Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what weight is given to an initial teacher training provider's most recent Ofsted judgment when evaluating whether to approve an application to be re-accredited to deliver training from September 2024.

Following a comprehensive process over two rounds the Department has now concluded the accreditation process. The Department does not intend to run any further accreditation rounds before first delivery of the reformed initial teacher training (ITT) in 2024/25.

The Department expects the next round of accreditation to take place in the 2025/26 academic year, with recruitment to ITT courses from September 2026, after the new quality requirements have come into effect. Details will be published on GOV.UK.

The accreditation process was not designed to assess quality of current provision, but focused on assessing providers’ capacity to deliver high-quality reformed ITT from September 2024, in line with the new Quality Requirements developed following the ITT Market Review. These two processes are distinct, and, therefore, Ofsted inspection judgements were not considered as part of the accreditation process. The Department firmly believes that the ITT accreditation process was the best way of assessing ITT providers’ potential whilst ensuring it was fair and manageable for applicants, and the Department is confident in the robustness of our assessments. The Department assessed applications in combination with Ofsted, who brought considerable knowledge and expertise to the process.