Monthly Archives: May 2022

Blame it on Easter

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When design and technology is the only key subject recording more offers to would-be graduates wanting to train as a teacher in April 2022 than at the same point in the 2021 recruitment into training round, you know something unusual is happening.

Being charitable, one might ascribe the lack of offers to candidates to a combination of the timing of Easter this year and the imminent announcement when the data were collected of the 2022 ITT Training targets by the DfE. Apart from design and technology every secondary subject that I have been tracking since the 2013/14 round is recording lower offer numbers than in April 2021.

Of course, ‘offers’ defined as those in the ‘recruited’, ‘conditions pending’, ’deferred from a previous cycle’ and ‘received an offer’ don’t tell the whole story. Trends in applications are also a key barometer as they aren’t influenced so much by targets although Easter does affect when candidates apply, as does the forthcoming examination season for finalists that might not yet have applied to train as a teacher.

Applications to train as a primary teacher reached 31,925 by mid-April this year. The table shows how that number compares with recent years.

ApplicationsFebruaryMarchAprilMayJuneJulyAugustSeptember
Primary2016/173791041530442604672049350515905341054310
Primary2017/182643030540338103811041180443104690048060
Primary2018/192471028670322503585038880417904433045490
Primary2019/20202380027870319203599040180461804689048670
Primary2020/213024035770410204468048530513105294054230
Primary2021/22239672839131925

Source TeachVac from UCAS and DfE data

So, applications are in-line with pre-pandemic lows for April. As the data on courses with vacancies has revealed, (see my blog post on that topic) this is not enough to fill courses across the country and the government cannot take the primary sector for granted.

Overall applications to the secondary sector courses are a worry and the government should take notice.

Applications for Secondary CoursesMarchAprilMayJuneJulyAugust
2015785808759095160101700
2016814908758093530100000
201775850827708955097370
201859350673907846086790
201957860667407636084790
202057780683107935091100
2021728308430092160100720120070122310
20226175570253

 Source TeachVac from UCAS and DfE data

Only in 2018 and 2019 were applications lower at this point in the cycle. Hopefully, the data for May will show closer to the 90,000 number that is required to provide sufficient choice in many subjects.

Overall, some 37% of applications – note applications not applicants – have resulted in some sort of ‘offer’. According to Table 10.1 in the DfE data the percentage for design and technology is over 40%, but even that percentage won’t be high enough to ensure the target in the Teacher Supply Model is met.

 I don’t know why the DfE hasn’t issued the normal mid-month update containing this data, but it is available on their web site at Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2022 to 2023 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK (apply-for-teacher-training.service.gov.uk)

Ministers and their Aides may well want to reflect upon this data and its implications. Keeping fingers crossed that graduate unemployment might be on the rise and teaching looks like a safe bet in any economic downturn is one possible strategy, but at present it still looks like a gamble with the education of the nation’s children that has too risky odds. The data for May will be awaited with real interest.

How much to advertise a teacher vacancy?

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Should a foreign owned company earn around £50 million from recruitment advertising largely paid for by schools located in England? I previously wrote about the published accounts of the tes a couple of years ago Teacher Recruitment: How much should it cost to advertise a vacancy? | John Howson (wordpress.com) This morning, Companies House published the TES GLOBAL Ltd accounts for 2020-21 covering the period up to the end of August 2021. The turnover in the UK of the Group was some £54 million; up from pre-pandemic levels of just under £52 million. Most of the income comes from subscription advertising, where schools pay the company an annual fee. Transactional advertising income continued to form a much smaller part of the company’s turnover.

Now, as regular readers of this blog are aware, I am not unbiased when it comes to the issue of recruitment advertising and the teacher vacancy market, having helped create TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk  well before the DfE started their job board.

There is an interesting question as to why schools are prepared to use TeachVac and the DfE site, but still pay shedloads of cash to the owners of the tes job board? For some it will be just inertia: nobody ever got fired for using the established player in the market. For some it will no doubt be a belief that tes has more teachers looking for vacancies than any other platform. TeachVac requires registration, so we know a lot more about our active job seekers than job boards that don’t require a sign-up. Interestingly, there seems little data in the tes accounts about usage of their platform by teachers. TeachVac regularly publishes data on matches, having passed the one million for 2022 earlier this week.

TeachVac has been dedicated to prove the concept that job boards don’t need to be expensive, and its current pricing model of £1 per match up to a maximum of £1,000 per school per year for secondary schools, and less for primary schools, is much cheaper than a subscription to tes.

Interestingly, tes has admin expenses of around £60 million, not all spent on the recruitment side of the business. However, it is vastly more than the £150,000 TeachVac costs to do a similar job of matching vacancies to job seekers. With the possibility of 75,000 vacancies on TeachVac this year, that’s a cost of little more than £2 per vacancy for TeachVac, compared with perhaps £4-500 per vacancy listed by the tes extrapolating from the information in the published accounts. This despite the company further reducing its headcount from 191 to 160 at the end of the accounting period.

In their accounts, tes’s owners cite software and development costs of £43,000,000. I wonder what that values that  places on TeachVac’s software when we come to do our annual accounts later this year?

