Dissecting the ITTECF

This article first appeared in SecEd Magazine’s ECT supplement in June 2025. To download the full guide for free, visit the SecEd website.

The Department for Education has published a new framework to support trainee teachers and ECTs which comes into effect in September 2025 (DfE, 2024)

The DfE hopes that the framework will help ensure high quality teaching and improve student outcomes.

The Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework (ITT-ECF) combines what was the Initial Teacher Training Core Content Framework (CCF) and the Early Career Framework (ECF) with the intention of ensuring that all new teachers receive three or more years of training underpinned by the best available evidence.

The original frameworks were designed to help trainee teachers and ECTs succeed at the start of their teaching careers. The DfE says that combining them means that teachers will get a more “joined up development journey beyond initial training into the early years of their career”.

As well as bringing the two frameworks together, the ITT-ECF has been updated to ensure it is based on the latest evidence, including new and updated content on how teachers should support students with SEND, high-quality oral language, and early cognitive development, and mental health.

Some background 

The CCF, first published in 2019, defined in detail the minimum entitlement of all trainee teachers. It set out the content that ITT providers and their partnerships were expected to use when designing and delivering their training programmes. The CCF aligned with the ECF to establish an entitlement to a three or more year structured package of support for all new teachers.

The ECF, meanwhile, was published in 2022 and set out what ECTs were entitled to learn about and learn how to do when they started their careers.

When it was published, the DfE said the ECF underpinned a new entitlement for two years of professional development designed to help ECTs develop their practice, knowledge and working habits. Previously, new teachers were only entitled to one year of induction support.

In January 2024, the DfE reviewed the two frameworks, a review which provided the rationale for replacing them with the combined ITT-ECF.

First, the review found that there was unnecessary repetition between the two frameworks. In contrast, the ITT-ECF includes new wording on progression, setting out how knowledge and skills should develop across ITT and through ECF-based induction, to reduce this repetition. 

The DfE states that: “A teacher’s understanding and confidence with the elements of teaching develops as they grow in experience, and that they require less expert support over time. But … this is not a linear process and ECTs should purposefully revisit the components of great teaching throughout their training to strengthen and deepen their expertise.”

As such, the DfE says that ECF programmes going forward will be consciously designed to build on prior learning, with delivery tailored to what each ECT needs to develop their expertise.

Second, the review found a need to contextualise the ECF programme to different settings and subjects. ITT providers will have the autonomy to incorporate the ITT-ECF as part of a full curriculum appropriate for the subject and phase that the trainee is training to teach. The DfE says it is vital that ECTs are able to “relate their training directly to their own specific contexts and needs”.

Third, the new ITT-ECF will provide more support with regards teaching students with SEND. Indeed, the new combined framework includes significantly more content related to adaptive teaching and supporting students with SEND, some of which has been adapted from the new National Professional Qualification (NPQ) for SENCOs to be relevant for trainees and ECTs. The DfE has also made some edits to existing statements to improve inclusivity for SEND throughout the framework.

Structure of the ITT-ECF

The ITT-ECF sets out two types of content: “Learn that…” and “Learn how to…” statements.

“Learn that…” statements are informed by the best available educational research. This evidence includes practice guides, rigorous individual studies, high quality reviews and syntheses, including meta-analyses.

“Learn how to…” statements are drawn from the wider evidence-base, including both academic research and guidance from expert practitioners.

The ITT-ECF is a minimum entitlement to training and not a full curriculum. The DfE says it remains for accredited ITT providers and ECF lead providers to integrate additional analysis and critique of theory, research, and expert practice as they deem appropriate.

The ITT-ECF standards for which there are “Learn that…” and “Learn how to…” statements are:

1. Set high expectations 
2. Promote good progress
3. Demonstrate good subject and curriculum knowledge
4. Plan and teach well-structured lessons 
5. Adapt teaching 
6. Make accurate and productive use of assessment 
7. Manage behaviour effectively 
8. Fulfil wider professional responsibilities 

Plan and teach well-structured lessons

In the remainder of this article I will delve into Standard 4 and its five criterion…

Criterion 1

I transform students’ knowledge, capabilities and beliefs about learning

In terms of transforming students’ knowledge about their capabilities, we need to make them comfortable with the discomfort of hard work because students must be challenged if they are to make progress and learn. 

