Monthly Archives: May 2025

Do teachers lack for good career advice?

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A quarter of a century ago, I started a career clinic on the pages of the TES when it was still part of News International. I recall going to Admiral House, their then HQ, and presenting a live webinar where teachers posed question on line, and I dictated the answer in real time to a typist and the answers then appeared on the web. Later, between 2008 and 2011, I answered over 5,000 questions in a twice weekly on-line clinic.

I recall these memories, not to boast, but to ask whether anything is now better for teachers? Do MATs help their staff with career development. Do mature entrants receive any advice about careers when they train to be a teacher, or is the emphasis from the DfE’s website onwards just about bringing them into the profession? I am inspired to ask these questions having read laments about the challenges around returning to teach in the UK after a spell abroad.

Now it maybe your partner has returned to the UK for job reasons or the geopolitical situation makes teaching overseas a risk at a particular moment I time.

Here in England, who is telling teachers what the consequences for their careers will be if the Spending Review doesn’t compensate for falling rolls across the school system, and VAT has been imposed on private schools? What does the 6,500 extra teachers mean for your career as a thirty-something teacher of English in a council area now run by Reform?

I assume that the professional associations provide support. Indeed, I used to run seminars on ‘managing your teaching career’ for one of them. But, when there is a teacher shortage, and rolls are rising, teaching posts are easy to come by. That won’t be the picture for much of the next decade, whatever government is in power.

Then there are those that want to leave teaching and either set up their own business, as consultants, curriculum content creators or just tutors. Where do they turn for advice?

Fifteen years ago, I charged £100 for a CV appraisal and a phone conversation with teachers and double that for school leaders. What might be the going rate today?

With universities facing cutbacks, should they start being entrepreneurial and offer career services to teachers? What about the big recruitment agencies that make money from schools. How much do they reinvest in the sector?

Today is an interesting day to write this post, as tomorrow is the 31st of May, the traditional date for final resignations for those leaving at the end of term. This year’s output of new teachers will be particularly aware of how successful they have been in finding a job already. If they and their colleagues haven’t found a job yet, what is someone going to do about that in the face of the huge expansion of in-school graduate apprenticeships announced recently by the DfE. How will the axing of Level 7 apprenticeships affect serving teachers and their career ambitions?

Lots of questions, but few answers. I would welcome your views and comments.

How will the Apprenticeship Levy changes affect schools?

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Will the changes to the Apprenticeship Levy announced today affect schools? I have argued before I this blog that the Apprenticeship Levy is in fact a tax on schools, and especially primary schools, as their individual budgets often all below the threshold for paying the levy, but, unless they are small stand-alone academies, they pay the Levy. This is because they are either maintained schools, where the local authority is the employer, or they are part of MATs or other arrangements where the salary bill crosses the threshold for paying the levy.

Now, a tax may not be a bad thing per se, especially if the proceeds are used for the good of those paying it. When it was first introduced some local authorities were slow to ensure the proceeds of the Levy were used by schools, and ended up returning unused cash to HM Treasury. Hopefully, that doesn’t happen anywhere today.

The announcement by the DfE this morning of the effective abolition of the Level 7 apprenticeships, expressed by the government as: “Refocusing funding away from Level 7 (masters-level) apprenticeships from January 2026”, (DfE Press Notice) comes hard on the heels of the announcement on the 9th May for the school sector about teaching apprenticeships that said:

“postgraduate teaching apprenticeship (PGTA) courses will be slashed from twelve months to nine, aligning to the school year and getting newly trained teachers into the classroom sooner.  

Courses currently run from September to September, meaning trainees typically have to wait months before kicking off their careers, and making it challenging for schools to support apprentices while training.  

The change will be made from August this year and is expected to open up more opportunities to train to teach, as well as accelerating trainees’ journeys to the front of the classroom.” Red tape slashed to get more teachers into classrooms – GOV.UK

On the one hand, the government gives, but on the other hand it could take away in-service opportunities for teacher development where these were paid from the Levy for Level 7 courses. The outcome must not be unspent levy cash once again being returned to the government by employers of teachers and other staff working in schools.

Incidentally, school leaders should check whether the employers of those services they contract out have a policy for using the Apprenticeship Levy that they pay. If they don’t, then schools may not be receiving full value for money for their expenditure.

