Ambition’s Early Career Teachers programme is “outstanding” says Ofsted

Early Career Teachers provides newly qualified teachers with two years of evidence-based professional development. An Ofsted inspection team visited us in May 2023 and spoke to a cross-section of the organisation, as well as delivery partners, trainers, mentors, headteachers, and our early career teacher participants.

It was our first inspection under the new Ofsted inspection framework and follows our successful first Ofsted Lead Provider Monitoring Visit in 2022.

We received outstanding grades across all areas of the inspection: overall effectiveness, quality of professional development and training, and leadership and management.

At Ambition, everything we do is driven by our mission: to help teachers and school leaders serving children from disadvantaged backgrounds to keep getting better.

This was recognised in an excerpt from the report:

“Equality sits at the heart of Ambition Institute. All parties involved in the programme share the same vision to train and develop educators who enable children from disadvantaged backgrounds to achieve the very best. Early career teachers are exceptionally well supported by Ambition Institute. A culture of learning permeates at every level.”

Highlights from the report included:

• The impact on early career teachers and their workload: Early career teachers are “exceptionally well supported by Ambition Institute”. They have “regular opportunities to revisit learning and deepen their understanding”, which enables them “to successfully build and apply their knowledge over time”. Their learning is “precise and impactful”, because of our “careful consideration of workload”.
• Collaboration with delivery partners: Our delivery partners “have a deep and consistent understanding of the curriculum”, that our quality assurance is “clear and transparent and a collaborative process”, and that “Ambition Institute’s values encourage high quality relationships at all levels”.
• Instructional coaching and support for mentors: Our mentor training programme is “extremely well thought of” by mentors, and resources are “of a very high quality”. The use of technology, including professional learning platform Steplab, supports mentors well. Instructional coaching is used “highly effectively”, so that mentors can tailor learning to each ECT’s stage of learning.
• High -quality programme design, materials, and trainers: Our programme is “meticulously planned with carefully considered design choices at all stages”. Quality assurance is “extremely strong” and “clear, transparent, and collaborative”. We recruit “high quality people” as trainers, and the quality of training is “exceptionally high”. We have “created a comprehensive range of exemplification materials”.
• Data and insights: We “gather an impressive range of qualitative and quantitative data” and use this to shape delivery and materials, utilising the “impressive range of information”.

We are very grateful to our colleagues, partners, and participants who took part in the inspection process.

As the report notes, everyone involved in the programme has a shared commitment to keep getting better. We will continue to listen to early career teachers, mentors, school and trust leaders, and our delivery partners to build on the feedback in this report.

The full report is available on Ofsted’s website.

For more information on Early Career Teachers, please visit our programme page.