While I have been waiting for the DfE to produce the June data about admissions and acceptances to ITT postgraduate courses, I thought that I would have another look at the percentage of courses no longer showing as offering vacancies as listed on the DfE website.
In passing, UCAS used to publish a calendar of dates when the monthly data would be published and generally stuck to that regime. There seems to me to be little logic to the reporting by the DfE this year.
Anyway, what are the portents for September, and thus for the recruitment round that will provide staff for schools in the 2023/24 school year? Sadly, they don’t seem great.
The data I used matches ‘courses with vacancies’ against the ‘all courses’ number. Now, of course, a course may only have one vacancy or many, and the data doesn’t show that information, useful although it might be to applicants trying to decide where to apply to at this point in the cycle. I assume that those advising applicants are privy in order to use the data to help maximise successful outcomes.
Below in the table is the percentage of courses with vacancies ranked from least to most.
| Subject | 24th June vacancies | all courses | % with vacancies | |
| Psychology | 28 | 106 | 26% | |
| Latin | 5 | 16 | 31% | |
| Social Sciences | 36 | 115 | 31% | |
| Classics | 7 | 18 | 39% | |
| Heath & Soc Care | 16 | 36 | 44% | |
| Comms & Media Studies | 18 | 39 | 46% | |
| Physical education | 262 | 563 | 47% | |
| Dance | 35 | 70 | 50% | |
| Business studies | 170 | 272 | 63% | |
| History | 406 | 642 | 63% | |
| Drama | 227 | 350 | 65% | |
| Economics | 25 | 38 | 66% | |
| Computing | 373 | 561 | 66% | |
| Art and design | 325 | 479 | 68% | |
| Music | 266 | 387 | 69% | |
| Primary | 1200 | 1716 | 70% | |
| Citizenship | 14 | 20 | 70% | |
| Design and technology | 350 | 494 | 71% | |
| English | 575 | 808 | 71% | |
| Modern Foreign Languages | 691 | 966 | 72% | |
| Religious Education | 347 | 480 | 72% | |
| Mathematics | 630 | 871 | 72% | |
| Chemistry | 561 | 766 | 73% | |
| Geography | 501 | 671 | 75% | |
| Biology | 551 | 733 | 75% | |
| Physics | 607 | 796 | 76% | |
| Science | 21 | 25 | 84% |
Only ten subjects have more than a third of courses currently ‘closed’ with no vacancies. The assumption must be that these courses are ‘full’ although there might be other reasons for the course not shown as currently offering vacancies.
Leaving out the small number of ‘science’ courses, there are three subjects, biology, physics and geography with more than three quarters of courses still returned as with vacancies. Even the primary sector has 70% of courses with at least one vacancy.
Such high levels of courses can be seen as a ‘good thing’ if there happens to be a flood of late applications. However, it is possible some school-based providers will no longer recruit after the end of term, and are thus not taking applications after the end of next week.
If the ability and willingness to recruit throughout the summer is not a criterion for re-accreditation then it ought to be, otherwise the government risks shooting itself in the foot by missing out on late applicants. There are those that don’t decide to become a teacher until August, and want to start in September.
As Teach First has started recruiting again, for this summer, it looks fair to say that that data are pointing to 2023/24 being another challenging year for schools needing to recruit staff. Currently, the average number of vacancies for schools in London and the South East stands at 10 per school.
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John Howson 