How will the news affect higher education departments working with pre-service and in-service teachers, and others in the education field? If there is a move away from courses where trainees pay fees towards an employment-based apprenticeship with a salary and associated benefits that might reduce interest in higher education courses. If the removal of Level 7 apprenticeships cuts enrolment on higher degrees that could be a double whammy, coming just at a time when training targets are being affected by falling pupil numbers.  This may not be an easy summer for those responsible for training teachers, even if interest in the profession is once again on the increase.

Is the teacher supply crisis over?

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“As part of our Plan for Change, we are already seeing green shoots, with two thousand more secondary school teachers training this year than last and more teachers forecasted to stay in the profession.” DfE Press Release 22nd May 2025

Good news is always worth repeating, so the release continues later:

There are encouraging signs that this is working with two thousand more secondary school teachers training this year than last, a 25% increase in the number of people accepting teacher training places in STEM subjects, and more teachers forecasted to stay in the profession.  DfE Press Release 22nd May 2025

Good to see the DfE confirming the data showing the improvement in teacher supply, at least at the national level. The secondary trainee numbers increased from 13,000 in 2023 to 15,000 in 2024. This was a substantial increase on the previous year. With targets lowered for 2025 entry in some subjects, and the primary sector, perhaps the sector can breathe a small sigh of relief, at least for the rest of this decade?

For those that missed it, here’s what I said on LinkedIn in April

What do English and Classics have in common? They are the only two subjects where ‘offers’ on PG ITT courses are still below those of April last year. As I predicted last month, the decade long teacher supply problem may be finally coming to a end. Falling school rolls; underfunded pay settlements squeezing PTRs – watch for my analysis of PTRs from 1974 to 2024, coming soon – and a tightening labour market in graduate level jobs for new graduates all mean good news for the DfE. The task then is to hang on to those teachers already in the system; a 4% pay rise will help here. Around 1,300 of the additional applications this year are from those under-24: just what is needed for the long-term health of the profession. Even better, most of the additional applications are coming from within the UK, with RoW applications 1,000 lower than last April. too early to crack open the champagne, but could make the research the DfE are going to commission on the workforce interesting. Also, need for help with teachers looking for jobs writing their letters of application and careers advice.

And what I said on LinkedIn in March

The ITT numbers for March 2025 are interesting. The gentle trend downwards in primary, and upwards in secondary applications (in most subjects) continues. The former is of concern, the latter is not enough to see all vacancies filled in 2026, even with the expected cuts schools are facing in their workforce between now and then. Dig a little deeper, and a couple of interesting facts emerge: a third of applications come from just two areas, London and the rest of the world.
The second fact is that career changers numbers are on the decline, but new graduate numbers are once again on the increase. This is entirely to be expected with a labour market where jobs for new graduates may be harder to come by this year, and those in work are less likely to take the risk of becoming a teacher with no job guarantee at the end of your training; a fresh student loan to repay, and a loss of earning for a year. If we do see a real downturn in the job market, then expect the decade long crisis in teacher supply to disappear. At present, the jury is out on this point. The question mark about interest in English and drama continues this month, with ‘offers’ in English some 200/300 where they might be expected to be. Generally, it is the arts and humanities where there has been little growth (art and design excepted) in interest. Despite the continued decline in applications to train as a primary sector teacher, it looks as if all the growth in applications to train as a secondary teacher have come from women.

Sutton Trust and the London effect

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The recent publication of  an Opportunity Index Interactive Map – The Sutton Trust by the Sutton Trust raises some interesting questions about both methodology and the funding of schools.

I am in the process of completing an article discussing changes in pupil teacher ratios in England over the past 50 years between period of local government re-organisation. What struck me in doing that research was how often London boroughs had the most favourable PTRs, both in the late 1970s, and fifty years later in the 2020s.

Now, the Sutton Trust uses constituencies not borough in their mapping, but there is the same result: London parliamentary constituencies in the 2024 general election fill the top 20 places in a number of the Sutton Trust rankings, including the attainment 8 score for pupils with Free School Meals – not sure whether that is entitlement or take up, as they can be different in the secondary sector.

