Initial teacher education inspection data summary report (IDSR) guide
This guide gives an overview of the inspection data summary report (IDSR) for initial teacher education (ITE) providers and inspectors.
Applies to England
Overview of the inspection data summary report (IDSR)
This guide is for initial teacher education (ITE) IDSRs.
The IDSR is a document showing data for Ofsted inspectors to use when preparing for and during inspection. The IDSR is designed to align with the ITE inspection framework and handbook. It provides inspectors with insights into data published by the Department for Education (DfE) and collected by Ofsted.
Access your provider’s IDSR
Providers can access their IDSR as a document that we have emailed to the provider’s given contact.
ITE IDSR 2024
We have focused on the same guiding principles for the ITE IDSR that we followed for the schools’ IDSR that we launched in September 2019.
The ITE IDSR has been designed to:
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reduce the time spent preparing for an inspection
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interpret data for inspectors
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minimise the inspector’s focus on small groups, which can distract from discussing how the provider meets the needs of all trainees
The ITE IDSR highlights important data. Inspectors use this data as a starting point for conversations with provider leaders.
The ITE IDSR contains:
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basic provider details
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provider context information
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details of the most recent inspection of each phase, including a link to the report
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characteristics of new entrants, such as age, degree qualification grade and ethnicity
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summaries of the results of the trainee online questionnaire
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data on outcomes, including qualified trainee status and employment outcomes
Provider details box
The provider details box on the first page of the report shows the following data:
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provider’s name
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provider’s address
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provider’s unique reference number (URN)
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provider’s UK provider reference number (UKPRN)
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the local authority in which the provider is located
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provider’s phone number
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type of provider
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phases of education that the provider offers
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total expected number of trainees in 2023/24
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provider’s website URL
The provider self-reports most of this information in the annual provider return. Therefore, the information may not be the most up to date (see the ‘Data sources’ section).
Note that the number of trainees and the number of partner schools are the expected numbers for 2023/24 supplied by providers in summer 2023. Therefore, these may not exactly match the actual numbers for the year.
Provider context
This section provides information on the number of trainees attending the provider over time and the training routes they follow.
Number of trainees by phase across time
This section provides the total number of trainees by phase for the past 3 years. If the provider has undergraduate trainees, then trainees in all years of their course are included in the total.
Providers self-report these numbers through the annual provider return.
The data for 2023/24 is populated using ‘expected’ numbers supplied by the provider before the academic year started. As a result, the data may not exactly match the actual number of trainees who started courses in those academic years.
For primary and secondary phases, the national averages presented are specific to the type of provider. For example, we compare primary higher education institution providers with primary higher education institution national averages. For the early years and further education phases, there were not enough providers by sub-type to carry out this calculation. Therefore, the national averages presented for these phases are for all providers and are not specific to the type of provider.
Expected trainees by route
This section presents the expected number of trainees by route. Providers self-reported these numbers through the provider survey during summer 2023. Therefore, they may not exactly match the current trainee numbers.
If any trainees completed an assessment-only route at the provider in 2022/23, the number is shown here.
For further education providers offering franchised delivery in partnership with other providers, the numbers of trainees at each of these providers is shown, broken down by route. A sentence is also included if this provider validates ITE provision owned and delivered by other providers. This validated provision is not in scope for this provider’s inspection.
Expected schools by phase
This section presents the expected number of partner schools for each phase. Any other training providers delivering this provider’s curriculum as part of a formal agreement are also listed here. This refers to training providers, not schools with whom the provider has a formal partnership agreement.
Providers self-reported this information through the provider survey during summer 2023. Therefore, the information may not exactly match the current schools and colleges totals for each provider.
Latest inspection
The IDSR provides information on the latest inspection of each phase, including a link to the provider’s Ofsted inspection reports page. Where phases were inspected separately, the separate inspection dates and outcomes are shown. Older inspections (pre-2013) carried out as an ‘employment-based route’ inspection are not shown.
The IDSR takes the latest inspection data from Ofsted’s official statistics on initial teacher education: inspections and outcomes.
Characteristics of new entrants
This section provides recruitment data that the DfE collects through the initial teacher training (ITT) census.
This relates to new entrants in the 2023/24 academic year. Data for 2023/24 is provisional and is due to be revised in the December 2024 ITT publication.
The IDSR creates sentences for the following characteristics:
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undergraduate entrants
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postgraduate entrants with a 2:1 or higher in their degree
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postgraduate entrants from a minority ethnic group
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postgraduate entrants aged over 25 on census day (second Wednesday of October)
The IDSR will always include a sentence providing the proportion of undergraduate trainees.
