It has been great getting out and about this week and I enjoyed my visits to Parliament Hill School and William Ellis, it was a pleasure talking with heads, but also the informal conversations with students from both schools, who were delightful, polite as well as curious!

The Early Career Framework (ECF) working group have been meeting regularly over the last six months, undertaking careful due diligence to ensure we have the very best provision and approach to the ECF locally, to benefit both our schools and our Early Career Teachers (ECT). We were pleased to receive confirmation over the Easter period from Education Development Trust that Camden Learning has been chosen to be a delivery Partner on the National Roll out of the ECF. This arrangement has been confirmed now with EDT and the DfE on the proviso that Camden are anticipating recruiting 80 Early Career Teachers.

This week you may have had land in your inboxes an update on ECF from Paddington Academy, which is designated as the Central London Teaching School Hub for our region. We have liaised and met with Paddington as part of our due diligence around the ECF and they have made the decision to go with an alternate ECF provider. We do look forward to working with Paddington Academy over the next few years on training and CPD opportunities, however, we made the decision that the EDT model was a more suitable fit and approach locally.

Our local decision to become a delivery partner is based on a number of reasons, the main one being that Camden has a strong history of local, context-based NQT training that brings together lead practitioners and trainers, mentors and coaches. We believe that leading our own programme aligns with the Camden Learning vision and that the programme in its directed structure, as it is very short on face-to-face learning and networking. We know that this is vital for our ECTs (NQTs) and impacts on our recruitment and retention and we intend to look at how we can take some of the directed learning burden from ECTs and Mentors. It is also one generic set of materials for all phases, so being a local delivery partner does mean we can plan more phase specific work. Importantly, we can keep both our training and our AB (Appropriate Body) work close and a strong belief that holding the management and leadership locally will support the huge new admin and on-line learning burden that schools face.

As Camden Learning and our ECF working group, we appreciate how challenging the last 12 months have been for school leaders, therefore with the implementation of the ECF we recognise it is a huge undertaking and cultural change. We hope that we have relieved this burden from schools, by undertaking the intense preparation and work on your behalf, so that schools can concentrate on other matters, whilst trusting that plans are being put in place for Camden schools ahead of September.

As was mentioned at the primary heads earlier in the week, it would be hugely helpful if all headteachers could let Paranie Sivachandra (Paranie.Sivachandra@camdenlearning.org.uk and myself know how many ECTs you are planning to employ in September. Over the next couple of weeks the ECF working group will lead a briefing session for school leaders and mentors where we will update you on the practicalities, materials, funding and enrolment in amongst other updates. There are three briefings planned over the next couple of weeks, you only need to attend one, dates and time below. Hana will send out invites and Zoom links next week, please send onto Mentors as it will be important for them to attend a session.

• 4th May – 8am-9am
• 11th May – 12pm-1pm
• 13th May – 4pm-5pm

Jon Abbey

Managing Director of Camden Learning