Initial Teacher Education
Early Insights 2024-2025
Learning
Many student teachers showed commitment to their studies, built positive relationships, communicated effectively, and demonstrated suitable literacy, numeracy, and digital competence, with good progress noted in Welsh language development and workload management. However, their progress was often limited by inconsistent placement quality, weak planning skills, over-reliance on existing materials, and underdeveloped ability to connect theory to practice or support pupils to apply cross-curricular skills effectively.
What’s going well
- Most student teachers demonstrated a commitment to personal and professional growth.
- Many students built supportive relationships with mentors, tutors, peers, and school staff.
- Many were good communicators on the whole, giving structured explanations and clear instructions.
- A majority modelled learning well for pupils.
- Many students had suitable personal literacy, numeracy, and digital skills.
- Overall, students who are learning Welsh made good progress and developed a suitable understanding of developing pupils’ Welsh language skills.
- Many student teachers managed their workload suitably, particularly where assignment planning was well- integrated with school learning.
What needs to improve
- Student teachers’ progress was too dependent on the quality of their placement schools; for example, students’ understanding of foundation learning was limited by a lack of opportunity to observe effective practice, or weaker school practice perpetuated misconceptions about the Curriculum for Wales.
- Overall, students’ development of their planning skills is a common shortcoming, with many failing to identify clear learning objectives. A majority of student teachers lacked a strong enough understanding of effective lesson planning and were often over-reliant on published schemes or school plans which limited their creativity.
- Many students’ ability to support pupils in applying literacy, numeracy and digital skills across the curriculum was underdeveloped.
- The extent to which student teachers placed in English-medium schools developed pupils’ Welsh language skills was too variable.
- A few student teachers had weaknesses in their personal skills in literacy and numeracy.
- A majority of students teachers’ reflection is often descriptive rather than evaluative, with a limited analysis of the impact of teaching on pupil progress.
- A majority of students do not make strong enough links between theory and practice to improve their own teaching.
- Student teachers’ increasing difficulties with managing behaviour were noted as strict COVID-era policies were relaxed.
Learning and teaching experiences
Most partnerships designed programmes aligned with QTS and accreditation standards, promoting core teaching values in Wales, research-informed practice, and student well-being, with enriching contributions from lead schools and strong tutor-mentor relationships. However, inconsistencies in the quality of teaching and mentoring, weak connections between theory and practice, and limited alignment between university and school elements hindered students’ ability to fully engage with, and reflect on Curriculum for Wales.
What’s going well
- Most partnerships showed a clear commitment to designing programmes to meet QTS and accreditation standard.
- Many programmes were underpinned by conceptual frameworks that, in the best instances, gave strategic direction.
- Most programmes promoted well the core values of being a teacher in Wales.
- Many programmes were rooted in research-informed practice.
- Many programmes provided helpful learning experiences, supporting student teachers’ understanding of Curriculum for Wales.
- Contributions from lead schools enriched student teachers’ knowledge beneficially.
- Many programmes provided tailored and purposeful opportunities for student teachers to develop their Welsh language skills.
- Many partnerships placed a strong emphasis on student teachers’ well-being.
- There were suitable processes across many partnerships for tracking student teacher progress.
- There were respectful, trusting, and supportive relationships between student teachers and tutors/mentors in many cases.
- Many tutors demonstrated good subject and phase knowledge.
- The few most effective tutors modelled teaching, linked theory to practice, and encouraged critical thinking.
What needs to improve
- Overall, student teachers do not always develop the critical understanding, practical skills and professional confidence needed to teach independently and effectively by the end of their training.
- In a majority of programmes, connections between theory and classroom practice were underdeveloped.
- In many partnerships, student teachers were not supported to record and reflect systematically on their development.
- Opportunities to explore different models of curriculum design or to gain a full understanding of Curriculum for Wales were underdeveloped across many programmes.
- A lack of coherence between different elements of the programmes was a recurring weakness across many partnerships. For example, there was often a lack of alignment between university and school-based components.
- In a minority of partnerships, learning experiences to develop subject knowledge and pedagogies in primary and secondary programmes did not support students well enough to develop and deepen these skills.
- There were missed opportunities to connect areas of learning and support student teachers’ understanding of pupil progress in literacy, numeracy, and digital competence.
- There was too much inconsistency in the quality of teaching and mentoring.
- Many mentors were unaware of the content of university sessions, which limited their ability to support students’ development.
Leadership
Many partnerships demonstrated a strong, shared vision aligned to national priorities, with collaborative leadership structures and a clear commitment to professional learning and data-informed development. However, weaknesses remained in implementing joint leadership, with unclear accountability, over-reliance on ITE directors, and underdeveloped self-evaluation and improvement planning processes.
What’s going well
- Many partnerships had a clear, well-communicated vision aligned to national priorities.
- In many partnerships the vision for ITE was co-constructed and shared between university and school-based staff.
- In many partnerships there were logical leadership structures with roles and responsibilities shared between university and school staff.
- A majority of partnerships developed suitable data systems to track student progress and outcomes. In a few cases, these systems helped guide strategic decisions.
- There was a strong commitment across partnerships to professional learning and research-informed development.
- Many partnerships were developing their approaches to professional learning for mentors.
What needs to improve
- Despite governance structures, many partnerships have struggled with implementing joint leadership in practice.
- In many partnerships, lines of accountability and decision-making responsibilities were unclear and lacked coherence.
- In most partnerships, too much responsibility was placed on the Director of ITE, and a lack of distributed leadership made leadership structures fragile and unsustainable.
- Self-evaluation and improvement planning processes remained a weakness across most partnerships, with a lack of effective use of first-hand evidence.
- In most partnerships, improvement planning lacked precision, sharpness and measurable success criteria.
- Mentor development has been a challenge for all partnerships. In many partnerships, mentor development was overly focused on administrative responsibilities rather than mentoring skills. There were few opportunities for mentors to share effective practice.
Overview of recommendations:
All partnerships received a recommendation to improve aspects of programme design, including the coherence, sequencing and progression of learning experiences. These recommendations reflect the need for partnerships to ensure that student teachers develop their knowledge, skills and understanding in a more integrated and developmental way across university and school contexts.
Nearly all partnerships (six out of seven) received a recommendation to improve the quality and consistency of teaching and mentoring. These typically focused on ensuring that student teachers benefit from effective modelling of practice, clear developmental feedback, and a coherent approach across the partnership.
Nearly all (six out of seven) were also advised to strengthen self-evaluation and improvement planning processes, particularly in relation to how evidence is used to identify priorities and drive improvement across the partnership.
In addition, the majority of partnerships received a recommendation to strengthen wider aspects of leadership, governance and accountability. These included clarifying strategic direction, improving joint leadership between schools and universities, and ensuring that leadership at all levels is effective in driving improvement.
Across the partnerships, recommendations highlighted the need to strengthen student teachers’ skills and knowledge in key areas essential for effective teaching, such as understanding phase and subject pedagogy, and improving lesson planning. In many cases, inspection findings identified the need to develop student teachers’ critical reflection skills and to support them in making more meaningful connections between theory and practice.