September 2025: Early Career Teacher Entitlement (ECTE)
From September 2025, the ECT Programme will be renamed the Early Career Teacher Entitlement (ECTE). We will continue partnering with Ambition Institute, which has developed an updated curriculum in response to ITTECF changes. The ITTECF integrates initial training and early career development, ensuring a seamless transition for teachers. We will share updates throughout the year, with formal training scheduled for the Summer Term.
Curriculum Structure
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:
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Year 1 |
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Term 1: Creating the enabling conditions for learning |
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Term 2: Introducing pupils to new knowledge |
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Term 3: Enabling pupils to engage in high-quality practice |
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Year 2 |
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Term 4: Increasing challenge for pupils |
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Term 5: Working in education |
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Term 6: Reflecting, revisiting and embedding good teaching practices |
Workload Adjustments
- 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
- Self-study modules are designed to be accessed via Steplab every fortnight throughout the two-year programme. The Instructional Coaching cycle is also recommended to take place fortnightly.
- 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.