This report describes the proceeding and findings of a sponsored seminar designed to enquire into effective ways of supporting a highly qualified further education workforce in the future, through better use and understanding of current workforce data, and identification of additional data which may be required.
The seminar was designed to provide an overview from a wide range of national sector stakeholders. The data being explored inlcuded the data from the Staff Individualsied Record (SIR) and from intial tecaher eductaion inlcudeing data about participating teachers, the qualifcations and the etechre educators
Participants agreed that there was a need to collect data which would provide a better understanding of the qualifications taken in initial teacher education (ITE); for example there is a need to undertsand in more depth why tecahers might take a Level 3 Award rather than a Level 5 Diploma. Similalry particpants agreed that the data available on providers of ITE should be improved, inlcuding, if possible, greater clarity about the backgrounds of teacher educators. Whilst the possibility of mkaing the SIR mandatory was discussedviews were divided about how effective this might be. A range of suggestions were made and explroed about ways of increasing the power and qualoty of SIR data and about te potential forlikningit with other data sets with a view to improving identification of CPD neesd and tackling recruitment and retention issues.