So, how can we create a learning environment that is conducive to hard work and that convinces students they have the capability to willingly learn from mistakes, take risks, and know and do more? 

To my mind there are six core elements for such a learning environment. Students must:

1. Feel welcomed
2. Feel valued
3. Be enthusiastic about learning
4. Be engaged in their learning
5. Be eager to experiment
6. Feel rewarded for their hard work

Behind all these characteristics is a simple, albeit oxymoronic, aim: to ensure learners are comfortable with discomfort. In other words, we want our learners to know that the work they’ll be asked to do in our classrooms will be tough, that they will be challenged with hard work and made to think. We want our learners to know that there will be no hiding place in our classrooms – they must ask and answer questions and attempt everything we ask of them.

However, in so doing, we want them to feel safe and protected, we want them to be eager for challenge, and to willingly attempt hard work because they know that we have strung a safety net beneath them – yes, they might falter but we will catch them if they fall.

We also want our learners to know that taking risks and making mistakes is not just accepted in our classrooms but is positively and proactively welcomed as an essential part of the learning process. 

Our learners are not at the point of automaticity and so must make mistakes if they are to get better in our subject. If they don’t make mistakes, they cannot receive feedback; if they don’t receive feedback, they will not know how to improve; if they don’t know how to improve, then they are unlikely to do so. 

There are many ways of achieving an effective learning environment in which learners are comfortable with discomfort: some are simple common sense; some are more complex. Let’s take each of the six hallmarks I listed earlier in turn and discuss some tangible ways of achieving them.

1, Feel welcomed: The best – and simplest – way of achieving this is to physically welcome students into our classrooms. For example, we could establish a habit of greeting learners at the classroom door at the start of every lesson and do so with a smile and by greeting some learners by name. For some learners in some contexts, that might be the first time someone – an adult, at least – has acknowledged their existence. If we can’t show our learners that we are pleased to see them and eager to teach them, then can we really expect them to be pleased to be in our lesson?

2, Feel valued: We achieve this by making sure we’re on time and have a lesson planned and ready to go. We create a culture whereby everyone’s contributions are welcomed and given the time and attention they deserve. This might involve explicitly teaching and repeatedly reinforcing, not to mention modelling, debating skills such as active listening. Valuing each learner’s contribution is not the same as agreeing with everything they say. Indeed, if a learner gives a wrong answer, then they need to know it is wrong and why. But a learner’s response doesn’t have to be right for it to be useful. 

3, Enthusiastic about learning: This is, in part, achieved by developing learners’ intrinsic motivation but this isn’t always possible and is rarely easy. So, another tangible, teacher-led strategy for enthusing learners is to model that enthusiasm by constantly articulating – through our words and actions – our joy at teaching our learners and at teaching our subject. In this regard, sometimes a little over-acting goes a long way. It is better to be considered the kooky, eccentric teacher who’s truly, madly, deeply in love with science, say, than the boring one who never cracks a smile.

4, Engaged in their learning: What is “engagement” and why does it matter? Fun is never our goal as teachers; we don’t need learners to enjoy our lessons to learn. We need them to think about the right things. If they happen to enjoy what they do, then that’s a bonus. But “fun activities” are not our guiding star; rather, thinking hard but efficiently about curriculum content is. 

5, Eager to experiment: I have already said that taking risks and making mistakes is an essential part of the learning process; it is not just to be accepted but to be positively and proactively welcomed in our classrooms. We therefore want to instil in learners the importance of practice, of drafting and redrafting work until it is the best it can be.  Our motto should be this: If it isn’t excellent, it isn’t finished.  

6, Feel rewarded for their hard work: Rewarding hard work and effort not only creates a level playing field on which every learner has equal chance of scoring a goal (because everyone can try hard, after all), it also makes explicit the progress each learner is making from their individual starting point. Not every learner can achieve a grade 9 or an A*, but every learner can improve to beat their previous score.

