IfL registration and ITT providers

If you are a trainer, tutor or teacher working in LSC-funded FE and skills provision, you are required to register as a member of the Institute for Learning (IfL), to demonstrate that you maintain your teaching professionalism, and undertake at least 30 hours' continuing professional development (CPD) each year (prorated for part-time teachers) and abide by IfL's Code of Professional Practice.

Registration with the Institute for Learning (IfL)

After completion of the appropriate qualification (diploma for those in the full teaching role and certificate for associate teachers), all teachers in the learning and skills sector will be required to register with the Institute for Learning. This registration will confer Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills (QTLS) and the license to practise in the sector for those with the diploma. Associate teachers will receive the Associate Teacher, Learning and Skills (ATLLS).

IfL is the professional body for teachers and trainers and student teachers in the learning and skills sector. By supporting the professional needs of our members we strive to raise the status of practitioners across the sector. It is for teachers, lecturers and trainers who practise or are training to practise across the whole sector including adult and community education, further education and work-based learning. It is a membership organisation, run by and for its members.

Teachers in FE or specialist independent colleges should have registered by 31 March 2008. If you missed that deadline, you are advised to register without further delay.

Trainers, tutors and teachers delivering other LSC-funded further education provision – including those in adult and community, work-based learning, offender and voluntary sector settings – should have registered by 30 September 2008.

Teachers new to the sector from September 2007 need to register within six months of starting to teach, and will have to become licensed practitioners.

The government has agreed to meet the full cost of standard registration with IfL for teachers in LSC-funded institutions who register online, even if you are an FE college teacher and missed the original 31 March 2008 deadline.

A number of UCU members have contacted us to say they are being asked to re-register with IfL having already done so in March-April 2008: please refer to the IfL FAQs web pages

Log onto the IfL website for more information and to join.

Centres for Excellence in Teaching

The new ITT programmes will be delivered by ITT providers endorsed by Standards Verification UK, the standards arm of LLUK. As previously programmes will be both higher education programmes delivered either directly by higher education institutions and in association with FE colleges, and awarding body programmes usually delivered by FE colleges and drawing down LSC funds.

New Centres for Excellence in Teacher Training (CETTS) have been recently established. These are networks of higher education institutes, FE colleges, adult and community learning services and other providers of ITT. There are currently 11, some with a regional brief, some with a more local remit and other with a regional and national brief. The centres are intended to improve the quality of initial training and continuing professional development for teachers working for FE colleges or providers of work-based and adult and community learning. Their prime purpose will be to improve and develop practice in response to the national agenda for reform.

Each CETT will offer both initial training and continuing professional development (CPD) of a quality and standard that go well beyond minimum requirements. Those undertaking training (trainees, teachers, tutors and trainers) will benefit from a breadth and depth of opportunity to enable them to develop as excellent practitioners. CETTS are intended to be leading exponents and ambassadors of good practice, grounded in cutting edge action research.