The National Institute of Teaching: pioneering an evidence-informed approach to teacher professional development

The National Institute of Teaching is a specialist higher education institution for the teaching profession with a clear public mission: to improve teacher and leader development in England so that all children – particularly those facing disadvantage – receive the education they deserve. 

We were founded in 2022 after four large multi-academy trusts (MATs) successfully collaborated in a bid to establish a new institute of teaching. Our four founding MATs – The Harris Federation, Oasis Community Learning, Outwood Grange Academies Trust and Star Academies – each have a strong track record of educational success in under-resourced communities. 

Being born out of schools, we were designed to be different from teacher education providers. Our defining characteristic is our mission to improve teacher education at a system level, supported by our tightly integrated model that brings together research, data, and professional education within live school and training environments.

We believe this helps us bridge the long-standing gap between educational research and classroom practice, while remaining attuned and responsive to the real-time needs of schools and teachers.

The National Institute exists not simply to deliver teacher education programmes, but to function as the sector’s resource for testing, understanding, and sharing what works in teacher and leader development in England.

While quality of teaching is widely recognised as the most powerful in-school factor influencing pupils’ outcomes – particularly for vulnerable learners – there has historically been limited capacity in England to generate and mobilise applicable, context-specific evidence about how teachers develop, and how professional development can reliably improve practice at scale. We were created to address this through new national research infrastructure.

A teacher education laboratory embedded in real schools

Central to our approach is our function as a professional development (PD) ‘laboratory’, where researchers, teacher educators and schools work together in a single enterprise. Our research specialists are embedded with teaching teams and school partners across England, creating a continuous feedback loop between evidence and practice.

This integration allows us to design, trial, refine and evaluate interventions within the real constraints of classrooms, training programmes and school systems before they are shared more widely.

This model enables us to address what policymakers and educators often describe as the ‘last mile’ problem in education reform: the challenge of translating well-intentioned policy or high-quality research into effective, scalable practice without distortion.

By piloting and testing professional development approaches in live initial teacher education (ITE), early career, leadership and trust-level programmes, the National Institute generates evidence under real-world conditions. This approach has already informed national practice in areas such as intensive training and practice in ITE, mentoring, inclusive pedagogy and leadership development, demonstrating how research-practice integration can reduce the risk of ineffective or poorly implemented reform.

The Teacher Education Dataset (TED): a new national evidence asset

Supporting this laboratory model is the Teacher Education Dataset (TED), a nationally significant data asset designed to address a longstanding evidence gap in teacher education.

Historically, England has lacked a robust longitudinal dataset that links teachers’ characteristics, training and practice with children’s educational outcomes, limiting insight into questions that are critical for policy, leadership and provider decision-making. TED fills this gap by securely linking anonymised data from thousands of teachers and pupils across a growing network of schools and trusts, enabling analysis at a scale and level of relevance previously unavailable in Europe.

TED is the analytical backbone for the National Institute’s research–practice integration. It allows us to examine questions such as how teacher effectiveness develops over time, how training routes and experience interact with pupil needs, and how teaching practices support outcomes for disadvantaged learners and those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Crucially, TED is not an abstract research database; it is designed to inform real decisions made by school leaders, system leaders and policymakers. By grounding analysis in English schools and subjects, TED avoids over-reliance on international proxies and ensures that evidence reflects the realities of the national context.

The Evidence Portal: translating research into professional action

A third pillar of the National Institute’s model is our Evidence Portal. While high-quality research on teacher development exists globally, it is often inaccessible, fragmented or difficult to apply in practice. The NIoT Evidence Portal addresses this by synthesising hundreds of systematic reviews into a living meta review, and translating the resulting findings into a single, trusted resource for those designing and delivering teacher education and professional development.

What makes the Evidence Portal distinctive is its explicit focus on practitioner use. Alongside research synthesis, it provides structured tools, exemplification, and ‘in-practice’ case material drawn from schools that have implemented evidence-informed approaches successfully.

The Portal is itself treated as an intervention: it is piloted, evaluated and refined to ensure it supports real changes in practice, particularly in schools serving disadvantaged communities. In this way, insights generated through the PD Laboratory and TED are rapidly fed back into the system, creating a virtuous cycle of evidence generation and application.

A unique proposition within teacher education

Together, the PD Laboratory, TED and the Evidence Portal constitute a set of national public assets that we believe have transformative potential for education in England. The National Institute of Teaching’s contribution does not lie merely in the fact that we do research, but in the depth of our school-led, research–practice integration.

As a specialist, practice-focused HEI, we aim to contribute to national research infrastructure and strengthen the policy evidence base while enhancing the quality and impact of professional education. 

In an education system facing persistent inequality, workforce pressures and ambitious reform expectations, the National Institute aims to enhance and complement the work of all those engaged in teacher education, both within and around schools, so that all children can benefit from schooling that sets them up for a life of choice and opportunity.