Monthly Archives: September 2018

Teacher Analysis Compendium 4

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In my last blog post I drew attention to the Teacher Analysis Compendium 4 – subtitled Analysis of teacher supply, retention and mobility, and recently published by the DfE at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/teachers-analysis-compendium-4 in my last post I reviewed the application the DfE has also created for this work, although unlike most apps this is largely designed around on-line use and might be a challenge for mobile phone users if not for those with larger size tablets.

Anyway, the Compendium contains useful and often unique insights into the following areas of the teacher workforce:

Subject Knowledge Enhancement courses for potential trainees (SKE);

Teacher Subject Specialism Training (TSST);

Time series analysis of teachers in England using Teachers’ Pensions Scheme data;

Teachers returning to the profession;

The pool of qualified teachers who are not currently teaching in the state-funded sector;

Entrants and leavers to the teaching profession;

Retention of Newly Qualified Teachers;

Annex –missing teachers’ characteristics.

In times past, these type of statistics would have appeared in the annual Volume of Statistics on Teachers that were part of a series of education statistics put out by the Department each year. Whether either ad hoc compendiums of this nature or a regular series of volume of statistics is the best way for data of this type to be presented to the outside world is not for me to judge.

One area of debate that is likely to emerge from the consideration of the data in the Compendium is whether there ought now to be a more regional approach to the provision of teacher preparation places to meet the growing demand over the next few years, especially in and around the London area? This was something the National Audit Office raised in their Report of a couple of years ago.

The compendium might have usefully contained a table showing where completers obtained their first job in terms of whether it was within the same region or a different region from where they trained. Using the northings and eastings available it might also be possible to determine the relative distance from the training base the first job was obtained. Tracking the movements of these teachers might also be illustrative of how mobile the teaching force is and at what stages in their careers?

The work on Subject Knowledge Enhancement courses for potential trainees (SKE) is particularly interesting, as this is a growing area of the market for potential teachers. Such courses have the capacity to bridge the gap between an increasingly diversified higher education system, where degrees no longer match the needs of subjects taught in schools, if they ever really did, and the desire for specific subject knowledge from those that enter the teaching profession.

In a future Compendium, a look at the degrees of these that enter our primary schools might merit a section. Are primary schools still too heavily dominated by Arts and Humanities graduates that lack in-depth knowledge of science and mathematics and are the preparation course able to remedy any deficiencies to an acceptable level without sacrificing the knowledge and skills of trainees in other subject areas they may not have studies for several years?

 

 

Leavers, remainers and entrants – new data from the DfE

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Last week, the DfE published the snappily titled Teacher Analysis Compendium 4 that brought together a series of notes about the state of recruitment, retention and training within the state-sector teacher workforce. The link to the document is: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/teachers-analysis-compendium-4

I am highly delighted to recommend the new tool that analyses the data relating to entrants; leavers and remainers. Regular readers will know that I have complained regularly that the percentage of the cohort remaining wasn’t backed by the actual numbers of the cohort remaining. Now everyone can see both sets of data: a great improvement and one worth saying thank you to civil servants for taking the time and effort to create.

If you have an interest in teaching take time to drill down into the data for say, secondary remainers by government region and compare inner London with the North East. I won’t put a spoiler alert here. There are many different combinations that interested researchers can create from the data and I am sure that it won’t be long before research papers and conference talks start using this data.

The one drawback is the historical nature of the data. Sadly, it cannot tell anything about whether the direction of travel has changed since the latest year in the tables – now two years ago – and that can be important information when there are changes in the labour market and alterations in the direction of the size of the school population. Fortunately, job boards such as TeachVac, and presumably the DfE’s own site, can provide up to the minute information of the operation of the job market.

Another shortcoming of the DfE data it that it cannot tell anything either about the crossover between the state funded and private sectors or between schools and further education. Both are useful pieces of data for policy makers. Job boards can advise on trends in recruitment in the private sector and it ought to be possible to link schools and further education data together at least at a high level.

University teacher trainers will no doubt be pleased with what the data says about retention over both the longer and shorter terms of their trainees in non-LA maintained schools. However, it would be helpful to have definitions of reference groups such as EBITT and where non LA Maintained schools refers to the school only when it was a non-maintained school or all data for that school during the time period by linking URNs together where a school has changed status?

