The news that the Home Office are going to oversee the recruitment of either 20,000 new graduate police officers or people capable of earning a vocational degree must prompt the question; in the current labour market, where are these new police officers going to come from? Of course, it might be a preemptive strike by the government against a possible recession and the associated increase in unemployment. This must be on the assumption that any recession will hit the graduate end of the labour market at least as hard as it hits those with no qualifications.
After seven years of a failure to recruit enough new teachers into training – a back door cut – and facing an increasing pupil population, teaching also need more entrants than it has at present. Indeed, it seems likely that when the ITT Census for 2019 is published in November, this will be the eighth year of missed targets in some subjects. I recorded the disturbing decline of design and technology trainee numbers in one of yesterday’s posts, if anyone is interested.
So, might teachers switch to become police officers? I doubt it will be 20,000, but the loss of any experienced teachers will be a blow to the profession that has also seen retention rates worsen for teachers we might have expected to have reached the stage where they had become what one person described to me this week as ‘lifers’.
Potential teachers, especially those keen to be in London and not eligible for Teach First, might well weigh up the starting salary of a constable against the fees to be paid as a trainee teacher and the absence of any guarantee of a teaching post on completion of training.
I certainly think that this move to increase police numbers will reinforce the need for a review of the former training grant for all teachers, and not just payments to those lucky enough to be on Teach First or the School Direct Salaried routes or receiving a bursary. Of course, the government could wait and see, but that must be deemed a risk unless graduate unemployment rises both quickly and fast.
If the new Secretary of State for Defence wants more graduates in the armed forces and the NHS more nurses, then those actions will place more pressure on the teaching profession to be competitive in a labour market where it clearly isn’t competitive at present.
Do we really want a system that produces just enough qualified teachers of Physics to meet the needs of private schools, Sixth Form Colleges and the selective schools? Do we want a system that fails to produce enough teachers of design and technology; of music; even of art? According to head teachers that I meet, this isn’t even the complete list of subjects where recruitment is currently a challenge.
The other salvation is that a slowing down of the global economy might reduce demand from ‘overseas schools’ for teachers trained in England. Such a situation is possible, but with the switch of many of these schools to educating not the children of expat business families, but locals dissatisfied with their State system or unable to access it, not too much hope should be placed on this solution, at least for now.
John Howson 
Agree, not sure where the extra teachers are coming from. Recruitment and retention policies need a tie-in as in some US states so that those trained do not end up in private schools.
An interesting idea but not one that has well appealed any government regardless of political complexion. The same is true of deciding that those trainees changing careers and with roots in a community should be considered for local jobs. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Ministry used to issue an annual circular on how many new teachers a local authority could employ to encourage them to seek out returners and ensure a fair distribution of new teachers. since most were ‘classroom’ teachers and not ‘subject’ teachers it was easier to manage in those distant days.
John Howson
I’m not sure the government will be too bothered about a reduction in the number of trained teachers. Academies have been given the dubious freedom to appoint unqualified personnel to teach and we have (had? Is Gibb still there?) a schools minister who advocates off-the-shelf teaching materials. No doubt these will include the sort which lay down a script from which ‘teachers’ must not deviate.
I think what we are seeing is a de-professionalization of teachers (aka the ‘Blob’ which received such opprobrium when Gove and his consigliere Cummings were at the DfE).
Janet,
Nick Gibb is still there. I suppose they have to have one Minister who knows where the DfE HQ is located. But Middle Class parents won’t accept low quality teaching any more and we know that de-professionalising teaching won’t create a knowledge led economy.
Habe a great weekend.
John
I switched from the Police to Teaching 25 years ago, and was aware then that there was considerable traffic between the two professions then. As a Deputy Head now, I feel that I made the right choice for me but I note that I am only paid about the same as a Police Sergeant with experience but I have far more responsibility, and work more hours. I suspect the cost of sorting out this mess of chronic underfunding of both will be far higher than the money saved in the short term from cuts to services under the Tory administration.
Paul,
Thanks for the comment. I admit the headline was a bit ‘tongue in cheek’ as is the purpose of headlines. I am delighted that officers do become teachers and also youth workers as well as those that opt to move in the other direction.
Yes, the mess of the past decade is going to take some sorting out, as one only has to observe the report on the state of Feltham A YOI this week, where many of our youngest offenders are held in custody without the State accepting their rights under the Human Rights Act Article 2 to education and meaningfully to full-time education if they are of an age as enshrined in other legislation.
John