Guidance for lead providers
Use this guidance to:
- understand lead providers responsibilities
- know how lead providers should interact with the Department for Education (DfE) and the ‘Register early career teachers’ service
- find where to manage data, funding and reporting
What lead providers are responsible for
Lead providers are responsible for delivering high-quality early career teacher (ECT) training based on the initial teacher training and early career framework. This includes:
- coordinating with delivery partners and schools
- ensuring ECTs and mentors receive the full programme entitlement
- submitting timely, accurate data to DfE
- managing changes to participant details and training status
- making sure declarations are correct so funding can be released
Where to manage participant training data
Lead providers must use the ‘Register early career teachers’ API to submit and update data about:
- early career teachers
- mentors
- training schedules
- programme declarations
- participant deferrals, withdrawals and reinstatements
- creating and updating partnerships
This data enables:
- delivery of training
- accurate payments
- oversight of participant progress
Testing and going live
Lead providers should use the sandbox environment to test sending data before moving to production when it goes live. This will help ensure:
- their integration works correctly
- errors can be fixed early
- payments are not delayed due to data issues
The sandbox works just like the live environment, but no real training records, payments, or notifications are sent.
To help get started, we recommend technical teams bookmark the Swagger API documentation so they can quickly find the latest information about endpoints, request formats, and validation rules.
Other interactions with DfE
In addition to managing training data, lead providers may also need to:
- submit reports and quality assurance data
- respond to DfE communications or data checks
- access funding statements and programme documentation
- collaborate with appropriate bodies on ECT progress and assessment
They’ll typically hear from DfE through:
- emails
- Slack messages
DfE also publishes release notes whenever it updates the API.