Monthly Archives: March 2021

Data in: garbage out

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Regular readers of this blog will be aware of my post of the 15th March about the freedom of Information request that I have made to the DfE. The request was about to total of vacancies on their teacher vacancy site. New readers need to know that I am Chair of TeachVac, a similar site for teachers seeking permanent jobs in schools anywhere in England. Hence my interest in the topic.

When TeachVac staff checked the DfE site today, it was showing a total of 1,805 vacancies: a good score and about 45% of the vacancies numbers being displayed at that point on TeachVac. However, just over 600 of the DfE’s vacancies appeared to be duplicates. This would reduce their unique vacancy number to around 1,200, of which a proportion are non-teaching posts or posts in the further education sector not covered by TeachVac. Such a lower number would be less impressive for a site fully functioning for as long as the DfE site has been, and with unfettered access to free marketing to schools.

Interestingly, a vacancy for a school cleaner apparently appears multiple times on the DfE site when a user tried looks through the site to discover the composition of the 1,800 vacancies making up the total.

Now, there is nothing wrong with this approach in an open site, such as the DfE operates, but it does make comparison more of a challenge. I am still awaiting the DfE’s response to my FOI request – they have until after Easter before the reply period expires, and I would need to take the matter further.  Using the filters on the DfE site avoids the problem of duplication, but masks the issue of the total number of unique teacher vacancies being carried by the site.

This week has seen schools ramp up recruitment ahead of the Easter break, with an increasing number of vacancies being recorded in the primary sector. I shall be writing the April newsletter for TeachVac’s subscribers over the weekend, ready for publication at the start of the month. At this point, it still looks as if recorded teacher vacancies in the first quarter of 2021 will be below the number recorded in the same quarter of 2020. The big test will be vacancy levels in April and the first couple of weeks of May, especially now that schools are open and functioning as near to normal as possible in the present conditions.  

TeachVac has already predicted that there will be shortages in design and technology; business studies and computing this year, and mathematics is expected to be added to this list of subjects either just before or just after Easter.

On the other hand, physical education and history has far more trainees than vacancies and recruiting even more trainees in these subjects seems to reflect a government with little understanding of the cost of training teachers and the implications for trainees in these subjects. I am not one that advocated recruitment controls lightly, but thought should be paid to the consequences of training too many teachers for the state sector’s needs.

ITT: not all plain sailing

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Normally during a downturn in the economy, and the associated rise in unemployment, teaching does well as a career choice, and applications for places on graduate teacher preparation courses surge; they only peak when the labour market shows signs of picking up again.

The trend during the pandemic of the past year has been slightly different to this pattern. Yes, overall applications, and applicant numbers are up, as commentators that just look at the overall numbers have noted. However, for those more concerned with the details, the picture is more nuanced.

In primary, applications have not yet reached the peak seen in the 2016/17 round, and are some 5,000 or so below that level, and only 8,000 applications above the low point reached in March 2020 before the full extent of the current pandemic had become clear. There may be a warning here about the desirability of becoming a primary school teacher among the group that society has relied upon to ensure an intake of high quality new teachers each year. The public data doesn’t allow for any further comments, but someone should be taking a look at the detailed data.

It is in the secondary sector that the outcome is more nuanced. Three subjects stand out for concern. In biology, overall applications are down on March 2020, by around a thousand, to 2,360. While there will be plenty of chemistry trainees this year, with applications double what they were in March 2020, physics, as a subject, seems unlikely that it will meet its target for the year unless applications pick up in the second half of the year. As a result, any shortfall in biology may leave school struggling for science teachers for September 2022, if demand return to more normal levels next year.

In geography, applications are down by around 300 this year on last, meaning offer levels are not much above the low levels seen seven and eight years ago. However, with ever more history trainees competing for jobs, schools will be able to replace geography teachers with humanities teachers. Whether their quality of subject knowledge will be acceptable is an issue for others to debate.

Design and technology, the ‘ugly duckling’ and neglected child of the school curriculum is a real and serious concern. Applications by mid-March were just 760, compared with 820 at the same point in 2020. That’s application and not applicants. As a result, offer levels are at their lowest point for March for any year in the last decade.

I would content that design and technology is an important subject, and the DfE needs to address where the future stock of teachers is to come from? An urgent look at the details of applicants and why only 190 offers have been made is needed. In reality, this could be a few as 100 actual applicants offered places on design and technology ITT courses by mid-March.

Nearly half of the growth in applicants can be found in the London and South East regions. Whether this means that some rebalancing of ITT places might be required, as these are the two regions with the greatest demand for teachers, is no doubt a matter for active discussion. It would be foolhardy to leave places unfilled in other parts of the country whilst turning away acceptable applicants from London, especially as London often produces a higher percentage of BAME trainees than other parts of England.

