Welcome to the Education and Training Foundation

What we do

We support teachers and leaders across the Further Education and Training sector to help them achieve their professional development goals for the benefit of learners and employers across England. In doing so, we help to transform the lives of individuals and communities across the country, unleashing potential and benefitting the economy.

Our work has three key principles at its heart:

  • The first is that we exist for the benefit of learners, something we achieve by improving the professional practice of teachers and leaders in the sector.
  • The second is that we exist as a means to an end, not an end in itself. We have no shareholders and make no profit. Everything we do is about helping our fantastic sector unlock the talents and potential of our learners and improving productivity, employability, skills and educational attainment.
  • And the third is that we exist to support professionals to be even better than they already are, identifying excellence and seeking to understand and disseminate it through collaborative practice. Although our work focuses on FE and Training, we bring in expert challenge and support from outside the sector.

Our Professional Development offer

We have a strong relationship with the Department for Education, which recognises our unique expertise and funds many of the programmes we deliver.

That support includes:

Additional support

As well as professional development programmes we support recruitment into the sector and provide key data and research.

We are also the guardian of the sector’s Professional Standards and home to the professional membership body for the sector, the Society for Education and Training (SET), whose 22,000 plus members we support. SET is responsible for the awarding of both Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills (QTLS) status and Advanced Teacher Status (ATS).