The Early Career Framework Is Designed To Stop One Third Of New Teachers Leaving – Will It Work?

I joined the education team at Capita earlier this year to lead on the design and accessibility of education programmes, after working for over 30 years in secondary education, including spending eight years as a Headteacher of a secondary comprehensive school.

Throughout my career in schools my personal philosophy has remained unchanged. Teachers are the foundation of the education system: there are no great schools without great teachers. I hold a core belief that excellent teachers improve the life chances of all young people regardless of background or starting point, creating a better and brighter future for all.

The best teachers will inspire young people to be excited, curious and ambitious for themselves. That’s why it’s so important for teachers to flourish and remain in their chosen profession.

I believe the recipe for successful and motivated teachers is built on a foundation which provides teachers with the right support, robust school leadership and continuous professional development.

My team is committed to applying the academic evidence base of what it takes to be a good teacher, combined with the unrelenting desire to improve life chances for young people and a realistic understanding of the pressures that teachers face. That’s why we put teachers and pupils at the heart of our education programmes.

The policy direction

Currently, 33% of teachers leave the profession within five years of joining it. To address issues of teacher retention in England, the government revised the Initial Teacher Training Core Content Framework, updated the National Professional Qualifications, and implemented Early Career Framework (ECF) reforms. As part of the largest investment in continuous professional development (CPD) for teachers in a generation, these policy changes ensure that every teacher, in every school, receives high quality professional development throughout their careers.

The Early Career Framework is just one strand of the Department for Education’s (DfE) retention and recruitment strategy. It marks an exciting new national development programme that has the potential to transform the future generation of teachers in the profession – for the good of children and our communities.

The choices schools can make

From September 2021, it will become a statutory requirement for schools to offer a two-year induction based on the Early Career Framework to their Early Career Teachers. The ECF provides schools with an entitlement to a structured 2-year package of high-quality professional development. As well as funded time away from the classroom to partake in meaningful learning and development activities.

Every school providing statutory induction will need to prepare for these changes. There are three options available to you if your school will have an Early Career Teacher starting in September 2021:

• a funded provider-led full induction programme
• to deliver their own training using DfE-accredited materials and resources
• to design and deliver their own ECF-based induction

It is up to school leaders to choose the approach that best suits the needs of their Early Career Teachers and Mentors and you can find out more on the DfE website here.

How Capita is supporting Early Career Teachers to flourish

Following a successful procurement process, Capita was awarded a contract as one of six lead providers, to deliver the Early Career Framework reforms. The ECF underpins what all Early Career Teachers should be entitled to learn about based on expert guidance and the best available research evidence. It focuses on five key areas, researched and endorsed by the Educational Endowment Foundation:

• behaviour management
• pedagogy
• curriculum
• assessment
• professional behaviours

Starting in September 2021, our fully-funded ECF programme provides the opportunity to help shape the very best teachers of the future and keep them in the classroom, working with children and communities for years to come.

I have designed our programme working closely with our lead academic partner, the University of Birmingham, to create a unique programme of professional development for Early Career Teachers and their Mentors. It is based on an evidence-informed understanding of what works coupled with cutting-edge technology, which will help to save teachers’ time and keep them on track of their learning.

We are also working with a network of high calibre delivery partners, including Russell Group universities, to roll out our programme nationally. Our delivery partner network brings local insights into each conference and facilitated session, ensuring the CPD is applicable to each teacher and setting. This is what makes our programme unique and flexible.

The newest entrants into the teaching profession this autumn will already be exceptional teachers. They have overcome the challenge of training in the most unpredictable of circumstances, engaging children virtually and thinking on their feet more than their predecessors.

These Early Career Teachers will be the sunshine in places that have been tired, uncertain and at times anxious over the last couple of years. They will bring fresh ideas, new ways of working and flexibility that will be of benefit to their Mentors who are more experienced teachers.

What excites and motivates my team is the knowledge that unlocking the talent and potential of teachers through the ECF programme will no doubt have a lasting impact on young people for generations to come.

I know that many schools may still be unsure about their ECF choices given they’ve had to grapple with so much this academic year. If this sounds familiar to you as a school leader, contact my team and I to understand more about how our programme is unique and will work for your setting. I’d be delighted to talk to your school so please get in touch at: ECF@Capita.com.