Perhaps the most frightening of the tables is the one showing an age breakdown of teachers leaving the state sector. The table identifies three age groupings that might be described as; younger; mid-career and approaching retirement age. The increase across many of the subjects in departure percentages among the younger age group and also the actual numbers must be of concern, especially against the background of a rising secondary school population. These young teachers are the leaders for tomorrow. To provide but one example: the number of female teachers of English under the age of 35 leaving increased from 770 in 2011 to 1,123 in 2017 and that must be a concern.

For anyone interested in teacher recruitment and retention this is an invaluable resource. Thanks again to the DfE.

Participation in higher education

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The DfE recently reported on the time series regarding entry into higher education. The data was updated for 2016/17 starts and can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/participation-rates-in-higher-education-2006-to-2017 There are a number of useful tables that show the continued growth in participation by eighteen to twenty one year old either directly from another education establishment or after a gap. In the latest year that data are available for, 28% of the 652,000 eighteen year olds went straight into higher education. They were joined by 11.9% of nineteen year olds and 3.2% of those aged 20.

All the percentages up for all age groups and the percentage comes to 49.8% that is described as the initial participation rate (IPR). As might be expected, a greater percentage of eighteen year old women than men go directly into higher education; some 32.1% of women compared with 24.1% of men. As might be expected, the IPR for women is much higher overall at 56.1% compared with 43.1% for men. However, the gap tails off with age as numbers form the year group starting in 2016/17 tailed away. The IPR is still below that of many other G7 countries.

Sadly, the IPR for part-time students has yet to regain the percentages seen before the fee increase to more than £9,000. Some of this potential group of students may have transferred to degree level apprenticeships, but it is to be feared that part-time higher education at least at the undergraduate level, remains out of favour and is not being marketed by the higher education sector.

A small percentage of those entering higher education do so through the further education sector rather than at a university. The further Education sector accounts for just less than four percent of IPR for higher education and seems to be growing slowly. There is also no gender gap amongst those taking the FE route into higher education.

I couldn’t find a comment yet from HEPI, The Higher Education Policy Institute, about these data from the DfE. However, the concern for the higher education sector must be that they are facing a few years when the number of eighteen year olds in the cohort will be falling. If the IPR of the age group remains flat, then that actually means fewer students looking to enrol. This might partly account for the rash of unconditional offers as institutions seeks to plan their numbers, and hence their income, as far ahead as possible. The 17-19 age group in 2106/17 was around 20,000 smaller as a cohort than the previous year.

No doubt, if there is also a loss of interest from EU or other overseas students, then some courses and indeed faculties might find their cash position under pressure during the next few years. How legitimate is it to use tuition fee cash from popular subjects to support less financially viable departments? This is an interesting question that students as consumers might well ask. If you put a philosophy and ethics of business course in the business studies degree it may well be necessary to support the continuation of the philosophy department. If you don’t why should a future business mogul pay to support the department if it has no impact on his course?

One answer is, you are buying a university experience and not that of your course alone.

Teacher Preparation data – Part 2

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Normally, that is for most of the past twenty years, I would have commented on the data provided by UCAS about applications and acceptances to the different subjects and between primary and secondary phases on the day it has appeared.

This month I refrained from doing so that I could look further into the data provided over the past three months. For some reason there appears to have been a glitch in the data I was looking at for Report B Table 10 of the data in August. I assume this was my mistake, and the data has now been corrected in my spreadsheets to conform to the published data currently on the UCAS web site.

The mistake slightly over-estimated the number of ‘offers’ to applicants, by using the end of cycle data for 2017 rather than the actual August data. Inputting the September data revealed the discrepancy and has allowed the changes to be made retrospectively. I can now say how I think the outcome will look compared with both last year and the DfE’s estimate of need, as calculated through the Teacher Supply Model.

So, on the evidence of the total ‘Placed’, Conditional Place’ and ‘holding offer’ numbers from the UCAS data, the 2018 round for secondary subjects should be slightly better overall than 2017, with biology, English, PE, art and languages exceeding the TSM number and IT/Computer Studies and history being at the required level. This leaves Chemistry, design and technology, mathematics, music, Physics and Religious Education unlikely to meet their TSM number unless Teach First can made up the shortfall.

