The Institute for Teaching has been launched in a bid to provide bespoke training courses to teachers.

Education secretary Justine Greening hopes that the institute will support and spread great teaching by providing training courses to teachers at any stage in their career. The government funding comes as part of the £75 million Teaching and Leadership Innovation Fund which aims to support new programmes that deliver knowledge and skills-based training for teachers.

The courses being offered include a “fellow’s” course aimed to help experienced teachers progress to  “teacher-educators” as well as a master’s in expert teaching for those who want to develop advanced techniques. The institute dubbed a “specialist graduate school for teachers” has been founded by a group of school alliances to address what they see as a growing need to improve the training and development of qualified teachers. The institute argued that research has shown schools are spending over £1 billion each year on teacher training and development but “most of it isn’t helping teachers to get better”.

The Institute for Teaching will target low-income communities, Matt Hood, the Institute for Teaching director said: “Having an expert teacher in every classroom is the best way to make sure that every pupil, regardless of their background, gets a great education. “To improve teaching, we have to improve the training teachers get.”

Hood argues that the issue with badges such as advanced skills teacher and lead practitioner is that the schools community spends “a lot of time trying to recognise expertise in the system” but puts nowhere near as much work into planning pathways to earn that expertise. Hood hopes that the Institute for Teaching will address this issue.