School Direct offers two types of training places:

  • School Direct training programme. Open to all graduates, and is funded by tuition fees paid by the trainee, who may receive a bursary from the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL).
  • School Direct training programme (salaried). For graduates with three or more years’ work experience. The trainee is employed as an unqualified teacher by a school and their training and salary is subsidised by the NCTL.

School Direct places are usually given to lead schools on behalf of partnerships of schools. That means you can share responsibility for the training and employment of School Direct recruits.

Each School Direct partnership decides:

  • which accredited provider or providers to work with (a summary of Ofsted information for teacher training providers by phase and region is available, with further details available from the Ofsted website)
  • how the training will be structured
  • how funding will be split between the school and accredited provider
  • what places to request (phase and subjects), based on future employment needs
  • who to recruit

Lead schools are responsible for:

  • submitting a request for places to the NCTL
  • ensuring that candidates meet the School Direct and accredited providers’ entry requirements
  • ensuing that standard trainee recruitment timescales and processes are met
  • ensuring that places are requested in line with future staffing needs, as it is expected that the partnership will employ the trainee once they are qualified

Schools can recruit locally through their own recruitment processes, work with their initial teacher training (ITT) provider to use its marketing and recruitment processes, or use a combination of the two. Further details can be found in the Quick start guide for schools 2014 to 2015.

You may also be interested in our frequently asked questions, or read more about what funding is available on our funding pages.