Teacher training providers also call on government to set up a national body for early career and trainee teachers.
Diversity and antiracism should be embedded into teacher training, the government has been told.
In an open letter to policymakers shared exclusively with Tes, teacher training providers have outlined their priorities for change.
The Initial Teacher Education and Training Innovation Network also suggests that the Department for Education establish a national consultative body for trainees and early career teachers.
The network, which includes the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers and the University College London Institute of Education Centre for Teachers and Teaching Research, also warns that it is not helpful “if views form in the training year that teaching is so challenging that long-term career plans are not feasible”.
The letter states: “Such a view dangerously suggests the inevitability of teaching not being attractive to new entrants because it is incompatible with the changing life choices made by people in their twenties and thirties.”
‘Explicit focus’ on inequality and racism
Attention to teacher identity and positive affirmation of diversity and antiracism should be “fundamental” to initial teacher training (ITT) provision, the letter says.
Specifically, it states that policymakers should “prioritise equity and inclusion by embedding diversity, antiracism and teacher identity development within national ITT expectations”.
Providers call for an “explicit focus” on addressing inequalities and countering racism within ITT programmes, and suggest that this is a point of trainees’ reflective tasks.
Another recommendation is to “create an agreement among providers and schools about how to support trainees’ experiences of all forms of discrimination”.
Providers are also calling for a change in how “learning to teach” is experienced on ITT programmes.
Teacher trainees have “minimum control over their training conditions” and “minimal access to influential forums for reviewing ITT”, the letter warns.
It calls on the DfE to establish a national consultative body for ITT, which should include new teachers.
“This should allow new entrants to have constructive discussions with senior leaders about their experiences, with a goal of increasing long-term retention,” the network states.
‘Don’t make SEND a bolt-on’
The letter also calls for a review of the “frequency, timing and focus of lesson observations” carried out by new entrants.
ITT should also provide a balance between schools providing supportive structures for teaching and helping new teachers develop their own planning to meet pupils’ needs.
For policymakers, the network suggests that the DfE aligns ITT policy more closely with special educational needs and disabilities principles.
This should embed pupil needs “at the heart of teacher development” rather than as a “bolt-on provision”.
Read the full article by Cerys Turner, here.