Partnership Vision
Liverpool Hope University’s ITE partnership is founded on a shared commitment to the development of high-quality, reflective and resilient teachers, through collaborative, curriculum-led training delivered across centre based and school based contexts. The partnership brings together the University, Training Partners, and settings hosting trainees for professional placement experience, each contributing distinct but complementary expertise to the delivery of the accredited ITE curriculum.
Training Partners work with the University to deliver delegated elements of the ITE curriculum, including aspects of training design, delivery, mentoring leadership and quality assurance, as agreed through formal partnership arrangements. Settings hosting trainees for professional placement experience provide the professional practice context in which trainees apply, rehearse and refine their learning through structured mentoring, purposeful practice and immersion in school life.
Across all partnership arrangements, the University retains full accountability for curriculum design, assessment, mentoring quality, safeguarding and statutory compliance, while working collaboratively with partners to ensure high-quality implementation at scale.
Download our principles underpinning partnership working.
Values and ethos
Liverpool Hope University is an ecumenical institution that supports the local community and beyond by working in partnership to develop the future generations of teachers.
As a value driven university, we pride ourselves on developing Hope Teachers with a strong sense of social justice and moral purpose.
Enhancing Pupil Progress
Liverpool Hope trainees can make a positive impact on pupil progress in your school by providing additional support within the classroom. Introducing trainee teachers to your pupils provides a wider range of role models for pupils to relate to and by exposure to new teaching and learning strategies a pupil's imagination and motivation can be broadened. Our trainees can inject a new level of enthusiasm into your classrooms.
Recruitment opportunities
Our partner schools have the opportunity to work with the next generation of teachers. This will support future recruitment as schools will have the opportunity to develop relationships with potential employees of the future.
School staff development
Mentoring trainees can provide an excellent tool for professional development for emerging and experienced teachers. Liverpool Hope University values the role of the mentor and has invested time into ensuring mentor training materials provide professional development for all mentors, no matter their level of experience.
By observing, evaluating and coaching trainees, mentors are also given the opportunity to reflect on and develop their own practice.
Co-construction and collaboration
We value the contributions of our partner schools in developing our Hope ITE Curriculum offer to ensure it meets the needs of the local and national context.
Other benefits
Partner schools also benefit by receiving financial remuneration from the university. The fee received depends on the length of the placement and the number of trainees the school is supporting.
Add capacity into the school, enabling the teacher to work on school based priorities or target different groups of learners.
Through network events, schools have the opportunities to share ideas and network with other schools who work with the university.
Discounts on university courses are also offered to partner schools. Liverpool Hope University offers a wide range of courses to support staff professional development.
Why support Initial Teacher Education?
Liverpool Hope University is committed to ensuring that all staff involved in mentoring and oversight of trainees are appropriately trained, supported and developed to fulfil their role effectively. Mentor training is role-specific, curriculum-led and proportionate, in line with the ITT statutory criteria.
Core Principles of Mentoring
Download our Core Principles of Mentoring.
The University has worked in collaboration with our settings and mentors to ensure our mentor training develops new and experienced mentors, drawing from current research and understanding. Core mentor development modules are delivered through our Mentor Hub. The mentor development modules offer a structured, research-informed CPD programme that enhances mentors’ professional expertise.
By engaging in this course, mentors benefit from continuous professional growth, ensuring their practice remains responsive, evidence-informed, and impactful. The development of these modules demonstrates our commitment as a university to go beyond minimum requirements to acknowledge and value the significant commitment mentors make to trainee teachers and to the wider ITE partnership.
The Mentor Hub
The Mentor Hub works alongside our Partnership Knowledge Base to fully support mentors throughout the trainee’s placement.
At Liverpool Hope University we are dedicated to training teachers who are research informed, creative, and reflective. Hope Teachers will have a moral purpose and an enthusiastic, ambitious and flexible approach to teaching the next generation.
The Hope Teacher sees their career as a vocation, a way of changing the lives of children and the opportunity to make a real difference in terms of social justice by improving educational outcomes. Our teacher education equips trainees with the depth of knowledge, skills and understanding required to engage, motivate and inspire young learners across the diverse range of settings and age phases.
Why host a Hope Teacher?
At Liverpool Hope University we are dedicated to training teachers who are creative, proactive and reflective. A Hope Teacher has a moral purpose and an enthusiastic, innovative and flexible approach to teaching the next generation. The Hope Teacher sees their career as a vocation, a way of changing the lives of children and the chance to make a real difference.
The ‘Hope Teacher’ is a unique feature of all of the programmes offered in the School of Education at Liverpool Hope University. The distinctive and special qualities of our teachers have been identified in our last two Ofsted inspections:
“The ‘Hope Teacher’, who takes a full part in professional school life and teaches ‘with moral purpose, the whole child” (Key Finding, Ofsted Report, Nov. 2012)
“‘The Hope tutor’ has emerged sharing the same attributes as ‘the Hope teacher’, particularly resilience, positive outlook and conviction. A shared vision of excellence, effective teamwork and a proactive approach have been key factors” (Ofsted Report, Jan. 2014)
Qualities of a Hope Teacher
The Hope Teacher is someone who believes they can make a difference to the lives of children and young people by striving for excellence in teaching and learning, and by understanding the needs of all pupils.
There are four key learning dispositions in Hope Teachers:
- Resourceful – can adapt and be flexible
- Resilient – can respond positively to setbacks
- Reflective – can learn from and build on experience
- Reciprocal – can work well with others
Principles of Hope Teacher Programmes
Principle 1: Learning about teaching involves understanding the contested nature of knowledge and having opportunities to compare, contrast and critique ideas, issues and debates about practice.
Principle 2: Learning about teaching requires an understanding of the diverse needs of learners and their perspectives and contexts.
Principle 3: Learning about teaching requires good knowledge, skills and understanding of curriculum, subject and pedagogy that is constantly reviewed and developed.
Principle 4: Learning about teaching is enhanced through dialogue and critical reflection, and informed by research and the learner context.
Principle 5: Learning about teaching requires an emphasis on those learning to teach working collaboratively with their peers and more experienced colleagues.
Principle 6: Learning about teaching requires meaningful relationships between schools, universities and student teachers with their peers.
Principle 7: Learning about teaching is enhanced when the teaching and learning approaches advocated in the programme are explicitly modelled by the teacher educators in their own practice and take account of the contextual learning environment relevant to the wider world.
Principle 8: Learning about teaching requires opportunities to plan, rehearse, teach and analyse across a range of diverse contexts.
To find out more about hosting a trainee teacher, please get in touch.
T: 0151 291 3658/3062/3659
E: partnershipoffice@hope.ac.uk
If you are a current partner you can log into all our systems through your Hive account.
Get in touch
Partnership Office,
School of Education
Liverpool Hope University
Hope Park
Liverpool
L16 9JD
For partnership enquiries please contact:
T: 0151 291 3658/3062/3659
E: partnershipoffice@hope.ac.uk