The Sutton Trust map illustrates the high rankings for much of London and parts of the Home Counties to the north and west of London. I am sure that the f40 Group of Local authorities will find this a useful tool to show how badly rural areas are funded, with many rural constituencies falling into the lowest toe categories of ‘very low’ and ‘low’.

Someone might also want to look at rural areas where there are selective secondary schools. I was struck by the fact that Weald of Kent constituency, where I stood in the 2024 general election for the Liberal Democrats, ranked 526th out of 533 constituencies in the Opportunity Index listing. Pupils in the constituency are in the Kent selective school system, and most don’t qualify for free transport to a selective school, even if they pass the entry test. Does that make a difference?

Looking at pupils that grew up in Oxfordshire, there are large differences. in the rankings in the Opportunity Index, with Bicester & Woodstock constituency ranked 68th in the opportunity rankings, and Oxford East some 398 places lower,  with a ranking of 466 out of the 533 constituencies.

ConstituencyRank out of 533Top 50% earners by age 28Top 20% of earners by 28Attainment 8 for Free School Meals Pupils
Banbury41037729
Bicester & Woodstock68431236
Didcot & Wantage260361231
Henley & Thame211461632
Oxford East466351029
Oxford West & Abingdon259401235
Witney324431027

This disparity helps to make the point I have made before, that the present funding formula for schools doesn’t work for pockets of deprivation in relatively affluent upper tier authorities. This has been the message of the f40 Group for some considerable time, and is supported by my study of PTRs across the past 50 years.

The last paragraph is not to deny the fact that urban constituencies in the metropolitan areas take up many of the lowest ranking positions, but it is worth looking at those constituencies that are near the bottom of the rankings, such as Clacton and Weald of Kent, and that don’t fit the normal perception of areas where opportunities are mor limited than in other constituencies.

Tis it once again time to discuss again how we fund our schools, and what society wants its schooling system to try to achieve.

Are teacher redundancies inevitable?

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The blunt answer is probably yes. Falling rolls, and a pupil driven National Funding Formula mean that even if a pay settlement is fully funded, some schools won’t be able to cover their present levels of expenditure with fewer pupils.

In the past 50 years, during periods when school rolls were falling, some redundancies took place, but new entrants from ITT often bore the brunt of the disappearing jobs. I recall doing a radio interview around 2010 about new teachers stacking shelves in Tesco because they couldn’t find a teaching post. For some primary school trainees, it might yet come to that state of affairs again.

The key issue for the next few years is, how will HM Treasury react to falling rolls when it sees funding for schools is now largely pupil driven. The creation of a National Funding formula so heavily tied to pupil numbers was a big risk. It was easy enough to turn a blind eye at the time the Formula was being created, as rolls across the country were on the increase. However, those of us with a longer vision could foresee that when rolls were falling, school budgets would quickly come under pressure. With staffing the largest component of school spending: less cash means less staff, even when there was the buffer of high levels of reserves accumulated for a ‘rainy year’.

In the past, HM Treasury has generally allowed the spending department at Westminster responsible for schooling o keep the same funding levels, even as rolls were falling, and when schooling was a local service councils could also prop up schools from Council Tax. I doubt that such an approach will be possible this time.

Falling rolls will mean falling income for schools and hence, redundancies. Such a scenario allied to parental choice means that some popular schools will up their marketing, and ride out the crisis, but less popular schools, and I include some faith schools in that group these days, with either face closure or the need to operate with lower costs and fewer staff.

With education probably lower down the pecking order in the forthcoming Spending Review than many other departments of state, certainly below defence and the NHS, and also not scoring highly in polling with voters, I can see HM treasury wanting to clawback some of the expenditure on education necessary when rolls were higher as an alternative to tax increases.

The macro picture doesn’t look great, and the new General Secretaries of the main teacher unions are going to face a tough battle, and almost certainly industrial action against a Labour government. In such action, the losers will be those living in our most deprived communities and not the parents that can make alternative arrangements: just look back to 2020, and what happened when covid hit our schools.

We are already seeing entrepreneurs marketing courses on ‘how to recruit pupils’ to schools worried about falling rolls.

