Early Career Teachers

This DfE-funded programme builds on the thinking behind the Early Career Framework (ECF) and is designed to help early career teachers develop the skills and knowledge required to be successful in their roles.

  • Improve wellbeing and job satisfaction of early career teachers
  • Two-year induction training package, aligned with the ECF
  • Attract and retain teachers at the start of their careers, so they can better support pupils
#encodeForHtmlAttribute( photo.alt )#

Why us?

What is the duration of the Early Career Teachers programme?

The Early Career Framework provides an entitlement to two years of evidence-based development for teachers at the start of their career.

What is the Early Career Teachers programme and its primary goal?

Through the framework we have developed our carefully sequenced and evidence-informed curriculum for teachers and mentors focuses on how teachers learn as well as what they learn. 

What is the role of instructional coaching in the Early Career Teachers programme?

We use instructional coaching, one of the best-evidenced forms of professional development, meaning your early career teachers will benefit from bite-sized content and tailored, observational feedback to help them to keep getting better over time.

ECTs will also benefit from our innovative Steplab platform, designed by teachers, for teachers. An accessible learning platform designed to provide carefully structured support, to ensure that mentors can provide high-quality mentoring without adding to their workload.

We’ve been perfecting our programme for early career teachers since our early pilot in 2019, funded by the Education Endowment Foundation. We use what we learned to further develop our programme offer for schools across England.

You can download our free Expert Edit publication now for more information about the Early Career Framework and how our Early Career Teachers programme can support your teachers from the start of their career.

Through the framework, early career teachers are entitled to additional support and training, including one-to-one mentoring from an experienced colleague. Mentors are similarly offered support and guidance on how to get the most from their role and their early career teachers. 

At Ambition Institute, we have delivered the Early Career Framework to around 30,000 new teachers and their mentors on our Early Career Teachers programme.

Benefits for your school

  • Attract and retain staff 
    • Provide quality professional development for new teachers, encouraging them to stay in the profession.
    • Provide your experienced teacher with teacher development and leadership for participating mentors.
  • Tried and tested support – Access training materials for teachers and mentors that have developed and improved since our involvement in Education Endowment Foundation Fund pilot in 2019.
  • Evidence-informed – Ensure teachers at the start of their career have access to evidence-informed training and development.

Benefits for your early career teachers and mentors

  • Tackle challenges – support with typical problems faced by early career teachers.
  • Flexible learning – access to our flexible Steplab platform.
  • Develop their practice – support early career teachers at the start of their careers to keep getting better.

Curriculum

Each term ECTs will focus on a different strand of effective practice: behaviour, instruction and subject. They will also develop understanding of how pupils learn.

The key learning from the three strands is outlined below:

What they'll learn

Behaviour

  • Using routines to support behaviour management.
  • Creating a positive learning environment.
  • Support with overcoming low-level disruption.
  • Support with creating high expectations in the classroom.

Instruction

  • Supporting pupils through instruction based strategies such as questioning, scaffolding and modelling.
  • The importance that prior knowledge plays learning.
  • How to adapt classroom practice to meet the needs of all pupils.
  • How to use feedback effectively.

Subject

  • Creating good planning habits to support learning goals.
  • Strategies for examining and addressing the gaps and misconceptions pupils may have.
  • Considering how literacy can be developed across all subjects.

How they'll learn

  • 3 full-day conferences (focused on deepening their understanding of how pupils learn, the principles of adaptive teaching, and effective implementation).
  • 6 one-hour virtual clinics to support early career teachers to address a typical teaching problem faced by most teachers, based on their study materials and key areas from the Early Career Framework (ECF).
  • Regular modules of online learning. Self-study modules help early career teachers engage with the latest research and ideas for practical classroom implementation in a manageable and accessible way.
  • Regular instructional coaching sessions designed to support early career teachers to apply insights from the study materials into their classroom practice. Mentors will provide teachers with a specific, bite-sized step to practice each week that responds to their own classroom context and practice.

Cost

The Early Career Teachers programme is funded by the Department for Education.

How to join

Want to join our ECT programme?

Find one of our delivery partners for your school.

  1. Identify your local delivery partner from our helpful map here.
  2. Contact your local delivery partner directly to establish that you’ll be working together.
  3. Your delivery partner can help you with the next steps to register your ECTs and mentors.

Already working with us?

  1. Contact your Early Career Teacher delivery partner to let them know you want to continue your relationship.
  2. Your delivery partner can help you with the next steps to register your ECTs and mentors.

Interested in the programme?