Miami Mortgage News

Increase in teacher trainees is 'too little, too late', providers complain

University and school initial teacher training providers unimpressed by shock government move to allow 25 per cent more trainee teachers to be recruited for SeptemberUniversities and schools say plans to increase the number of trainee teachers they are able to recruit this summer may have come too late to tempt more quality newcomers into the profession.The National College for Teaching and Leadership has told certain teacher training providers that they may recruit up to 25 per cent more students to start courses in September 2017.But the reaction from teacher trainers to this week's surprise announcement has been mixed.'They might have spent their budget'“To give 25 per cent to everybody now is quite bizarre," Jo Palmer-Tweed, the executive director at Essex and Thames Primary Scitt, a school-centered initial teacher training organisation in Southend, said.“A lot of people have made plans on the numbers they had, they have done their staffing, timetabling and a lot of people I know have stopped recruiting because they are full. They might have spent their recruitment budget.“To be told, when you have got just ten weeks of recruiting left, that you can have another 25 per cent is really unhelpful.”And others agree that the move is too late.Rachel Lofthouse, who heads Newcastle University's teacher training courses, said the university's school of education had decided not to take up the offer and increase its teacher trainee numbers by 25 per cent.“With so much in flux over the last few years there are questions over staffing of programmes and the capacity for increasing the numbers of school placements in many regions," she said."Late changes to planning like this do not result in sustainable and stable provision. As such, this feels rather too little, too late to resolve the issues."