Birmingham City University

Birmingham City University

Address: Benjamin Zephaniah Building, 15 Bartholomew Row, B5 5JU Unique reference number (URN): 70075

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Inclusion Strong standard

Leaders have created a warm and welcoming culture where inclusion is prioritised. Trainees feel they belong in the programme community right from the start of their course. Leaders understand the local area and know the schools that serve it very well. This knowledge enables them to understand the potential barriers that trainees might face.

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Inclusion Strong standard

Leaders are swift to identify trainees’ learning and support needs. They skilfully use a range of information to gain an in-depth understanding of any trainees' barriers to learning. This enables leaders to make necessary adaptations and provide individualised support that is highly effective and makes a difference to trainees’ ability to complete the course. Trainees are confident to disclose existing or emerging needs, knowing that disclosure leads to timely action. Leaders robustly track the impact of support to ensure trainees continue to flourish. This means that support is timely and can be withdrawn when no longer needed. Trainees

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Expected standard

describe the tangible, and sometimes life-changing impact on their wellbeing, confidence and ability to succeed because of leaders’ support.

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Expected standard

Leaders direct trainees to a range of helpful guidance, including academic support and pastoral systems. As a result, trainees access appropriate help to sustain their learning and wellbeing.

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Curriculum, teaching and training Expected standard

Leaders have designed an ambitious curriculum that is informed by statutory guidance. The structure of the curriculum is clear and deliberately sequenced to integrate taught elements with teaching practice. The curriculum introduces core-teaching principles gradually and then revisits them with increasing complexity across years and placements. For example, the sequence of intensive training and practice begins with managing pupils' behaviour. This enables trainees to establish presence in the classroom and manage classrooms effectively in their first placement.

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Curriculum, teaching and training Expected standard

The curriculum prepares trainees to meet the needs of pupils who face barriers to learning, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Staff ensure that trainees learn about different ways in which adaptations can support pupils to thrive in their classrooms. The content of this part of the curriculum has been specifically chosen to reflect the highest areas of needs nationally and locally.

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Curriculum, teaching and training Expected standard

Leaders make sure that trainees learn about safeguarding. Trainees are taught to be professionally curious, to recognise signs of harm, and to promote the safety and welfare of pupils. Trainees revisit this important topic often to deepen their understanding, including of current regional and national issues.

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Curriculum, teaching and training Expected standard

Centre-based staff are knowledgeable and have a thorough understanding of the curriculum. Their teaching is rooted in high-quality research, ensuring that trainees learn the most relevant knowledge needed to teach.

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Curriculum, teaching and training Expected standard

Leaders have established well-defined assessment processes. These provide trainees with feedback that is linked to curriculum priorities and to individual trainees’ progress. Leaders provide suitable support for trainees to catch up where necessary. Opportunities for structured reflection, such as critical incident analysis, enable trainees to develop their ability to link theory and practice.

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Curriculum, teaching and training Expected standard

New leaders have recently refined systems for supporting school mentors. Mentors value the clarity of documentation and regular updates. They typically describe the support they receive as timely and multi-layered. This, in turn, enables them to typically support trainees well. However, the processes for checking mentoring and moderation of target setting are not yet fully embedded across all schools. This leads to some inconsistencies with the effectiveness of mentoring. A small minority of mentors are not fully engaging with the communications being offered by the university. As a result, they are not as well informed and there is variability in how well mentors set effective, achievable targets.

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Leadership Expected standard

Leaders demonstrate a clear vision for primary initial teacher education underpinned by their aim to produce primary teachers who are committed, creative, confident and collaborative. New leaders, in a short space of time, have identified what needs to be done and have started work to successfully address this, including introducing systems for quality assuring the work of the primary provision. However, it is too early to see the impact of this work on trainee outcomes.

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Leadership Expected standard

Leaders check thoroughly that statutory duties are met. The curriculum meets the requirements of the Department for Education’s mandatory compliance criteria for initial teacher training.

