As the New Year inspires people to consider their future goals, a training hub in Leicestershire has launched a course for those considering a new career in teaching.
Leicestershire and Rutland Teaching School Hub (LRTSH), which currently offers additional training to already qualified teachers, is launching its Initial Teacher Training course – the main route used to train early career teachers entering the profession for the first time.
The one-year course is a School Centred Initial Teacher Training course, or SCITT, which allows graduates to complete almost all of their training in a school environment.
There was a large surge in interest in teaching as a career following the pandemic. Many parents who had experienced teaching for the first time, due to home-schooling their own children, decided to look at making it a career.
In the academic year 2020/21, there were 2,898 new entrants into initial teacher training in the East Midlands, according to government figures.
That was a rise of more than 400 from the previous year, though figures since that peak have declined, to just over 2,600 in 2021/22 and 2,169 for the 2022/23 intake as graduate schemes began to accept applications again.
Kay Shepherd, director of LRTSH, said: “There is no doubt that teaching has to be one of the most rewarding career choices and ITT candidates are choosing to teach to make a difference and shape the future generation.
“We’re excited to be working in partnership with Teach First to provide a new School Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) programme.
Kay Shepherd, director of Leicestershire and Rutland Teaching School Hub
“Our one-year programme involves a powerful mix of self-directed, live training and one-to-one support, for both trainee and their in-school mentor. At the end of it, trainees will be awarded Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) by Teach First and gain their PGCE from our partner Sheffield Hallam University.”
School-Centred initial teacher training (SCITT) courses are postgraduate initial teacher training (ITT) programmes designed and delivered by groups of neighbouring schools and colleges.
Cristabela Fonseca is an early career teacher at St Mary’s Primary School in Loughborough who qualified in 2021 following a three-year undergraduate degree at Northampton University which incorporated the ITT required to become a qualified teacher.
She said she had been attracted to the career due to her own experiences at school.
“I knew what impact teachers had on me and I wanted to be able to do that for other people,” she said.
“I had struggled at primary school with my confidence. When I moved up into secondary school, I noticed how much teachers were doing to support me and put interventions in place to help me get that self-belief and it made a huge difference.”
Now working at St Mary’s Primary School, Cristabela said she is enjoying other aspects of being a member of staff which she hadn’t considered during her training.
“Aside from the teaching, I’m really enjoying the relationships I’m getting to build with other members of staff and the support that is there to help you in your teaching.
“I really think the ITT helped prepare me for what teaching would be like, particularly the placements you do as you do these across different age groups. I started teaching Year 4 and am now teaching Year 6 so it definitely helped to prepare me.”
And head teacher at St Mary’s, Priscilla Jordan, said she was delighted initial teacher training will now be available through Leicestershire and Rutland Teaching School Hub. She and her staff have completed various professional development courses through the Hub.
“We have sent our staff to the Hub quite a bit because they offer really good courses,” said Priscilla. “I think they will be an excellent SCITT provider because they are involved in our schools and the quality of their training so far has been excellent. Our teachers who have done training through the Hub come back with more confidence in the classroom.
“We would certainly take trainees to do placements with us and would take on qualified teachers from them because we know the quality of the training they will have received.”
Anyone interested in starting a career in teaching can contact the Hub on [email protected] or call 0116 303 3744.
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For more information contact Kirsty on 07970627385 or email [email protected].
