Since the Carter Review of Initial Teacher Training (ITT) (2015), which outlined the quality and effectiveness of ITT courses in England, there has been much change. This edition of STE begins with a potted history of that change, not to give specific detail about what has followed, but to provide an overview of the training landscape and thereby a context for the authors, who are teacher educators, early career teachers or trainees.

Andrew Chandler-Grevatt shares a passionate article about his experience of working towards accreditation while Ben Looker provides an institutional perspective. A conversation between ITE tutor Sally Spicer and one of her PGCE alumni from 2017/18 begins a section of this issue that focuses on new teachers’ experiences as they begin their careers in school and reflect on the challenges that they have faced.

This theme is continued in an interview between Ruth Amos, Lecturer in Science Education at UCL Institute of Education and her ex-student, Molly Westwood, which provides a secondary teacher perspective. Molly’s PGCE experience was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, as was the beginning of her career in school.

The following article describes an innovation in primary science ITE, the Primary Science Enhancement Award, following one teacher’s experience of this additional programme, in which she took part during her initial teacher education, and its impact on her early career. The Primary Science Teaching Trust Outreach Director, Alison Eley, summarises the programme’s aims and development in the first part of the article. The second part records a conversation between Associate Professor David Allen, Teaching and Professional Lead for Primary Science in ITE at the University of Hertfordshire, and Jade Plum, who is now in her second year of teaching at Cromwell Academy in Cambridgeshire.

We finish this edition with perspectives from primary trainees. First, an article from Naomi Owen and Naomi Scott, who are studying at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. We then conclude with an article from Charlotte Parmenter, who is training at the University of Strathclyde.