For postgraduate entrants with a 2:1 or higher, postgraduate entrants aged over 25 and postgraduate trainees from a minority ethnic (excluding white minorities) group, the IDSR includes a sentence when the provider’s percentage is in the highest 20% of all providers or the lowest 20% of all providers. If a sentence is displayed in grey, it means that either the percentage was not exceptionally high or low compared with other providers or there were 10 or fewer trainees in the cohort. Note that where an entrant’s degree class was given as ‘other’ this will not be counted as a 2:1 or higher. ‘Other’ degree class includes international degrees, which have different grading classes, degree classes below 2:2 and others. It excludes trainees whose degree class is not known or not applicable.
For all characteristics, the proportions given reflect only trainees where the characteristic is known.
Subject of new entrants in 2023/24
The chart in this section shows the subjects studied by new secondary trainees in 2023/24 in descending order. The numbers shown include both undergraduates and postgraduates. This data is provisional and subject to change.
Trainee online questionnaire in 2023
Findings
This section summarises the responses that trainees provided in the online questionnaire that we carried out in summer 2023.
There is a sentence stating how many trainees responded to the trainee online questionnaire. The IDSR compares this number with the number of trainees for the 2022/23 academic year, which is taken from the 2023 provider return.
The IDSR shows the overall proportion of positive responses given to all questions in the survey. This is alongside the average positive responses for all providers. A positive response is where a trainee responded ‘strongly agree’ or ‘agree’ to a question.
The IDSR also highlights those questions that more than 10% of trainees responded to negatively (‘disagree’ or ‘strongly disagree’). Questions are only highlighted if there were more than 10 respondents to the questionnaire.
Some questions in the trainee online questionnaire are available to all trainees, whereas some questions are specific to phases. If a question that is flagged as having had higher negative responses is phase-specific, the IDSR indicates the relevant phase.
Respondents by route
This table breaks down the number of respondents to the trainee online questionnaire by the phase and route of the trainees.
Qualified teacher status and employment outcomes
This section provides outcomes data that the DfE publishes in the annual ITT performance profiles.
Qualified teacher status outcomes
This section presents the proportion of trainees who were awarded qualified teacher status (QTS) at the end of their course. The data relates to trainees completing their course or ending their training without being awarded QTS in the 2021/22 academic year. The data is shown for all trainees and also broken down into primary and secondary phases. Early years ITT and assessment-only candidates are not included in the IDSRs.
The IDSR creates a sentence when the provider’s ‘awarded QTS’ percentage is in the highest 20% of all providers or the lowest 20% of all providers and the cohort is larger than 10. If a sentence is displayed in grey, it means that either the percentage was not exceptionally high or low compared with other providers or the cohort was 10 or fewer.
Trainees not awarded QTS
This section shows the number of trainees who ended their training but were not awarded QTS in the 2021/22 academic year. QTS rates are as at the end of the academic year (31 July 2022) and therefore some trainees may go on to qualify in the following academic year.
These numbers are also broken down by phase and route.
Employment outcomes (state-funded schools in England only)
This section shows the proportion of the 2020/21 final-year trainees awarded QTS who were employed in a state-funded school in England within 16 months of qualification. The data is shown for all trainees and also broken down into primary and secondary phases. Early years ITT and assessment-only candidates are not included in the data used for the IDSR. Note that this data is revised and final.
The IDSR creates a sentence when the provider’s ‘teaching in a state-funded school’ percentage is in the highest 20% of all providers or the lowest 20% of all providers and the cohort size is larger than 10. If a sentence is displayed in grey, it means that either the percentage was not exceptionally high or low compared with other providers or the cohort was 10 or fewer.
Data sources
Provider return 2023
Ofsted collects the information from all providers annually. We sent the most recent provider return to all providers in the summer of 2023.
The following data comes from the provider return:
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phases of education that the provider offers in 2023/24
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total expected number of trainees in 2023/24: this includes the total numbers in the provider details box and the number of expected trainees by route in the provider context section of the report
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total expected number of partner schools or colleges in 2023/24
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other providers offering franchised delivery in partnership with this provider or delivering the provider’s curriculum through a formal agreement
As providers self-report the information in the provider return and we collected this before the 2023/24 academic year, the data may not exactly match current information.
Existing data
The other data that the IDSR presents in the provider context section comes from Ofsted’s existing data. This information comes from a variety of sources, including previous provider returns, notifications and data from the DfE.
