Data Collection
The initial teacher training performance profiles are collected each year for trainees in the final year of their ITT training. As of Initial Teacher Training Performance Profiles 2021/22 DfE extracts data from the Register Trainee Teachers service. From the 2018/19 publication to the 2020/21 publication data were extracted from the Database of Teacher Training Providers (DTTP). ITT providers are typically asked to sign-off their data for the previous academic year on 31st January of a given year.
Coverage
The initial teacher training performance profiles covers outcomes for initial teacher trainees in England. From the 2018/19 release to the 2020/21 release this included trainees who had a course outcome in the year as well as those who were expected to complete in year. From 2021/22, this will only cover trainees with course outcomes in a given academic year. The statistical release includes provisional employment figures for the training year of the statistical release, and revises finalised employment figures for the previous training year. For more information on the trainees included in these releases going forward, please see the 2021/22 year specific methodology published here.
Confidentiality
The Code of Practice for Official Statistics requires that reasonable steps should be taken to ensure that all published or disseminated statistics produced by the Department for Education protect confidentiality.
To do this small numbers are suppressed for sensitive characteristics and for very small providers.
This suppression approach is consistent with the Department’s statistical policy (opens in a new tab). Symbols used to identify this approach in published tables are as follows:
| Symbol | Description |
| 0 | Zero |
| c | Small number suppressed to preserve confidentiality |
| z | Not applicable |
| x | Not available |
Quality assurance
Data for the ITT performance profiles are completed, reviewed and signed off by a designated person at each ITT provider. The data collection and publication production teams within the Department for Education carry out a number of quality checks on the data throughout the data entry process. After data is extracted , a quality assurance process is undertaken by the publication production team. This process includes detailed quality checks across the dataset. Details of the specific issues found are outlined in the year specific methodology, included within each publication.
Trainees included in this release
We included a number of filters to the data received from ITT providers to ensure we capture only valid trainees. We included:
- trainees with valid records (they were not dormant, deferred or marked as a draft record)
- trainees that did not leave their course within the first 90 days
- trainees that were not excluded for other reasons (see below)
- From ITT Performance Profiles 2018/19 to 2020/21, trainees were included if they were deemed to be in their expected final year. This included trainees who:
- Had a recorded end date in a given academic year
- Were on full-time postgraduate training courses with no recorded end date but started their course in a given academic year
- As of ITT Performance Profiles 2021/22, trainees were only included if they had a course outcome in the academic year being reported. Here course outcome refers to the successful or unsuccessful completion of a course or leaving the course before end. Historical data in the 2021/22 release was revised to exclude all trainees who were recorded as yet to complete their course. For more information on this change please see the ITT Performance Profiles 2021/22 release.
Trainees excluded from this release
There are a number of trainees excluded from the mainstream ITT analysis who may be working towards QTS or another teaching qualification. The figures presented in this release do not include:
- Non-supported trainees – we exclude a small number of trainees that the provider has indicated are not eligible for UK financial support and do not have a DfE allocated place. This includes overseas trainees not entitled to UK financial support; trainees on the School Direct salaried route undertaking a non-DfE-funded subject and/or employed at an independent school; or in situations when a School Direct Salaried trainee is undertaking a subject that would not normally be funded by DfE, but the provider is funding the trainee themselves outside of their DfE allocated places.
Some trainees are excluded from the mainstream underlying data sets but are included in their own separate underlying data sets for this publication.
- Assessment only candidates – assessment only is for experienced teachers with a degree and those with a teaching qualification from different countries, who have not been awarded QTS in England. It allows teachers to do the necessary assessment to qualify for QTS without taking an ITT course.
- Early years ITT – Trainees working towards early years teacher status (EYTS) are not included as mainstream trainees as they are not eligible for QTS. This programme focuses on pre-school initial teacher training. However, High Potential ITT (formerly known as Teach First) offer an early years programme working with children aged three to five years, which does lead to QTS; therefore, these trainees are included in the mainstream underlying datasets.
Measuring Employment
The Department uses internal administrative data sources to estimate how many final year trainees awarded QTS go on to employment in a state-funded school in England. Trainees in the ITT performance profiles in the training year of the statistical release are matched with the relevant school workforce census (SWC) to identify which trainees went on to teach in a state-funded English school in the year following qualification to produce provisional and then revised employment rates (see details below). The SWC is a snapshot of everyone working in a state-funded school in England taken in November each year.
For this publication, we calculate two employment rates:
- A provisional employment rate for final year trainees in the training year of the statistical release
- A revised employment rate for final year trainees in the training year prior to that of the statistical release
Provisional employment rate: Departmental analysis has found that matching ITT trainee data to school workforce census data from the year following qualification does not fully capture how many trainees go onto employment because some teachers do not start in time to be recorded in that SWC, while others start up to sixteen months later. We account for these teachers by applying an uplift to the training year of the statistical release’s employment figures to estimate a provisional employment rate. The uplift is derived by comparing with data from previous years to determine what proportion of new teachers employed during the year were not included in their first school workforce census but were captured in the following year’s census.
Revised employment rate: We use the SWC data two years on from ITT completion to calculate a ‘revised’ employment rate that fully captures all trainees employed within 16 months of qualification.
More information on the methodology used prior to the 2017/18 academic year (when the Department switched to using internal administrative data sources to estimate employment rates) and the rationale for the change in methodology can be found in the publication of the ITT performance profiles for academic year 2016/17 (opens in a new tab).