ISE Award winner Teach First explain how they transformed their selection process to improve the diversity of hires.

At Teach First, we believe that no child’s success should be limited by their background. This applies to every aspect of our work and underpins our selection model.

Our graduates are often inspired by our vision because of barriers they faced at school. This personal connection to our work is incredibly important, giving many of our trainees a passion and drive to achieve the best for themselves and their pupils, alongside an ability to relate to the challenges affecting young people growing up in poverty.

Contextual recruitment

As an organisation that cares deeply about the impact of educational disadvantage, we were among the first to challenge academic attainment as a marker for excellence, removing A-level requirements and introducing a contextual recruitment tool in 2017.

This allowed us to consider grades achieved at school or college in the context of each applicant’s experience and to recognise the distance travelled by graduates who have overcome adversity.

This dramatically improved the diversity of our trainees, whilst maintaining the quality that our high potential graduates have become known for.

A new approach

We wanted to expand upon this work, particularly as our research exposed a concerning lack of representation within the national teacher workforce, and highlighted the transformative power of authentic role models, and the part they play in shaping the life outcomes of children.

We knew the scale of change we envisioned would require an extended period of continuous improvement with time to monitor and evaluate discrete initiatives.

We began by critically analysing our selection model to identify and remove aspects that were likely to disadvantage applicants from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. We then researched the best ways to assess for potential, which led to our five-year plan to transition to a Development Centre (DC).

Transitioning to a Development Centre Model

We adapted our competency framework to identify potential by simplifying our behavioural indicators and removing those related to experience rather than behaviour.

We increased scenario-based exercises, introducing a problem-solving task in which candidates responded to a real-world problem they were likely to face as a teacher.

We removed the competency ‘leadership’ because it advantaged those with access to professional networks and was not statistically predictive of leadership potential.

We created opportunities to provide candidates with live, actionable feedback, initially embedding this into the case study, and later, designing a two-part ‘teach and re-teach’ exercise, in which candidates were provided with developmental feedback after their first delivery, and given the opportunity to reflect and redeliver the content again with adaptations.

Post-assessment exercises

We evolved a range of ‘Post-Assessment eXercises’ (PAX) to support candidate development at the selection stage and to test for trainability.

Candidates who miss our bar but demonstrate clear potential receive detailed feedback and tailored support before being reassessed.

Spurred on by the success and rapid progress of early PAX trainees, we have continually developed our PAX programmes, setting up a Candidate

Development team to lead this work. As well as providing a truly developmental pathway, this route benefits candidates who show true growth mindset, and allows us to rigorously assess for potential.

To date, there are 15 PAX routes, including a 3-day course delivered by Training Leads. Our dedicated team designs and pilots new tools in response to candidate development needs. The flexibility of this model allows us to continually test-and-learn, acting as an innovation hub for new selection tools.

In 2023 we launched ‘Enhance’, a pre-DC workshop for underrepresented talent. DC pass rates of attendees are in line with average, indicating we have successfully closed the gap.

Recently, we introduced a new competency, adaptability, to measure candidate response to on-the-day feedback.

Ongoing performance analysis of our PAX trainees suggests that response to feedback may be predictive of future success. We are keen to investigate this further and build on our commitment to developing lifelong learners.

Alongside changes to our model, we improved candidate experience through digital transformations, partnering with Blackthorn to offer candidate-led scheduling and a user-friendly online portal, and with TopScore to deliver an all-in-one assessment platform.

Working with TopScore, we built on existing technology to realise the final elements of our DC plan:
• Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scales, allowing assessors to score individual indicators within competencies so that discrete behaviours could be quantified (2022)
• Personalised feedback reports, including developmental statements linked to specific observed behaviours, alongside detailed reflections from each assessor (2024)

Impact

In 2023 we trained and placed 1,334 teachers in schools in disadvantaged communities, significantly outperforming the sector during a teacher recruitment crisis.

Our continual improvements drive diversity on our programme and across the teaching profession. The proportion of non-white and mixed heritage trainees has doubled in five years. Half of our trainees were the first in their family to attend university, 11% disclosed disabilities and 20% identified as LGBTQ+.

Our progress is evident from our cohort demographic data, particularly during the five-year transition to a Development Centre (cohorts 2019 – 2023).

We are incredibly proud of our 2023 cohort, in which 30% of trainees are from ethnic minority groups. This is a phenomenal achievement, whether you compare it against the national population (18%), the working age population (29%), the undergraduate population (28%), the national teacher workforce (15%) or with other graduate recruiters (Census 2021; DfE, 2002; National Statistics, 2023).

The positive impact of our work is further evidenced by research conducted by NFER, 2022, which compared Initial Teacher Training routes, and found significantly narrower margins between acceptance rates for ethnic minority and white applicants applying to Teach First.

Compared to the sector average, we have narrowed the gap by 50% for Black applicants and we are the only route into teaching where white applicants are not the highest performing group, with mixed heritage applicants demonstrating higher success rates.

This indicates we are making steady progress towards achieving a more equitable selection model.

Alongside exceeding diversity targets, the quality of our trainees has remained high. Independent research conducted by NFER in 2023, found that GCSE attainment was significantly higher in departments that had recruited a Teach First trainee and that our teachers were 12 times more likely to progress to senior leadership roles within three years.

Future focus

Although, our five-year plan has now been successfully implemented, we continue to look for new ways to improve.

This season our focus has turned to providing our partner schools with more information about what each of our trainees uniquely offers. This will support us to match each trainee to the right school and strengthen the transfer of knowledge between our recruiters, our training providers and our in-school mentors.

We hope that this will support our trainees continued development as they become brilliant teachers and leaders, acting as catalysts for social mobility within their classrooms, and beyond.

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