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The Starting Strong Teaching and Learning International Survey 2018 is an international survey of staff and centre leaders working in early childhood education and care (ECEC), administered in ECEC centres belonging to ISCED Level 0.2, and, as an option, centres providing services for children under the age of 3. The Conceptual Framework provides an integrated theoretical and analytical underpinning to the survey that articulates its research foci and links to existing knowledge and evidence and policy questions. The key themes include those mainly concerned with: ECEC staff-child interaction (process quality of staff-child interaction and monitoring and assessment of children's development, well-being and learning); ECEC centre characteristics (structural quality characteristics, pedagogical and administrative leadership, climate, and stakeholder relations); ECEC leader and staff characteristics (background and initial preparation, professional development, well-being, professional beliefs about children's development, well-being and learning, and self-efficacy); and the cross-cutting theme of equity and diversity in the child group.

The Greater Cambridge Greater Peterborough (GCGP) region is a highly prosperous area, with prodigious job growth. Assessing and understanding the skills demand of the present and future local labour market is therefore of great importance to inform policy discussions about skills development at the local level. This report uses the Employer Skills 2015 survey carried out by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills to assess the skills demand from the perspective of businesses. Analyses are conducted for four industry sectors that were considered particularly relevant for the local labour market in the region, namely Life Sciences, Information and Communications, Health and Social Work and Construction. [The report was commissioned by Cambridge Ahead and the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority.]

This Perspective explores the ways in which the growth of digital technology is impacting education and skills. The authors state that technology is not only more prevalent in people's lives, but its growing use will affect schools' curriculum, new digital skills in jobs, and the changing use of services. However, they point out that education establishments are not keeping up with the technology growth, that new skills will have to be learnt outside of only digital skills, and that digital technology could lead to increased social exclusion for different sections of our society.

This report explores the working conditions and flows of state-funded secondary school teachers in Cambridgeshire compared to a select number of other local authorities and to the English national landscape as a whole between 2010 and 2015. It also presents findings for different subjects, highlighting the situation for science, technology, engineering and mathematics related subjects. The analyses use the School Workforce Census data. Key Findings: (1) Working conditions for secondary teachers in Cambridgeshire are becoming less attractive. Compared to the national average, teachers in Cambridgeshire (a) are more likely to earn a salary within lower pay ranges, (b) are more likely to work part-time, and (c) since 2010 have seen an increase in their chances to work under fixed-term or temporary contracts. These conditions may be making Cambridgeshire less attractive than other Local Authorities (LAs) for teachers to work. (2) Cambridgeshire may be seeing insufficient replacement rates of secondary teachers. Our findings point to a larger gap between the proportions of new entries and the proportions of retirees in Cambridgeshire compared to the national level. The difference is even starker for teachers of STEM-related subjects. Overall, Cambridgeshire also experienced smaller proportions of entries and higher proportions of retirement than three other LAs which we examined in the analysis, namely, Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire and Inner London. (3) Teacher shortages are a real threat for Cambridgeshire. The analyses suggest that teacher shortages are a real threat for Cambridgeshire, since the replacement rates of teachers leaving their teaching posts are likely insufficient and given that increasingly less attractive working conditions were identified compared to the national situation. Recommendations: The findings suggest that unless greater numbers of new teachers are attracted and retained, experiencing a shortage of teachers may be imminent for Cambridgeshire. Therefore, collecting data on Cambridgeshire teachers specifically regarding their work satisfaction, reasons to join and leave the profession will help to better understand leaver and entry flows. Future research looking at housing prices and other costs of living in Cambridgeshire is needed to see how these may conflate with this reports' findings on teacher working conditions and flows. Such research can then inform future policy efforts to make the area more attractive to work. Appended are: (1) Counts of Teachers; (2) Distributions across Pay Ranges; (3) Teacher Pay by Subject Taught; (4) Data on the other Three Local Authorities; (5) Coding Details; (6) Variables Contained in SWF Census Data Extract; and (7) Potential Data Sources.

