Since the demise of the National Strategies 1997- 2010 there has been shift towards teacher professional learning moving from central control to teaching schools and the Carter Review (2015) reinforced the role of schools as providers of teacher development (Mutton et al. 2017). The result has been an increase in competition and a neo liberal approach to the marketization of professional development for teachers with schools running professional development courses and competing for participants with HEIs, private training providers (Connell, 2013). All of this is against a backdrop of reduced school funding in real terms and an increase in compliance based trained such as safeguarding, PREVENT and Ofsted mandated inputs (Ince and Kitto, 2020). Simultaneously, there is a Northern Europe wide recruitment and retention crisis in the teaching profession (European Commission, 2013). As a response many schools have developed action research and evidence informed approaches to teaching and learning under a close to practice research ethos (Wyse, D., Brown, C., Oliver, S., Poblete, X., (2018) becoming research schools and developing professional learning communities which also serve as a retention and recruitment strategy (Coldwell, M,. Greany T,. Higgins S,. Brown C,. Maxwell B,. Stiell B,. Stoll L,. Willis B. and Burns, H. (2017). The English government’s response to the crisis in recruitment and retention is their Early Career Framework (ECF) policy initiative (DfE, 2019). This professional development programme is designed to provide high quality support for ECTs and their mentors so that they can be good teachers and will stay in the profession. According to the policy: It is essential that ECTs are able to develop the knowledge, practices and working habits that will set them up for a fulfilling and successful career in teaching. At the heart of the DfE’s Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy is a commitment to transform support for teachers at the start of their career (DfE, 2019:25). The ECF strategy was launched in January 2019 and will be implemented in early roll areas in the Northeast of England in September 2020. This paper reports on the development and implementation of the ECF roll out against the wider policy and practice landscape of close to practice research and professional learning communities as approaches for transformative professional learning and development.

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