Secondary school leaders have welcomed the idea of the apprenticeships “in principle” but have urged the Department for Education (DfE) to also act to make teaching salaries more competitive.
Teacher degree apprenticeships are to be rolled-out this autumn and the DfE said this week that they would offer “a high-quality, alternative route for people to become qualified teachers”.
Ministers are particularly hopeful that the new route will appeal to some of the 400,000 teaching assistants working in England’s state schools, as well as to other school support staff.
The plans, which were unveiled by the DfE during National Apprenticeship Week, will see trainees spending 40% of their time studying for their degree with an accredited teacher training provider, but working in the classroom “from day one”.
It will be a four-year programme available for people to train as primary or secondary teachers. Tuition fees will be paid for and those graduating will gain qualified teacher status.
Courses will have to adhere to the initial teacher training (ITT) criteria, including the ITT Core Content Framework. They must also enable trainees to meet the Teacher Standards.
Degree-level apprenticeships have been growing in popularity due to the chance to earn while learning. Such apprenticeships already exist in areas such as construction, accounting and law.
A pilot of the teacher degree apprenticeship is to be launched later this year involving up to 150 apprentice math teachers working in secondary schools. Training providers will bid to partake in the pilot and trainees will be recruited from this autumn and start their training the following year.
However, the DfE says that providers and employing schools will be able to develop and run teacher degree apprenticeship courses within the same timeframes as the pilot.
The DfE is to work with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) and an employer-led “trailblazer group” to develop the initiative.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan said: “The teacher degree apprenticeship will open up the profession to more people, from those who want a career change to those who are looking for an earn and learn route without student debt.
“It will be a game-changing opportunity for schools to nurture and retain talent from the ground up, helping apprentices to gain the knowledge and skills they need to teach future generations.’’
The initiative comes amid dire teacher recruitment figures. Annual ITT recruitment figures, published by the DfE in December, showed significant shortfalls across secondary subjects. Indeed, only 50% of the secondary recruitment target was met, with 13,102 teachers recruited against a target of 26,360. It means that, with the exception of the Covid-influenced 2020/21 academic year, the overall secondary recruitment target has not been met since 2012/13.
Primary ITT has also missed its target, albeit with a much healthier level of recruitment – 96% of the target was recruited (8,844 teachers), an improvement on the 91% of 2022/23.
The DfE has already unveiled a £196m investment in teacher training bursaries for 2024/25, covering 12 subjects. However, the Association of School and College Leaders said that without a rise in teacher pay levels, the supply line will not come close to being repaired.
But a notable pay rise looks unlikely given that the DfE’s remit to the School Teachers’ Review Body for September 2024 has urged restraint.
ASCL general secretary Geoff Barton said that the teacher degree apprenticeship was “a good idea in principle”. However, he continued: “But it is unlikely that teacher degree apprenticeships will provide anywhere near the number of qualified teachers required to solve the recruitment and retention crisis.
“It will take a long time before degree apprenticeships make any impact at all on the recruitment and retention crisis being experienced by schools and colleges right now, and we think it is likely that the system will continue to rely on the traditional postgraduate training routes for the foreseeable future.
“The problem is that this supply line is broken with only half of the required number of secondary school teachers being recruited into post-graduate training this academic year and targets having been missed for most of the past 10 years. The only real answer to this is an improvement to teaching salaries to make them more competitive in the graduate market and more action to tackle the systemic pressures which drive people out of the profession such as high levels of workload and stress.”
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, added: “Without much more detail it is impossible to see how this scheme will work in practice: how already overstretched schools will manage the pressure on training resources and timetables – and how the pay structure for apprentice teachers will work in a way that will not cause confusion and, potentially, a sense of unfairness among established teaching staff.
“Apprenticeships give people a chance to build skills and careers, and are a vital part of our education system, but this is not the way to go about meeting the challenges of recruitment into teaching. Teachers should be graduates. However low pay, high workload and oppressive accountability measures mean that graduates are not willing to enter schools.”