In March 2016, the Higher Education Academy (HEA) commissioned RAND Europe to conduct a literature review of research published since 2012, with the aim of identifying and summarising the key trends and issues in the literature on how "quality teaching" and its impact are currently being defined and demonstrated at higher education institutions (HEIs). While the assessment of "quality teaching", and its impact in higher education (HE) have historically been neglected by researchers (BIS 2016a), the context around higher education teaching is rapidly changing. Excellence in teaching has become more entrenched in higher education policy and in the educational strategies of academic institutions, and increasingly linked to the performance and assessment of these institutions (Skelton 2005). This report, and the discussion on defining and demonstrating "quality teaching" more broadly, is particularly timely given the imminent roll-out of the Government's Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), which intends to assess and monitor "quality teaching" for all higher education students in England, and at participating institutions in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. It will likely have a significant impact on teaching practice in the sector. A searchable Excel database (available from the HEA website) entitled "The searchable teaching quality literature dataset" contains the literature captured in this review and is divided into two sections: one tab for the literature that was cited in this review, and a second tab for the literature that informed this review. Both tabs contain the bibliographic information of all the literature contained therein. In addition, the tab for the literature cited in this review also contains information on what relevant themes are covered in each paper, as well as the national context(s) to which the report refers. An appendix contains the Methods, Inclusion Criteria, and Databases.

In 2008, the initial cycle of the OECD's Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS 2008) established, for the first time, an international, large-scale survey of the teaching workforce, the conditions of teaching, and the learning environments of schools in participating countries. The second cycle of TALIS (TALIS 2013) aims to continue the tradition of providing timely, comparable, and useful policy information regarding the conditions of teaching and learning environments to participating OECD countries, non-Member economies, and sub-national entities (TALIS participants). Understanding that recruiting, retaining, and developing teachers is a priority in all school systems worldwide, TALIS examines the ways in which teachers' work is recognised, appraised, and rewarded. In addition, TALIS assesses the degree to which teachers' professional development needs are being met. The study provides insights into the beliefs and attitudes about teaching that teachers bring to the classroom and the pedagogical practices that they adopt. Recognising the important role that school leadership plays in fostering an effective teaching and learning environment, TALIS describes the role of school leaders and examines the support that they give their teachers. Finally TALIS examines the extent to which factors are related to teachers' feelings of job satisfaction and self-efficacy. In an effort to continue to improve TALIS while simultaneously maintaining consistency, new directions for the study have been adopted for the second cycle. At the same time, many of the TALIS 2008 themes, scales, and indicators have been preserved. This approach serves the dual purpose of allowing for the analysis of trends and permitting the investigation of contemporary issues in teaching and learning. To achieve the multiple aims of TALIS, a well-developed conceptual framework is important. The original conceptual framework for the TALIS program was developed by a joint task force comprised of experts from the Indicators of Education Systems (INES) Network A (learning outcomes) and Network C (learning environment and school organisation). With the second cycle of TALIS, further development and extension of the conceptual framework are warranted. The Conceptual Framework contains an introduction and is then followed by three sections. Section I: General Purpose and Policy Relevance of TALIS elaborates on the general purpose and policy goals of TALIS and explains and justifies the type of context information needed to meet these goals; Section II: Knowledge Surrounding Themes and Main Indicators examines the conditions of teaching and learning that have been selected by the participating countries in a way that is relevant to the evaluation of the main policy goals, and themes; and Section III: Design of TALIS 2013 describes the overarching design of the main study. The addition of ISCED (International Standard Classification of Education) teachers is detailed, as is the necessity of ISCED-level specific instruments. Appended are: ISCED Levels. [Additional contributors to the report include: Mara Westling Allodi, Ralph Carstens, Jean Dumais, Ben Jensen, Eckhard Klieme, Peter Kloosterman, Paulína Koršnáková, Mareike Kunter, Tadakazu Miki, Sang-Wan Park, Svenja Vieluf, and Eva Wiren.]