Postgraduate initial teacher training (ITT) recruitment: 2017 to 2018
Updated 16 January 2017
© Crown copyright 2017
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-itt-recruitment-controls/2017-to-2018-postgraduate-itt-recruitment-level-updates
Overview
The Department for Education (DfE) is committed to keeping School Direct lead schools, school-centred initial teacher training providers (SCITTs) and higher education institutions (HEIs) updated with the latest recruitment information.
In School Direct category 2 subjects (where national recruitment limits apply), we’ll issue updates once a 90% recruitment level is met.
UCAS is publishing daily data and we’d encourage you to check this regularly so you have a clear picture of the rate at which recruitment is moving in individual subjects.
Category 1: fully allocated
Subjects include: drama, history, physical education (PE) and primary
Trainee places are allocated at an individual provider level for all School Direct lead schools and initial teacher training (ITT) providers across all routes in this category. This recognises that demand for places in these subjects is consistently high.
All allocations within this category are the final allocation decision taken by DfE. School Direct lead schools and ITT providers cannot recruit above their allocation for these subjects.
Category 2: dual approach
Subjects include: art and design, biology, chemistry, English and music
Higher education institution (HEI) core and SCITT core (provider led)
HEI core and SCITT core places are allocated at an individual provider level. These have a relatively consistent level of recruitment across these sectors of the recruitment market. For category 2 subjects, providers cannot recruit above their allocation for their HEI core and SCITT core places.
School Direct fee and salaried routes
The allocations that lead schools received for category 2 subjects for School Direct trainee places were generated through our modelling process. However, School Direct lead schools have the freedom to recruit beyond this, and can recruit as many School Direct trainees as they feel they need, until an overall national recruitment cap is reached in each subject and route. If you’re a lead school and will be recruiting a higher number than is registered on the data management system, please update the data management system to ensure data accuracy.
This approach to School Direct will reduce the risk of good-quality candidates being turned away. This will also account for the fact that category 2 subjects tend to recruit relatively slowly and fill at a late stage of the cycle.
We will stop recruitment if and when overall recruitment caps are reached in each School Direct route and subject. We’ll give 5 working days’ notice from 5pm for lead schools to continue to receive applications.
When this notice period has expired, no further applications will be honoured. School Direct lead schools can process all applications received within the notice period in the usual way. All offers resulting from this will be honoured by DfE, even if interviews and offers are made after closure.
| Category 2 subjects | School Direct (salaried) recruitment level | School Direct (tuition fee) recruitment level |
|---|---|---|
| Art and Design | Open | Open |
| Biology | Open | Open |
| Chemistry | Open | Open |
| English | Open | Open |
| Music | Open | Open |
This information will be updated regularly.
Category 3: uncapped recruitment for all providers
Subjects include: business studies, computing, design and technology, geography, mathematics, modern foreign languages (MFL) and classics, physics, religious education (RE) and others. Others include: citizenship, dance, economics, health and social care, leisure and tourism, media studies, psychology and social science.
In category 3 subjects, all providers and lead schools are given their full requested maximum allocation and have automatic permission to recruit beyond this.
This means that recruitment for category 3 subjects are uncapped regardless of what you initially requested, or what you have been allocated.
In the unlikely event that there is significant over-recruitment we reserve the right to stop recruitment in these subjects.
This category includes subjects where we face the biggest recruitment challenges (for example, mathematics and physics) or where the number of requests and level of demand is low (for example, those captured within others). Recruitment is therefore uncapped in these subjects.
Back-filling of trainee places
Last year there was a significant difference between the number of people recorded by UCAS as having accepted an ITT place at the end of the recruitment cycle and the number who later appeared in the ITT census.
Any person who is not going to enrol should be withdrawn from the UCAS teacher training system and any withdrawn applicant can be replaced/backfilled with another before the end of the cycle.
Schools and providers should keep in contact with accepted applicants to ensure that they are planning to enrol and are likely to meet any specified conditions. We strongly advise that conditional offers are given cut-off dates and that these are clearly communicated to applicants. If the condition remains unmet by the specified cut-off date, the offer should be withdrawn.
If you’ll be recruiting trainees in addition to your initial allocation, please update the data management system to reflect this for purposes of data accuracy. We’ll contact you in due course with a process for informing us via the data management system.
Contact us
For more detailed information regarding the 2017 to 2018 ITT allocations modelling process, please refer to the ITT Allocations Methodology for 2017 to 2018.