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Leadership Expected standard

The university works collaboratively with partner schools and carefully considers their input and views. School mentors and school leaders speak highly of the recent improvements in communication and support for schools.

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Leadership Expected standard

The newly established advisory board provides strategic oversight, support and challenge to leaders. There are clear lines of accountability in place. The advisory board consists of professionals in the field of education who have the required expertise and skills to fulfil their strategic roles well.

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Leadership Expected standard

Leaders make sure that those who teach and mentor trainees have a comprehensive programme of professional development. This enables them typically to carry out their roles effectively.

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Leadership Expected standard

Staff feel supported well by leaders. Leaders are approachable and provide support when staff workload is heavy. Staff retention and morale are high, with educators expressing commitment to the role and the institution. There are clear routes for reporting bullying, harassment or victimisation, with assurance that concerns will be taken seriously.

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Professional behaviours, personal development and wellbeing Expected standard

Leaders have clear expectations of trainees’ professional behaviours, attendance, and commitment to learning. These are shared with trainees and staff. Staff know how to use the provider’s system of ‘report and support’, so any issues with professional behaviours can be identified and addressed. Professionalism is reinforced through taught sessions, mentor dialogue, and formal intervention processes such as ‘Rapid Improvement Targets’ where needed. While many trainees demonstrate clear awareness of professional standards a minority of trainees do not consistently maintain high levels of punctuality and attendance.

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Professional behaviours, personal development and wellbeing Expected standard

The university provides highly effective mental-health support, personal tutoring and pastoral support arrangements. This contributes positively to trainee personal development and wellbeing. Trainees typically report knowing how to ask for help and are confident to do so.

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Next steps

Leaders should continue to enact their robust plans, and evaluate the sustained impact of recent refinements, so that increasing numbers of trainees complete the programme successfully and move into the teaching profession on a long-term basis.

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Next steps

Leaders should ensure all mentors engage with training and guidance on their role so they can purposefully reinforce the teacher training programme and provide clear targets for trainees.

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Next steps

Leaders should consider how they communicate their expectations for professional behaviours, and monitor the impact of actions taken, so that all trainees consistently demonstrate professional levels of punctuality and attendance.

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Next steps

Leaders should continue to strengthen the impact of governance arrangements so that they receive further challenge and support to strengthen the initial teacher education provision and improve outcomes for trainees. There are clear routes for reporting bullying, harassment or victimisation, with assurance that concerns will be taken seriously. Trainees know the university’s response would be robust.

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Next steps

Leaders monitor trainees’ workload and prepare them to manage increasing demands through explicit teaching of workload strategies. This ensures trainees are typically prepared to cope with the demands of the profession.

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Achievement Needs attention

A number of trainees do not complete their primary initial teacher education. Some qualify as primary teachers, but they choose not to gain subsequent employment as teachers. Published outcomes for all trainees, including different groups, are below national averages.

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Achievement Needs attention

New leaders have acted swiftly to put in place robust systems and recent refinements that are having a positive impact on current trainees’ progress. The curriculum provides all the elements of teacher training to enable trainees to develop the skills they need to be well prepared for a successful career in teaching. Leaders track how well trainees are doing. This enables them to intervene quickly when there are signs a trainee is not doing well. Leaders know, at an individual level, why trainees withdraw from the course.

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Achievement Needs attention

Trainees are reflective about their learning. They typically understand how well they are progressing and identify priorities for improvement. Trainees understand the pressures and realities of teaching, including safeguarding responsibilities and professional expectations.

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Inclusion Strong standard

This is a warm, welcoming and caring learning community where trainees quickly develop a sense of belonging. Equality and diversity are at the centre of the provision.

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Inclusion Strong standard

Leaders take a highly proactive approach to inclusion, actively encouraging trainees to declare any disabilities or barriers to learning and/or wellbeing. This work is further underpinned by well ‑ defined systems to identify and support trainees' needs. There is a 'team approach' to ensuring that any barriers are swiftly identified and addressed very well. Leaders have developed a range of tools, including the comprehensive 'trainee pen portraits' and the specific multi ‑ agency approach that enables access to specialist and financial support to any trainee who may need it.

