Monthly Archives: May 2016

Fast-track to headship

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Recently there has been some publicity in the Daily Telegraph and the TES about a scheme whereby new entrants into education will be prepared for headship after just two years of experience. Now, I am not clear whether this is a scheme to be aimed at either new graduates or career changers with significant amounts of management experience or a mixture of both.

However, after more than 30 years of studying leadership appointments in all types of schools, I wonder if this is an interesting new attempt to solve a problem governments often don’t fully understand. The Blair government attempted to tackle a shortage of leadership candidates by introducing a civil service style fast-track scheme for entry into the teaching profession: it lasted a few years and was then quietly dropped. One of the intentions behind Teach First was to attract potentially high flyers in the hope that some would stay in teaching and progress to headships. In recent years there has also been the ‘future leaders’ scheme. So, why another new initiative?

It may be that in looking ahead to an all academy world the government or at least its friends at the University of Buckingham have realised that if there are to be between 500-1,000 multi-academy trusts in the future then there won’t be enough leaders available within the present system capable of running these trusts effectively without seriously affecting the numbers of school leaders available to run individual schools, whether as heads or deputies. Filling such positions might argue for a scheme aimed at career changers rather than new young graduates. However, such a scheme might face recruitment issues, since only the highest paid positions in schools and MATs are in any way comparable with the sort of salary and benefits a successful graduate can earn in many other sectors. This will, possibly, be less of an issue outside London and the Home Counties where graduate salaries are often less different to those in the public sector, but there are often fewer graduates working in some of these areas to attract into teaching.

There are other issues that will face a scheme of this sort if it is to attempt to become a national scheme. How will vacancies be offered to candidates on the scheme? Will it be an extension of the National Teaching Service with, perhaps, certain types of school being required to place a request for a leader with the scheme based upon a school’s location, achievements and perhaps other factors? Will the two main faith groups the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, buy into such a scheme or will it only be for schools and MATs with no religious character and background? How will existing teachers view any narrowing of their possible promotion opportunities; will more decide to go and seek promotion abroad?

Of course, it could be a scheme that comes to the aid of MATs and schools that have tried to recruit a leader and failed to do so. Over more than half a century of detailed analysis of leadership recruitment, I have seen trends showing such schools facing recruitment challenges to have been overwhelmingly in the primary and special school sectors and frequently to have been schools that have had a religious background. There are schools in coastal and the more remote inland areas where small primary schools can face recruitment challenges, but in the secondary sector there is usually a further factor such as poor performance of a school behind recruitment difficulties. So, will the scheme be aimed at filling these types of vacancies where I would have thought more experience of teaching than a mere two years in a school might have been required?  Even the late Sir Rhodes Boyson was thirty before he achieved his first headship, and he is often held out to conservatives as an earlier achiever of leadership. Like many early achievers, he didn’t stay in headship but eventually entered parliament: here lies another challenge for such a scheme, not only selecting those that will be successful candidates, but also finding those that will stay in education leadership.

I am sure that the government has consulted its friends and advisers about how any such fast-track systems work in other people-focused sectors and how much support those on fast-track schemes need after appointment to a leadership post.

Perhaps talking to the churches and other faith groups about such a scheme might not be a bad idea for the DfE since many clergy acquire significant management responsibilities for churches and congregations very early in their careers. Might we learn from their experience? Of course, the whole scheme could be a mere speculative venture by a private university and a small number of individuals. Time will tell and no doubt the DfE will make it clear whether such a scheme has their backing.

 

-U- turn on a Friday afternoon

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I prepared this post before the announcement of the government’s –U- turn on forced academisation. We still need to see the small print of any Bill to know how far the government has really made concessions. As a result, I thought it worth posting my thoughts.

Now that the Police & Crime Commissioner elections are over it can be back to normal again for this blog. The big debate over the past few weeks has been about forced academisation. Much of the debate so far has failed to address in depth any of the three main points behand the argument about changing the structure of schools: the place of democracy in education; how important is geography in the organisation of our schools and does the primary sector need a middle-tier to ensure the survival of small schools?