What will be done for teachers either made redundant or unable to find their first teaching post? In the 2000s, I ran a regular career clinic for the ‘tes’, and offered career guidance and seminars for those worried about their futures. Maybe, it is time for some of the bigger MATs to work together to provide a service for teachers. The first action might be to allow those facing redundancy priority look at any vacancies as they arise. With modern technology, posting jobs to a defined group before general circulation seems like a good idea, and could save on redundancy costs if redeployment is possible. Perhaps, I should restart TeachVac now I am no longer a councillor in Oxfordshire?

Home Guard or Civil Defence Force?

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A new home guard will be established to protect key British infrastructure from attacks by hostile states and terrorists , under plans reportedly put forward in a major defence review. The Independent Sunday 18 May 2025

Less than a year after the issue of whether or not conscription was under consideration by a Conservative government surfaced during the early days of the 2024 general election, we now have a Labour Prime Minister presiding over a defence review that apparently wants to revive a part-time volunteer army. Whatever happened to The Territorials and their companion volunteer reserve forces in the other armed services?

We will have to await the full Defence Review to understand what is in the minds of those charged with the defence of the ream in the 21st century. At a time when there are more teachers in training than the whole establishment of the Royal Navy, (a factoid that never ceases to amaze me), something clearly has to be done about staffing our defence forces.

With the armed services no doubt open to pressure to reduce their numbers of Commonwealth recruits, a group that don’t often receive a mention in the debate about immigration, a review is obviously necessary if we need more people in our defence forces. Incidentally, I saw a post on LinkedIn recently that suggested there were days when the recruiting offices across the whole of Scotland only managed to recruit one person a day into all arms of the forces.

Will the Review consider the issue of cadet forces for young people. The remnants of these units are now rather haphazardly spread across the country, although the private schools have still, at least in the boys’ school sector, managed to retain many of their Combined Cadet Forces.

The CCF also used to be a feature in the State secondary school sector, at least in selective schools, but largely disappeared in the early 1960s, around the time that conscription was abolished. I recall that the school I attended has such a Force in 1958, when I joined the school, but by the time I reached the possible age to join, it had been disbanded.

Will an expansion of such forces be part of the proposals, or will the needs be just for adult volunteers. And what about the Royal Observer Corps – will that again feature as a part of the volunteer defence force?

Personally, I think a civil defence force that has wider uses than just preparing for a war is a more attractive proposition to sell to the general public. Afterall, even if saboteurs were to play an important part in the scheme of things, we already have the Civil Nuclear Police force to guard our high-risk power stations – and, incidentally, they are the only police force where all officers are trained and can carry firearms on a regular basis.

A civil defence force could help in times of national emergencies, such as floods, fires and other times of high risk – where increasingly firefighters are already a mixture of full-time professional and part-time retained officers, such as those that tragically lost their lives last week at the Bicester Motion conflagration –.

You only have to think of the fire bombs of the animal extremists that were inserted into clothing in shops to know how recruiting soldiers to stamp around outside possible targets is little more than gesture defending.

I will wait with interest, to see what actually the government will be proposing.  


Are there savings to be made in education?

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One of the tasks faced by someone no longer a councillor is to dispose of the vast accumulation of papers and reports collected over the years. While doing so it is possible to come across long forgotten articles. One such was an article that I wrote for the TES in their edition of 17th September 2010 that was headed ‘how to cut millions of pounds without harming the chalk face’.  Well, I suppose that ought to be the interactive whiteboard these days rather than the chalk face.

How relevant today are the suggestions I made at the end of a period when the Labour government led by Gordon Brown has favoured spending on education?

Back then, at a time when rolls were rising in primary schools, but still falling in the secondary sector: the opposite of the current situation, I focused firstly on the pension scheme and the cost of allowing private schools to be members of the teachers’ pension fund. I warned that uncapped salaries could risk bankrupting the scheme if there was either no cap on salaries or contributions didn’t rise.

In the event, the decision was taken to increase contributions and to ensure new entrants were on average salaries for their pensions rather than the more expensive final salary scheme previously available. However, the scheme is still massively expensive, especially as many pensioners are living longer. (note as a recipient of a public sector pension, I have an interest in anything the government does to public sector pensions).

My second suggestion was to reform teacher training to a more school-based system that required secondary schools only to train for the staff that they would need. In a period of falling rolls, it is easy for the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model that uses historical data to calculate the number of teachers needed to overestimate the needs of schools to recruit teachers. With a period of falling rolls currently facing schools, this is certainly an area where discussion might be helpful, especially after the recent announcement of more training places for graduate apprenticeships. Wasting training places, either for teachers that cannot find a teaching post in England or that start work in the private school sector, can lead to a mis-direction of funds.

