Where Have All The Teachers Gone? Is ‘Teach First’ To Blame?

The dire consequences of marketisation in teacher training

Since the 1800s, teacher training has been delivered, researched and supported by the university sector, culminating in the 1960s with the establishment of degree and postgraduate education programmes, the majority of which included Qualified Teacher Status. In the 1990s and 2000s, School-Centred Initial Teacher Training¹ programmes and Teach First² were developed in the context of a teacher recruitment and retention crisis.³

Thirty years on, we are at a time of a deeper crisis in the profession – a significant reduction in teacher recruitment of up to 50% in England, with at least one in three teachers leaving the profession in England.^4,5 The response to this crisis has been the marketisation of initial teacher training⁶- leading to the creation of the National Institute of Teaching⁷ and the subsequent closure of 61 of 240 university-supported or university-delivered teacher training courses in England⁸.

This has come concurrently with the closure of the Teach First programme in Norway. Decisions made by the central government in England and local government in Norway have reduced the number of teacher training opportunities. The practical implications of these policies are dire, with children starting their primary education in classes over the recommended number of 30 students⁹ and secondary schools unable to deliver lessons with qualified graduate teachers in STEM and Arts subjects.^10,11

Collaboration was the key

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