Six organisations have been given £17 million to support teachers with things like phonics, leadership, reading and STEM.
The fund will also see five “professional development excellence hubs” created in Blackpool, Birmingham, Northumberland, Sheffield, Stoke, and West Sussex. These hubs will support schools to develop and retain teachers.
The £75 million investment to support CPD and retention comes a week after the National Audit Office (NAO) published a critical report into teacher recruitment and retention.
The NAO said that the Department for Education (DfE) has spent relatively little on supporting the existing workforce and “cannot show that its interventions are improving teacher retention, deployment and quality”.
The DfE has said that the new Teaching and Leadership Innovation Fund will particularly target schools in the government’s 12 so-called Opportunity Areas – social mobility coldspots that have been earmarked for extra support and funding.
The first six successful projects to receive funding include:
- Teacher Development Trust: To create five CPD excellence hubs across the country to support schools to transform the way they design, commission and implement training.
- Ruth Miskin Training: CPD to support the teaching of phonics and early reading.
- STEM Learning: To support STEM teachers’ subject knowledge, subject leadership and to support STEM careers advice.
- Institute for Teaching: A programme to raise the quality of teaching through support to leaders to improve teacher development and expertise in developing other teachers.
- Institute of Physics: Support programme for physics teachers including subject knowledge enhancement for non-specialists, subject leadership and enhanced knowledge for specialists, and mentoring for and recruitment of NQTs.
- Teach First: To strengthen the leadership teams in the schools “that need it the most”.
Education secretary Justine Greening said: “This new fund proves our commitment to creating a culture of high-quality on-going professional development throughout a teacher’s career.
“I hope that thousands of teachers across the country will benefit and I’m particularly pleased that we are targeting the schools where it is needed most.”