As hinted yesterday, it may be that potential trainees on Subject Knowledge Enhancement courses (SKE Courses) don’t become ‘Placed’ until the end of these courses, and some may be added to the ‘Placed’ totals over the summer, creating the increases seem this year.

Interestingly, in April, before the growth in applications, I prepared a table for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Teaching with a prediction for the outcome of the recruitment round in terms of meeting the TSM number. How good were my predictions?

Subject Meet 2018 TSM Meets 2018 TSM CHANGE From April prediction?
April view Sept view on meeting TSM
RE NO BELOW no
PE YES ABOVE no
Music NO BELOW no
Mathematics NO BELOW no
History ? AT  
Geography ? BELOW  
English NO ABOVE Yes
D&T NO BELOW no
Computer Studies + IT NO AT Yes
Business Studies NO BELOW no
Art NO ABOVE Yes
Languages NO ABOVE Yes
Biology YES ABOVE no
Chemistry NO BELOW no
Physics NO BELOW no

In four subjects, English, IT/Computer Studies, Art and languages, the prediction has changed for the better. In April, the situation on the humanities was unclear, but it now seems as if history might just miss the TSM number and geography certainly will, partly because the number was so high.

Physics remains the real worry, although the better situation in Biology means recruiting science teachers in 2019 may be no more of a challenge overall than it was this year. After a good year this year, mathematics teachers may be harder to find in 2019, whereas recruiting teachers of English in 2019 might be an easier proposition than it was in 2018.

However, we won’t be able to assess the full position until the ITT Census in late November when the Teach First numbers are added to the totals and it is revealed how many of those that were placed through UCAS actually made it on to courses.

 

 

 

 

Teacher Preparation data – Part 1

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The final UCAS figures for numbers on graduate teacher starting preparation courses this autumn were published earlier today. These figures exclude Teach First, but cover almost all other graduate courses. The final outcome figures of those that actually turned up, and were still there after the first couple of weeks, will be published in late November when the DfE’s ITT census appears. However, these figures from UCAS can provide a good approximation of that outcome.

This year has been an unusual recruitment round, as there has been a late surge in applications and acceptances. Such a late surge is normally only seen when the economy is in recession and jobs for graduates are scare. As that isn’t the case this year, there must be another reason for the upturn in interest in teaching. However, whatever the reason, the interest is to be welcomed.

By mid-September this year, UCAS had received applications from 41,020 applicants domiciled in England compared with 41,690 at the same point last year: a credible outcome for what might have been a disastrous year had early trends not been overturned. However, the only regions with more applicants this year were the North West and the West Midlands, both not key areas of teacher shortages. The most worrying trend is the continued downward rate in applications from the 23-29 age group. Applications from young new graduates held steady, while those from old applicants continued to increase. Whether older applicants will continue to apply, if Lucy Kellaway’s BBC radio series next week about her experiences of the profession gains wide traction, only time will tell.

The total number of men applying in England fell to just over 13,000 this year, from almost 13,700 last year while more women applied, but not in large enough numbers to offset the decline in male applicants.

Applications, and candidates may make several applications, were down for all types of course catering for primary teacher preparation. However, higher education and SCITTs saw more applications that last year for secondary teacher preparation courses. There were fewer applications for secondary School Direct courses, with only 4,970 applications for the ‘Salaried’ route compared with 6,170 in 2017. As far as secondary schools are concerned, there might need to be a review of training, especially when taken into consideration with the data on SKE courses contained in today’s DfE publication on the teacher workforce. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/teachers-analysis-compendium-4

School Direct ‘Salaried’ numbers ‘Placed’ have dropped in the secondary sector from 990 in September 2016, to just 560 this year, with similar numbers ‘conditionally placed’ in both years. By this time, one wonders why there are any remaining ‘conditionally placed’ applicants. Higher Education is again taking its places as the main route for preparing secondary school teachers, even if SCITT courses are counted with the other school-based routes. In the primary sector, there has been an increase in numbers ‘Placed’ on School Direct ‘Salaried’ courses, but fewer trainees were ‘Placed’ in higher education courses than last year, although the final outcome will depend upon what happens to the slightly higher number of ‘conditionally placed’ applicants this year.

