Teach First switches focus from cities to coasts

Teach First will switch its focus away from inner cities and towards coastal and rural communities to better reflect where disadvantage is concentrated and attainment is low, Tes can reveal.

The charity has also halved costs for secondary schools as it opens applications for the latest iteration of its teacher training scheme, chief executive James Toop (pictured) told Tes.

Teach First won the contract for the government’s High Potential Initial Teacher Training programme (HPITT) earlier this year, having run the programme for the past 23 years.

Teach First looks to rural communities

Teach First has been funded by the government to deliver the HPITT programme since 2003.

While the programme was initially grant funded, since 2017 it has been competitively tendered and delivered under contract.

The charity was originally launched in London in 2002, but Mr Toop said its focus is now shifting away from cities.

“When you look at where the biggest achievement gaps are now, there’s a lot more regional disparity,” he added.

This is recognised at government level, too, with the Department for Education launching Mission Coastal and Mission North East in efforts to provide more support to children in the “most underserved” areas.

“What we’re trying to do is to focus our recruitment in the areas that have got the highest levels of disadvantage and lowest attainment, and when you look at where that is nationally, that’s moving out to regional parts of the country,” Mr Toop said.

Trainees placed in groups

But the charity CEO said he recognised that, in order to get trainees to more rural areas of the country and away from hotspots like London and Manchester, incentives will be required.

Trainees will now be sent in groups to their school placements, which Mr Toop hopes will be another sell to those working in more isolated areas.

“Having a group of people with whom you might share a house or lift share with, that can really help to get groups to go together and you’ve then got a peer support network,” he said.

While trainees attend initial training in a group setting, school placements were previously individual.

In another bid to make teaching in more deprived areas attractive, Teach First will now also offer a coach in a trainee’s second year, who will “support them with their leadership journey”.

School costs halved

As part of its move out of urban areas, Teach First has reviewed its pricing. It says it has now more than halved its costs to secondary schools. For high-priority subjects such as maths, science and computing, schools will pay £3,350 per year.

“I think that the price point that we had previously under the old contract might have prohibited schools from taking more trainees,” Mr Toop told Tes.

He said the change has been made in recognition of lower funding and budget pressures for schools outside of London, meaning “where schools may have taken one trainee before, they can now take two”.

In 2022-23, Teach First reached 76 per cent of its recruitment target, which the charity’s CEO at the time described as “disappointing”.

Under the latest version of the scheme, which is now called Teach Lead Change, the charity will have a reduced recruitment target.

AI ‘makes teaching more appealing’

Mr Toop told Tes that he hopes teaching will appeal to graduates who are worried about jobs being replaced by AI.

“We know that a lot of people are concerned about AI-proofing their careers,” he said.

“In a world where increasingly graduates are worried about AI replacing jobs and there’s real uncertainty over that, teaching and starting your career in the classroom provides all of that human interaction.”