Teachers Feel Under Prepared For Teaching Career: Research released by the Teacher Support Network Group suggested that teachers in England and Wales do not feel that their initial teacher training (ITT) courses prepared them adequately for a career in the teaching profession.

Teachers Feel Under Prepared For Teaching Career, Says New Education Market Research

The research, which asked the opinions of 774 teachers working in England and Wales in relation to both the initial training and on-going continuing professional development (CPD), found that a quarter felt that their ITT prepared them ‘not very well’ or ‘not at all well’ for a teaching career.

In addition, a similar proportion (25%) said their ITT did not prepare them for well enough in terms of managing behaviour, classroom management, or disciplining and dealing with disruptive pupils. Around a fifth (17%) of teachers also felt they were under prepared for dealing with paperwork and admin, dealing with parents (13%), workplace politics, bullying and lack of support (7%) and assessing or leveling their pupils (7%).

Almost a tenth of teachers (7%) also stated that they felt unprepared for the political impacts on the education sector – such as alterations to the curriculum for instance.

The study also found that two fifths of the teachers interviewed had been unable to undertake the amount of additional training and development that they wanted to in order to improve. Of these, more than half (51%) said they could not afford to take additional training, and a fifth (20%) suggested that they had been unable to do so due to time pressures.

Looking specifically at initial teacher training (ITT) the research found that there was a lack of teachers who deemed the process as wholly suitable. A quarter (24%) of teachers stated the training was prepared them either ‘not very well’ or ‘not at all well’ and only one in ten (11%) said that their experience of ITT had prepared them ‘very well’. The largest proportion of respondents (38%) felt that ITT provision had prepared them only ‘adequately’ for their on-going career in the teaching profession.