Closing the Gap After Induction: Why ECT and RQT Support Needs Rethinking

Over the past year, as Starlight has grown across schools, one theme has come up repeatedly in conversations with senior leaders: we are asking more of early career teachers than ever before, while the system around them is becoming structurally thinner.

The new Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework, now sitting under the Early Career Teacher Entitlement, has rightly raised expectations. It has clarified content. It has strengthened areas such as adaptive teaching, SEND, behaviour and professional behaviours. It signals something important: induction should not be a tick-box. It should be developmental.

And yet the lived experience in many schools is different. Mentors are stretched. Meetings that are meant to be fortnightly slip under pressure. Between those sessions, an ECT may teach twenty or more lessons without any structured, evidence-based feedback. When you look at the retention data, the picture becomes even more sobering. Around one in three teachers still leave within their first five years, and England continues to record some of the highest early-career attrition rates in the OECD.

This is not a capability problem. It is a feedback frequency problem. The paper we have just published, Starlight for ECTs and RQTs, explores this in depth and sets out the structural case for doing something different. The central argument is simple: ECTs need feedback that is specific, timely, actionable and regular. The system currently guarantees the relationship. It does not guarantee the frequency. That gap matters.

Research cited in the paper highlights the strong link between teacher self-efficacy and retention. When teachers feel competent, when they can see evidence of growth, when they are experimenting with practice rather than surviving it, they are far more likely to stay. The first year in particular is psychologically fragile. Confidence dips. The protective structure of ITT has gone. The classroom is yours.

High-frequency, transcript-grounded coaching is not a replacement for mentoring. It is a multiplier. When an ECT records a lesson and receives private, evidence-based feedback within minutes, something shifts. Reflection becomes habitual rather than episodic. Mentor meetings become sharper because they are grounded in what actually happened, not vague recollections of how the lesson “felt”. What has surprised me most, however, is what happens after year two.

The term RQT is informal, but the third-year gap is very real Starlight for ECTs and RQTs. The reduced timetable disappears. The formal reviews stop. The mentor sessions end. In many schools, structured support falls away just as teachers are taking on subject leadership or additional responsibilities. It is precisely at this point that attrition accelerates. A small number of trusts have built bespoke RQT programmes. Most have not. The result is a professional cliff edge.

This is where scalable coaching becomes strategic rather than tactical. If we can extend the habit of reflection beyond induction, if we can give teachers a private developmental companion that does not rely on timetable generosity or mentor allocation, we remove the cliff edge. We turn growth into a flywheel.

From a leadership perspective, the implications are equally significant. Anonymised, aggregated trends across an ECT or RQT cohort allow trusts to design targeted CPD rather than defaulting to generic INSET. If questioning and formative assessment are consistently surfacing as development areas, then that becomes the focus. Coaching data informs CPD strategy rather than the other way round.

None of this works without trust. The paper is explicit about voluntary participation, separation from appraisal, teacher ownership of data and GDPR alignment. Early career teachers are particularly sensitive to surveillance. If a tool feels punitive, it will fail.

Coaching, not compliance. Insight, not surveillance. Growth, not grading.

The deeper question is this: if we accept that feedback drives improvement, and that improvement drives retention, why would we ration it?

We have built a national entitlement that rightly defines what early career teachers should learn. The next step is ensuring they experience that learning as a continuous, evidence-rich process rather than a sequence of isolated conversations.

The challenge is not designing another framework. It is increasing the frequency of high-quality feedback without increasing workload.

That is a structural problem. It requires a structural solution. If we are serious about retention, about teacher confidence, and about raising the quality of classroom practice at scale, then the early career phase is the most leverageable place to begin.

You can read the full research briefing here:

Starlight for ECTs and RQTs.pdf

Download PDF • 151KB

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The Insight Engine is written by Adam Sturdee, co-founder of Starlight, the UK’s first AI-powered coaching platform, and a senior leader with responsibility for teaching, learning and coaching. This blog is part of a wider mission to support educators through meaningful reflection, not performance metrics. It documents the journey of building Starlight from the ground up, and explores how AI, when shaped with care, can reduce workload, surface insight, and help teachers think more deeply about their practice. Rooted in the belief that growth should be private, professional, and purposeful, The Insight Engine offers ideas and stories that put insight—not judgment—at the centre of development.