Description

In 2003, an article in the Times Educational Supplement was headed ‘New staff unprepared for racially diverse classes’. The information came from the annual survey conducted by the Training and Development Agency, (TDA, formerly the Teacher Training Agency, TTA) to collect data from newly qualified teachers (NQTs) about the quality and relevance of their initial teacher training (TDA, 2003). The subheading stated: ‘Students are happy with their training but want more help teaching ethnic-minority pupils’.

Findings from the first three years have been published (Hall & Cajkler, 2008; Cajkler & Hall, 2009) and this occasional paper draws on those articles but also includes more recent data gathered in 2007 and 2008. The structure of the paper broadly mirrors the above articles, but we draw on data from 226 questionnaires and 26 interviews collected over five years.