A TEACHER training facility has been rated “inadequate” by Ofsted inspectors.

Cumbria Teacher Training of High Street, Workington, was inspected between May 10 and 13, and the facility which trains would-be teachers for primary and secondary school education has now been rated “inadequate”.

Their report reads: “This is because leaders have not ensured that trainees have access to a well-considered, well-planned training curriculum that prepares them to teach their subject or age-phase.”

The report also claims: “Leaders do not ensure that trainees benefit from effective support from programme tutors and mentors. Tutors and mentors lack clarity about what essential knowledge to teach to trainees and when.”

Ofsted’s report claims that Cumbria Teacher Training’s schooling could go further.

“Leaders do not ensure that trainees know about up-to-date or pertinent educational research. As a result, they are unable to apply this to the subject or age-phase that they are trained to teach. Trainees receive poor-quality mentoring and ineffectual targets for improvement.”

Four of Her Majesty’s Inspectors met with the facility’s leaders, directors and tutors.

Inspectors also met representatives of the West Cumbria Teaching School Alliance and representatives of Sheffield Hallam University.

The inspectors also spoke with three newly-qualified teachers, 19 primary-phase trainees and eight secondary-phase trainees.

In the section about what the facility does well and what it needs to do better, the report said: “Primary-phase trainees learn some essential knowledge about how pupils learn to read.

“All trainees develop some essential knowledge about the safeguarding of pupils. This includes county lines, radicalisation and female genital mutilation.”

However, it said: “Leaders lack ambition in their design of the teacher-training curriculum. They have not planned the content of their curriculum in any meaningful way."

They went on: “They do not successfully integrate the two PGCE modules that trainees study through a linked university into the training curriculum.”

The Ofsted report also claims that the training school does not meet the Initial Teacher Training compliance criteria which is statutory under the Department for Education.

Although the inspections were carried out in May, the report was published on July 14.

Cumbria Teacher Training was unavailable for comment at the time of writing.