Allied to the previous point of training, in 2010, I highlighted the issue of redundancies, and whether a system should be employed whereby all vacancies on offer by all state-funded schools should first be offered to those teachers facing redundancy: otherwise, the cost of redundancy payments for teachers that might then walk into another teaching post was a waste of money. How to handle the labour market for teachers during a period of falling rolls is something the DfE might still need to consider.

My concluding point related to Labour’s flagship projects. Of course, the one of those that mushroomed under the Conservative governments was the creation of Multi-Academy Trusts, each with its own chief officer and backroom staff. In Oxfordshire, there are around 20 MATs. Reducing that to say, five, could reduce central office costs, and allow the cash saved to be diverted into in-service training, and the recreation of an advisory and inspection service to stand between schools and ofsted, as well as identifying the future leaders of our schools, something the present system does not always do well. Saving just ten MAT CEO posts at £150,00 each might save around £2 million a year after on-costs have been taken into consideration.

Where there are falling rolls, unless overheads are reduced, the cash available for teaching and learning will undoubtedly be reduced in a period where the demands on government spending for areas such as defence and policing are uppermost in the mind of a government that doesn’t want to raise taxes, and thus may struggle to find extra cash for schooling.

‘Fully funded’ often doesn’t mean what it says for school budgets

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As usual, there is discussion about whether the recommendation of the School Teachers Remuneration Body (the STRB) about the level of increase for teachers’ salaries will be fully funded by the DfE this year. Of course, it depends upon what you mean by ‘fully funded’.  If the amount set aside by the DfE is less than the total pay bill, then clearly it won’t be fully funded.

However, even if it is ‘fully funded’ at the overall level, will that mean it will be fully funded for each and every individual school? Such an outcome is highly unlikely. Consider two schools; one has many young teachers and a high annual turnover of staff; the other, has a settled staff, mostly being paid at the top of their pay grade. Now also assume the first school is a maintained school with no top slicing, and the other part of a MAT that both top slices and pool reserves.

Are the two schools funded differently, assuming they are in the same local authority, with no differences in area cost adjustments or other factors. For the most part they won’t be, because of the working of the National Funding Formula that is largely based upon an amount per pupil.

There was less concern among school leaders about whether the pay bill was being met in full when pupil numbers were on the increase: it becomes much more an issue under the National Funding Formula when rolls are falling, and, as a result, a school’s income is set to reduce going forward.  

How did schools get into this position? In the 1990s when budgets were being devolved to schools from local authorities, schools could for the first time use their new freedoms to set their own staffing patterns.

Before the changes resulting from the Education Reform Act of 1988, local authorities set the staffing patterns for schools. Each school was allocated a Group, mostly from Grade 1 for the smallest of primary schools to Grade 7 for the largest secondary schools. Each grade had a point score, and that related to factors such as the number of promoted posts, and whether the school could employ a deputy head or heads. Special schools had their own grading that reflected their more complex staffing structure. The local authority picked up the staffing tab, much as some MATs do today.

All this central funding largely went out of the window with the devolution of funding to schools, although the salary of headteachers – especially in the primary sector – remained largely tied to the former group sizes for many years, often until the uncontrolled introduction of executive headteachers.

In these days of modern technology, it would be perfectly possible for the DfE to provide an uplift of the percentage recommended by the STRB that was related to each school’s salary bill. This would meet the need to ensure no school lost out from an average pay increase for all schools, but would have other consequences. I doubt the DfE would allow schools complete freedom over their staffing structure that they currently enjoy. Perhaps we might even see a return to the sort of structure that disappeared after schools’ gained control of their budgets: now there’s an interesting thought for a Labour government.

What should we do about children not in school?

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Is it time to start looking for a new solution to the issues surrounding children not in school? Currently too many young people are missing school for a variety of different reasons.

How about a ‘virtual school’ for all children not on a ‘normal’ school roll? The Local Authority where they live would assume responsibility on day one for any child without a school place, whether the child has moved into an area, and there is no mid-year SEND place available, (or other school places) or the young person has been excluded by a school, and has not yet been assigned another school.