Next month the blog will consider the different routes into teaching, and how they are faring and also revisit the issue of the age profile of applicants.

Another nail in the coffin of 3-tier schooling

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Somerset County Council is to reorganise some of its remaining three tier schools into a more usual pattern of primary and secondary sectors according to a BBC story.

Council approves changes to Somerset schools

Somerset County Council has approved changes to nine schools in the Crewkerne and Ilminster area – saying that while the majority of responses to a public consultation had opposed the plans, no viable alternatives had been put forward. Pupils in the schools will move from a three-tier system (infant or junior, middle and upper) to a two-tier system (primary and secondary), with the change prompted by financial instability resulting from low pupil numbers. The Cabinet member for education and transformation said the decision marked a “significant milestone” following a “long and difficult journey”. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-somerset-56430254

Three tier patterns of schooling, similar in nature to the private sector, pre-prep, prep and secondary school model were introduced into the state system in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Usually they were introduced in response to both the move towards non-selective secondary education and the most efficient use of school buildings following the requirement of the 1944 Education Act to remove the remaining all-age elementary schools. All-age schools became briefly fashionable again with the advent of academies, but I have yet to see any research evidence of whether they work any better than the dominant system with a break at eleven.

A few three tier systems still linger on, especially in Northumberland and a few other areas, but for the past two decades authorities have been unwinding most of the systems. There were two models at the height of the three tier approach. A switch to secondary at age 12, where the schools educating children up to twelve were regarded as primary schools and those with a break at 13. The 9-13 schools in those systems were regarded as secondary schools. This compromise affected the funding arrangements for pupils depending upon which system was in operation. Buckinghamshire used the former system whereas Bedfordshire chose the latter.

In Oxfordshire, the City of Oxford, in 1974, at the point where it lost its status as a County borough and became a district council with no further responsibility or schooling, opted for a three tier system of schooling, even though the rest of the county had opted for a two tier comprehensive system. In those days, the city was run by a Conservative administration, and there are those that think the choice of a different system to the county system reflected a view on the loss of perceived status by the city politicians. Certainly, it took until the end of the 1990s before the county achieved a single unified system of education. That lasted a mere decade before the arrival of academies once again fractured the landscape asunder.

Three tier systems had some impressive supporters including Sir Alec Clegg in the West Riding of Yorkshire. But, in the end, they were never destined to be more than a footnote in the history of state schooling in England.

Off to University

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Here’s a hear warming story about a student from among the group of most disadvantaged pupils in our education system https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/19162077.traveller-milly-teaches-classics-going-oxford-university/

I would say in our schools, but most traveller and Romany children don’t go to school on a regular basis.

When I joined Oxfordshire’s Education Committee in the early 1990s – some readers may have to look up the term Education Committee in the history books – Oxfordshire had a fully fitted mobile classroom serving this community. Now, these children sometimes don’t even appear on the pupil outcomes data as a group as their outcomes are so far adrift from those of other groups in society.

Fairground children are a distinct group within the wider category, and in rural areas they spend part of the year traveling from market own to market town for the annual street fair.  So, congratulations to Milly on winning a place at University, and to Joe for the work that his organisation does to promote Oxford University with state school pupils.

I wonder whether anyone has thought about traveller children during the lockdown and whether they have had access to on-line learning. I will be asking the question as this group could surely benefit from the learning about remote teaching and learning gained during the pandemic.

I recall visiting a secondary school a couple of years ago where they had children from a mobile home community site for travellers on their roll. They worked hard to ensure the children received an education even though it took up time and resources. The National Funding Formula and per pupil funding don’t provide for the needs of groups where special arrangements are required.

I won’t say ‘Good Luck’ Milly, because I don’t believe she needs good luck. But, I do hope that she enjoys her time at university.

Freedom of Information Request

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The DfE’s teaching vacancies web site has been in operation for some time now. Indeed, in the DfE’s evidence to the School Teachers Review Body (STRB) this year they state the following at paragraph 45:

We are also continuing to develop and improve our Teaching Vacancies service, which is a free, national jobs listing website designed to save schools money and deliver high quality candidates. With schools spending in the region of £75m on recruitment advertising and not always filling vacancies, there are very significant gains to be made in this area. Over 75% of schools in England 14 are now signed up to use the service and over half a million jobseekers visited Teaching Vacancies in 2020 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/967761/STRB_Written_Evidence_2021.pdf

On the face of it the site is doing well. Regular readers will know of my role as Chair of TeachVac, the job site matching teachers to jobs across England that pre-dated the DfE site. After reading the above paragraph, I wondered how the half a million jobseekers number was measured. For most of the time there has been no requirement to log-in and register to view vacancies on the DfE site, so was it just ‘hits’. In that case half a million might seem a low number over 12 months. I am not sure what the TES would claim, but TeachVac is in excess of 5 million ‘hits’ over the last twelve months and heading for 6 million for 2021.

