Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of the teaching schools core funding annual grants.

The Teaching School Programme operated from September 2011 to August 2021 and focused on school to school support. The National College for Teaching and Leadership, as an Executive Agency of the Department at that time, commissioned an evaluation of Teaching Schools which was published in 2016. The report is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teaching-schools-evaluation-final-research-report.

In the Recruitment and Retention strategy, published in January 2019, the Department committed to improving support for all teachers, ensuring that they receive high quality training and development at every stage of their career. The Teaching School Hub programme, in operation since September 2021, created a network of 87 centres of excellence for teacher training and development to replace the previous network of around 750 Teaching Schools.

Teaching School Hubs receive an annual core grant to ensure they have the capacity to deliver teacher development in their areas. Teaching School Hubs are measured for effectiveness against a rigorous set of key performance indicators on a termly basis. Funding is assured through the annual certificate of expenditure process to ensure that funding has been spent in line with the grant terms and conditions.