Then there are those for who the normal school environment is not longer suitable. They should have a clearly defined place within the education system, managed by the local authority. Only in exceptional cases should responsibility for education be ceded to those parents that ask the state to educate their children.

Many young people might remain on the roll of the virtual school for a short-period of time. However, it would ensure no child for whom the state had assumed responsibility went missing from schooling.

Using the expertise gathered from the established model of virtual schools for children in care together with the work of hospital schools and services should ensure that a body of expertise would quickly develop to ensure all young people, whatever their challenges, had a programme of schooling mapped out for them, even if it didn’t look like the established regime of the traditional school day. However, there would be an expectation of regular contact between the virtual school and the pupil, with individual timetables of learning controlled through the school.

With a pupil being on a school roll at all times, parents would know that their children were part of a framework that includes inspection and has the child at its centre, and also removes the sense of isolation many children not in school can experience. The provision of a virtual school should also reduce the need for the use of section 61 of The Children and Families Act 2014.

The ‘virtual school’ would be able to commission ‘alternative provision’ from registered providers and in some cases be able to transfer the pupil to the roll of the alternative provider, where that was appropriate.

Many pupils in the care of the new virtual school would have special educational needs, as do many children that are the responsibility of the current virtual schools for young people in care. I believe that the notion of a ‘school’ is the best way to educate such children. The virtual school would work with both the SEND sector and the NHS, but be clear what is education and what is therapy, and the responsibility of the NHS.

The present funding model for SEND doesn’t work, and leaves many local authorities underfunded, and a small number of pupils costing significant amounts, while not being on the roll of any school. A virtual school should bring in-house many of the costs currently charged by the private sector for tutoring and other learning and allow some economies of scale to be developed. But, better education for every pupil must be the main aim: no child should be left out of schooling for a single day.

Time to stand up to HM Treasury

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The news that postgraduate apprenticeships for teachers are to  be reduced to nine months in length Red tape slashed to get more teachers into classrooms – GOV.UK and aligned with the school-year, effectively returns school-based training possibilities to where they were two decades ago when the previous employment-based GTTP Scheme was flourishing.

The fact that the government is offering schools up to £28,000 to cover the cost of training apprentices in mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, computing, and modern foreign languages – the subjects which have the highest teacher shortages – if they take on an apprentice is something of a mixed blessing.

Could we see some applicants ditching higher education courses for a salary and presumably pension and NI contributions as a better bet than a scholarship, especially as once one has a foot in the door, the school is likely to want keep them after the end of the apprenticeship, if they prove successful.

This announcement form the DfE means apprentices pay nothing for their training and will earn a salary while they are training before moving on to full time teacher pay salary. If the salary is better than the scholarship, even without the additional benefits, might some be tempted to move if they become aware of this new route, especially if the school is nearer their home.

The advantage of an employment-based routes has always been their flexibility to offer career changers training near where they live, rather than at a university or SCITT that may be some distance away from their homes.

Of course, there needs to be applicants wanting to start teaching in these subjects, and I believe the current uncertain economic situation will help create the environment for the necessary increase in applications.

Where does this leave those training on other routes without a salary and with student debt around their neck? As they also have no certainty of a job at the end of their training, it appears a poor bet in a time when schools are complaining of under-funding and making staff redundant. Why take the risk of an intensive year of study with no guarantee of a job at the end?

This is why I think the Secretary of State must stand up to HM Treasury, and once again offer the free training for all that was withdrawn by the coalition government in 2010 in a really short-sighted move. Not to do so, could destabilise the whole teacher preparation market, if not in 2025 then certainly in 2026.

I have repeatedly said that the presence of two trainees in adjacent classrooms, one on a salary and the other paying for the privilege of their training, was plainly wrong. This new move on apprenticeships makes it both absurd as well as wrong.

Perhaps the government could offer free training for all as part of the pay bargaining this year with the professional associations. After all, HM Treasury knows that falling rolls will see the schooling budget on a downward trajectory over the next few years, especially as the decline in rolls is greatest in London, the highest cost area in terms of government funding of schooling.

The new on apprenticeships is not a gift horse one should ignore, but one to use as a basis for putting all graduate teacher preparation courses on the same financial footing for those seeking to become a teacher. Not to do so will have consequences.