THE BRADFORD teaching schools programme has proved so successful in recruiting new teachers it has had to expand its operation to take on even more.

Teaching schools train the next generation of educators, and there are currently five operating in the district.

They work as part of an alliance of primary schools, nurseries, special schools, secondary schools, academies, free schools, and Sheffield Hallam University.

Members of Bradford Council's Children's Services Scrutiny Committee have been given an update on the progress of the teaching schools.

Since the initiative started training teachers in 2014, it has recruited a total of 105 new teachers.

To become a teaching school, an educational facility has to have an outstanding Ofsted rating, and the lead Bradford teaching school is based at St Edmund's Nursery and Children's Centre, which was given its third consecutive outstanding rating last year.

The schools help improve other schools by recruiting and training new entrants to teaching, providing training courses, supporting school leadership and recruiting and training outstanding head teachers and subject leaders. People new to the teaching profession can learn on the job by working with other, high quality, teachers. It also means teachers can be sent to struggling schools, and successful schools can offer sport to improve less successful ones.

Christian Bunting, head of teaching schools, told the committee: "We hear about declines in applications for people to become teachers, but we find it is not the case. We run initial teacher training, and we have had so many good applications of people wanting to train to teach with us that we were over-recruiting. We had to increase our allocation.

"You do require a special commitment, and a commitment to the city, but we are finding it is not difficult to recruit teachers. There is a very positive feel about what we are doing.

"We've recruited about 105 teachers so far, and our training involves these people training with some of the best teachers in the city.

"Last year all but three of our trainees got jobs in Bradford schools."

The 'schools' are actually based over numerous buildings, and Anne Marie Merifield, head of St Edmunds, said: "Because we don't have a building to support we can provide much more support to training the teachers.

"The success of these schools is a strong rebuttal to the claim that this city finds it difficult to recruit teachers."

She said it was important to reach out to as many people as possible, not just young graduates. She added: "There are some people who won't know it but they may be really good teachers."

Councillor Sinead Engel asked how diverse the trainees were, adding: "I know of some schools where there is one male teacher. Boys at that school aren't going to think 'I want to be a teacher.'"

Mrs Merifield said the split was "around 50/50" between men and women, and there were a significant amount of South East Asian heritage trainees, reflecting Bradford's diversity.