We have more teachers in the classroom than in 1997. We have a range of routes for people who want to change career into teaching and these can be accessed direct or via transition to teaching. Most take up either postgraduate certificates in education (PGCE) or the employment-based Graduate Teacher programme.
The Becoming a Teacher evaluation (Hobson et al., 2006) found that 97 per cent. of survey respondents reported feeling ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ confident that their ITT programme had prepared them to be an effective teacher. However, a higher proportion of employment-based trainees, and a lower proportion of PGCE trainees, than those following other routes reported feeling ‘very confident’ that their ITT route had prepared them to be an effective teacher.