Who succeeds in teacher training?

Publication Summary

This article describes part of the findings of a study requested by the (then) Teacher Training Agency (TTA) into the factors that support high quality initial teacher training (ITT) provision in England. The study had two chief aims. The first was to characterise successful trainees in terms of data already known about them using a dataset of all 72,881 postgraduate trainees from 1998 to 2001. The second was to relate these findings to potential determinants of the effectiveness of different kinds of institutions and routes in their training of teachers. There was little variation in the success rates of trainees with different entry qualifications, backgrounds or areas of subject specialism. Almost 90% of trainees were successful in achieving qualified teacher status and 95% of these were able to secure a teaching post within six months of finishing training. This varied little according to the type of institution that was attended, its level of research activity, or its quality as determined by Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) inspections. This leads us to conclude that there is no evidence, on these existing data, of a differential institutional effect in determining the success rates of trainees in ITT.