Roadmap

This document explains what we’re working on to improve the register early career teachers service.

It sets out what we’re working on now, what will come next, and what we might pursue later.

By sending this out publicly, we hope to:

All of these items of work are related to our objectives as a team.

The services that make up Register early career teachers (ECTs)

Register ECTs, where schools register their ECTs and mentors to receive training and funding
an API for lead providers, where they can receive and send information about the training of ECTs and mentors to the DfE
Record inductions, where appropriate bodies can tell us an ECT is serving induction with them, and whether they’ve passed or failed
a joint admin and finance console to view information and aid in support queries for all our users

We decided to combine Record inductions and the rest of the services for training because:

induction data is used by these training services, so being closer together made sense
historically, there was a separate service for appropriate bodies to check ECT data submitted by schools, whilst now there can be one for them to do this and record inductions
in the future, we hope to try to deduplicate registration for schools, so appropriate bodies can just approve of information schools submit relevant to induction

To read in more detail what we’ve done so far, we recommend looking at our design history.

We launched the new register early career teachers service for schools and lead providers on the 28 April 2026. You can read more about the changes for schools from the service we replaced here.

We are:

responding to support tickets and queries after our initial release, so we can make improvements or fix bugs in the service as needed
adding API fields that will be helpful to onboard 2026 ECTs and mentors quicker, such as an ECT’s working pattern
preparing for opening registration for ECTs and mentors in the 2026 academic year
finish migrating data from the old service to the new and checking all migrated data is accurate, so we can ensure the data can be reliably used by all parties that depend on it
iterating our admin console so we can better support our users with any problems that arise

We will:

explore how we can reduce the workload burden of registration and management of ECT training and induction for schools
look at how we can improve the API to better meet the needs of lead providers and reduce their workload
explore extending our API so it can also meet the needs of appropriate bodies, so they can more quickly access induction data for teachers
make the service more sustainable, to save taxpayer money and reduce manual actions

We will:

look at how we can reduce the complexity of managing participants who don’t follow the “standard” pattern of training, so that we can simplify validation and make management of training easier for lead providers
improve how withdrawals and deferrals of ECTs and mentors are reported by schools and lead providers, to reduce workload and duplication for both users
work out how we will close the delivery of ECF in 2027, ensuring the approach is flexible and works for all our users internally and externally
improve how statuses work over the API, to make it clearer for lead providers the current state of a participant
work out how to notify school of changes that have happened in training or where they need to act in the service, so data is kept updated for training and funding to take place quickly