11th June 2020

Here for you: Developing teaching staff for the future

This installment of our ‘Here for you’ series looks into developing teaching staff for the future.

In this article, we looked at Graduate Unemployment and the outlook COVID-19 has created for school leavers and graduates. The education sector is perfectly suited to support the next generation of teachers, by using funding available and training graduates to fit your schools’ ethos and values. With so many routes to hiring graduates for schools to utilise, it’s difficult to know which to take. Our Teacher Training Programme is flexible to your needs!

Apprenticeships

Apprenticeships are fantastic options to fund ITT in your school, however, applying can take time. Our route to teaching benefits graduates and schools alike, we’re able to manage the process for you so you can focus on finding the perfect graduate to grow to fit your school. As part of our cause to support the future generation of teachers, our programme pledges to take the heavy lifting of applying for apprenticeship funding away from you. We’ll set you up with a national teaching apprenticeship provider on the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers (RoATP), manage the resourcing process, and give advice on accessing apprenticeship funding and DfE salary grants to contribute towards your succession planning.

School Salaried Route

It’s important to note that trainees receive the same modular training and PGCE materials on both the apprenticeship and school salaried routes, for the qualification of a PGCE and QTS.

If you’re not paying into the Apprenticeship Levy, you have access to the exact same training programme and its associated benefits and if you opt to hire shortage subject graduates for your school, you’ll be eligible to receive DfE salary grants.

Graduate Unemployment

School leavers and graduates are facing one of the toughest job markets in a generation. It’s emerged that employers across various sectors are reducing graduate jobs, however, education doesn’t need to follow suit. Using available funding and training graduates for your school is a great way to offset training costs and hire on a long term basis for your school.

Applications to our Teacher Training Programme dramatically increased over the past few months, as the deadline for traditional courses looms. Most of the applications we saw came from STEM and core-subject graduates keen to inspire the next generation.

Funding

While investing in a graduate may not have been something you’ve considered for this September, there is a range of funding available that can offset much of the training cost.

The initial cost for schools includes candidate selection and vetting from Engage, along with access to the pool of fully-screened, hand-selected graduates. Once the trainee is in your school, the costs cover all PGCE, QTS and training costs; university support and training for the school-based mentor; and the trainee’s salary, pension, and national insurance contributions.

However, if you pay into the Apprenticeship Levy, you can pay for the £9,000 training and assessment costs using your Apprenticeship Service Account, or you can cover 95% of this cost by accessing the Government co-funding scheme. Schools recruiting shortage subject trainees can potentially attract significant DfE salary grants of up to £19,400 in secondary schools and £13,100 in primary schools. There are many benefits to hiring graduates for your school and funding is a big one.

Flexibility to suit you

With teacher training targets missed for the last 7 years in a row and worsening retention rates, many schools are focusing on hiring STEM and other shortage-subject specialists. Applications to our training programme have surged recently and we now have a large number of STEM and other shortage-subject graduates looking to join local schools to train from September, all of whom are being assessed by our Training Team.

Our programme enables trainees to begin work as support or intervention staff in your school before starting their ITT programme when you decide they are ready to teach your pupils independently.

The key points of our programme include:

• Trainees work full-time in your school, accelerating pupil progress from day one
• The programme is delivered in two phases
  • Phase One – Getting Ready to Teach: trainee works as a member of support or intervention staff whilst receiving a thorough CPD and tutoring course designed to prepare them for their ITT programme. Phase One can last for one, two or three terms, dependent on the progress of your trainee
  • Phase Two – Ready to Teach: when you feel your trainee is ready, they begin independently teaching for 18 hours/week whilst completing their PGCE & QTS (you can fast-track straight to Phase Two if your trainee is ready)
    Consultations

The Engage Teacher Training Programme combines the expected rigour and credibility of a university-led course with the hands-on experience in your classrooms to produce robust and knowledgeable practitioners with a PGCE & QTS.

To discuss how the programme can help your recruitment needs for September and support your intervention programmes to close the gap, arrange a consultation call with our Training Team.