Case Study – ITT, Recruitment and Beyond at Ignite Federation

Following the pandemic, a brief market analysis together with personal anecdotal evidence suggested that there was an untapped market of people who could become great teachers. We recognised that this potential market could supply people with the passion and desire that is required to survive in such a professionally tough environment along with the experience and qualities to maintain the high levels of resilience that are also essential.

And so, our formal partnership with the Coventry & Central Warwickshire Teaching School Hub alongside the University of Warwick was born.

It was clear that getting the word out there was going to be key. A dedicated page was created on both our school websites which included a quick and simple ‘contact us’ form as well as direct links for further information:

• https://www.therevelprimaryschool.co.uk/train-to-teach-with-us/

• https://www.wolveyschool.co.uk/train-to-teach-with-us/

A dedicated email address ‘teachertraining@’ was created to keep things separate and manageable as well as to provide a dedicated look and feel.

Key school staff attended the various training and partnership meetings with the University of Warwick so that we knew exactly what to expect and could ensure adequate resources (personnel and time) could be put in place.

We then set about targeting our key potential markets: existing ambitious support staff together with our local community of parents and neighbours.

• All staff in school receive regular reminders that we are available for training should they wish to progress their careers.
• Individuals are approached and annual performance reviews are used to signpost potentially interested staff to myself for further discussion.
• Coventry and Central Warwickshire Teaching School Hub provide banners promoting the programme for the gates of both schools
• Newsletters include a regular feature to promote Initial Teacher Training, including profiling recent successful trainees who we have now employed as teachers in school.

As well as supporting us with high quality teacher recruitment, our engagement with and commitment to ITT has led to other benefits:

• Through regular engagement with various partnership resources and events at the University of Warwick, existing members of staff not only gain and rehearse valuable skills in mentorship and coaching but have also accessed a wide range of free CPD covering areas such as having difficult conversations and making reasonable adjustments for staff who may have additional needs.
• At a whole school level, our approach helps us to ‘mold’ potential recruits during the training process; we are able to assess their true potential and understanding our way of working is supportive of transition into the ECT phase should we recruit them.
• The approach has also enabled senior leaders to identify gaps in skills or weaker areas of pedagogy within our staff teams which may potentially have remained hidden had they not been exposed through access to cutting-edge research brought to us by a strong University partnership.
• Discovering new and enthusiastic entrants who have benefited from being immersed in school life and community during training has helped to ensure that they eventually enter the profession with their eyes fully wide open and we believe this is sure to help retention in the longer term.

Over recent years we have trained 5 trainees and have two more recruited for next year. Most of these trainees have direct or more indirect links to our schools.  As a federation, we are now realistically in the position of training more high-quality new teachers than we have vacancies for; our approach in not only benefiting pupils in our school community but those beyond too! 

I will leave you with a recent quote from a parent who had expressed concerns over an Early Career Teacher, who we trained, being appointed to teach Year 6: ‘Having met Mrs O’Brien and seeing first-hand the positive impact she is having, I can only say it was an inspired decision’