Criterion 2

I introduce new material in steps, explicitly linking new ideas to what has been previously studied and learned

Here I would like to focus on the need to articulate what learners are expected to learn and why, which brings me to the importance of sharing learning objectives and success criteria.

If you want to give learners a fighting chance of success, we need to explain what they are expected to learn, why that is important, and how that learning will be used later – including how it will be assessed. And the best learning objectives and success criteria do just that. 

Learning objectives are not lists of tasks. They do not articulate what learners will do in the lesson; instead, they articulate what learners will know by the end of the lesson, what they will take away with them.

Success criteria, meanwhile, set out what a good one looks like. They are measurable statements used to determine whether – or to what extent – learners have achieved the learning objectives. As such, learning objectives and success criteria are central to helping learners establish:

• Where they are in their learning.
• Where they are going.
• How they will get there. 

When writing objectives, I suggest we start at the end and ask: What do I want learners to know and do at the end of this lesson? What do I need learners to think about in the lesson in order for them to acquire that knowledge? 

Criterion 3

I help students understand new processes and ideas via modelling, and I make abstract ideas concrete and accessible. 

Once learning objectives have been written and shared, the most effective, expedient way for learners to acquire the information we have set out for them to acquire is for the teacher – that educated, experienced, expert at the front of the classroom – to tell them, then show them, what they need to know. This is the I Do–We Do–You Do approach. 

As such, at the start of a new teaching sequence, we should make effective use of direct instruction – which is another way of saying teacher explanations and modelling. Here are four features of effective explanations:

1. Reduce the difficulty of a task during initial teaching – present new material to learners in small “chunks”.
2. Provide scaffolds and support – model a new procedure by, among other strategies, thinking aloud, guiding learners’ initial practice, and providing learners with cues.
3. Give supportive feedback – provide systematic corrections and feedback, as well as expert models of the completed task.
4. Offer opportunities for extensive independent practice – give learners plenty of opportunities to try out new knowledge and skills.

Criterion 4

I guide, scaffold and provide worked examples that help students apply new ideas, but are gradually removed as student expertise increases.

Scaffolding is a feature of adaptive teaching. The idea is this: we teach the same curriculum to all and have high expectations of all. We give learners the same activities to do in class and assess them with the same rigour. This ensures every learner, regardless of background, starting point, and additional need, is afforded an equal opportunity to succeed; they are given access to the same ambitious content. But, to make sure they can access it, we sometimes need to scaffold the task initially. Task scaffolding, like the scaffolding on the side of a building, is a temporary support structure which enables learners to access more challenging content. The scaffolding should be taken down as soon as possible so that learners become increasingly independent.

Scaffolds might be live, which are ‘in the moment’ tweaks made in response to ongoing formative assessment and/or learner observation, or they might be planned, which are regular additional support given to those learners with known needs. Scaffolds might be visual – such as giving a learner a task planner, a list of small steps to take to complete a task, worked examples, images that support vocabulary learning, etc.; they might be verbal – such as explaining a task in more explicit terms and in smaller steps, repeating an instruction, reteaching a difficult concept, using questioning to address misconceptions, etc.; and they might be written – such as a word bank, a writing frame, sentence starters, and so on. 

Visual, verbal and written task scaffolds are forms of additional or different types of support we can offer learners to help them get started with the same task as their peers. But we can also vary the size and style of a learner’s finished product to ensure equity. 

Criterion 5

I explicitly teach students metacognitive strategies linked to subject knowledge, including how to plan, monitor and evaluate, which supports independence and academic success

Metacognition describes the processes involved when learners plan, monitor, evaluate and make changes to their own learning behaviours. Metacognition is considered to have two dimensions: 

• Metacognitive knowledge
• Self-regulation

Metacognitive knowledge refers to what learners know about learning. This includes:

• The learner’s knowledge of their own cognitive abilities (e.g. I have trouble remembering key dates in this period of history).
• The learner’s knowledge of particular tasks (e.g. The politics in this period of history are complex).
• The learner’s knowledge of the different strategies that are available to them and when they are appropriate to the task (e.g. If I create a timeline first it will help me to understand this period of history).

