Tell us something we didn’t know, might be the first reaction to this headline from today’s Times newspaper. Indeed, October is a slightly odd time to publish such a survey, as it is well after the start of the school year and at a point where teacher recruitment is heading towards its autumn low point before picking up again in January.
However, I guess it took the TES some time to put together the answers from the National Governance Association members that completed the survey. Anyway, a survey of this type does help to keep the pressure on government, lest they try and bury concerns about teacher recruitment.
The figure for the extra number of teachers needed by the mid-2020s is also not really news, since the DfE has been publishing the forward planning associated with the Teacher Supply Model for the past couple of years. We have David Laws to thank for opening up this key planning tool to general visibility when he was Minister of State. The next iteration of the Model is due to be published in a couple of weeks, towards the end of the month and will confirm future needs as the school population increases. No doubt this blog will comment on the DfE’s views at that time.
I was surprised that the NGA/TES Survey didn’t highlight the issues many schools have had this year trying to recruit a teacher of English. Indeed, TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk where I am the chair of the board, surveys key subjects on a daily basis and across the whole of England and we would rate English as more of a problem subject in 2018 than mathematics. As I pointed out last week on this blog, that might not be the case in 2019.
The report in the Times article didn’t mention regional recruitment issues. At TeachVac, we believe that the recruitment situation is generally at its worst in and around London. That’s not to say school elsewhere don’t face problems for specific reasons, but that a higher proportion of school in London and the Home Counties may expect to find recruitment difficult.
The Times newspaper article also ignored the challenges in vocational subjects such as business studies and parts of the design and technology curriculum. That’s probably not surprising, as the DfE shows a complete lack of interest in these subjects, not even offering a bursary to business studies students despite the real challenges schools face in recruiting these teachers.
With the government’s school-based training scheme, School Direct, having stalled this year, the NGA ought to be asking what can be done to ensure teachers that train through higher education courses end up in the schools where they are needed. It is absolutely no use attracting more mature entrants on the back of the BBC Radio 4 series with Lucy Kellaway, if they are in the wrong place and wrong subjects. The Treasury ought to be asking why so many teachers of history are being trained at £9,250 a head. Wasting money training too many teachers is as much of an issue as not training enough, but receives fewer headlines.
John Howson 
One thing that puzzles some of us is why every penny is being spent solely on PG teacher education and recruitment.
Universities could easily roll out 3 year B.Ed/BA degrees in teaching a subject at secondary level (which already exist in some subects) with the tuition fees waived instead of the 27k bursary. Smart folks will also know that 27k in tuition fee waivers for those who will never earn enough to pay off their student debt entirely is cheap money.
Parents and their offspring aspiring students would be queuing up for a three year tuition-free degree in teaching mathematics or physics with QTS and a guaranteed career at the end. Such entrants to the teaching profession would be much more likely to stay in the profession.
All such suggestions are immediately flattened by DfE bods who insist that PG is the only game in town before failing to recruit enough teachers of such subjects for any metric you care to review. What is it about PG that compels the DfE to inflict teacher shortages on schools rather than invest any money in UG teacher education?
James,
I wonder whether they were thinking about the apprenticeship route rather than UG ITT degrees as a route? most studentssave looked to a general degree and PG specialisation over the past few years.
THE SKE route is also cheaper for the DfE than UG fee paying degrees where completion rates have also been an issue. See Teacher Compendium 4 referenced in an earlier blog post for details of SKE numbers.
However, with the loss of A/S levels universities might like to monitor what is happening in Physics and what can be offered to those taking A level and not getting and A or A*. The creation of an ITT course for them sponsored by the university and a group of local schools might be worth exploring even if it was a 3+1 and not a concurrent course.
John