Teacher education in England has evolved to a practice-theory model, in which trainees on a one-year postgraduate certificate of education spend 24 weeks of a 36 week course in schools, rather than on the more traditional and comfortable, theory driven, predominantly Higher Education Institute (HEI) based programme. Partnership between the HEIs and schools is the organisational basis for practice in teacher education, which aims to develop the trainees and support the learning of school students as a structured by-product of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and whole-school improvement. In this article, the authors present the findings of a survey that examined the part that schools play in initial teacher training (ITT) in England. In assessing reasons behind a school's commitment to ITT partnerships, the authors examined the role of the key players in the partnership. The sample for the structured interviews comprised 10 such professional mentors, all of whom had participated in the original survey of 55 mentors and were chosen using Cresswell's (1998) criteria.