Academy trusts are “growing” their own talent by training sixth-form leavers for central team roles and encouraging them into the classroom with teaching masterclasses.
Schools face severe teacher shortages and often struggle to spend their apprenticeship levy.
A recent study by the National Foundation for Educational Research found Generation Z – those born after 1997 – are “slightly more likely to fit the motivational profile of a future teacher than millennials”.
It led to calls for more schemes to entice them into the workforce.
The Education Alliance (TEAL), which runs 12 schools in Yorkshire, has developed what it says is the “UK’s first virtual work experience programme” for sixth-formers and undergraduates considering teaching.
Sarah Barley, the alliance’s director of employability who launched the online virtual work experience programme during lockdown, said attracting sixth-formers could help ministers meet their commitment to hire 6,500 more teachers.
Designed for pupils aged 16 to 18, it includes five modules that take 10 hours focusing on areas such as lesson planning and how to build a learning resource.
Pupils who complete the course can download a certificate guaranteeing them an interview at TEAL’s SCITT, Yorkshire Wolds Teacher Training.
Barley also delivers face-to-face teaching masterclasses at local schools as well as virtual sessions to those further afield.
She has visited about 15 schools and recently held a national event watched remotely by some 1,000 pupils.
‘Growing our own talent’
The 54-school Harris Federation is piloting a chartered manager degree apprenticeship team in partnership with the University of Kent.
Three of the trust’s sixth-form leavers will start the four-year apprenticeship this month to hopefully bag a BA in business management.
The trust will pay them £20,000 a year while they study and use its apprenticeship levy funds to cover each pupil’s £22,000 course fees.
“This is growing our own talent,” said Wira Gitonga, the trust’s apprenticeship manager.
“Because they already understand the Harris culture, it will be good for them to transition into working with us and then [becoming] our future leaders.”
The apprentices will spend four days a week learning on the job, attending lectures on Fridays.
They will rotate regularly to work in different departments of the trust’s central team and its academies, such as in finance, human resources and project management.
Scheme could see cohort of 30
Sir Dan Moynihan, the trust’s chief executive, said this was “just the start”. The trainees could then be supported through professional qualifications in their chosen specialism.
A finance officer-starter could become a management accountant, for instance.
Harris plans to start a second cohort in September next year. If the scheme goes well it hopes to reach an “interim target” cohort of 25 to 30 within four to five years.
Employers with an annual wage bill of more than £3 million must pay 0.5 per cent of that bill into the apprenticeship levy.
They can then draw down funding to pay for apprenticeship training, but schools have complained of limitations to what they can use it for.
Moynihan said pupils were often “surprised at the range of professional functions in the centre of MATs”.
“Once you let people know and show them, the demand follows … the penny drops.”
Pupils offered six-week taster course
Kingswood Secondary Academy in Corby, part of the Greenwood Academies Trust (GAT), has a programme that mentors sixth-form pupils interested in teaching.
In a six-week taster, pupils learn the basics of teaching and modelling various teaching methods and strategies.
They are expected to present their own 30 to 60-minute lesson by the end of the course.
GAT, which does not have a formal initiative that targets former pupils, attends careers fairs at its academies and occasionally hires former pupils as central office apprentices or trainee teachers.
Lauren Millband was one such appointment. After finishing her A-levels at The Brunts Academy in Mansfield, she joined the trust as a finance apprentice.
“It has been fascinating to see the inner workings of schools from the other side and contribute to their operations,” she said.
Andrew Carter, the chief executive at the 10-school South Farnham Educational Trust, said that at any one time it had 20 or 30 former pupils working as teachers or heads in its schools.