Overall, TES GLOBAL Ltd has returned to losses in 2020-21, after a profit in the year before, when they sold their teacher supply business. The company still has a large interest burden effectively being serviced by schools.

The question, as ever, is, how long will schools be prepared to pay these prices for recruitment advertising when cheaper options are available?

Good news about Psychology

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Two thirds of ITT courses offering psychology via the DfE website no longer have vacancies. Nearly half the courses training teachers in Latin, and four out of ten of the physical education courses also no longer have vacancies, as of 4th May. That’s the good news.

At the other end of the scale, between 90-92% of the science courses still have at least one vacancy, with little difference between courses for biology, chemistry or physics teachers despite some generous incentives to teach the subjects. Most of the remaining courses have more than three quarters of courses still recruiting, including courses for primary school teachers.

This data is interesting because it reveals recruitment issues are widespread across England and not just confined to a few regions. If the latter was the case, then it would be likely that courses in some regions would be showing ‘no vacancies’ by now. Generally, that doesn’t appear to be the case except in psychology and the small number of other subjects were above average numbers of courses have no vacancies.

The next big challenge comes in June, when new graduates have to decide their future. Will the worsening economic outlook cause a recruitment bounce such as was seen in 2020 during the height of the first wave of the covid pandemic? Perhaps we will have to wait until 2023 before the labour market for graduates tightens sufficiently for graduates to turn to teaching.

Can we start to suggest that the longest period of teacher shortages might be drawing to an end with a spectacular array of unfilled places in 2022.

However, to really solve the teacher supply crisis, at least at recruitment into training of postgraduates, the profession has to look attractive to graduates, and the recent hike to more than 12% on loan repayments may well act as a deterrent. The outcome of this year’s STRB review of pay and conditions will also be crucial, as will be the willingness of the government to accept the Report.

The one good note for the government is the reduction in the size of the primary school population and thus, a likely requirement for fewer teachers in the next few years. This will especially be the case if the hard Funding Formula causes small schools to close in any numbers, making for more efficient class sizes.

Pupil numbers in the secondary sector will also level out, if not decline, in a few years’ time and that will also potentially take the pressure of training numbers for the secondary sector. However, if teachers continue to switch to tutoring or teaching overseas, then any decline in the need for teachers from a reduction in pupil numbers will be offset by a growing demand for other reasons.  

In the meantime, persuading new graduates to select teacher training might be where the government can best spend its marketing budget over the next couple of months.

Trends in school leadership

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Last week, the DfE published an interesting paper about the characteristics and trends in school leadership over the decade from 2010 to 2020. School leadership in England 2010 to 2020: characteristics and trends – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) This document will no doubt provide the basis for many higher education dissertations and academic research articles. The DfE data also helps to validate the annual Leadership Review produced by TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk over the past few years that in itself has been the successor to the research into headship turnover that I commenced with Education Data surveys way back in the 1980s: genuinely a lifetime ago.

One of the issues that the DfE paper doesn’t draw out enough is the fate of older entrants into teaching. Now, I assume someone switching career in their late 30s isn’t normally interested in aiming for headship unless they have been persuaded to teach for that very reason. But, what of those in their late 20s? Can they expect the same promotion opportunities as new graduates? I expect that to be the case in the relatively flat hierarchies in the primary sector, but what of those talented career changers in large English and Mathematics departments? Can they achieve promotion fast enough to reach headships? Or is there still a barrier of age by which you must normally have reached first an assistant headship and then a deputy headship to be considered not ‘too old’ for a first headship in a secondary school?

The second leadership issue not adequately considered by the DfE paper is that of the staffing of leadership teams in faith schools, and especially Christian schools, in an increasingly secular society. Requiring adherence to the faith, not just in a notional manner but as a practicing adherent, can restrict the supply of candidates. How far, especially in the primary sector, where faith schools form a large proportion of the overall total of schools, does this issue affect leadership appointments. TeachVac annual review suggested that faith schools are more likely to need to re-advertise a headship than non-faith schools, although better management of teacher supply by some diocese has reduced the size of the problem from the levels seen more than a decade ago.

In terms of middle leadership, there seems little about difference between subjects in the study and any strain that a shortage of teachers in subject such as design and technology or business studies may place on middle leadership isn’t considered. Do teachers in these subjects reach middle leadership positions sooner that say, English or mathematics teachers?

Not surprisingly, in a survey that runs for 2010 to 2020, headteachers and other school leaders are more likely to be younger in 2020 than in 2010. This is partly due to the retirement of the ‘baby boomers’ in the years around 2010, and their replacement with new headteacher, usually in their early 40s. The trend to younger headteachers seems once again to be in evidence with record number so headteachers below the age of 40, although there are still relatively few headteachers appointed in their 20s. The ending of the compulsory retirement age has meant that in 2020 there were a record number of headteachers over the age of 65 still in post. Some may even be old enough to qualify for their bus pass.

This research is worth considering by policy makers, and it might be useful for the House of Commons Select Committee on Education to study the findings along with a discussion about whether or not the problems recruiting teachers has a longer-term effect on middle and senior leadership appointments?