Monthly Archives: June 2025

A broken system: not just mismanagement

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When searching the DfE website this morning for the latest numbers about schools and pupils to allow me to compare the number of teachers per school for different subjects, I was distracted into looking at the number of ‘open notices’ from the DfE to Councils across England. Currently they total around 30 such notices and there are others that have been closed in recent times. These notices refer to the provision of either special needs (SEND) or children’s social services.

There really must be something wrong with a system where nearly 20%, or one in five, of all upper tier local authorities have such notices that are issued to councils for ‘poor’ or ‘inadequate’ performance. I had expected the majority of such notices to be for SEND services, but in fact half are for Children’s Social Services. This raises the question of whether in some authorities, and especially smaller unitary authorities, there is the funding to cope with both SEND and Children’s Social Services?

Of the local authorities with ‘open’ improvement notices for children’s social services, most are small metropolitan districts of unitary authorities.: Liverpool, Nottingham City and the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire are the exceptions. The pattern for SEND notices is different, with six counties, four metropolitan districts, four unitary councils and one London borough with ‘open notices.

What is striking about both lists is the geographical split. The relative absence from the list of well-funded London boroughs – only three appear, and only one in the SEND list, compared with eight metropolitan districts really is worthy of note and discussion. Comparing the distribution with my recent report on pupil teacher ratios does suggest that funding, or the lack of it, may play a part.  

If the 16 other authorities with closed notices since 2020 are added to those with ‘open’ notices, then almost a third of all local authorities have been on the ‘naughty step’ with the DfE and Care Quality commission so far in this decade.

If that percentage and the split between types of authorities doesn’t raise questions about why and why some authorities are more likely to be faced with improvement notices than others, then I think we have a serious lack of inquiry.

The relationship between the size of an authority and competence to deliver high quality services is important, both because of the Reform Party’s pledge to cut out waste, and the Labour government’s intention to reform local government. Both need to be seen in light of this list. Is bigger better, or is local government outside London just not well-enough funded

Of course, I must declare a personal interest, since I look over as Cabinet Member for Children’s Service (excluding SEND) after Oxfordshire received a ‘notice’ in the autumn of 2023 about the quality of its SEND provision.

To some extent with SEND, authorities are at the mercy of the NHS, over which they have little power, and that relationship with SEND needs to be investigated thoroughly. Penalizing democratically elected local government for the failing of a nationally run NHS is neither fair not equitable. That the government’s funding of the High Needs Block may add to local government’s problems also needs to be taken into account. Oxfordshire is in the bottom 30% for SEND funding.

Green shoots, but still issues with the teacher workforce in schools

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This week the DfE issue the annual data collected in last Novembers census. There are two main sets of data, those on the school workforce and those on schools and their pupils. This blog looks at the Workforce data. The DfE link is School workforce in England, Reporting year 2024 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

Here are the key points as identified by the DfE.

  • There are 468,300 FTE teachers, which is an decrease of 400 since last year and an increase of 26,900 since 2010 when the school workforce census began. Trends differ by school phase; state-funded nursery and primary schools saw a decrease (2,900, -1.3%) whereas there were increases in secondary (1,400, 0.7%) and special and Pupil Referral Units (900, 3.2%). 
  • There are 288,800 FTE teaching assistants, which is an increase of 5,900since last year and an increase of 67,300 since 2011 when the census began collecting support staff information.
  • Pupil to teacher ratios are similar to last year: 20.8 pupils per teacher in nurseries and primary schools (the same as last year), 16.7 in secondary schools (down 0.1) and 6.5 in special and PRU schools (up 0.1).
  • The number of teachers entering and leaving service both decreased, though the number of entrants continues to be higher than for leavers. This, combined with changes in working patterns and an increase in teachers without qualified teacher status, resulted in a marginal decrease to the number of teachers in England.
  • 9 in 10 teachers remain teaching in state-funded schools in England one year after qualification. 
  • Teacher vacancies and temporarily filled posts decreased in November 2024after three years of increases.

Here are my comments:

 PTRs: looking over the longer period since 1975, primary PTRs have improved from 24.0 to 20.1, some 3.2 pupils better, whereas in secondary schools the change has just been from 17.0 to 16.7, albeit this is 0.1 pupil per teacher better than last year despite all the comments about funding. By the way, I do wish the DfE would not use up and down in relation to PTRs as it can be misleading.

Workforce: Here there is both good and bad news. The bad news is that the 16999 New entrant numbers were well below the average of the past 14 years, and some 9,400 below the peak reached in 2015/16. The good news is that this should mark the low point of the present cycle, and numbers should increase from next year onwards. Deferred entrants were also below the average for the past 14 years at just 2,710

And now more good news. Returners to teaching were up to their highest level since 2014/15 and entrants new to state schools were above the 14-year average, but below last year’s number.

Taken overall, entrants in total at 41,736 were the lowest recorded for any year in the past 14. Thankfully, this is less of a concern with pupil numbers falling in the primary sector across much of the country and likely to fall in the secondary sector as well over the next few years.

