Abbey Mead Primary Academy is a National Teaching School and the lead school for a new and exciting model of initial teacher training that provides trainees with invaluable classroom experiences to equip them with the skills and knowledge to become effective and confident primary school teachers.
Abbey Mead Primary Academy, as the lead primary school for the Leicester Teaching School Alliance (LeTS), works within an alliance of over twenty schools from Leicester City and the local region. This Alliance of schools is committed to providing outstanding quality teacher training so the young people in our schools achieve the best possible outcomes. The Alliance hopes to use the School Direct route to grow outstanding teachers and leaders to employ in its alliance schools.
Abbey Mead and the LeTS alliance have worked in very close partnership with the Leicester and Leicestershire SCITT, an outstanding primary ITT provider, in the design of this School Direct programme. All School Direct trainees on this route will benefit from following the full training programme of the L&L SCITT.
School Direct is a route to train teachers that follows the SCITT (School Centred Initial Teacher Training) philosophy of putting schools at the heart of the ITT process. All trainees on School Direct programmes accredited by the L&L SCITT will specialise within training to teach either FS & KS1 (3-7yrs) pupils or KS1 & KS2 (5-11yrs) pupils.
Over the last ten years the Leicester & Leicestershire SCITT has continuously refined and developed its training programme to achieve its current outstanding local and national reputation for providing primary teacher training of the highest quality. All trainees on all School Direct programmes accredited by the L&L SCITT will benefit from following the full SCITT training programme, whilst also being allied to some exceptional schools within the partnership. All trainees will be enrolled on a full PGCE programme, with 60 Masters credits, as an integral part of the course.
Indicators of the L&L SCITT’s exceptional programme include:
- Rated as one of the two TOP primary ITT providers nationally for the quality of training in The Good Teacher Training Guide for each of the last two years.
- In the Top 3 ITT providers nationally for the overall quality of training in the 2013 and 2014 Newly Qualified Teacher surveys ( Six months after completing ITT training all NQTs are asked to complete a government survey regarding how well their ITT training provider prepared them for the challenges of their first year as a teacher)
- Outstanding in its most recent OFSTED inspection
- Exceptionally good employment prospects for trainees (61 out of the 62 trainees gaining QTS in the last two years were employed as teachers immediately after completing training )
- Extremely high retention of trainees on the course (over 96% over the past 3 years)
- Excellent outcomes for trainees against the Teachers’ Standards at the end of training in both 2013 and 2014
- 100% of headteachers employing the SCITT trainees rated the quality of training their NQTS had received as `good’ or better ( 58% `very good’) in the most recent 2013 survey