Official Statistics

Main findings: Initial teacher education inspections and outcomes as at 31 August 2022

Published 29 November 2022

Applies to England

This is the main findings report for the initial teacher education inspections and outcomes as at 31 August 2022 release. The following are also available:

• underlying data, tables and charts
• methodology
• pre-release access list

This release contains:

• data for inspections completed between 1 September 2021 and 31 August 2022
• data for the most recent inspections and outcomes as at 31 August 2022

Both datasets include inspection reports published by 7 October 2022. This cut-off point has been extended by one week from that used for earlier releases, in order to include as many inspections as possible.

Nearly a third of age-phase inspections completed this year resulted in an outcome of requires improvement or inadequate.

94% of age phases were judged good or outstanding at their most recent inspection. This is 6 percentage points lower than at 31 August 2020.

The new inspection framework and how Ofsted inspects initial teacher education

Ofsted’s current framework for initial teacher education (ITE) was introduced in September 2020. However, no inspections were carried out under the framework until May 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The framework puts a much greater emphasis on the quality of the ITE curriculum than its predecessor. It is now aligned with the education inspection framework (EIF), which launched in 2019 for schools, early years and further education inspections. For this reason, caution should be used when comparing inspection outcomes across different years and frameworks.

Inspections between 1 September 2021 and 31 August 2022

22 age phases inspected this year were judged to require improvement or to be inadequate.

We inspected 54 providers covering 76 age phases in 2021/22. Of these 76 age phases, 54 were judged to be good or outstanding, 16 to require improvement and 6 inadequate.

The primary/secondary combined age phase (where providers have small numbers of trainees, primary and secondary phases are inspected together) had the highest proportion of good or outstanding overall effectiveness judgements. Further education had the lowest proportion (2 out of 7).

The current framework intentionally raises the bar on the quality of education and training provided to trainee teachers.

Figure 1: Overall effectiveness judgements of ITE age phases inspected in 2021/22 (numbers)

Most recent ITE inspection outcomes over time

The proportion of age phases judged good or outstanding has declined by 6 percentage points since the introduction of the new inspection framework.

On 31 August 2022, 94% of age-phase providers were judged good or outstanding at their most recent inspection. This proportion has fallen since the introduction of the new framework, from 100% in August 2020 and 95% in August 2021.

Only around a quarter of the age phases have been inspected under the current framework. The new framework intentionally raised expectations, so the most recent inspection grade of providers last inspected under the previous framework may not reflect the grades they would get when inspected under the new framework.

The current inspection framework was designed to be more rigorous than its predecessor, and this has resulted in more age phases being judged requires improvement or inadequate. Figure 2 shows how the proportion of good and outstanding judgements was higher under the previous framework used from 2014 to 2020.

Figure 2: Overall effectiveness of ITE age phases inspected under the current and previous framework (percentages)

The region with the highest proportion of outstanding age phases is London where 47% of age phases were judged to be outstanding at their most recent inspection. The North East has the highest proportion of less than good judgements: 22% (5) of age phases in this region were judged to require improvement at their most recent inspection.

Most recent inspection outcomes by provider type

96% of school-centred initial teacher training providers (SCITTs) are good or outstanding

The provider types with the largest number of ITE providers are SCITTs and HEIs (higher education institutions), each with 170 inspected age phases. Of these, SCITTs had the highest proportion of age phases judged as good or outstanding at 96%. 92% of age phases in HEIs were most recently judged good or outstanding (see figure 3).

Figure 3: Most recent overall effectiveness judgements of ITE age phases by provider type (numbers)

Further information

Initial teacher education

Teaching in England requires specific qualifications, as well as subject knowledge, experience or a previous degree. For example, to teach in a maintained primary or secondary school, you must have achieved qualified teacher status. Early years teacher status (EYTS) is available for those wishing to specialise in working with babies and children from birth to 5 years old. Practitioners working in further education and skills can work towards achieving qualified teacher learning and skills status. Initial teacher education (ITE) is the overall term used for the training provided to enable a prospective teacher to gain the required professional status or qualification.

Types of ITE providers

These are the types of ITE providers:

• HEIs – universities or university colleges that provide undergraduate or postgraduate teacher training. An HEI usually offers an academic qualification that includes qualified teacher status

• SCITT – a consortium of schools, usually in a local area or region, that provides graduate training for teachers

• Teach First – a charity that recruits graduates and trains them to teach in deprived areas. (This will be the last release in which each of Teach First’s regional offices will be listed separately. Going forward, Ofsted will be inspecting Teach First as a single provider so only one line for each age phase of training offered by Teach First will be included in future releases).

• ITE in FE - training for those entering the further education and skills sector

Each type of ITE provider can offer training for up to 4 different age ranges. These are called age phases. They cover:

• early years
• primary
• secondary
• further education

In 2021/22, we began to carry out monitoring visits of early career framework and national professional qualification providers.

Contacts

If you have any comments or feedback on this publication, please contact Louise Butler on 03000 131 457 or [email protected].

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the following for their contribution to this statistical release: Oli Bayntun, Ed Giles and Mundeep Gill.

Annex: Data tables for figures

This section contains the underlying data in an accessible table format for all figures.

Data for figure 1: Overall effectiveness judgements of ITE age phases inspected in 2021/22 (numbers)

Age phase	Outstanding	Good	Requires improvement	Inadequate	Total
Early years initial teacher education	0	3	1	0	4
Primary initial teacher education	1	15	5	1	22
Secondary initial teacher education	1	11	6	2	20
Primary/secondary initial teacher education	4	17	1	1	23
Further education initial teacher education	0	2	3	2	7
All initial teacher education age phases	6	48	16	6	76

See Figure 1

Data for figure 2: Overall effectiveness of ITE age phases inspected under the current and previous framework (percentages)

	Number of age-phase inspections	Outstanding	Good	Requires improvement	Inadequate
Current framework	112	6	57	25	12
Previous framework	292	36	57	6	1

See Figure 2

Data for figure 3: Most recent overall effectiveness judgements of ITE age phases by provider type (numbers)

Provision type and age phase	Number of providers	Outstanding	Good	Requires improvement	Inadequate
HEI Primary	63	21	38	4	0
HEI Secondary	68	18	45	4	1
HEI ITE in FE	24	4	17	1	2
HEI Early years	15	2	12	1	0
HEI Total	170	45	112	10	3

Provision type and age phase	Number of providers	Outstanding	Good	Requires improvement	Inadequate
SCITT Primary	44	22	20	1	1
SCITT Secondary	46	15	28	2	1
SCITT Primary/Secondary	77	25	50	1	1
SCITT Early years	3	0	3	0	0
SCITT Total	170	62	101	4	3

Provision type and age phase	Number of providers	Outstanding	Good	Requires improvement	Inadequate
TeachFirst Primary	3	2	1	0	0
TeachFirst Secondary	3	3	0	0	0
TeachFirst Primary/Secondary	77	25	50	1	1
TeachFirst Early years	3	0	3	0	0
TeachFirst Total	11	9	2	0	0

Provision type and age phase	Number of providers	Outstanding	Good	Requires improvements	Requires improvement	Inadequate
ITE in FE	9	0	7	2	0	0

See Figure 3