This feature is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development.

This issue’s problem: Bob Williams is struggling to get the pitch right in teaching topics at GCSE that the school previously taught to Year 7.

Bob Williams, now half way through his training year, is feeling very out of his depth. Although he is a history graduate, his degree (which he took several years ago) was essentially focused on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While he had been prepared for some subject knowledge development work in relation to Key Stage 3, he had not expected it to be too demanding and was quite shocked to realise the extent of the changes that have recently been made to GCSE...