From fragmentation to chaos? The regulation of initial teacher training in further education

Over the last 10 years the system for training further education (FE) teachers in England has been the subject of almost continuous government reform. Following a critical Office for Standards in Education report in 2003, a new set of standards and associated regulations were introduced in 2006 by the then Labour Government to replace the earlier standards and regulations introduced by the Further Education National Training Organisation in 1999, which had had little time to bed down. The research reported in this article has been carried out with the support of the University Council for the Education of Teachers Post-16 Committee. Employing socio-cultural perspectives, it evaluates how the most recent regulatory regime is shaping trainees' learning and professional development. It explores how the 2006 standards, assessment units and regulations are influencing the curriculum offer, qualifications structure and pedagogical practice of teacher educators and trainees following courses run by university-led initial teacher training (ITT) partnerships in England. The broad finding is that despite a decade of reform, there is little evidence of the enriching of the experience of trainees on ITT courses that the government reforms envisaged. The fragmentation and impoverishment experienced by trainees learning to teach in the FE workplace remains a constant theme that the barrage of national standards, regulations and assessment units have done little to address.