Earlier today the DfE published the census of those that started teacher preparation courses this year. For the first time in some years they have included Teach First data except for history and computing numbers in the totals. As  a result it has taken a little while to disentangle the numbers to compare with the TSM for 2015 that didn’t include Teach First numbers. You can regard the old NCTL allocations as mere flights of fancy as it is only the TSM that matters except where their use distorts regional patterns of teacher supply.

I am now having some discussion with the NCTL about how Teach First was treated in the previous published TSM figures. Since the purpose of the table below is to try to identify the size of the possible free pool of trainees that will be available to schools to recruit in 2016 I will try and replace the present table with that data once the history issue has been cleared up. I assume after two years on the programme in their allocated school any Teach First person changing school is treated in the same manner as any other teacher with QTS by the DfE and would not count as  a new entrant  to the profession. This just shows how complicated it is and how important it is that schools can know how many trainees will be available for employment in 2016.

What good news there is centres around physics -where the bursary clearly works – and languages where we don’t know the nationality of applicants. Applicant numbers are now as I predicted slightly better than last year thanks to the marketing in the summer term but won’t yield enough trainees in many subjects to meet demand if it stays at 2015 levels.

Census without Teach First

I think the basis for ‘other’ has changed so it is worth discounting that figure. Both Business Studies and Design & technology are subjects where TeachVac has recorded more demand for teachers in 2015 than there has been supply, so that isn’t likely to change in 2016 unless the demand drops as schools hire more teachers in EBacc subjects.

I will add to this blog as more of the numbers are analysed over the next couple of days.