Education Business

More support for trainee teachers who want to work with severely disabled children has been announced by Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Ed Balls.

The pledge is in response to a review by Toby Salt, which calls for more to be done to attract and retrain teachers who want to teach disabled children in special schools and mainstream schools.

Balls announced a partnership with Teach First to bring top graduates into schools, particularly special schools, allowing them to gain the skills they need to teach severely disabled children and a new six-month specialist course for new teachers to enable them to be better prepared for their first job working with children with severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties.

Also, new arrangements to collect data on skilled teachers to manage supply effectively for the future and developed by the Training and Development Agency for Schools to ensure that every teacher has access to the quality professional development materials that they need to develop their skills.

Ed Balls said: "All children have potential and we want to support them to take part in school life, to achieve and to be happy throughout their education."

"That is why we are working to provide more and better training opportunities for graduates and newly qualified teachers and to monitor the supply of specially trained teachers so all young people with severe learning difficulties get the education they deserve."

Further information:
DCSF