The Education Department at Ã÷ÐÇ°ËØÔ was highly praised for their Partnership work in the 2023 Ofsted inspection.
Initial Teacher Education (ITE) teams and the Partnership Office (PO) work closely with a wide variety of schools, educational organisations and alternative education provision across London boroughs and neighbouring counties. Established school partner colleagues join us to shape the quality of Early Career Teachers (ECT).
School colleague participation of all aspects of the ITE programmes ensures rigorous student teacher selection; input and delivery on taught aspects of the programmes; and offers strong and supportive mentoring during placements. Their valuable advice ensures our delivery is tailored to the needs of school recruitment and forms a strong insight for a new teacher’s career path.
We choose to work with a highly professional network of dedicated, proactive school mentors, and look to expand our partnership with others who hold similar values and commitment in support of student teachers. Schools benefit from getting to know the students during their close interaction on placement and supporting them towards potential ECT employment.
How your school can be involved
Offer school placement
Partner schools host both undergraduate and postgraduate placements of varying durations. Placements are offered directly by the school via our school portal or we can introduce a school to a School Partnership Hub, sharing student support with a group of local partner schools.
Express an interest and contribute to the programmes
Influence and understand how the programmes work and strengthen communication with a network of student teachers to increase opportunities for ECT recruitment.
- Work with academic teams and students sharing professional education themes in the curriculum, either at the university or at your school premises. Your school may have a particular focus or expertise that could greatly benefit programme delivery, enhancing the student experience.
- Participate on occasions in the selection process during the student application period with other school colleagues to interview prospective students to the PGCE courses.
- Join the Partnership Management Group (PMG), the steering forum for the PGCE programmes, chaired by the Director of ITE and led by senior colleagues from our partnership schools. The PMG informs the partnership, ensuring programme responsiveness to changing national policy and regional issues influencing teacher and school education. It enables rigorous quality assurance and keeps pupil progress and school improvement imperatives at the heart of our ITE provision.
Post job alerts
Schools will be able to post vacant job information on the school portal alerting student teachers who are seeking ECT posts. These alerts will be visible to student teachers via their student portal. Non-partner schools can request a guest log-in for this purpose only. (This service will only be open to schools and educational organisations).
School placement portal
All our partner schools have access to the school placement portal as account holders and communications are channelled here for the convenience of schools. All of the above activities are easily accessible on the school portal. In turn, confirmed student placements with contact details of both student teachers and supporting university staff can be viewed here.
School Hubs
This initiative offers schools a strong partnership and a range of activities that will grow as a Hub develops. From the onset, Hubs are included at university open days to meet prospective students. A Hub of schools can offer placements for students to rotate within during their course and school inductions can also be shared along with the responsibilities of supporting student teachers. It is anticipated that strong mentor networks will develop from sharing good practice and support staff professional development in schools. In turn this offers stability and continuity to ECT recruitment as student teachers often prefer to study and work in their own locality.
Alternative educational settings
The Department of Education has established rapport with a group of dedicated alternative educational settings provisions and organisations around London. Student teachers are offered the opportunity to gain experience in these settings as part of their programme, which have previously included EYFS, Primary Schools, Secondary Schools, Pupil Referral Units, young offenders’ institutions, and Special Schools. We welcome organisations interested in partnering with us for these experiences.
Want to know more?
We would be delighted to provide you with further information about the work of the ITE programmes and how you could become involved as a partner. Please contact the Partnership Office (PO) at:
cbass-po@brunel.ac.uk or by telephone +44 (0)1895 267141.