‘Read 'The Trail' by Kafka for a good analogy’: UK teacher educator experiences of DfE Accreditation in England

The whole ITE sector in England has just been through a significant change, brought about by the Department for Education's ITT Market Review (DfE, 2022). We use the term ITE to reflect our thoughts on education versus training, the DfE use ITT (initial teacher training). Whilst the DfE DfE’s recruitment and retention strategy had promised streamlining of the ITT market, as it argued that doing so would make it easier to apply to teach, the review went further and recommended a whole sector accreditation process. Subsequently all providers were required to apply for reaccreditation in order to provide ITT from the 2024/25 academic year onwards, by way of a workload-intensive two stage process, where many providers lost accreditation in stage 1.