The DfE has announced the bursary rates for trainees starting courses in 2019. Still no bursary for business studies trainees, and a shocking waste of money with bursaries for history trainees. Either, pay a salary or waive fees for all trainees or have a genuine policy of dealing with shortage subjects, not this charade where bursaries have little relation to real teacher supply issues.

 

 

Vision and not just rhetoric needed

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As you might expect, Angela Rayner’s speech to the Labour Party Conference was strong on rhetoric, but short on real substance.

Take the following extract:

Our National Education Service will not only reverse the cuts but tackle the inefficiency of the Tories’ school system and take power from corporations and hand it to communities.

Might there be just the hint of an ambiguity there? What will be national and what will be returned to communities?

A promise of a national supply agency to extend the Conservative’s National Vacancy Service that is already competing with the market.

For local authorities, … we will allow them to build schools, create new places and take back control of admissions from academy trusts. But, nothing there about funds for local inspection and advice services and local coordination of teacher training places to ensure sufficient supply. Presumably, that will remain a national function not delegated to local authorities.

Then there is a bit of a muddle

So we’ll allow academies to return to local authority control. We’ll end the scandal of individuals and companies profiting from schools they are involved in, stopping fat cat pay for bosses and restoring fair pay for staff.

And we will use our time in government to bring all publicly funded schools back into the mainstream public sector, with a common rulebook and under local democratic control.

Will Labour create a fully locally governed system of schooling and at what level of government? Why create new cooperative schools, except that it sounds good, when a reshaping of the system with just two classes of state funded schools; maintained and voluntary. The latter being able to form groups of schools, along the model of diocesan schools. What happens to control of post-16 further education. Will colleges remain under national control or be integrated into a more local framework?

Missing was anything about the future of selective schools. Will Labour plan to reform them if it came to power?

Curiously, given the fact that Labour want to offer seats on the board to workers, there was no pledge to ensure staff could sit on governing bodies and no suggestion of how local policy development would need to involve governors, teachers and voluntary school operators. Is the old Education Committee model the way forward, or does Labour have any fresh ideas for local governance of education? Not yet clear, at least from this speech. Presumably, a work in progress?

Where does Labour stand on the curriculum, on testing and on inspection? Or aren’t these important enough matters to highlight in a speech aimed at applause rather than a blueprint for the future.

Missing also was any reference to how education will need to help young people face a world that will be very different from that of today. I know how important structures are, but I want an Education Secretary that can deal with those issues in a paragraph at the start of a speech and then provide a vision for the future that is more than a return to a ‘national service locally administered’ that is what yesterday’s speech seemed to promise.

(For readers that don’t know, it is right that I declare an interest as a Liberal Democrat Councillor on Oxfordshire County Council with the spokesperson role for education.)

Schools for the future?

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In the first segment of the BBC’s Today programme this morning, sometime in the run up to the seven o’clock news, I heard a representative from a Free School in the North West saying that control over the money was one reason the school had been established. Regular readers of this blog will probably know what comes next. True, if you are a standalone academy of free school or a local authority maintained school you have total control over your funds, but not if you are a school in a group of academies. There your Trustees can shift money between schools with impunity: so much for the free to control your finances.

Last Tuesday, at Oxfordshire’s Cabinet meeting, I raised this issue with the Cabinet member in the Conservative led administration whose portfolio includes schools. I asked for a commitment to fight for cash allocated to Oxfordshire schools to be spent at that school and not, when the school is part of a group of academies that cross the county boundary, used to secure the education of children in another part of the country. After all, Oxfordshire is a member of the F40 group of local authorities that see themselves as under-funded. It would be grossly unfair to transfer cash from an Oxfordshire school to another school in a better funded area. The minutes have yet to be published, but I expect them to show she wasn’t happy with this possibility.

Of course, under the Common Funding Formula, all schools should be funded at a similar basic level, but the principle of devolved budgets remains. Over the past two decades, once a budget was handed to a school it was sacrosanct and could not be touched by anyone else. Now, that principle has been broken for some schools, why should it apply to any?

