Hub Newsletter – Spring ’25
Thursday 10th April, 2025
It’s been a busy Spring term at the Teaching School Hub, packed with ECF conferences, NPQ clinics, Maths Hub and Language Hub and training across the city.
We’ve launched our new Recruitment and Retention Toolkit, designed to help schools promote teaching as a viable and rewarding career within their communities.
We’ve also been carefully reviewing the upcoming ECF changes for September 2025 and are pleased to confirm our continued partnership with Education Development Trust following a thorough due diligence process.
What’s in this term’s issue?
Use our quick links here to jump to the relevant section of the newsletter.
As always, we’re here to support North Birmingham schools—please get in touch to let us know how we can help:
What is the toolkit for?
We want to support schools with recruitment by supporting effective communication, supporting collaborative partnerships and by driving engagement with teacher training and ongoing professional development, across North Birmingham.
As part of our strategic role to support all teacher training across North Birmingham, we have collaborated with Teaching School Hubs, ITT Providers and schools across the West Midlands to develop a bank of resources to support schools with the recruitment of new staff and retention of existing colleagues.
We believe that teacher training is vital to sustainable recruitment.
In any case, these resources have been designed for use by schools to support their recruitment of staff at all levels.
We hope they are helpful and support your school.
We kindly ask that Headteachers (or a suitable proxy from their leadership team), complete the Recruitment and Retention Audit Tool that is comprised within the toolkit.
We appreciate any and all feedback, suggestions and recommendations as we strive to make the toolkit a beneficial resource for schools:
Spring Term Events
The ECF Spring Term events were once again hugely well received, with both ECTs and Mentors valuing the time to work with their peers and have opportunities to reflect on their practice.
“The session was informative and reflective on practice. It showed me areas I was confident in and areas I need to maybe improve in more.”
ECTs and Mentors felt able to take key learning from research as well as practical strategies back into their practice in school.
“The Model for Great Teaching was very useful as it can be used to indicate the areas that ECTs are working on well, and areas for development which can then ultimately feed into identifying the granular step to work on during mentor meetings.”
Headlines from survey data
96% of ECTs and Mentors rated the quality of facilitation as ‘very good’ or ‘good’.
95% of ECTs and 93% of Mentors said that they strongly agreed/agreed that they would be able to apply the learning from the session to their practice.
September 2025 and Beyond…
There are a number of changes coming for Early Career Teachers and Mentors who will start their training with us in September and Beyond.
As you can see, the areas of content remain the same but the structure and style of the course are changing quite radically.
You can read about the changes in our blog post and new website pages, linked below.
Update
It is an exciting time in the world of NPQs at the Hub, as our Cohort 8 Spring 2024 NPQs are about to begin. With all our fully funded places filled, we are welcoming over 100 participants to the Hub over the next few weeks to attend their Launch Conferences and commence their programme. We are looking forward to working with our Cohort 8 participants on their CPD journey on our courses for Headship, Senior Leadership, SENDCO, Behaviour and Culture and Leading Teaching.
Headteachers and CPD leads who have participants on these courses can always use our website to keep track of what your staff should be doing and when. Dates for our Cohort 8 programmes, along with other supporting information can be found on our website: NPQ – Arthur Terry Teaching School.
Our Cohort 6 Autumn 2023 participants are currently taking their Leadership assessments. We wish the best of luck to all colleagues who are completing the Senior Leadership and Headship courses this Spring.
Congratulations to all those who sat their Specialist (NPQLBC, LPM, LL, LT & LTD) assessment in February 2025. These participants should expect to receive their results on 29th April.
Future Cohorts
We await clarity from DfE and Ambition Institute about the next round of courses, due to start in Autumn 2025. We expect that the Arthur Terry TSH will run a full suite of courses but keep an eye out for our messages in the next two terms for updates.
Since its launch in January 2024, The Trent and Tame Language Hub (co-led by The Arthur Terry School and Painsley Catholic College) has delivered evidence-informed professional development to 198 teachers from 82 schools across the Birmingham, Stoke and Staffordshire area. Teachers have welcomed the opportunity to develop networks outside their schools, to share best practice and to think more deeply about some of the issues facing Language teachers on a day-to-day basis. Through regular blog posts, the Trent and Tame Language Hub team, hope to share important messages more widely. This term, blog posts have included:
- Motivating learners to continue with Languages at GCSE and A-Level
- How to make language learning relevant
- How can we make transition between KS2 and KS3 more effective?
- Ways to raise the profile of German in your school – even if it’s not on your timetable
- Top Tips to prepare staff and students for GCSE speaking exams
- Key takeaways from TTLH’s Teach Meet – Tried and Tested (revision) strategies for KS4
Please encourage your Language subject leads and teachers to sign up to our half-termly newsletter for information about our CPD offer, offers from NCLE’s cultural partners and top tips on how to motivate the young people in your classrooms. If you’d like to get in contact with the TTLH team to find out more about our work e-mail ttlh@atlp.org.uk.
Many ECTs had a Progress Review or Assessment due on 28th March. Please ensure that you clearly state EVIDENCE of your ECT’s progress as explained in the Spring AB Newsletter.
Schools are appointing teachers for next term/the new academic year. If your new teacher is an ECT who has completed terms at another school, please ask to see their previous Progress Reviews or First Formal Assessment. These often provide a clear picture of their status on the Teachers;’ Standards. Remember that if an ECT leaves a school before their next formal assessment is due, the school must complete an Interim Assessment to inform their next school of their status on the Teachers’ Standards.
Registrations of new ECTs can be made through ECT Manager and we have a Handy Guide to Register ECTs
Any queries about ECT Manager or changes in ECTs circumstances, please contact Caroline Finn, caroline.finn@atlp.org.uk
