Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of reducing the number of teacher training days during the covid-19 outbreak in the 2020-21 academic year.

Teachers continue to benefit from five days of inset training each year and the Department has not identified any need to reduce this. Schools have the freedom to determine the dates on which they hold inset days and what they use them for. Inset days have been helpful to support teachers in managing additional pressures during the COVID-19 outbreak. In December, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, announced that schools could take an additional inset day on 4 January 2021 to help teachers train and prepare for COVID-19 testing in schools.

The local authority is required to set term dates for community schools, community special schools, voluntary controlled schools, pupil referral units and maintained nursery schools. The governing bodies of foundation and voluntary aided schools are required to set their own term dates. Local authorities and governing bodies must set dates in line with the requirement of the length of the school year as set out in the Education (School Day and School Year) (England) Regulations 1999.

Academy trusts, of academies and free schools, set their own term dates and they are not bound by school day and school year regulations.

With regard to initial teacher training (ITT), the ITT criteria requires programmes to be designed to provide trainees with enough time in school to demonstrate that they have achieved all the Teachers’ Standards. These typical periods of time are set out in the ITT criteria and supporting advice, which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-criteria/initial-teacher-training-itt-criteria-and-supporting-advice#c23-training-in-schools. For most courses, this will typically be 120 days. The Department has clarified to ITT providers that in the event of disruption due to the COVID-19 outbreak, courses with fewer than 120 days physically in school are acceptable. This will not result in non-compliance in relation to C2.3 of the ITT criteria. Further information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-initial-teacher-training-itt/coronavirus-covid-19-initial-teacher-training-itt#changes-to-the-itt-criteria-for-2020-to-2021.