The claim of 75% of schools registered with the DfE says nothing about how often they place vacancies on the site.

A casual glance at the around 1,500 vacancies shown as the total on the DfE site reveals a number of issues.

Firstly, not all vacancies are for teachers. Some are for teaching assistants and others for everything including cleaners, support staff, examination offers and cover supervisors. Secondly, not all vacancies are for posts in schools. Some are in Sixth form Colleges and other institutions not run under school regulations.

However, the most important issue is the number of unique posts on the DfE site. I raised this with the DfE directly recently, and have not yet had a explanation. As a result, I have tabled a Freedom of information request.

On the DfE vacancy site for teachers

How many of the published vacancies on 16th March or nearest available date with data were duplicated.

What was the number of unique vacancies on that day for teachers in institutions operating under schools regulations displayed on the DfE Vacancy site after excluding Sixth Form Colleges, other Further Education institutions and any private sector institutions and posts not requiring a teacher such as Teaching Assistant, cleaner, Examinations Officer and cover supervisor? Vacancies providing services across MATs and not linked to a specific school should also be excluded from the total.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes to respond to the FOI request. Since the answer should be available at the press of a button, it surely should not take long for a response, even after it has no doubt had to be checked at several levels within the Department before being released.

Last week, it was reported to me that one vacancy appeared several times on the site. I have no objection to such a policy if the total refers to ‘unique’ vacancies and not to repeats of the same vacancy, as such an approach to the total might be construed as misleading as to the usefulness of the site.

As I have pointed out before, TeachVac consistently has more vacancies than the DfE site, and teachers wanting a job in either the state or private sector can find them on TeachVac, but not on the DfE site.

However, the largest mystery of all is why schools are still spending £75 million on recruitment advertising when there are better uses for the cash. Perhaps the teacher associations and those responsible for school governance and administration can tell me the answer as to why so much cash is being spent on recruitment advertising?

Fire Chiefs support school sprinkler system for new schools

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Those readers that have been following this blog for some years will know that one of the few matters that The Daily Mail and I both agree upon is the need to fit sprinkler systems in new schools.

On the 15th April 2019 this blog carried a post headed ‘Install Sprinkler Systems’. This followed a call to ensure all new schools had sprinkler system built into them during construction.

Zurich Insurance, a major insurer for local government risks has now come out in support of this suggestion in a new report. A review of their view can be found in this link to pbctoday https://www.pbctoday.co.uk/news/health-safety-news/fire-risk-in-schools/81974/

I fully support the recommendation that all schools should be built with sprinkler systems for the reasons cited in my blog post of April 2019.

Zurich found that the average school posed a fire risk 1.7 times greater than non-residential buildings. When compared to 2.9 million non-household properties, school buildings were also three times more likely to fall into the ‘high’ fire risk category (58% vs 20%).

Now the National Fire Chiefs Council has added their voice to those calling for the compulsory fitting of sprinklers in schools.

Over the last five years, 1,100 classrooms have been gutted by fire, with 47 schools destroyed among a total of 2,300 fire incidents – while just 2% of buildings were fitted with sprinklers. The National Fire Chiefs Council is calling for sprinklers to be mandatory in all new schools, in line with Scotland and Wales.

This is a powerful new ally in the campaign to fit sprinklers.

Those concerned about climate change might also add that an unnecessary fire in a school, as in any building, releases gases from the burring materials into the atmosphere that could be prevented by having installed sprinklers.

The removal of the requirement for sprinklers in new schools was a short-sighted measure that ought to have been changed already. Better some water damage than the destruction of a whole school and the disruption to the education of many children.

Schools and the pandemic a year on

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Health and Social Care, business and education. Along with the vaccine, these are the three big stories from the pandemic. Behind them lie probably close to 150,000 deaths; each one a tragedy for a family and friends. As befits a blog about education, I will concentrate on my thoughts of what has taken place in education since last March.

Cooperation can be better than competition

Not all expertise resides in one place, and fighting a pandemic is best achieved with teamwork.  Sadly, the government didn’t harness the expertise contained in bodies such as the professional associations. The worst example was probably the announcement that schools would open in January only to be rapidly changed a day later. The on-going saga over assessment is another example of unreal assumptions leading to damaging changes.