The answer to this question is important, especially as the Labour Party continues its journey away from competition as a panacea of all evils in education and back towards the possible municipal control of schooling model.

Both my own Party, the Liberal Democrats and Labour have the courage to see that reforms started under Ed Balls and enthusiastically taken up by Michael Gove haven’t produced the solution that they wanted. Improvements in outcomes there have been, but the system is now too weighted against the disadvantaged in society. If your child is taken into care and moved away, there is a high risk that their education will be severely damaged. The growth in home education starting at the end of Key Stage 3 isn’t always a good sign and pupil place planning during a period of rising school rolls has been a nightmare in many areas and cost the country money wasted on travel costs that were not really necessary.

There really isn’t the need for a new form of cooperative school proposed by the Labour Party this week. Updating the voluntary school sector rules for the twenty first century would be quicker and simpler to achieve as a way forward.

Good schools for all remains the aim: can it be achieved without a degree of overall local control and planning for the future?

 

TeachVac or the DfE site?  

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Which free site offers the best approach to finding a teaching job?

There are the only 2 sites for teaching vacancies in England with national coverage that are free to both schools and teachers. One is offered by TeachVac the other is the developing DfE site.

I would add that I have been chair of the group operating TeachVac since its inception over four years ago. TeachVac like the new DfE site came about because of the high cost to schools of recruitment advertising.

TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk uses a defined request approach. Users register and can specify their preferences for phase, location and other key criteria. As vacancies enter the system they are matched and each day details of new matches are sent to registered users to decide whether to take time in finding out more about the school and the vacancy.

This method does not require users to do any searching of the site and preferences can be changed if not enough matches are found in a particular area. The system is simple to use and in periods of the year when there are many jobs on offer – specifically from March to June for classroom teacher posts – applicants do not need to waste time searching through lots of unsuitable vacancies.

The DfE offering is at https://teaching-jobs.service.gov.uk/ and is based around a more traditional open search system that requires teachers to specify filters. A click through on a vacancy also doesn’t take you directly to the school site, but to a more detailed analysis of the vacancy with a link in a sidebar to the vacancy page.

At present, the coverage of the DfE’s site is limited and applicants will have to keep checking to see if the area that they are interested in now live on the DfE site. TeachVac has coverage of the whole of England.

TeachVac includes both independent and all types of state funded primary and secondary schools in its coverage, whereas the DfE only handles state funded schools.

Let’s leave aside the concept of the State taking over from the market in providing a service; something odd to see from a Conservative government.

The DfE, like TeachVac, is trying to save schools money in these straightened financial times, but costs more to operate than TeachVac.

So, register with TeachVac. If it doesn’t meet your requirements, you can easily deregister and be forgotten by the site, then visit the DfE site and see how they compare?

If you like the TeachVac approach – no nonsense, no marketing and daily alerts if new jobs arise, then let me know and tell your friends and colleagues. Please also make suggestions for improvements and possible marketing routes.

TeachVac also tells schools that register with the site about the state of the market when they post a vacancy and has special arrangements for both diocese and multi-academy trusts wanting to list vacancies at several different schools.

To finish with a reminder. TeachVac is free to use for both teachers, returners and schools. It is offered as a service to the education community.

 

 

 

UK Music Talent pipeline concerns

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UK Music, is the industry-funded body established in October 2008 to represent the collective interests of the recorded, published and live arms of the British music industry.

To quote from their website, UK Music promotes the interests of record labels and music publishers (major and independent), songwriters, composers, lyricists, musicians, managers, producers, promoters, venues and collection societies through collective representation. https://www.ukmusic.org/about/

At the Liberal Democrat Conference this week UK Music published a pamphlet entitled ‘Securing our talent pipeline’ https://www.ukmusic.org/news/securing-our-talent-pipeline

As they acknowledge, the UK music industry is doing well at present. It grew by 6 per cent last year and is now worth £4.4 billion to the economy with the live music industry contributing around £1 billion. However, that is exactly the time to reflect on the future.

UK Music say that while the immediate outlook is promising, there is growing evidence of a looming crisis in the music industry’s talent pipeline – a pipeline that they rely on for future stars and one that is a vital part of their industry’s eco-system.

