Strategic aim two - Professional status

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To promote the professionalism of teachers and trainers, and raise their standing by:

A. Celebrating the professional status of individuals through their teaching and learning qualifications, professional formation and achievement of QTLS or ATLS

B. Upholding the standards of professional practice

C. Promoting recognition for the profession.

Strategies

  1. To invest IfL membership with such significance that it is central to teachers’ and
    trainers’ professional journey and identity, and a source of personal pride to be shared with colleagues, employers and learners.
  2. To promote professional teaching and training within the sector as a career of choice, recognising and supporting the stages of each individual member’s journey.
  3. Ensure clear, fair and progressive membership levels, including the recognition of experience as well as qualifications, enabling all members to aspire to QTLS or ATLS, through to Fellow status.
  4. To promote IfL’s Code of Professional Practice to teachers and trainers, employers, the wider sector and the general public as a benchmark of a highly reputable and professional workforce, promoting and upholding it as a model of robust, considered and supportive professional practice.
  5. To help employers attract and support a broad range of teachers and trainers, developing greater parity of esteem with other professional communities and their professional and membership bodies.

Evidence of success

  • FE and skills teachers and trainers are proud of their profession and IfL membership, and are held in high regard by learners, colleagues, the sector and the general public.
  • Teaching and training in the sector becomes an attractive career choice for experts from business, industry, other professions and for graduates.
  • All post-2007 teachers and trainers and a significant number of those employed before that time hold, or are working towards, professional status through QTLS or ATLS.
  • FE and skills teaching professionals have parity of esteem with other professions.
  • Employers recognise the value of professional status through IfL membership and QTLS or ATLS, recruit accordingly, and they support teachers and trainers in their continuing professional development.
  • Employers recruit a more diverse teaching and training workforce.
  • Membership of IfL is recognised through certificates of membership, logos or initials, in ways that members value.
  • Colleges and providers increasingly trust their teachers and trainers to direct their
    own continuing professional development, exercise informed judgement, and they free
    up time so that teachers and trainers have greater flexibility for creativity and innovation.
  • Mutual professional recognition of status exists for teachers between the schools
    sector and FE and skills, with seamless pathways for movement between the two.
  • IfL’s Code of Professional Practice is held in high regard by teachers and trainers, learners, employers, the sector and the general public.
  • IfL has a high reputation amongst members, employers, partners and policymakers.
  • IfL works effectively with key partner organisations in relation to standards and
    qualifications for the profession and the workforce strategy developed by Lifelong
    Learning UK (2006) with the sector.
  • The professionalism of teachers and trainers is reflected in the strategies of partner
    organisations, for example, LSIS.
  • IfL becomes a world-class professional body.

Examples of what we will do

  • Promote the value of our members’ professional expertise and contributions to the nation.
  • Show the diversity of members’ backgrounds as a very positive feature of the profession.
  • Work with employers to engage their commitment to professional qualification, the
    IfL Code of Professional Practice and ongoing professional development for members.
  • Develop more ways for formal recognition of membership, including certificates, initials and progressive categories of membership.
  • Deliver effectively as the European ‘competent authority’ for professional teachers and trainers across Europe to aid inter-nation movement.
  • With partners, ensure that there is careers advice and opportunity for broadening
    professionalism as an expert teacher or trainer, and for promotion to leadership roles.
  • Use technologies to raise professional status, for example, an online register of professional members.
  • Celebrate teachers’ and trainers’ achievements at awards ceremonies.
    Outcomes for members
  • Members will feel that their professionalism is recognised more widely.
  • Members will be recognised as well-qualified and up-to-date, modern professionals,
    irrespective of the part of the FE and skills sector in which they work.
  • The diversity of teachers’ and trainers’ backgrounds is recognised as a real strength.
  • Members receive support from employers for their initial teacher training and for their ongoing professional and career development.
  • Members are proud to abide by their Code of Professional Practice.
  • Teachers and trainers know that their IfL membership is valued by employers,
    as demonstrated, for example, in job advertisements and recruitment practice.
  • Members feel that it is worthwhile to become increasingly well-qualified and
    expert teachers and trainers.
  • Members from groups often disadvantaged in their careers value the difference that IfL makes to their prospects. 
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