Age of the workforce: While the DfE is happy to note that “A third of the teacher workforce is aged 30 to 39”, this disguises the fact that teachers under the age of 29 now only account for 17.6% of the workforce. This is where the school leaders of tomorrow will be mainly drawn from. In 2016/17 teachers in their 20s accounted for 23.2% of the workforce. With cuts to ITT targets over the next few years more than likely, the age profile of new entrants might be something worth considering in order to ensure adequate leadership candidates in the 2040s.

Ethnicity: there has been some further improvement in the number of teachers from ethnic minorities, but the teacher workforce is not yet representative of the population as a whole.

Support Staff: interestingly, despite all the talk about budget issues, numbers rose. Are teaching assistants being used to replace more expensive teachers as a result of budget pressures. If so, it is interesting to see more administrative and other support staff being employed. More than 2,600 non-teaching staff are once again employed in leadership positions, reflecting the diversity of roles with a school in the 2020s.

Finally, the fact that there were more drama teachers employed by schools than all design and technology teachers should give pause for some thought abut the curriculum schools are able to deliver.

Teacher training numbers set to fall for next few years

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The May 2025 data on applications to ITT courses was published today Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2025 to 2026 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK The news is almost, but not entirely good, with offers ahead of last year across the board, although only by 14 in Religious Education, nine in Drama and 43 in design and technology. Still, at the macro level, the teacher supply crisis can almost certainly be declared as having come to an end if those offered places all turn up at the start of their courses.

Of course, there are still three months of the recruitment round left, and those subjects not yet likely to hit their DfE targets, announced in April, may yet do so. I think it is possible that Chemistry and English will meet the targets, but I am doubtful about business studies 212 offers (900 target); Classics 44 (60); design and technology 466 (965); drama 235 (620); music 276 (565); religions education 347 (780) and subjects in the ‘others’ group 2,520 (375).

The 1,762 offers to applicants classified as from the ’rest of the world’ amount to 6% of all offers and, I suspect, somewhat higher percentage in some secondary subjects. Still, it is good to see more younger applicants applying, even if the percentage of those 21 and under – i.e. new graduates – being made offers has dropped from 84% to 77% as a result. By comparison offers to those career changers in the 25 to 29 age group have stayed stable at 52% last year and 51% this year.  

Male applicants are doing slightly better this year with 45% offered places compared with 42% last May. For women applicants, the offer rate has remained at 59%. London still leads the way, with around 15% of all applicants.

One of the reasons why some subjects won’t meet their targets is the decision of the DfE Teacher Workforce Model team to include some element of carry-over where some subjects failed to meet their target last year. The DfE Postgraduate initial teacher training targets, Academic year 2025/26 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK document explains the decision as follows:

“The drivers behind changes in target vary by subject. The key factor as to whether the 2025/26 targets have increased or decreased for specific secondary subjects is the extent to which those targets have been adjusted to build in the impacts of recruitment being below target in the two ITT recruitment rounds before 2025/26. This is done via the under-supply adjustments [1], which account for approximately a sixth of the combined primary and secondary target.” My emphasis

“[1] Under-supply adjustments calculated in the TWM assess the impacts of retention and recruitment via all routes. They use ITT recruitment data, and ITT completion & post-ITT employment rates to estimate the number of NQEs entering the workforce, having trained via PGITT, from the two ITT cycles immediately before 2025/26. It uses these figures, along with estimates for both the corresponding numbers of entrants into the stock via other routes (e.g. returners) and leavers, to estimate the size of the workforce in the target year. This figure is then compared to previously estimated teacher demand & supply, to identify if enough teachers were recruited/retained/re-entered to meet the needs of the system. If there is a supply shortage, an under-supply adjustment is made. The model does not apply an over-supply adjustment.” DfE Postgraduate initial teacher training targets, Academic year 2025/26 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

Now, this is a perfectly respectable method of helping schools replenish their teaching stock in ‘shortage’ subjects once recruitment starts to pick up. However, it comes with policy implications. Firstly, changing targets each year so late in the process makes life difficult for ITT providers to manage the staffing for their courses. What is going to happen in the three subjects where offers already exceed targets? Thirty years ago, targets were issued on a three -year cycle with years two and three being indicative, but rarely subject to wide swings, unless there was a policy change.

Then there is the issue of whether schools will have the vacancies for any increased recruitment by September 2026. These targets were set ahead of the Spending Review. Schools staff their timetable to be fully staffed each September even if some staff are less than ideally qualified.

As long-time readers will know, I think there should be a closer alignment between ITT targets and the actual behaviour of the labour market. By waiting until the end of April to announce targets, the DfE has managed to use data from recruitment in 2023, and that helps, but is still a risk when pupil rolls are falling and school funding is also under pressure. However, as many of the targets adjusted upwards still won’t be met, even with increased recruitment, this is all a bit academic, but worth discussing for future years.

