Thanks to numerous recent visits to secondary schools in person, to support design and technology departments, I have been able to reflect on the current ECT 2 year requirement, alongside the damning fact that nearly 20% of ECTs leave teaching at the end of their 2nd year. It made me think back to my early days as a newly qualified teacher (NQT), and what it was about my first year of teaching that made me want to stay and continue my career for a total of 14 years.
I came up with the following 7 recommendations which I believe reflect the positive opportunities I personally received in my first year, that kept me coming back for more, and importantly aiming to advance my career in education.
My 7 key pieces of advice to keep ECTs beyond the 2 years are as follows:
- Task all ECTs to carry out a self audit of subject knowledge, and create a personal development plan to be met during their first 2 years, to prioritise being the best subject teacher first.
- When investing in ECT training, prioritise teaching practice, to ensure the foundations for success are established.
- Identify staff who will make excellent ECT mentors, because they not only focus on becoming a rounded, confident and capable teacher, but they role model those characteristics.
- Ensure ECTs reflect on the enjoyment of teaching and working with young people, and protect them from distractions that reduce their time and opportunities to build effective relationships with students.
- Encourage ECTs to identify their own style and personal strengths as teachers, by observing all different types of teachers in the school, not just those you deem “outstanding”.
- Challenge ECTs to carry out long term curriculum planning early and often, with the chance to trial and test their ideas, and build a sense of ownership to their professional practice.
- Facilitate ECTs visiting other local school departments of the same subject, to help them build up their own personal collaborative network.
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Why this advice reflects the experience I had, and might help current ECTs to stay in teaching
For me, I was very lucky (on reflection) to serve my NQT year at a school with particular specialism in teacher training and development. During my first year I was exposed to:
- There was a requirement to attend weekly professional development training (such as how to teach “good” lessons, or “how to move from good to outstanding”). They were led by two advanced skills teachers in the languages department, who instilled their passion for teaching French on to me, but in a way that I could replicate into teaching my subject, D&T. I understood thanks to this experience, the importance of passion for the subject, and therefore invested in my knowledge because I wanted to be the best subject expert I could be for the students.
- I was largely left to plan from scratch and develop the D&T curriculum with little restriction or guidance from my subject lead, which on reflection was important. It allowed me to make lots of mistakes and learn very quickly what works and what does not, but also take ownership of my professional capability to curriculum plan properly.
- Networking was something I was doing because I wanted to connect and share ideas with fellow D&T teachers. I led the DATA branch for Sutton and Surrey, which meant I was the organiser for a termly network meeting where teachers brought together and discussed their projects with one another, and we would learn and debate what was working and what wasn’t.
- My mentors in school were people with genuine passion for teaching, and also really great characters. They were also real people, sometimes capable of teaching outstanding lessons, but still learning themselves. They gave me a real sense of what the life of a teacher was going to be like, and it afforded me the opportunity to find my own style and approach to the job. I coupled this internal mentoring with mentors from the wider D&T community, including people such as David Barlex. These people would share their vast experience of the subject with me, and question my thinking constantly in ways I would not have arrived at on my own steam.
I’d love to hear what others think about the ECT years, and how best to support newly trained teachers entering the industry, and your own ways to keeping them onboard beyond the first two years.
Phil Holton 