About us
The National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) has been repurposed and no longer exists. Regulation of the teaching profession, including misconduct hearings, will continue to be handled by an executive agency of the Department for Education, the [Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA)](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/teaching-regulation-agency). The Teaching Regulation Agency started operation on 1 April 2018. All other [NCTL functions have been moved into the Department for Education](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/plans-to-further-boost-teacher-recruitment-and-development). Contact the [Teaching Regulation Agency](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/teaching-regulation-agency) if you need information about regulation of the teaching profession. Contact the [Department for Education](https://www.gov.uk/contact-dfe) if you need to contact NCTL. NCTL was an executive agency, sponsored by the Department for Education. It existed from 29 March 2013 to 31 March 2018.
About us
NCTL’s aims are to improve academic standards by recruiting and developing a workforce to meet the needs of our school system, and to help schools to help each other to improve. We will work towards developing a 0 to 18 education system which will allow new ways of working to support the best schools, headteachers, and teachers to lead improvements in the quality and training of all school staff.
Who we are
We employ around 300 staff and are based across 6 sites: London, Nottingham, Coventry, Manchester, Sheffield and Darlington.
Responsibilities
We are responsible for:
- ensuring that enough high-quality trainees enter teacher training to meet the needs of the sector
- managing the allocation of teacher training places and related funding to schools and universities who provide teacher training
- managing the early years initial teacher training programme in line with the government’s ambition for a graduate-led early years workforce
- recognising teachers’ professional ability for the award of qualified teacher status (QTS). We do this for the European Economic Area (EEA) and we are the competent authority in England for the teaching profession
- helping schools and their partners develop and deliver high-quality continuing professional development and leadership training
- developing a national network of teaching schools
- enabling successful school leaders and governors to take on a lead role in school-to-school support to improve the performance of other schools *ensuring that in cases of serious professional misconduct, teachers are prohibited from teaching
Priorities
Our priorities for 2016 to 2017 are to:
- support schools to take control of their own recruitment and training of teachers, through School Direct, and support the development of new school-centred initial teacher training (SCITT) provision while encouraging higher education providers to work in partnership with schools further to improve their programmes of training
- provide the framework and scaffolding to reform the national professional qualifications (NPQs) while continuing to quality assure the awarding of these qualifications
- oversee the induction process for teachers and award qualified teacher status and early years teacher status
- uphold high standards of teacher professional conduct
- encourage schools to develop their own networks of high-quality school-to-school support *enable schools to broker support from the best school leaders and teachers through teaching school alliances, the Teaching Schools Council, national leaders of education, national support schools and regional schools commissioners