The Good Teacher Training Guide 2011, by Professor Alan Smithers and Dr Pamela Robinson, published 11 August 2011, compares 227 university, school-centred and employment-based providers of teacher training on entry qualifications, Ofsted grades and take-up of teaching posts.
The Billericay Educational Consortium, one of the two pioneers of school-centred teacher training, is top. Oxford University comes second and Cambridge University third. Southfields Community College (Wandsworth), one of the first Training Schools, is also in the top ten, where six of the places are taken by school-led schemes.
Buckingham is fifth of the 75 universities after Oxford, Cambridge, Exeter and Loughborough.
This is the first year that it has been possible to compare all three training routes since for the first time teaching take-up figures for employment-based training have become available. Trainees on school-led schemes were much more likely to go into teaching than those trained at universities. Universities tended to have the higher entry qualifications and get the better Ofsted grades.
The report also takes a close look at proposed government reforms to teacher training, asking among other things: ‘Is school-led training better?’; ‘Will £20,000 bursaries work?’; ‘Is Teach First the answer?’; ‘Has Ofsted gone soft?’; ‘Are the degrees of new teachers getting better?’; and ‘Can the training be good if the trainees do not become teachers?’
