Funded by the Department for Education, Future Teaching Scholars represents an innovative route into teaching, designed to support students with the potential to become outstanding maths and physics teachers. This potential was formally assessed as part of the Scholar application process, and forms part of our research into teacher development.
Aims of the FTS Programme
In addition to producing outstanding teachers, a key aim of the FTS Programme is to increase the retention rate of teachers in both maths and physics – two subjects for which there are recruitment challenges. 32% of NQTs (now known as ECTs) who qualified in 2016 left the teaching profession within five years.
Our Scholars boast above national average teacher retention rates – with 90.4% of Scholars who started their Initial Teacher Training (Year 4 of the FTS Programme) remaining in the profession after three years.
Furthermore, some of our Scholars have already begun to progress in their teaching career, moving into middle leadership roles such as Head of Year, Deputy Head of Maths and KS4 Coordinator within just three years of teaching.
Read more about our Scholars and their experiences on the Future Teaching Scholars programme.
FTS Programme statistics
- 90.4% of Scholars who started their ITT remained in the profession after three years.
- 56% of our Scholars are female, and 44% are male. This breaks the gender gap widely observed across STEM subjects and occupations, which are traditionally male dominated.
- In the 2023-24 academic year, 90% of our Scholars continued their employment with the same school.
- 66% of Scholars who have graduated from the programme have opted to stay in our Alumni network. We have also had numerous Alumni Scholars present conference sessions, write case studies and participate in further activities with the programme.
Our research: what we’ve learned through FTS
A series of research has been published by Education Development Trust (EDT), the delivery centre for the Future Teaching Scholars programme, outlining the effect of support provided during the undergraduate phase on our Scholars’ Initial Teacher Training. This research led by Dr Richard Churches, Global Head of Research at EDT, has been documented in a series of papers: ‘Assessing the Potential to Teach’.
Key findings
- We conducted a four-year study which aimed to explore whether teaching potential can be accurately predicted through the use of assessment centres – with our Scholars as this study’s participants.
- Classroom simulation was the best predictor of a Scholar’s teaching ability compared with other selection activities used during the assessment centre.
- By the time our Scholars began their Initial Teacher Training (ITT), they were on average teaching at a level that was at least one academic term in advance of expectations.
Explore our research
Assessing the potential to teach (2023)
This report presents final conclusions about the FTS assessment centre’s predictive validity, and the standards of teaching achieved by participants at the end of their first term of teaching.