How many years can the government continue to let the labour market for teachers remain relatively unregulated? After nearly a decade during which the supply of qualified new entrants into the teacher labour market across many secondary subjects has failed to meet the predicted demand, as measured by the government’s own modelling through the Teacher Supply Model, there must be a genuine discussion about the consequences of the failure of the labour market to work effectively, and what steps might be taken to help meet the policy objectives behind the operation of the teacher labour market?

Over the past few weeks, I have written two opinion pieces on the working of the labour market for teachers – both reproduced on this blog – and also witnessed the fact that education has been included as an important component of the government’s levelling up agenda.

Can you really level up outcomes if the labour market for teachers, a key resource; indeed, the key resource in schooling even today, is insufficient to meet the needs of a market that is no longer just regional nor even national, but increasingly global in its scope.

To be fair to the government, it has taken some steps to intervene in the market. The DfE job board was one step, although that just competes with the other existing providers and its use isn’t mandatory for schools. The iQTS qualification to be trialled this year, is another interesting response to the development of a global market for teachers. Previous interventions such as highlighting the ability of academies not to require QTS of its teachers and granting QTS to American and some Commonwealth qualified teachers have had little noticeable impact on the labour market. In part, this has been because of the visa system in place in England, and the operation of the Migration Advisory Committee in determining ‘shortage’ subjects.

So, what might the government do now? One area to consider is teacher preparation There is a policy for teacher preparation. However, it needs to be set against the trend in the school population over the next decade. The years of massive growth in the school population are now coming to an end, and once again stable or even falling pupil numbers across the system will have an impact upon training needs, if other factors affecting demand remain constant. However, it seems possible that schools might need to finance at least some of the future pay rises from within their budgets. In the past, such a strategy has reduced the demand for teachers. However, it also has an effect on the demand for those other than teachers working in schools.

Reducing numbers in training in popular subjects such as history, art and physical education in the face of reducing pupil numbers may mean painful decisions about whether small providers will want to continue offering courses, especially if there is also a squeeze on funding for training. Will the approach to policy continue to encourage schools to create training places for the requirements locally or recognise that larger regional units offer better prospects for research and development of pedagogy and links with subject departments, not to mention the sustainability of small subjects where group sizes are often unviable even when recruitment into training is buoyant.

These are not new issues; they appear every time there is a change in the direction of pupil numbers. The new factors this time are the levelling up agenda and the issue of who manages the administration of places; schools or other bodies, including higher education?

The other issue is how you manage the move from preparation to employment in the teacher labour market? Does the government have a role here? That’s a discussion for another day.