Teach First to offer primary posts - graduate jobs

Some of Britain's brightest university graduates will be encouraged to teach in primary schools in several regions across the country at the start of the next school year after a charity announced plans to expand its teacher training scheme.

Teach First, which is known for recruiting and training top graduates to work as teachers in England's most challenging secondary schools, will place up to 80 teachers into primary classrooms for the first time from this September.

Teach First's aim is that eventually 5% of all teachers in primary schools in challenging circumstances will have graduated from the charity's teaching programme.

The move was announced following a successful Proctor & Gamble-funded pilot scheme, which saw 50 teachers placed in 27 primary schools in London.

Brett Wigdortz, Teach First founder and chief executive, said: "We are committed to addressing educational disadvantage and in order to do this we need to engage with children as early as possible, and that means placing inspirational teachers into primary schools in challenging circumstances.

"We recognise the very specific needs of primary pupils and have taken great care to ensure our teachers will receive the best training available including a thorough grounding in key skills such as literacy and numeracy teaching, how to engage parents in their children's learning and encouraging positive behaviour for learning."

Teach First currently operates in six English regions - East Midlands, London, the North West, the North East, the West Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber. Since its inception in 2002, it has placed 2,250 teachers in more than 250 secondary schools.