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Inclusion Strong standard

Leaders work closely with the university's disability service to ensure that those with disabilities, protected characteristics or other barriers have the adjustments they need to be successful. Early sharing of detailed pen portraits enables timely communication between the university and placement schools. This ensures that reasonable adjustments can be put in place to support trainees’ success.

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Inclusion Strong standard

Leaders are very clear that inclusion is much more than diversity among their trainee cohort. They aim to make a real difference through provision of opportunities that broaden trainees' knowledge and experience. For instance, through specialist conferences; recruitment partnerships to enhance employment prospects and access to education experts. This work is highly effective.

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Curriculum, teaching and training Expected standard

Since the changes made to leadership, the secondary Initial Teacher Education (ITE) curriculum has been reviewed and revised to ensure that trainees learn the right skills and knowledge at the right time. Safeguarding remains at the forefront and all trainees have a secure understanding of their role in how to keep pupils safe. Leaders give careful consideration to ensuring that trainees can quickly grasp the realities of teaching as a profession and the professional behaviours that underpin their subject and pedagogical learning.

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Curriculum, teaching and training Expected standard

The curriculum is delivered by knowledgeable, well-qualified teacher educators. The spiral design of the curriculum ensures that trainees can learn, apply their knowledge and return. This means that they understand how they are learning as well as what they are learning, making links with what they already know and what they need to know in the future. Intensive Training and Practice (ITAP) foci are selected to meet the needs of trainees. In each pathway, they are intentionally positioned within the curriculum design to support crucial areas of practice to build on the learning secured. Overall, ITAP design and delivery is effective in bridging theory and classroom practice. It is less effective where school-based mentors do not have sufficient knowledge and understanding of the ITE curriculum content.

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Curriculum, teaching and training Expected standard

A real strength in the curriculum is the early focus on preparing trainees to meet the range of needs pupils may have, prior to their first school placement. The 'Benjamin Zephaniah register', developed with the provider, helps trainees think about strategies and approaches for delivering learning in a multi-needs classroom. They are able to put these into practice within a university-based teaching space, getting highly individualised feedback from teacher educators and peers. As a consequence, trainees are confident of their ability to plan and deliver learning for all pupils.

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Curriculum, teaching and training Expected standard

Leaders have clearly signposted formal assessments which closely align to the curriculum. This ensures that trainees engage with a range of specific, high-quality research in addition to that within ITAP. The provider's 6 themes, which relate to the teacher standards, are clearly identified as part of all types of assessment and form the basis for feedback. Targets are set jointly between teacher educators and mentors. This ensures that trainees know how well they are progressing and where they may have gaps. There is a sense of collective responsibility between trainees, school mentors and teacher educators.

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Leadership Expected standard

The vision, values and priorities of leaders at all levels are aligned and actively promoted in the secondary phase. Leaders' focus on the '4 Cs: Committed, Confident, Creative and Collaborative' is clearly tracked through their work. In the short time they have been leading the secondary initial teacher education (ITE) programme, they have made significant strides in developing the foundations for improving outcomes for trainees.

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Leadership Expected standard

Leaders recognise the need to develop and retain expertise and work deliberately to do so, placing appropriate focus on professional development for staff and mentors. A comprehensive offer enables staff to enhance their own expertise and qualifications which feeds into the programme delivery. This is valued by staff, who are very positive about the support for their wellbeing and workload.

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Leadership Expected standard

Typically, mentor training is effective. Significant efforts have been made to make training accessible by offering a blend of delivery methods and timings and most now engage well with it. This year, new leaders have strengthened quality assurance systems so that there is greater oversight across the programme. This is improving the quality of trainee target setting to better support their progress.

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Leadership Expected standard

Leaders collaborate very well with schools to extend their planned curriculum into potential placement schools. Generally, these are suitable and offer trainees the experience and practice they require. However, occasionally, placements are not well matched to the needs of a trainee or to the stage they are at.