Inspection outcomes
The IDSR takes the date and outcome of the latest inspection for each phase from our official statistics on initial teacher education: inspections and outcomes.
Trainee online questionnaire
The IDSR takes all information in the trainee online questionnaire section of the report from the latest questionnaire responses for the provider. We collect these responses from providers annually. The latest trainee online questionnaire is from July 2023 and was completed by trainees carrying out their courses in the 2022/23 academic year.
DfE ITT census data
The DfE ITT census provides the recruitment characteristics data in the IDSR.
The current statistical release provides provisional figures on the number of new entrants who have started an ITT programme in England in 2023/24 by:
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school subject
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training route
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training region
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a range of trainee demographic factors
The statistics cover those training to teach through both postgraduate and undergraduate routes.
The DfE collects the ITT census annually and it counts those trainees registered on a course on the second Wednesday in October. For 2023/24, this was Wednesday 11 October 2023. The ITT census covers first-year trainees in England.
The DfE applies filters to capture only valid trainees. These are trainees who:
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are in their first year of study
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were signed off and not marked as ‘draft’
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were on a course on or before the second Wednesday in October
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were on a course that started on or after 1 August of the published training year
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were on a course that leads to qualified teacher status
Trainees on the Future Teaching Scholars programme in this dataset are included with trainees on a School Direct route.
The following trainees are excluded:
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Self-funded trainees – these are trainees that the provider has indicated are not eligible for UK financial support. This includes overseas trainees who are not entitled to UK financial support, and trainees on the School Direct salaried route who are undertaking a subject that is not funded by the DfE. The exclusion does not apply to High Potential ITT trainees (formerly known as Teach First) or trainees on the Future Teaching Scholars programme. Trainees who do not have a place allocated by the DfE were also excluded from the data until 2021/22. Some subjects have allocations to prevent over-recruitment. Providers that recruit beyond their allocation are expected to fund the costs of additional trainees. As of 2022/23, only physical education and early years teaching are subject to allocations.
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Early years ITT – the main tables in the DfE publication focus on trainees working towards QTS, and so trainees working towards early years teacher status (EYTS) are not included because they are not eligible for QTS. Figures on early years ITT are reported in a separate section of the release.
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Assessment-only candidates – ‘assessment only’ is for experienced teachers with a degree and those with a teaching qualification from a different country who have not been awarded QTS in England. It allows teachers to do the necessary assessment and skills tests to qualify for QTS. These individuals are deemed to be already in the workforce and therefore do not count towards the 2022/23 postgraduate ITT targets. Figures for assessment-only trainees have been published as an annex to the ITT performance profiles since its 2016/17 publication.
The DfE does not produce an updated version of the ITT census outside of its annual publication. These publications take a snapshot of the data submitted on the Database of Trainee Teachers and Providers, or its successor, Register, at the time of publication. The department does, however, publish revised data from the previous year in each publication.
For more information on the DfE ITT census data, see the methodology section of the ITT census website.
DfE ITT performance profiles
QTS
The DfE ITT performance profiles provide the QTS and employment outcomes information in the IDSR.
Information in the IDSR on QTS outcomes relates to trainees who were either awarded QTS or ended their training without being awarded QTS in the 2021/22 academic year. The DfE published the latest data on 27 July 2023, which is for the 2021/22 academic year.
This year, the DfE has for the first time extracted all data from the Register trainee teachers service. Due to this change in data source, only trainees with course outcomes are included in these statistics. Trainees with course outcomes refers to those who were awarded QTS or ended their training but were not awarded QTS. Trainees who are yet to complete their ITT course are no longer included, regardless of whether they are in their “expected” final year. To enable comparison between years, previous years’ data from 2017/18 onwards has been revised to reflect this change.
For the academic year 2021/22, the DfE received data from all 234 providers. This consisted of 164 school-centred initial teacher training providers and 70 higher education institutions. All data was reviewed, confirmed and signed off by a designated person at each provider.
The DfE statistical release presents final-year trainee outcomes and provisional employment data for 2021/22 and revised employment data for 2020/21.
The DfE applies filters to capture only valid trainees.
