WIREDGOV

Teach First, the high-profile Government scheme which places graduates with good degrees in challenging classrooms, is helping to improve teenagers' exam results, new research from the IOE has shown.

A GCSE student taking eight subjects benefits by around one grade overall if there are Teach First recruits working in his or her school, compared to schools without such teachers.

The research was presented this week by Dr Rebecca Allen, at the annual BERA (British Educational Research Association) conference.

Dr Allen said:

"This lends strong support to studies from the US regarding the effectiveness of these types of teacher recruitment programmes."

Teach First, introduced under the Labour government in 2003, has also been a central plank of coalition schools policy, with Michael Gove, Education Secretary, having promised to quadruple the number of recruits over this Parliamentary term.

It sees graduates with degrees of 2:1 or better placed in schools with low exam results and/or large numbers of disadvantaged pupils after only six weeks' training. The scheme is billed as giving talented recruits the chance to make a difference as a teacher for two years before possibly pursuing another career, though just over half of those joining it stay in the classroom after this time.

For more information about the report, go to: http://www.bera.ac.uk/