Induction tutor

Your role as an Induction Tutor

How to register your ECTs and mentors and gain Steplab access

Your role as an Induction Tutor

The induction tutor is the member of staff within each school with overall responsibility for putting the Early Career Teachers programme into action. This will often be a member of the senior leadership team. The induction tutor drives engagement with our Early Career Teachers programme in their school, for both mentors and teachers.

Key to this role is supporting and protecting the new statutory entitlements of early career teachers and their mentors in line with the ECF reforms and statutory guidance. The induction tutor will be responsible for monitoring engagement with the programme via the Steplab platform and liaising with the school’s delivery partner.

If you would like more information on what your role involves, you can take a look at this guidance from the DfE.

How to register your ECTs and mentors and gain Steplab access:

Step 1: Establish/confirm a partnership with a delivery partner

For schools who have used our ECT programme before, and will be using the same delivery partner:

• You do not need to contact your delivery partner.
• When completing step 2 on the DfE portal, confirm that you want to continue to use Ambition Institute as your lead provider.

For schools who have used our ECT programme before, but will be using a different delivery partner:

• Contact them to establish a partnership, you can find their contact details here.

For schools who have not used our ECT programme before:

• Find your local delivery partner using this directory, and contact them to establish a partnership.
• If you do not have a local delivery partner, unfortunately you will need to work with an alternative lead provider. A list of all the lead providers can be found here.

Step 2: Register your ECTs and mentors on the ‘Manage training for early career teachers’ DfE portal.

Please note, this step is for those from state-funded schools only. If you are from an independent school, you can skip to step 4, as it is your delivery partner’s responsibility to register your ECTs and mentors.

For each ECT and mentor, you will need the following information:

• First and last names
• Date of birth
• TRN – find TRN service
• Preferred email address (Please note: if their work email address is not yet live, they may wish to use their personal email address so they do not miss initial onboarding communications)

The DfE portal will walk you through the registration process. If you encounter any issues, please email: [email protected]

Step 3: Match your ECTs to their mentors on theDfE portal.

Step 4: Log in to My Ambition and complete your Steplab access form.

Once you have registered on the DfE portal and the DfE has validated your participant data, you and your ECTs and mentors will receive a welcome email from [email protected]. Then, please complete the following steps:

1.Create a My Ambition account, ensuring your name and email address match those in the welcome email from us.

• Please search for your school using its URN, to ensure you select the correct one

• Please select ‘Early Career Teacher programme’ for the question ‘Why are you registering with My Ambition today?’

• You may already have a My Ambition account, in which case you do not need to create a new one, but please check whether your account name and email address match those in the welcome email from us.
• If your existing account details do not match those in the welcome email, please contact us, and we will change them for you.

2.Complete your Steplab access form, under the Onboarding and EDI tab.

• You only need to complete one Steplab access form, even if there is more than one on your account.
• Please note your ECTs and mentors will have their own Steplab access form to complete.

3.Once you have completed your Steplab access form, you will gain access to Steplab within 24 hours. Please take some time to explore Steplab!

If you are unable to access Steplab after completing the steps above, and after waiting 24 hours following submission of the Steplab access form, please get in touch with us:

• By email at [email protected]
• By phone on 020 3846 5828
  • Registration queries: press 1,1
  • Onboarding queries: press 2,1

Step 5: Check that your ECTs and mentors are matched on Steplab.

Log in to Steplab and navigate to the 'Manage' tab. You should be able to see your ECTs paired with their mentors under ‘Coaching relationships’.

If your ECT and mentor matches are not visible please check that:

• You have added and paired them on the DfE portal from step 3.
• Your mentors and ECTs have completed their Steplab access form from step 4.