Strategic Board for Teacher Education: Meeting 27 Thursday 1 February 2024: 10.00AM – 11.30AM

SBTE Workplan– 1 February 2024

Overarching Aim:

Ensure that we have the right numbers of high quality teachers, in the right places, with the right areas of expertise. The Board will also ensure that:-

• the teaching profession is representative of the diversity of Scottish society
• teaching is seen as an attractive and valued profession with a focus on professional learning
• teachers are empowered to lead and influence to allow them to deliver high quality learning and teaching
• teachers are equipped to support improved learning and societal outcomes for all children and young people
• teachers are involved in the preparation for planned education reform and other wider system changes

Workstream 1: Workforce Planning and increasing diversity of the profession

Lead Organisation: COSLA (SCDE, ADES & GTCS)

Outcome: Local and national teacher resource demands are better understood to improve longer-term workforce planning. This includes tackling geographical challenges and ensuring targets for ITE programmes are set and met accordingly, particularly at secondary level and for hard to fill subjects such as science, technologies, mathematics, modern languages and Gaelic. The barriers to individuals with protected characteristics such as race, religion or disability entering or staying in the teaching profession are better understood and reduced.

Action - Gather detail on local approaches to workforce planning across local authorities; Consider whether a more consistent approach may be helpful in achieving effective long term planning - acknowledge that each local area has unique challenges; Improve understanding of teacher shortages in certain geographical areas and certain subjects and develop strategies to tackle these shortages and increase retention.

Progress - Initial meetings held between COSLA, ADES Personnel Network Reps and SG; Challenges identified such as secondary school autonomy on curriculum choice, some LA approaches being used based on simple teacher age and falling pupil rolls.

Next steps Consider the data collection tool used by some local authorities and how this can be developed to meet workstream needs; Revised data collection tool to be taken to ADES meeting/workshop in March 2024.

Action - Consider specific issues related to headteacher recruitment and retention. Progress - January 2024 - Laurence Findlay, Chair of HTRRWG has accepted invitation to become member of SBTE; HTRRWG met 6 December and agreed to strengthen links between the group and SBTE. Plan to align development of new workplan with the 3 workstreams of SBTE, with a particular focus on headteacher recruitment and retention issues.

Next steps - HTTRWG workplan development workshop taking place on 12 March 2024 in Aberdeen.

Action - Support work of SG Anti-Racism in Education Programme. For example: ITE providers implementing SCDE anti-racism in ITE framework; consider local authorities’ approaches to recruitment and recruitment of BME teachers.

Next steps - A discussion is required at SBTE on possible actions 1c – 1d as these were not considered in detail at the September 2023 workshop; Consideration of sufficiency to achieve the outcome, are they SMART, who is best placed to lead.

Action - Better understand issues related to teacher recruitment and retention in denominational schools and look to develop new approaches to overcome them.

Action - Work with HEIs to consider targeting ITE programmes to defined groups, such as individuals who have a disability.

Action - Consider how to address gender imbalance in the primary sector.

Workstream 2: Improving the Promotion of Teaching as a Valued Career

Lead Organisation: SG, GTCS, COSLA & Trade Unions

Outcome: Teachers are valued and teaching is recognised and better promoted as important, complex and impactful work, improving the attractiveness of teaching as a career.

Action - Consider how to shift public attitudes and improve the perception of teaching as a rewarding career.

Progress - SH met with Edinburgh University marketing who are looking at marketing across ITE providers.

Next Steps - Invites to be issued to SBTE members to form a short-life working group, which will include SG marketing rep.

Action - Develop a shared narrative that promotes the teaching profession and that Board members actively share through relevant websites and forums.

Workstream 3: Continuum of teacher education

Lead Organisation: SCDE, GTCS, ES

Outcome: A clear and progressive framework for teacher education across the career continuum. Teachers have the opportunity to progress their skills, knowledge and expertise through career pathway opportunities, have agency and autonomy and are leaders of learning within their community. Teachers in the early phase of their careers experience more consistent mentoring and coaching to increase their confidence, motivation and satisfaction. Teachers have access to sustained and coherent teacher education post-induction. This will lead to increased retention rates after achieving full registration with the General Teaching Council (GTC) for Scotland and at key career stages.

Action - Develop, in partnership, a career long teacher education framework that sets out the systems and structures required for teacher progression.

Progress - Paper to SBTE on 1 February setting out high level plan.

Next Steps - Partnership event on 4 March to consider teacher education framework principles and development.

Action - Ensure teacher education framework is informed by existing insight and data, reform consultation processes, academic research and system intelligence.

Action - Understand the current gaps in the framework and collaboratively develop a prioritised action plan to address.

Action - Use agreed teacher education framework and associated action plan to influence and inform clarity of organisational/system roles and responsibilities and recommend approaches to improving partnership working arrangements.

Action - Two key priorities:

Priority action plan area to focus initially on the early career phase – from ITE, through induction and the first 3 years of teaching to inform required change.

Action - Second priority is to identify structured and supported career long teacher education provision, mapped to the new Framework. An initial focus here would align well to the development of the proposed Centre for Teaching Excellence

Action - Advise on the impact of the teacher education framework on teacher educators throughout the system.