School-based teacher training courses, much hailed by the Teacher Training Agency, are not working, the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers has claimed. An Ofsted report on the Oxford consortium for School Centred Initial Teacher Training, published this week, found the course to be "poor" in half of the categories for inspection. "I trust that the TTA will be as rigorous in the handling of school-centred courses which are failing badly as they are with university-based routes," said UCET secretary Mary Russell.
"I hope that they consider these failures when they are encouraging schools to move away from university partnerships to SCITT courses."