1. The University of Sheffield School Direct – the story so far… Bryony Black, Director of ITE

2. Brief history of SD at Sheffield… 2012 – crisis. Very little school direct involvement + grade 2 Ofsted = catastrophic cut in numbers (from 150 to 30). 2012 – recovery. Partnership school applied for SD places, and as a result both core and SD were increased, taking us back up to 100 places for 2013-14. 2013 – numbers reduced once again, then increased half way through the 2014-15 recruitment cycle. Result – 80 out of 100 places filled.

3. 2015-16 allocation CoreSchool DirectTotal English077 Mathematics241236 Science21829 Geography8 (originally 3)816 History066 Languages14620 Total6252114 NB – dominated by science and mathematics – hardest to recruit to.

4. How SD works at TUOS: 3 main clusters All take our standard PGDE route All make full use of our admin team Very little distinguishes SD from core

5. Cluster A 10 schools Cluster in name only All originally partnership schools Meet at University twice per year 3 “cluster days” between September and January First week of school term in lead school Team approach to recruitment – all schools involved PGDE

6. Cluster B Teaching school alliance 2 main schools in cluster for 2014-15, expanding to 5 in 2015-16 Recruitment entirely led by lead school First week of school term in lead school For 2015-16, 5 “cluster days” following success of English and History inputs in 2014-15 PGDE

7. Cluster C Very small numbers – 3 languages and 2 geography Slight mystery as to why they include our students! Teaching school Lead school completely leads recruitment PGDE

8. Successes with our model… Closer relationships with some key partnership schools Made us re-evaluate our approach and consider whether it was a genuine partnership model. It was. Within one cluster, recruitment to teaching posts has been excellent. As we already knew the schools well, and they are working so closely with us, QA is not a challenge.

9. Challenges – over time Heavy reliance on strong recruitment to shortage subjects Ridiculously small numbers in English Very precarious position from year to year – impossible to plan ahead or build a strong team

10. Challenges - implementation Recruitment processes – a wide range of approaches for really quite small numbers (e.g. languages – 4 different approaches for 20 students). Schools beyond the lead schools are not always committed in the same way as lead schools – some don’t even realise they are part of a cluster… Contrasting recruitment successes of different clusters (buy-in of Head Teachers) Difference in approach between clusters frustrates students

11. The future Maintain and strengthen current clusters Approaches from a range of other schools/clusters – decisions to be made Supporting SCITTs?