National Professional Qualifications

We recognise that great teachers do not grow and flourish on their own. To this end, Capita is committed to its role in the delivery of the National Professional Qualifications (NPQ) programme which supports and develops our school leaders and experienced teachers as their careers progress with flexible, tailored professional development which matches each setting, context and the needs of all teachers.

The reformed NPQs complete the golden thread, running from initial teacher training through to school leadership, rooting teacher and school leader development in the best available evidence and collective wisdom of the profession.

Qualifications are available for teachers who want to develop expertise in high quality practice, such as behaviour management, to headteachers or chief executives leading multiple schools across trusts.

Capita and Leadership Learning South East (LLSE) have partnered to build capability and capacity of high-quality professional development to teachers and school leaders across our network. Our partnership is built on shared values and a relentless commitment to deliver evidence-based training, tailored to the unique needs and settings of each school.

I am delighted to be working with a high calibre network of delivery partners to deliver improved teacher retention rates through both the NPQ and ECF. This holistic CPD offering will enable teachers to flourish in their chosen careers and create better educational outcomes for the children they teach.

The new NPQ programmes will be available from November 2021, you can find out more by contacting my team at: NPQ@Capita.com

After being Headteacher in a successful and oversubscribed secondary school, Janice Fletcher lectured on university music education degrees. She moved to Capita Early Career Framework as Programme Champion to continue her commitment to improving the life chances of young people and to develop talented and committed teachers

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Background Note To The Early Career Framework Reforms

The five fundamental areas of practice: pedagogy, curriculum, assessment, behaviour and professional behaviours were researched by the Educational Endowment Foundation in order to provide timely feedback in the development of policy and programmes around the rollout of the Early Career Framework.

Three pilot programmes were developed to investigate the promise, feasibility, and scalability of differing models for developing Early Career Teachers (ECTs), mentors, and induction leads.

Two programmes were developed by Ambition Institute and a third by the Chartered College of Teaching. All aimed to provide mentors with the resources to deliver instructional coaching sessions to ECTs, coaching that uses expert teachers to deliver recurring, classroom-practice focused sessions, using observation and targeted feedback to develop practice.

Programme A (Ambition Institute) provided face-to-face training, a coaching guide, weekly online resources, and regular online coaching and support sessions to in-school mentors. School induction leads also received face-to-face training, designed to enable them to support mentors. Mentors used the programme to deliver instructional coaching to ECTs, either weekly or fortnightly.

Programme B (Ambition Institute) provided the same training as Programme A to mentors and school induction leads. In addition, this programme also delivered weekly online content and regular online support sessions directly to ECTs. The programme was also used to enable in-school mentors to deliver weekly or fortnightly instructional coaching sessions to ECTs.

Programme C (Chartered College of Teaching) provided online support to mentors, school induction leads, and ECTs. All received a selection of online modules providing weekly content to mentors and ECTs that were used to facilitate either weekly or fortnightly instructional coaching sessions, delivered by mentors to ECTs.

The intention was not to undertake a comparative evaluation of these programmes but instead to evaluate the modes of support and delivery within them. Each programme was delivered to teachers teaching a variety of different year groups and subjects spanning primary and secondary education. Schools opted to receive one of these programmes.

At the end of the evaluation there was a total of 98 schools across the pilot programmes: 50 primary schools, 45 secondary schools, and three all-through schools. The pilot evaluation was designed to run from June 2019 to July 2020. However, delivery and evaluation were modified due to the COVID-19 outbreak and this report covers the initial set-up period until February 2020.

The pilot aimed to examine the evidence of promise, feasibility, and scalability of the programmes using a mixed methods approach using three waves of survey, 20 school case studies, online engagement data, observation of sessions, and evaluation of materials.

The National Foundation For Educational Research (NFER) has been by commissioned by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to evaluate the impact of the Early Roll Out. The primary aim of the evaluation is to explore the impact of the ERO on the retention rate of early career teachers (ECTs) in the teaching profession. Secondary aims include an assessment of the impact on the retention rate of ECTs within their original schools, as well as on teaching quality, self-efficacy and teacher workload.