An impactful teacher education programme equips teachers with knowledge and skills to improve their effectiveness. Empirical findings on the effectiveness of teacher preparation programmes show that the accountability of institutions and teachers should not only be based on the knowledge or skills produced but also on student learning. Our study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a pre-service teacher education programme in Indonesia, known as Pendidikan Profesi Guru Prajabatan or PPG. PPG is a one-year full-time programme in addition to four years of undergraduate teacher education (Bachelor of Education). PPG graduate teachers pass a selection process and receive a teaching certificate upon completion of the programme. We use mixed methods to understand the differences in the outcome of PPG graduates majoring in primary school teacher education to their counterparts who did not attend PPG. To estimate the impact of PPG, we exploit the combination of rules and events in the selection process which allows us to estimate the impact of PPG on teacher performance using fuzzy regression discontinuity design (RDD). Once we attest to the validity of the fuzzy RDD, we find that PPG has no impact on a teacher’s professional knowledge and student outcomes in numeracy and literacy. We argue that this is due to the ineffective selection mechanism in distinguishing the PPG and the comparison group. We conclude that as an initial teacher training programme, PPG did not improve teacher effectiveness. Despite incorporating best practices from effective teacher training into the programme design, PPG does not appear capable of producing a higher-quality teacher.