Technology finally caught up with schooling or teaching discovered technology

It has taken a pandemic to challenge the existing format of teaching and learning. The technology revolution has impacted on many areas of life over the past half century, since email and the internet entered our lives. However, the resistance of the school sector as a whole to embrace new technology in a systematic manner beyond just installing bits of kit, such as whiteboards, led to there being no road map for when schools were forced to close.

The closure and lack of foresight revealed another problem that has always been there, but had disappeared under the carpet in the past two decades

The deprivation gap

The National Funding Formula marked the low point in recognising that not all children have access to equal opportunities in life. In the 1970s this issue was a hot topic. Books such as, ‘Depriving the Deprived’’ ‘The poverty of education’ and ‘Planning and Educational Inequality’ are worth revisiting as is the section of the Plowden Report that deals with the issue. Despite Labour’s Education Action Zones and the Conservatives’ Opportunity Areas, little real attention has been paid to the lack of education progress linked to deprivation except by a few individuals, such as the work of Professor Dorling, until the pandemic exposed the gaps in society.

The fact that it took a footballer to motivate a government over the issue of free school meals was an indictment of a school system where responsibility for the system was concentrated at Westminster.

The importance of place in local decision-making

It has taken the pandemic to make clear that local decision-making can deal with local issues far better than long chains of command. The current dual system of academies and maintained schools doesn’t work. Either nationalise schools and create the education equivalent of the NHS, with little democratic accountability or return to a system where local democracy has a central role to play in the local school system.

Schooling is still a people-driven activity

Schools never closed, and most school leaders found themselves running two systems for learners: on-line and face to face. Early in the pandemic a headteacher in Cumbria died with covid.  Without committed staff, backed by parents, schooling an unhappily fail to meet educational goals. There is a task to be done in areas where parents are not engaged with schooling to encourage a change of attitude.

And above all

Schools Matter

Children are eager to return to school. In these days of small families – by historical standards – and less community involvement than in the past, schools undoubtedly play a significant social role in the lives of children and young people. I am sure that looking at families where siblings of one parent have attended school as children of key workers and those of another have not been in school for most of the past year will show up the differences in outcomes both intellectual and socially.

Finally, all schools rely upon dedicated and hard-working staff. This blog wants to thank each and every one of you for what you do for children and young people.

Covid and the Teacher Labour Market in England

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We now have data from twelve months that have suffered from the effects of the covd-19 pandemic. First thing this morning, I asked my analysts at TeachVac what had been the consequences for the teacher labour market in England. They came up with the following table for all vacancies.

2018201920202021
March715990299302
April813187356080
May10170114686357
June386248283286
July93312941043
August547565543
September295538843382
October418654383721
November366242583074
December201528931811
January5492638682162622
February5056579184215167
Monthly recorded vacancies for teachers in England

Source: TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk

Secondary teachers have suffered from a greater decline in their job opportunities than their primary colleagues. However, with the modern equivalent of ‘pool’ recruitment still in operation in parts of the primary sector, the figures are less reliable for that sector the for the secondary school sector where most schools manage their own recruitment.

Details data for local authority vacancy patterns and even those for a specific postcode are available on request, for a small fee. Data are also available for specific secondary subjects on a month by month basis, again for a small fee.

The next two months will be key ones for teachers looking for jobs. Will the market return to 2019 levels or continue to remain depressed. Much may depend upon the behaviour of the wider labour market for graduates. However, how many teachers decide to leave their jobs will also be important. It is also worth remembering that he supply of teachers leaving teacher preparation courses will not be sufficient in all subjects to meet the DfE’s estimate of need. How far ‘returners’ can make up the deficit only time will tell, but fewer advertised vacancies will also help close the gap.

I, for one, had wondered whether the pandemic and resulting effects on head teacher’s workload, might have resulted in a wave of departures. So far, in 2021, there is little evidence of any surge in departures of primary head teachers.

Although there have been fewer vacancies in London during the past twelve months, the Home Counties, and especially those parts of the Home Counties in the South East remain the part of the country driving the teacher labour market. This is not surprising as this are also contains the largest concentration of private schools. So far, these schools do not seem, as a sector, to have been badly affected by the pandemic in terms of pupil numbers. No doubt September enrolment will conform whether that is still the case.

Finally, although pupil numbers are still increasing in the secondary sector, will there be any effect from Brexit? Might some EU families return to their home country rather than stay in England? If so, could such departures have an effect on school rolls in some areas where there are large concentrations of EU citizen living in particular neighbourhoods? Comments on this point would be welcome.