The Department for Education has taken control of its flagship FE teacher training scheme from its charity partner mid-contract, amid dwindling recruitment numbers, FE Week can reveal.
Taking Teaching Further (TTF) was seized from the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) in March by the DfE after just one year into what was supposed to be a two-year programme.
Delivery of the TTF was taken in-house by the DfE to “enable any possible future changes to be made more easily,” the department claimed. An ETF spokesperson added that necessary changes the DfE wanted to make would have required a retendering exercise.
Soon after the DfE took over the scheme, which retrains industry professionals as FE teachers, it revamped the offer with, for example, £6,000 financial incentives to entice more recruits to the hardest-to-fill subjects.