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Leadership Expected standard

Leaders ensure that the secondary ITE provision meets statutory and non-statutory guidance, including for safer recruitment. Leaders have recently reviewed their recruitment processes to ensure that trainees fully understand the commitment they are making. This work is at the early stages, however, and the full impact is not yet visible.

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Professional behaviours, personal development and wellbeing Expected standard

Current leaders have established high standards of trainees' professional behaviours. For example, leaders track attendance and punctuality across centre-based sessions and school placements. There are very clear processes in place that all trainees understand, should they fall below those expectations.

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Professional behaviours, personal development and wellbeing Expected standard

Wide ‑ ranging, signposted pastoral support is accessible to all, including counselling and highly-effective responses to complex personal circumstances. Additionally, support does not stop at the end of the programme. Rather, trainees are encouraged to understand their challenges and what helps to manage them, as they move into their future careers as teachers. A particular strength is leaders' regular review of their pastoral offer. This is always with an eye to what else they can do, or how they can better use the resources they have.

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Professional behaviours, personal development and wellbeing Expected standard

Typically, trainees report that bullying is very rare and usually dealt with quickly and effectively. Effective communication ensures that any concerns are shared between the provider and schools enabling informed and coherent support.

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Professional behaviours, personal development and wellbeing Expected standard

Leaders have ensured that strategies for managing workload are an integral part of the programme from the beginning. Teacher educators quickly identify anyone who may be struggling. In these cases, leaders use effective time-limited 'rapid improvement targets'. In most cases, these are successful in helping a trainee to catch up and be successful.

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Achievement Needs attention

In the past, too many trainees did not finish their course or remain in sustained employment after graduating. Published outcomes for all trainees, including different groups, are below national averages.

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Achievement Needs attention

New leaders have rapidly identified the root causes of historic low achievement and taken well-considered action to address these. For instance, curriculum reviews have led to an earlier and tighter focus on professional behaviours that remains a feature of trainee learning throughout the programme.

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Achievement Needs attention

Notably, partner schools have recognised the impact of this on the current cohort of trainees. The introduction of appraisal visits during each school placement has been a crucial development that is enabling teacher educators and mentors to track progress frequently, identify gaps in understanding and take targeted action. As a result, there are clear indications that more trainees are developing the skills and knowledge that they need to teach in their chosen phase and subject.

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Achievement Needs attention

Despite these early signs that leaders' actions are having a positive impact, over time, too many trainees have not completed their programme successfully and/or secured employment in teaching.

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Next steps

Leaders should build on the well-considered actions already taken to ensure that those at risk of not completing their course successfully are identified and supported rapidly so that increasing numbers of trainees complete the programme successfully and move into the teaching profession on a long-term basis.

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Next steps

Leaders should ensure that all mentors are engaging with the training and guidance available to them so that there is a consistently high quality of mentoring for all trainees across both placements.

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Next steps

Leaders should continue to actively monitor the impact of specific actions taken to improve the professional behaviours of trainees. This should consider how, over time, trainees are developing their ability to proactively identify and access what they need to succeed in their programme.

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Next steps

Leaders should ensure that regular checks of partner schools are carried out to ascertain that placements remain appropriate for trainees. These should consider aspects wider than the subject area in which the trainee is teaching, including how well they are supported to manage behaviour.

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Next steps

Leaders should continue their refinement of the recruitment process so that the right trainees are on the programme for the right reasons, with a suitable early understanding of what the role entails.

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What it's like to be a trainee at this provider

Leaders have established Birmingham City University (BCU) as ‘an anchor institution at the heart of its community’. New leaders have established high ambitions based around 3 pillars, ‘talent for tomorrow, powering prosperity and creating knowledge for good’. These ambitions are generally embedded and being realised. As a result, many schools now choose graduates to employ resulting in many teachers in the Birmingham area coming from BCU.

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What it's like to be a trainee at this provider

Trainees benefit from highly inclusive practices that makes them feel welcome and foster a deep sense of belonging from the start of their course. They speak of an open and supportive culture where they are encouraged to ask questions and share any concerns they may have. Trainees build positive, professional relationships with the mentors who support them. This helps them feel safe, both at university and while on school placements.