None of these issues are new. Indeed, the last one has been around ever since the 1988 Education Reform Act revealed the depth of the Thatcher government’s mistrust of local authorities. However, the first one is the most important. Do we want our public services increasingly managed from Whitehall with no local democratic involvement? As I have pointed out before that is what has become the lot of our National Health Service. There is a case for education to go the same way; a national funding formula backed by a National Curriculum and testing regime and a uniform arrangement of school types that does away with anomalies such as randomly scattered selective schools or 14-18 UTCs and Studio Schools could create such a system.  But, allowing free schools to spring up anywhere without fitting into this pattern suggests either a degree of anarchic thinking or a lack of understanding about the delivery of effective and efficient public services. The same arguments can be made for random collections of schools being formed into academy chains. How important is the need to have community involvement in schooling and if it is important is this aim weakened by chains with no link to the community where they operate a school?

I think everyone that wants to retain small primary schools, whether in rural areas or urban settings, recognises that they need support and help that larger schools could provide for themselves. This raises the issue of how such support should be arranged and paid for? If we knew the outcome of the government’s thinking on the National Funding Formula then this issue might be easier to resolve. A formula weighted towards pupil-based funding that did away with a lump sum for each school would probably spell the death of small schools and make the argument unnecessary. However, if the pressure on a Conservative government is to design a formula that allows small schools to survive, then it has to address the question of their organisation and support. Many years ago, pyramids were suggested with clusters of primary schools linked to their local secondary school or their nearest secondary school of the same faith in the case of church schools and those of the other faiths. This would argue that geography is important but harks back the part 3 Authorities of the 1944 Education Act that operated within the larger counties. Do we wish to go back to the pre-Taylor Committee Report of 1976 position with one governing body for all schools in an area? Does such a system produce rotten boroughs or community cohesion? My guess is that it depends upon how the system is regulated by the next tier upwards?

Any system is also only as good as the people operating it. The government needs to take a long hard look at the size of the leadership cadre, both professional and political and ask what the cost of increasing the size of the pool will be. I have watched leadership salaries increase in response to the economics of supply and demand and to ignore this basic principle of economics and to create say 500 new multi-academy trusts without working out how they could be funded doesn’t strike me as good government. To return to the Police & Crime Commissioner elections for a minute, it would be poor government that were to impose cuts on police forces to fund the academisation of all our schools.

 

Do TV adverts work?

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The recent publication of the April admissions figures for ITT courses starting this autumn look like further acceptable news for the government. I hesitate to say ‘good news’ because it is still probable that not all subjects will reach their required levels of admissions to meet the probable demand for new teachers in 2017. That’s a rather convoluted way of saying some Teacher Supply Model numbers will be missed again this summer.

As ever, despite the upturn in university admissions for undergraduate courses in many STEM subjects, it is the mathematics, physics, design and technology and IT areas that are most likely to miss their targets again. Even Teach First, when I looked at their web site https://graduates.teachfirst.org.uk/application-selection/subject-availability on 6th May hadn’t yet closed any of their subjects including some where recruitment controls have been applied to the courses in the UCAS admissions scheme; Teach First don’t, however, offer PE as a subject.

Still, after a couple of frankly dreadful years, applications are generally holding up so far. The real issue is what will happen between now and the end of the recruitment round and then how many applicants turn up when courses start. There may also be regional issues, but they are not apparent from the data publically available. Whether or not training ‘career changers’ in parts of the country where vacancies are relatively rare helps the task of staffing schools is a moot point.

Looking at the UCAS figures in detail, it seems as if the trend to fewer applicants from the 22-24 age-group is continuing. This decline, reported in earlier blog posts on this site, is balanced this year by a slightly greater increase in the number of applicants over the age of 40. Overall, applications with a domicile in England increased by around 1,470 compared with April 2015 numbers. This is an increase of between 4-5%. In view of the recruitment controls, I am sure the percentage would have been higher with unfettered recruitment policies. So, I am sure that the TV advertising does make some difference to recruitment.

The other issue is whether the recruitment controls have allowed the best candidates to be recruited? There is a loss of recruits to choose from in PE, English and History, although the exact change in the number of applicants isn’t disclosed, even though the probable change in the number of applications can be deduced from other data. It would be helpful to know the number of applicants per subject and their age ranges to help inform the debate about what sort of system should be used for the 2017 admissions round?

Regionally, there are more applicants across the country with London and the Home Counties seeing the largest increase in applicant numbers, if not the greatest increase in the percentage of applicants. In terms of applications rather than applicants, the re-balancing of places has resulted in fewer applications to universities and more to SCITTs and the School Direct routes although overall there has been a slight drop in applications, possibly due to the effects of the recruitment controls.

With university finals looming, there will probably be little change in the May data, so it will be late June before it becomes obvious where new graduates are looking to teaching as a late career choice.