Growing our own teachers: Why depth matters in FE ITE Reform

By Caroline Dunstan, Lead Learning and Development Practitioner at Riverside College and Think Further Scholar

What does it take to develop great teachers in FE? As FE ITE is undergoing government reform the risk is we could trade depth of learning for compliance with standards, but will this benefit our students, the FE teachers of the future? Real transformation happens when trainee teachers have the time and space to think, debate and question.

In a recent article in Intuition (2025) Ben Ramm, head of FE ITE policy at the DfE, explains that the government aims to "drive up the quality of provision for further education teacher education" by 2026/27. As the course lead for the PGCE and Cert Ed. (accredited through a university) in an FE college, I am supportive of any initiatives that develop and challenge our students to become the best new teachers that they can be and that encourage them to continue learning throughout their teaching careers. However, the implication of the DfE’s intention is that current FE ITE is a deficit model which demands change, without clarifying what the deficit is or what is currently low quality that requires reform.

In their consultation response (FE ITE consultation response, 2024) the government highlights its proposed changes including: changes to funding; establishing a formal accreditation framework with enhanced data reporting; baseline curriculum requirements with a more rigorous oversight and the setting up of an expert advisory group that will publish this initial curriculum guidance. This is all in line with strengthening the consistency and quality of FE ITT through regulatory means and has intrinsic value, but I wonder if it might it be more beneficial for those delivering FE ITT, and their students, to have access to supportive guidance and evidence-based updates?

One of the best professional development sessions I have attended recently for FE ITT, which resulted in direct improvements to our ITE programme, was the ETF Initial Teacher Education (ITE) Network, where providers share best practice. The University of Lancashire ITT team, including students, shared their research projects. From this, I identified that my own students would benefit from more input on policy for their research projects and was able to put this in place within a few weeks by inviting speakers, providing wider reading and facilitating classroom discussion. I hope this will result in our new teachers understanding more clearly the place of policy in education and being confident to both apply it to their research and to question it.

My main concern about the DfE proposals that will link "explicitly to the completion of evidence-based teacher training and development programmes based on clear quality standards" is that a new qualification/revised curriculum will be standards and assessment heavy. The new Learning and Skills standards have nine duties, 20 knowledge, 25 skills and six behaviour standards (60 in all) in comparison to the 20 ETF standards ITT in FE has previously worked towards. The new Level 5 Diploma in Teaching delivered directly through awarding bodies is made up of eight units with 14 mandatory assignments in comparison to the four assignments our students complete through our university accredited qualification, which we run part time over two years. I believe that our delivery, in which we "do less in more depth" provides students with the time and space to do deep learning and to really grapple with the evidence base so important in teaching. They have time to engage with research through completion of a practitioner research project in their own subject and to study curriculum planning in detail, working with their mentors to develop curriculum plans that they can then link to current evidence and theory.

They highly value the opportunity to work together and to discuss their triumphs and challenges within their own subjects, which in turn reinforces their emotional and ethical growth as teachers. The importance of flexibility in ITE is supported by the OECD report (2025) which suggests that governments imposing strict requirements on competencies can ‘hinder the capacity of ITEs to regularly update and align their curricula with the latest developments’.

Within DfE, quality often seems to link to measurable conformity; when courses are the same, they are easily compared and judged. This may work for schools with the national curriculum and the majority of teachers coming to teaching with a degree and post graduate teaching qualification but within FE there is great value in the diversity of teachers and qualifications and a need to adapt and innovate our ITE delivery to accommodate this diversity.

Many of the teachers on our Cert Ed. and PGCE courses are either teaching at the college at the start of the course or gain employment in the college during the course, we see it as an opportunity to ‘grow our own’ teachers and our success stories are working throughout the college from senior management to academic and vocational teachers and SPTs. The in-depth learning we are able to deliver works for us, and I hope the FE ITE expert advisory group will take into account not just the standards and quality of the FE ITE but also the value of time and space for new teachers to grow and flourish.