCITT in Outstanding Primary Schools, but when we received our own accreditation and launched the (also now defunct!) Graduate Teacher Programme, Jim’s focus and vision quickly became the necessity for all school-based providers to have a collective voice which would share best practice for the new focus on school-based initial teacher training. He felt it was important that SCITT providers should be able to influence national policy by having representation at DfE level from those people who were on the ground delivering the provision.
He then needed to promote his vision to providers all over the country and, consequently, my days of stuffing envelopes with photocopied mailshots and hand writing (yes hand writing!) hundreds of addresses started! Fortunately, it wasn’t long before technology came to the rescue and, at first, Microsoft mail merge and sticky labels helped, followed by the joy of electronic documents and email distribution lists – all the tools that modern day communications now have the advantage of, but which was not the case 25 years ago! Just as well, when you now consider the size and the scope of the present-day NASBTT organisation.
When Martin Thompson succeeded Jim as NASBTT Director and my role took me full-time into the world of ITT, as Partnership Co-Ordinator for Two Mile Ash ITT Partnership, the admin reins were handed over to Alison Hobson, a position she has managed wonderfully ever since!
NASBTT, however, should be proud of the voice that it has been for the last 25 years. It remains one of Two Mile Ash’s proudest moments that Emma Hollis, NASBTT’s current Chief Executive, was trained by us, and hopefully, she will continue to be the advocate that school-based providers need for many years to come.
Jane Cole was NASBTT’s Administrator from 2000-05, and is now TMA ITT Partnership Co-ordinator.