Early Career Teacher Entitlement

Early Career Teacher (ECT) has replaced the former term Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) in England as of September 2021.

The DfE have updated the service, which is now called the Register Early Career Teacher (RECT) service and can be found on the DfE Sign-in platform. You will need to create a DfE Sign-in account if you haven’t used DfE Sign-in before.

Please use the following link to complete registrations:
https://www.register-early-career-teachers.education.gov.uk/

Once you have signed up your ECT on the RECT service, you will need to add them to ECT Manager. The link for ECT Manager can be found here:

ECT Manager

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or require support with this process.

ECTs are required to attend live training sessions once per half term.

For specific dates, times and locations for your facilitated face-to-face sessions, please check ‘My WTSH’ area of this website and choose your ECTE cohort.

If you cannot attend your live session, please let us know and catch up by watching a recorded version on the UCL Extend platform. Please ensure that you click the ‘mark as done’ button to register your engagement.

ETCs who work in eligible schools, hold a QTS certificate and have not completed statutory induction before, should be eligible for Department for Education (DfE) funding.

Schools and establishments eligible for DfE funding include:

• state-funded schools
• maintained and non-maintained special schools
• independent schools that receive Section 41 funding
• colleges
• sixth forms
• children’s homes
• nurseries

If your school is not eligible, you can arrange and self-fund the ECTE programme.

Regrettably, no funding was provided to cover this service, and it operates independently of the ECF/ECTE training. All Early Career Teachers (ECTs) must be registered with an Appropriate Body service before they begin their induction, and as they progress through the training.

There are a few possible reasons why you have been unable to log in and access your UCL Extend:

• You haven’t signed or received your Letter of Intent from UCL.
• You haven’t registered your ECT on the DfE portal. It will take two weeks for UCL to process the registration.
• You are not signing in with the same email that you registered with DfE.

If none of the above apply to you, please email us at enquiries@wandlelearningpartnership.org.uk, with extend@ucl.ac.uk cc’d in so that we can investigate further.

Eligible schools will receive backfill payments for each mentor to cover 36 hours of mentor training time off-timetable, over two years.

This funding will be made in arrears over two payments. The first payment, covering 18 hours of mentor time off-timetable for training, will be made in the summer of year 1 following mentors starting the training.

The second payment for the remaining 18 hours of mentor time off timetable will be made in the summer of year 2 where there has been sustained engagement with the training. Find more information about backfill payments.

When an ECT or Mentor is moving or leaving the school, this must be reported by the school on the DfE portal.

If you are an ECT or Mentor, please contact your school induction tutor and ask them to update this information via the DfE portal (https://manage-training-for-early-career-teachers.education.gov.uk).

If there are any changes in your ECT’s circumstances regarding the ECTE course, please inform us about them as soon as possible by emailing: enquiries@wandlelearningpartnership.org.uk

Change of circumstances may include:

• Career break
• Maternity/Paternity leave
• Changing or leaving the school

UCL uploads information to the DfE every Tuesday but there can be a time lag between information being provided and when it is transferred. There is nothing further you need to do as this will be sorted out between UCL and the DfE.

ECTs and Mentors need to complete the End of Module Evaluation Forms by the end of the modules they are working on themselves.

Mentors with multiple ECTs can answer questions related to them in the form with one or all of their ECTs in mind.