The Early Career Framework: Origins, outcomes and opportunities

Teacher quality is widely reputed to be the key determinant of educational success for students. Teachers at the beginning of their career need support and guidance in providing a sustained, high quality experience for their learners. The role of continuing professional development (CPD) is crucial in honing and refining the knowledge, understanding and skills of teachers. Effective CPD can also provide teachers with the self-efficacy needed, particularly when they start teaching, to stay in the profession. With teacher shortages reported across the globe, and up to one third of teachers in England leaving the profession by their fifth year in teaching, CPD is an attractive solution to retain teachers.

The Department for Education have established a mandatory CPD framework for all early career teachers (ECTs) teaching in schools in England – The Early Career Framework (ECF). Tanya Ovenden-Hope (Editor) brings together insights from those most closely connected to the ECF; the training providers, school leaders and academics involved in understanding the efficacy of professional development and learning in schools. Ovenden-Hope offers an historical record of the ECF, showing where it came from, what it offers now for schools and early career teachers (ECTs) and the challenges and opportunities for development in the future.

Professor (Dr) Tanya Ovenden-Hope PFHEA FCCT FSET is Professor of Education and Dean of Place and Social Purpose at Plymouth Marjon University, UK. Tanya is also a Visiting Professor at Canterbury Christ Church University, an elected Council Member of the British Educational Research Association (BERA), elected Board Member of the International Council for the Education of Teachers (ICET) and invited Advisory Board Member for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Teacher Development Fund. With over three decades of cross-sector experience in Education (schools, colleges and universities) as a teacher, teacher educator and leader, she holds a number of invited voluntary roles for Education organisations, charities and trusts, ranging from trustee to research advisory board member.


The author of numerous papers, reports, articles and books, Tanya's research focuses on educational inequity, with particular attention on the relationship between place, school context and teacher recruitment and retention. Her research findings on coastal schools, rural schools and small schools, and subsequent conceptualisation of Education Isolation, have been used to re-frame thinking (internationally) on place-based inequities experienced by some schools, and to create interventions to level up opportunities for these schools.