Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of grammar instruction provided on teacher training courses.

To complete teacher training courses and become a qualified teacher, trainees must meet the standards set out in the ‘teachers’ standards’ published in 2011, available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teachers-standards.

This requires trainees to demonstrate good subject and curriculum knowledge, including taking responsibility for promoting high standards of literacy and the correct use of standard English, whatever the teacher’s specialist subject.

The Department published further guidance, ‘A framework of core content for initial teacher training’ (ITT), in July 2016. This guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-government-response-to-carter-review.

The framework sets out ITT providers’ responsibility to audit trainees’ subject knowledge early in their training, and make provision to ensure that trainees have sufficient subject knowledge to satisfy the teachers’ standards by the end of their training.

At their most recent Ofsted inspection, 99% of all ITT providers were rated good or outstanding.

In the Recruitment and Retention Strategy, published in January 2019, the Department committed to reviewing ITT core content guidance using the Early Career Framework as our starting point. Details of this can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-recruitment-and-retention-strategy.