Evaluation of the TLIF: The Education Development Trust and Chartered College of Teaching Accelerate Project
29 September 2022
Research report on the DfE website
Between September 2017 and May 2022, NFER and Sheffield Hallam University undertook the evaluation of TLIF, a three-year funding programme which aimed to support projects offering high-quality continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers and school leaders in the areas and schools in England that needed it most. One of these projects was the EdDevTrust and the CCT Accelerate project. This aimed to provide sustained support for early career teachers (ECTs) through specialist instructional coaching, blended learning involving face-to-face training and online modules, and peer-to-peer support through communities of practice.
Key Findings
- The project faced challenges in retaining participants. While DfE Management Information showed that 1,598 ECTs were initially recruited to the project against a target of 1,500, information supplied by EdDevTrust suggested that by March 2020 this had fallen to 700.
- ECTs valued the opportunity to discuss and reflect on their practice with an experienced external teacher, safe in the knowledge that these conversations were confidential and entirely developmental in nature. ECTs appreciated coaching conversations being tailored to their specific needs and situations.
- There is considerable evidence from both the surveys and the qualitative interviews that the project has improved participating ECTs' confidence and subject knowledge, equipped them with a growing repertoire of teaching skills, and improved their teaching practice.
- Analysis of School Workforce Census (SWC) data suggests that participating ECTs were statistically significantly more likely to remain in teaching one and two years after the baseline than ECTs in a comparison group. However, it is not possible to disentangle the effect of the project from other non-observed systematic differences between project participants and non-participants.