In September 2025, Ambition’s ECF Curriculum will have 4 strands (formerly 3):

• Behaviour
• Instruction
• Curriculum & Assessment (previously called Subject)
• Professional Practice (new)

ECTs will engage with content across multiple strands within each term, making learning more responsive to the challenges they face in the classroom. This moves away from ECTs one strand per term.

Each term will focus on an overarching theme, with modules selected from different strands to support deeper understanding:

• ECTs will have two weeks per self-study module across both years of induction, allowing more time to absorb learning and practice implementing changes effectively.
• Ambition are moving away from Year 1 being content-heavy and Year 2 focused only on revisiting.
• Term 1 will now include five self-study modules instead of six, giving ECTs time to settle into their schools and complete their orientation before diving into self-study.

• Self-study modules are designed to be accessed via Steplab every fortnight throughout the two-year programme. 
• The new modules are pitched at a higher level of expertise than in the current programme, in recognition of the new ITTECF framework.
• Ambition have refined and strengthened their diagnostics to help ECTs and their mentors to best tailor the programme to their needs. Diagnostic points will now be even more embedded across the programme.
• Ambition have increased the range of exemplification provided, to help ECTs to ‘see’ key ideas in practice. ECTs will find examples from all phases, key stages, a wide range of subjects and SEND. They will encounter newly written examples covering post 16, practical subjects and early years. They are therefore much more likely to read examples that match their current experience of classroom practice. 

Supporting students with SEND in mainstream

SEND is an important and national priority, Ambition are making this more prominent in the ECF content.

ECTs will see a more explicit exploration of how to support teachers to build their practice in:

• Conference 2: on Adaptive Teaching

• Clinic 2: Working with others

• Clinic 6: Supporting all pupils

• Module 2.6: Understanding pupil need and inclusion

• Module 3.6: Adapting lessons to meet pupil needs

• Module 5.2: Specialist provision

Supporting teachers in specialist SEND settings

For ECTs in specialist SEND settings, Ambition have added specialist SEND examples to a range of self-study modules and to every clinic. Ambition have developed a wider range of clinic materials to suit different audiences.

There will also be versions of each clinic that are specifically designed for either a Primary, Secondary or Specialist SEND audience.

There will be a specialist version of ECT Conference 2 by working in collaboration with leaders in specialist SEND settings. This conference focusses on adaptive teaching, which can often look quite different in mainstream versus specialist SEND settings. We firmly believe that this will go a long way in responding to the feedback we have heard from you on SEND provision.

This new strand, professional practice, will support ECTs to effectively work on their own professional development when the ECT programme is no longer available.  

Term 5 modules  

In the second year of the programme, Ambition are adding a range of modules from the new fourth strand, ‘Professional Practice’, into Term 5. This strand builds a wider understanding of working effectively as a professional in the education sector. For example, the strand includes modules designed to help ECTs to think, plan and prepare for life beyond the ECT programme.  

We want them to consider:  

• How to make thoughtful and successful improvements to their practice without the support of a mentor  

• How to identify and meaningfully engage with high-quality, reliable evidence and research  

• How to approach taking on additional responsibilities whilst also having a good work-life balance  

Term 6  

The final term of the two-year programme is predominantly focused on ‘Professional Practice’, which creates space for ECTs to take their time developing a single area of pedagogy. There will be a diagnostic tool introduced at the beginning of this term to help ECTs to identify a specific area of their classroom practice to develop. They will then be guided on how to plan and implement this change in their classroom. 

We hope this change will bring the golden thread to life and encourage our ECTs to become life-long learners in education. With strong foundations, some may choose to pursue NPQs, and many will feel confident to stay in education for years to come. 

Compulsory mentor training is being reduced to one year, although the responsibility to mentor an ECT will continue across both years.

Mentor Events

Mentor training will take place across one year, with only one clinic taking place instead of two.

 • Term 1 - Conference 1: Developing high-quality instructional coaching

• Term 2 - Conference 2: Adapting the instructional coaching model to ECT expertise

• Term 3 - Clinic: Providing challenge through instructional coaching

Additional Mentor Training & Support

• Coaching for mentors

• Mentoring and coaching development area on Steplab – 12 bitesize modules for mentors to engage with and a video example of a full instructional coaching conversation

• Guided and unguided coaching simulators on Steplab

What stays the same?

1. Mentor meetings will continue to be held weekly in Year 1 and fortnightly in Year 2.
2. Instructional coaching continues to be the best way to support ECTs in making effective, long-lasting changes in their practice- this will remain as the core element of coaching.
3. Coaching/ support will need to be logged on Steplab weekly (Year 1) or fortnightly (Year 2). 

What is changing?

• We firmly believe that instructional coaching is essential. However, we want to balance this with the need that ECTs have for pastoral support. We are introducing the option of pastoral meetings each fortnight in year 1 ECT-mentor meetings.
• This could encompass a wide range of issues, such as managing and planning parents' evenings, tutor groups, wellbeing, phone calls home, and workload to name a few. The content of this would be based on ECT needs and decided by the mentor.

This diagram suggests what a typical half-term for a Year 1 ECT would look like, receiving fortnightly Instructional Coaching and fortnightly pastoral meetings.

Responding to the needs of the variety of contexts our ECTs work in, and the feedback we get from clinics, for the September 2025 cohort, we will be using Ambition’s new specialised content to contextualise learning even further. 

For each clinic, there will be a choice of a Primary, Secondary and Specialist SEND pack. The exemplification will predominantly be examples from that specific phase or setting.

We choose to run specialised ECT clinics because:

• We want to build strong relationships and networks between same-phase colleagues.
• We support several specialist SEND settings, and we want them to have a bespoke experience.
• We split our cohorts into specific groups and have a specialist visiting fellow from that background delivering the session.
• We want ECTs to see a range of examples that are closer to the context that they teach in.