Teachers trainers this week expressed disappointment at the shelving of plans for a teaching apprenticeship that would have allowed non-graduates to train as school teachers.

The Trailblazer group of schools and teacher-training bodies behind the existing level 6 teaching apprenticeship for graduates had expressed an interest in creating an alternative “undergraduate” apprenticeship for people without a degree, intended to give teaching assistants (TAs) a route into teaching.

But on Wednesday, Tes revealed exclusively that the proposals had been kicked into the long grass.

The Trailblazer group had been asked by the Institute for Apprenticeships (IfA) to assess the need for such an apprenticeship in the profession. However, having failed to demonstrate sufficient demand in a survey of stakeholders, the plans are no longer being developed. The decision is not expected to be revisited for at least another year.

Emma Hollis, executive director of the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers, says she was “very disappointed” by the decision, and that she believes a work-based route into teaching would have attracted plenty of interest from TAs.

“We thought that was something we ought to investigate; we felt there was a lot of need for it, a lot of demand for it,” she says. “And we could give quite clear anecdotal evidence from various regions of a need for that route in [to teaching]. The IfA tasked the group with going away and gathering evidence to prove ‘additionality’.

“What [the IfA and the Education and Skills Funding Agency] said to us was that the evidence [from the teacher-training bodies consulted] wasn’t strong enough, it didn’t prove a great enough need. I was very disappointed and will be pushing to revisit [the decision] at the earliest possible opportunity, whenever that might be.”

The move to allow non-graduates to train as teachers has attracted some criticism from teacher trainers concerned about “dumbing down the profession”, Hollis adds.

Sir Andrew Carter, a member of the Trailblazer group and an adviser to the government on teacher training, says: “You can make them attractive and exciting for the employee, but that may not be sustainable for a business to run.”