The government has lowered the bar for schools wanting to participate in its flagship teacher training policy, TES can reveal.
Until now a school has had to be rated as “outstanding” by Ofsted before it could be designated as a teaching school.
But this summer, the National College for Teaching and Leadership started running a pilot scheme that has invited selected schools with “good” ratings to apply for teaching school status.
The pilot - run jointly with the Teaching Schools Council and regional schools commissioners (RSC) - is aimed at spreading the initiative into low-performing areas.
A Department for Education-commissioned evaluation of teaching schools, released in February, highlights considerable variation in numbers in different local authorities - with some having no, or very few, teaching schools.
It also raises concerns that Ofsted judgements make the model of a network of teaching schools vulnerable - because losing an “outstanding” judgement means that the school’s designation as a teaching school will be reviewed. The evaluation finds that about 5 per cent of teaching schools had been de-designated by October 2014.
‘Uneven’ distribution
But it also points out that a lack of teaching schools in some areas is not down to a lack of “outstanding schools”. It states: “Some local authorities have none or low teaching school representation (eg, Kensington, Chelsea and Southwark) despite the existence of relatively high numbers of ‘outstanding’ schools.”
Sir John Dunford, a member of the team that ran the evaluation, said: “The distribution of teaching schools is very uneven and the places where there are the fewest outstanding schools, such as East Anglia, are the areas that most need school-led improvement.
“Enabling schools judged ‘good’ by Ofsted to lead a teaching school alliance is therefore sensible, provided that the schools have a high quality of teaching and leadership, with a strong commitment to develop education widely across the system.”
The DfE refused to say how many “good” schools had applied under the pilot. A spokesperson said that decisions were still being made. They added: “We have been clear about plans to develop a more sophisticated and balanced approach to awarding teaching school and national leaders of education (NLE) status.
“We want more great schools and leaders - with a proven track record of providing high-quality support - to be able to share their knowledge and expertise so that other schools can learn from the best and help drive up standards across the country. We are currently testing this new approach and considering applications from a number of schools.”
Although the schools in the pilot project did not have to be “outstanding”, they were judged by a panel of teaching school members on their track record of providing high-quality school-to-school support, school-based initial teacher training and professional development to teachers and leaders.
References from an RSC or local authority were asked for and each school was visited, as well as pupil performance and progress data being scrutinised.