A number of trainees are excluded from the mainstream ITT analysis who may be working towards QTS or another teaching qualification. The figures presented in the DfE release do not include non-supported trainees. These are a small number of trainees that the provider has indicated are not eligible for UK financial support and do not have a place allocated by the DfE. This includes:
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overseas trainees not entitled to UK financial support
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trainees on the School Direct salaried route who are training in a subject that is not funded by the DfE and/or who are employed at an independent school
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trainees on the School Direct salaried route who are training in a subject that would not normally be funded by DfE, where the provider is funding the trainee themselves outside of their DfE-allocated places
Some trainees are excluded from the mainstream underlying data sets but are included in their own separate underlying data sets for this publication. These are:
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assessment-only candidates – assessment-only is for experienced teachers with a degree and those with a teaching qualification from a different country who have not been awarded QTS in England. It allows teachers to do the necessary assessment to qualify for QTS without taking an ITT course
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early years ITT – trainees working towards EYTS are not included as mainstream trainees as they are not eligible for QTS. This programme focuses on pre-school ITT. However, High Potential ITT offers an early years programme working with children aged 3 to 5 years that does lead to QTS; therefore, these trainees are included in the mainstream underlying datasets
The statistics cover those training to teach through both postgraduate and undergraduate routes. The DfE does not publish this data at provider level in the ITT performance profiles. Early years ITT and assessment-only candidates are not included in the IDSRs.
Some trainees in their expected final year of ITT may not have been awarded QTS by the end of the academic year. Trainees who are yet to complete the course will either complete the course without being awarded QTS or go on to be awarded QTS in a subsequent academic year.
From 2019, the DfE changed to using internal administrative data sources to determine how many final-year trainees awarded QTS go on to employment in a state-funded school in England. The first publication to use this new methodology was the 2017/18 ITT performance profiles publication.
Employment outcomes
Information in the IDSR on employment outcomes relates to revised data for the 2020/21 final year cohort for each provider. This is because employment rates are calculated from the proportion of qualified trainees who are employed in a state-funded school in England 16 months after qualifying. When the DfE published the latest performance profiles data, 16 months had not passed since trainees in the 2021/22 cohort had completed their course. Therefore, the latest data available is an estimate.
The DfE uses internal administrative data sources to estimate how many final year-trainees awarded QTS go on to employment in a state-funded school in England. For full details on the methodology for measuring employment, see the publication methodology.
For this publication, the DfE calculates 2 employment rates:
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a provisional employment rate for final-year trainees in the 2021/22 academic year
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a revised employment rate for final-year trainees in the 2020/21 academic year
Provisional employment rate: DfE analysis has found that matching ITT trainee data to school workforce census (SWC) data from the year following qualification does not fully capture how many trainees go on to employment. This is because some teachers do not start their new jobs in time to be recorded in that SWC, while others can start up to a year later.
The DfE accounts for these teachers by applying an uplift to the 2021/22 employment figures to estimate a provisional employment rate for 2021/22. The uplift is calculated by comparing with data from previous years to determine what proportion of new teachers employed during the year were not included in their first school workforce census but were captured in the following year’s census (the uplift applied for 2021/22 was around 31% of those not captured in the first year).
The DfE’s ITT performance profiles publications include provisional employment rates at an aggregate level. These are national figures by characteristic, route and subject. The DfE does not publish provisional employment rates at provider level, as it is not possible to calculate an accurate uplift at this level. At provider level, the DfE publishes revised employment rates the following year. Therefore, in the 2020/21 performance profiles, you will find the 2019/20 revised provider-level employment rates.
Conditions of use
The IDSR conditions of use and storage are that:
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the IDSR is to be used only for educational and analytical purposes and for informing inspection, not for any other purpose
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data presented in the IDSR is to be shared only with those who need and are authorised to have access to the information
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the IDSR should be saved in a secure location with limited access
Data protection
When accessing the data in the IDSR, you must recognise the privacy of that data and always comply with the Data Protection Act 2018. The Data Protection Act 2018 is the UK’s implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
You must ensure that you use the data that you have access to for the purpose for which the service was set up and that you do not use the data for any other purpose. You must ensure that the data is processed securely and that it is not subject to any unauthorised use or disclosure.
Contact details
ITE provider return
Please contact [email protected] regarding queries for the ITE provider return.
Characteristics of new entrants queries (ITT Census)
Please contact [email protected].
Trainee online questionnaire queries
Please contact [email protected] regarding queries for the trainee online questionnaire.
Qualified trainee status and employment outcomes queries (ITT performance profiles)
Please contact [email protected].
Updates to this page
Published 30 March 2021Last updated 10 January 2023 + show all updates
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Guidance amended to reflect the latest version of the IDSR. The main changes include revisions from the Department for Education in the 'Data sources' section.
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Added further details of DfE methodology to cover provider queries from last year’s release; updated dates and links and changed 'partnerships' to 'providers' throughout.
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First published.