Teacher Recruitment Bulletin: January 2019

Wishing all colleagues a happy New Year and successful recruitment for ITT 2019.

Welcome to the January 2019 edition of the Teacher Recruitment Bulletin, which contains vital information to support your recruitment of ITT trainees and teachers. Your colleagues can subscribe by emailing teacher.recruitmentbulletin@education.gov.uk.

1. Recruitment and Retention Strategy
2. Train to Teach – additional spaces for the spring term
3. Teaching Vacancies – new service to support your recruitment
4. Scholarships programme – recruitment to Modern Foreign Languages
5. Subject knowledge enhancement (SKE) – recruit to hard-to-fill subjects
6. Database of Trainee Teachers and Providers (DTTP) – reminders
7. Fee charging and fee loans 2019 to 2020 recruitment year – reminder
8. Annual Grant Return and Annex G Return – academic year 2017 to 2018
9. Maths and Physics graduates with teaching experience – September 2019
10. Teacher subject specialism training – build teacher capacity
11. School leader workload – join a focus group

In March 2018, the Secretary of State announced that we would develop a Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy. We plan to publish the Strategy shortly as well as the Early Career Framework and improved support for Newly Qualified Teachers. We will be sharing more details of these soon, including through regional dissemination events.

The spring term Train to Teach events below have provider exhibition spaces available; these are in addition to places you may have already been allocated.

Peterborough          Thursday 7 February 2019, 4.30pm to 7.30pm
Ipswich                    Thursday 14 February 2019, 4pm to 7pm
Milton Keynes          Wednesday 27 February 2019, 4.30pm to 7.30pm
Lincoln                     Wednesday 27 March 2019, 4.30pm to 7.30pm
Colchester               Thursday 28 March 2019, 4.30 to 7.30pm

To attend an event, please complete the booking form by 5pm on Friday 25 January.

Teaching Vacancies is the new service that is free of charge and allows schools to list their teaching vacancies. We’re rolling out the service nationally and by March, will have invited all schools to sign up.

In additional to search engines such as Google Jobs promoting the jobs listed, we will also be running a marketing campaign until March. This will promote the service as the new official site for teaching vacancies.

To see where the service is currently live, please visit: How we’re rolling out our search and listing service to more schools to support their teacher recruitment needs.

To view current vacancies listed, please visit: Teaching Vacancies.

To get involved and support the campaign or to request an invite to the service, please email yvonne.ridley@education.gov.uk.

If you are recruiting trainee Modern Foreign Language (MFL) teachers, please promote the £28,000, tax-free MFL teacher training scholarship to your candidates.

The scheme is aimed at high-quality linguists, passionate about teaching French, Spanish or German. Successful candidates must secure a training place by September 2019, which leads to achieving QTS status, at an ITT provider or lead school with permission to recruit by DfE. They should have a subject-relevant 2:1 (or predicted) degree. Candidates with a 2:2 (or predicted) degree may be considered if they can demonstrate significant subject knowledge.

Successful applicants will receive additional support to enhance their subject knowledge and gain access to high-quality professional development resources.

Applications are now open. Candidates can apply via the British Council.

For further details, including eligibility, please visit Get Into Teaching.

If you are recruiting teachers to hard-to-fill subjects, you can use SKE to help applicants become outstanding teachers if they don’t currently have enough subject knowledge. An SKE course will help them gain the knowledge needed to train to teach their chosen subject. Last year, over 4,500 trainee teachers in hard-to-fill subjects took an SKE course.

SKE is fully funded by DfE. Eligible candidates with at least a 2:2 degree could also receive £200 per week to help with living costs.

Courses are available in maths, physics, chemistry, biology, computing, languages, English, design and technology, geography, religious education and primary maths. 28-week SKE courses are starting now for ITT2019.

For further information, please visit subject knowledge enhancement: an introduction.

Performance profiles collection
The HEI Performance Profiles Collection, due in January 2019, will be postponed due to the MS Dynamics 365 software update. We will confirm dates, likely to be February 2019, as soon as they are available. Any providers that have submitted data to HESA for Student Collection will not be required to do so again.

Employment collection
We have recently received confirmation that the Employment Collection (for non-HESA generated records) will not be required. This information will now be provided from a separate DfE internal source.

Software update in January 2019
The DTTP uses Microsoft software, Dynamics 365 as its engine to collate data from providers. There is an update to the current version of this software planned for 19 January 2019. Our support contractor is conducting analysis and testing to determine if any remedial action is required in light of the update. We will advise if there is any impact that may affect you and how we will support this.

We would like to remind accredited ITT providers that guidance on fee charging and fee loan amounts for the academic year 2019 to 2020 was published in October 2018 in the updated ITT Criteria and Supporting Advice document. Providers should ensure that they are familiar with this advice.

SCITTs that are not registered with the Office for Students (OfS) should pay particular attention to the fee charge and fee loan limits that apply to them.

For queries about this advice, please email itt.accreditation@education.gov.uk.

The deadline for submission of the Annual Grant Return (AGR) and Annex G Return has now passed. This is a requirement of the Grant Funding Agreement and applies to ITT providers, lead schools, and other institutions that received the following in academic year 2017 to 2018:

• ITT Training Bursaries
• School Direct (salaried)
• Subject knowledge enhancement (SKE)
• Early Years
• Further Education ITT and SKE

Returns are now overdue so please give this matter your urgent attention.

For AGR queries, please email: itt.funding@education.gov.uk.
For Annex G queries, please email: annexg.funding@education.gov.uk.

Future Teaching Scholars are maths and physics specialists on a six-year teacher recruitment programme. They committed to teaching before commencing their undergraduate degree and have engaged in a structured programme of learning, which prepares them to teach and is delivered by Outstanding Teaching Schools, alongside their degree.

We are looking for schools to employ Scholars from September 2019. Schools will be required to fund the trainee teacher’s salary and the SCITT attached to the programme’s regional training centres provides the training. A supportive environment is essential and specific commitments will include releasing the Scholar to attend regular training sessions at one of the programme’s regional ITT providers and for the national conference.

Subject to an eligibility check, any school with maths or physics teaching vacancies that can offer excellent support, can express their interest in employing a Scholar. There are only 50 Scholars available in September 2019.

For more information and to register your interest, please visit Future Teaching Scholars.

Teacher subject specialism training (TSST) is available to upskill non-specialist teachers and is free to participants. It could help with timetable planning and vacancy management. Courses are flexible, many running at weekends, during twilight hours and in the school holidays.

The purpose of TSST is to improve the subject knowledge of non-specialist teachers and returning teachers in secondary mathematics, core maths, physics and modern foreign languages, and to increase the number of hours taught. This helps build capacity for schools to manage workforce challenges in these subjects.

To benefit from TSST, please visit teacher subject specialism training courses.

The DfE Teacher Workload team is running a short series of focus groups to understand school leader workload better. This includes identifying the key burdens, and any unnecessary tasks that could be removed, to explore possible solutions. The meetings will be held in DfE offices and are open to one representative per school from the school senior leadership team.

Darlington          Monday 21 January, 11am to 1pm
Manchester       Tuesday 22 January, 2pm to 4pm
London              Friday 25 January, 11am to 1pm (dependent on demand)
London              Friday 25 January, 2pm to 4pm (dependent on demand)
Coventry            Monday 28 January, 10am to 12 midday
London              Thursday 31 January, 10am to 12 midday

To attend a group please email your name, role, organisation, phone number, preferred location and time to workload.solutions@education.gov.uk.