This book is sub-titled Contextual Challenges from International Perspectives, and is jointly edited by Tanya Ovenden-Hope and Rowena Passy Itis to be published by Routledge on the 2nd October. The ISBN is SBN 9780367076450

I doubt whether many will want to buy it outright with even an e-book price of over £30. However, I mention it here for two reasons. Firstly, the authors asked me to write what has become the opening chapter. In it I discuss the history of teacher supply at the national level since 1970 within the context of my own career during the past half century.

Secondly, reading the book makes it obvious why I prefer to write blogs than books or academic articles about such a fast moving environment as the labour market for teachers. This book is now as much a work of history as it is a discussion about current policy, since the world of teacher recruitment has been changed by the pandemic.

Indeed, we are unlikely to see a return to conditions of widespread teacher shortages for at least a few years, however much of a -V- shape the recession we are now entering turns out to be. The opposite was, of course, the case when this book was being crafted.

I never envy the authors of a collection of chapters by different authors. Ensuring academics meet deadlines is a thankless task. This is the second time I have contributed a chapter to a book where the time between commissioning and publication rendered the original text not fully fit for the original purpose.

It would be interesting to bring together the various posts about teacher shortages on this blog and compare them with articles I wrote during periods of plenty in the labour market as part of my contributions to the TES during the first decade of this century.

There is one group that may find the book worth purchasing. The group is those successful in tendering for the DfE’s longitudinal survey of teachers designed to underpin their currently outdated Recruitment & Retention strategy. Those designing the survey for the DfE might like to link my previous post about the OECD data with the level of vacancies due to maternity leave currently being advertised on both TeachVac and the DfE’s vacancy site.