Self-regulation, meanwhile, refers to what learners do about learning. It describes how learners monitor and control their cognitive processes. For example, a learner might realise that a particular strategy is not yielding the results they expected so they decide to try a different strategy.

Put another way, self-regulated learners are aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and can motivate themselves to engage in, and improve, their learning. 

In practice, metacognition and self-regulation might take the following form:

The planning stage: Learners think about the learning goal the teacher has set and consider how they will approach the task and which strategies they will use. Learners will ask themselves: what am I being asked to do, which strategies will I use, and are there strategies I have used before that might be useful?

The monitoring stage: Learners implement their plan and monitor the progress they are making towards their learning goal. Learners might decide to make changes to the strategies they are using if these are not working. Learners will ask themselves: is the strategy I am using working and do I need to try something different?’

The evaluation stage: Learners determine how successful the strategy has been in terms of helping them to achieve their learning goal. Learners will ask themselves: How well did I do, what didn’t go well, what did go well, and what could I do differently next time?

The reflection stage: Reflection is an integral part of the whole process. Encouraging learners to self-question throughout the process is therefore crucial.

Study skills 

Teaching study skills is about breaking down broad tasks into their constituent parts, modelling each process, then providing opportunities for learners to practice and refine them. For example, if an assignment requires learners to research information for an essay, you must explicitly teach them how to use multiple sources, how to skim and scan for key facts, and how to distinguish between fact and opinion and detect bias. 

You must then teach them how to use evidence to support an argument, including how to embed quotations, and how to write a bibliography citing their sources. 

Before learners write their essays, we must teach them how to craft a logical argument. If we expect learners to work independently, perhaps drafting and re-drafting work based on feedback, and to do so outside of lessons and without our support, we must teach them how to manage and organise their time, how to avoid cramming by distributing and spacing practice, and interleaving study topics, and how to self-assess then re-draft, referring back to the success criteria. 

Likewise, if we expect learners to engage in classroom debates, we must teach them active listening skills and turn-taking, as well as how to agree or disagree with someone else’s contributions.

If you expect learners to adopt a growth mindset, willingly accepting and acting on feedback, taking risks and regarding mistakes as an integral part of the learning process, then we must teach and model resilience. 

Other study skills we might teach to our students include:

Note-making: Rather than note-taking, note-making is about forming a point of view, reasoning, analysing, and weighing statements and arguments, to develop a sense of curiosity and wonder. Learners’ notes should be the result of analysis, evaluation and synthesis; they should provide a thoughtful summarisation of the key points rather than be verbatim transcriptions of what the teacher has said. Perhaps learners’ notes could consist of flashcards or blank spaces on which to test themselves later.  I favour the Cornell model of note-making because it promotes active processing and subsequent retrieval practice. It’s easy to teach and simple to incorporate into any lesson. 

Self-explanation: When studying a topic, if a learner were using self-explanation, they would try to explain how new information is related to information that they already know. Learners can also self-explain when they solve problems of any sort and decide how to proceed; they merely explain to themselves why they made a particular decision. One reason this strategy (and note-making too) can promote learning and comprehension and boost problem-solving performance is that they encourage learners to actively process the content they are focusing on and integrate it with their prior knowledge. 

Dual coding: We receive information through two primary pathways – auditory (for the spoken word) and visual (for the written word and graphic or pictorial representation). Learning increases when we convey study material both verbally and through graphics that convey key concepts and ideas. Graphics include illustrations, diagrams, and flow charts, as well as animation or video. Simple images in drawings or photos are not sufficient, unless they are carefully chosen to convey entire concepts. What works for the teacher also works for the learner and so learners should make use of dual coding when writing study guides or even just scribbling revision notes to aid their self-explanation.

Linking concrete and abstract concepts: When engaging in note-making and self-explanation, learners should also try to link concrete and abstract concepts; they should try to find tangible examples that illuminate overarching ideas and explain how the examples and big ideas connect.Presenting concrete examples helps learners understand new ideas, while connecting those examples to abstract ideas allows learners to apply concepts in new situations.