Schools form an important part of developing that talent pipeline, so I thought I would take a look at the evidence from TeachVac, the vacancy site for teachers where I am chair of the board. www.teachvac.co.uk about recruitment and the supply of teachers of music.

The headline statistic is that music in our schools, as a classroom taught subject, is more of a shortage subject than mathematics. Sadly, TeachVac doesn’t keep data on instrumental and other specialist music teaching at this point in time.

Despite cuts to the curriculum in state funded schools, there have been more than 600 vacancies for main scale classroom teachers recorded so far in 2018 by TeachVac. This is slightly down on the 632 vacancies recorded by this point in 2017, but not significantly so. The previous two years, 2015 and 2016 recorded around the 550 vacancies mark by this point in September.

Allowing for better coverage in 2017 and 2018 by TeachVac, there doesn’t seem yet to have been a collapse in demand for classroom teachers of music. However, there are significant regional differences. Around half of the vacancies recorded in 2018 were from secondary schools in either London or the South East, the regions with the largest concentration of independent schools and the best funded state schools. Relatively few vacancies have been recorded from schools in the North East so far in 2018.

The real cause of any shortage of teachers of music is the failure of the DfE to attract enough trainee teachers of music over the past few years, and especially for entry into teacher preparation courses in 2017. Last September, the DfE estimate in the Teacher Supply Model was for 409 music teachers; 295 were recruited according to their census of trainees. This year, by the middle of August, potential trainee numbers were slightly below the same period in 2017 and on target for around 280 trainees overall.

Allowing for failure to complete for various reasons, this means the number of new entrants in 2019 could be in the range of 250-275 for the 4,000 or so secondary schools across England. Turnover would need to be as low as five per cent to ensure sufficient new entrants, even assuming the distribution across the country was as required: an unlikely situation.

So, music may well be a subject of concern in 2019 and UK Music are right to worry about the long-term consequences for their industry and the UK Economy.

 

 

 

School reserves shrink

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The news that the annual survey of school bank balances revealed that a third of schools surveyed were in deficit should come as no surprise. This blog along with many others has been charting the decline in school funds for some time.

Coincidentally, I asked the question at Oxfordshire’s Cabinet meeting this afternoon about school balances across maintained primary schools in Oxfordshire and how they changed between the end of the 2017 and 2018 financial years.

Since I haven’t yet had the data in the form of a spreadsheet, only as a written answer, I have yet to see whether Oxfordshire schools are faring better or worse than the national average. I hope to be able to answer that question later this week. However, there are a lot of minus figures in the table, even taking the effects of double entry bookkeeping into account.

At the Cabinet meeting, I also challenged the Cabinet member – part of the Conservative administration of the County – whether or not she would support the notion that money provided for schools in Oxfordshire should not be allowed to be transferred by Multi-Academy Trusts to support schools in the Trust located elsewhere in England.

I will need to check the minutes for her answer, but I am confident that she agreed with me. Personally, I would go further and not allow MAT or MACs to transfer funds between schools within the group even in Oxfordshire unless the same arrangements were possible for maintained schools and stand-alone academies.

Regular readers of this blog will know auditors of MAT/Macs were written to earlier this year by the Minister in the DfE about the issue of allowing the virement of funds between schools within MAT/MACs. However, schools outside MAT/MACs have no such facility available to them. Whether this should be seen as an invitation to join a MAT or to avoid doing so and keep the cash for the school will be a matter for local decision-making.

However, as I made clear above, if the DfE is going to have a National Funding Formula for schools it cannot, at least in my judgement, be correct for trustees to take money from schools in one area to provide for schools in another area.

Schools Forums up and down the country should take a long look at the issue or virement of monies between schools and consider whether they can draw up local guidelines. After all, the Schools Forum has a key role to play in school finances these days.

The F40 Group of local authorities might also want to have a say if cash were being transferred from their members to poorly performing schools in better funded parts of the country. Such a move would be a case of ‘depriving the deprived’.

After ten years of austerity it is no surprise that schools are running out of reserves. When they do then real cuts start being to be made. With a 3.5% pay rise to fund, expect 2019 balances to be far worse than they were this year.