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What it's like to be a trainee at this provider

Leaders and teacher educators work hard to get to know their trainees. They swiftly find out any barriers to learning and/or wellbeing that trainees might have. Leaders take highly effective and well-thought-out steps to reduce these and respond quickly to any changing or emerging needs. Numerous and very well-resourced student support organisations, such as disability support, help teacher educators to provide any additional support to associate teachers when needed. Consequently, the help trainees receive is of high quality and many flourish. Trainees typically learn what they need to become successful early career teachers (ECT). In the past, this was not always the case and a considerable number of trainees did not finish their course. New leaders have now brought about systems and strengthened their provision to ensure more trainees become successful early career teachers. Trainees are well equipped to put into practice what they have learned about adaptive teaching and

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What it's like to be a trainee at this provider

evidence-based approaches to managing pupils’ behaviour.

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What it's like to be a trainee at this provider

The university has established long-standing, collaborative partnerships with many educational organisations. Trainees receive broad and helpful learning experiences throughout their programmes. For example, they see examples of how to support the needs of pupils in special schools, selective school or in schools in areas of high deprivation. As a result, trainees are well prepared to teach in their local area and beyond.

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About this inspection

Trainees in the primary and secondary phases are either undertaking an undergraduate or postgraduate route. The postgraduate route is offered in partnership with one training partner.

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About this inspection

In the secondary phase, postgraduate trainees choose a subject area, with 17 currently running. Undergraduate trainees study a Bachelor of Arts in physical education.

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About this inspection

Following our renewed inspection framework, all inspections are now led by His Majesty's Inspectors (HMIs) or by Ofsted Inspectors (OIs) who have previously served as HMI.

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About this inspection

Inspectors spoke with the head of department and deputy head of department, the dean of school, leaders of the training partner and the provider's course leaders for primary and secondary. They also met with those responsible for compliance and members of the advisory board and partnership committees. Inspectors spoke with a group of subject leaders.

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About this inspection

Inspectors visited 38 schools, these included primary, secondary and all-through schools.

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About this inspection

During the inspection, inspectors spoke with numerous staff, trainees, mentors, school leaders and school mentors.

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About this inspection

Inspectors spoke to primary and secondary-trained early career teachers who had completed a course at this provider over the past 2 years.

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Primary phase lead inspector:

Corinne Biddell, His Majesty's Inspector

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Team inspectors:

Rob Hackfath, His Majesty's Inspector Alexander Laney, His Majesty's Inspector Ed Leighton, Ofsted Inspector Andrew Madden, His Majesty's Inspector Mark Sims, Ofsted Inspector Anna Vrahimi, His Majesty's Inspector Keri Baylis, His Majesty's Inspector Barry Yeardsley, His Majesty's Inspector Antony Bradshaw, His Majesty's Inspector Catherine Young, His Majesty's Inspector Matt Fletcher, His Majesty's Inspector Sam Chater, Ofsted Inspector

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Facts and figures used on inspection

This data was used by the inspector(s) during the inspection. More recent data may have been published since the inspection took place.

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Exceptional

Practice is exceptional: of the highest standard nationally. Other providers can learn from it.

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Strong standard

The provider reaches a strong standard. Leaders are working above the standard expected of them.

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Expected standard

The provider is fulfilling the expected standard of training. This means they are following the standard set out in statutory and non ‑ statutory legislation and the professional standards expected of them.

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Needs attention

The expected standards are not met but leaders are likely able to make the necessary improvements.

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Urgent improvement

The provider needs to make urgent improvements to provide the expected standard of training. services providing education and skills for children and learners of all ages, and inspects and regulates services that care for children and young people.

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Urgent improvement

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Urgent improvement

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Urgent improvement

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Urgent improvement

T: 0300 123 1231 Textphone: 0161 618 8524 E: enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk W: www.gov.uk/ofsted

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