The next few years, especially for anyone contemplating a career as a primary school teacher, might well be challenging when it comes to finding a teaching post after training.

What do you know of EOTAS?

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Even though it pains me to say so, the following FOI question and answer from a well-respected county council raises some interesting questions about audit and governance, and the monitoring of expenditure on SEND pupils.

Question: How many young people had EOTAS packages of over £100,000 granted by xxx County Council during the 2024/25 financial year, and of these packages, what was the largest amount of any package in operation during the financial year?

Answer: The information is not held in a centralised format. Therefore, to be able to obtain it, a manual audit would need to happen to cross-reference systems for 153 individual electronic records and associated financial systems to determine the total cost of each child or young person’s combined EOTAS package, each taking 20 minutes to locate, retrieve and collate, totalling 51 hours.

So, it appears that the county council in question does not know how much it is spending on each child with an EOTAS (Education Other than at School) package. It seemingly knows how much is being spent on each element of the package, but doesn’t have a spreadsheet that allows all elements to be brought together in a total per child.

Now it is not for me to question the lack of curiosity of the Director of Children’s Services or the Lead Member in the authority, let alone the Director of Finance, but it was an element of spending that I was concerned enough about to monitor when I was a cabinet member.

I have the same question out to a number of other local authorities, so it will be interesting to see whether I receive the same sort of answer. What is probably the case is that these packages are contributing to the High Needs block deficits in many local authorities.

A second shire county told me it couldn’t answer the question because the number was less than five, and might thus reveal details about an individual: fair enough, but I assume it means that there are somewhere between one and five such packages of more than £100,000 per child. It would be interesting to know what such education packages might contain, and why they are so expensive.

At a Scrutiny Committee meeting in November 2024, Oxfordshire County Council officers told the committee in a Report about EOTAS in 2024 “The annual spend as of November 2024 is £2.1 million for 52 children and young people.” (para 18 Report to Scrutiny Committee) That is an average of £40,000 per child with an EOTAS package.

EOTAs packages are as a result of s61 of the Children and Families Act 2014.

61Special educational provision otherwise than in schools, post-16 institutions etc

(1) A local authority in England may arrange for any special educational provision that it has decided is necessary for a child or young person for whom it is responsible to be made otherwise than in a school or post-16 institution or a place at which relevant early years education is provided.

(2) An authority may do so only if satisfied that it would be inappropriate for the provision to be made in a school or post-16 institution or at such a place.

(3) Before doing so, the authority must consult the child’s parent or the young person.

Might it be time for the National Audit Office to have a deep dive into this part of SEND spending to see whether the expenditure is producing the desired results for these young people?

Defence Review sets growth target for Cadet Forces

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The Defence Review published yesterday, and it was interesting to see that it has implications for education. Specifically, the Review includes some recommendations directly aimed at education and young people. The first of these is:

Work with the Department for Education to develop understanding of the Armed Forces among young people in schools.

I assume that will mean allowing recruiting teams into schools to offer career advice, and also, where an understanding of the role of the armed forces and home defence might fit into PSHE lessons.

More specifically, and with a cost attached to it, is the recommendation that:

Expand in-school and community-based Cadet Forces across the country by 30% by 2030, with an ambition to reach 250,000 in the longer term. There should be greater focus within the Cadets on developing STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) skills and exploring modern technology. Defence, wider Government, and partnerships with the private sector must provide appropriate leadership, support, and funding to deliver this expansion.

To reach this goal around 7% of the secondary school population need to be enrolled in cadet forces, or perhaps 10%, if you discount the youngest pupils in Years 7 and 8. If this happens then there is going to be a need for a whole lot of new staff in areas where the schools have been failing to meet recruitment targets for teaching staff for years.

What is the purpose behind this move. What will these young people be expected to do with the skills acquired after leaving school? Last year, at the start of the general election campaign there was a brief discussion about reintroducing conscription. As there is no mention of conscription in the review, might this be the alternative solution.  Although the voluntary scheme is much cheaper and less intrusive than conscription, it begs the question of who will sign up for the new places?

The last sentence in the recommendation suggests a new body might need to be set up to deliver the aims, especially if all the groups mentioned are to be brought together. Would such a new body be led by the MoD, and how will the new community groups recruit the staff for evening and weekend sessions when these days volunteer organisations are regularly struggling to find youth workers? Will local authorities be asked to help play a role in developing this expansion of uniform bodies.

As might be expected, there is a big emphasis in the Review on both the uses of and the protection from drones – the new weapon of war. The war in Ukraine has probably played a role similar to that of the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s in demonstrating how the technology of war can change in one theatre, delivery of the destruction of civilian population centres and other targets, while remaining the same on the ground: opposing armies slogging it out on front lines that resemble the trench system of World War 1.

I was part of the first generation to avoid conscription, and benefitting from that reduction in defence spending being used for improvements in the education sector from the 1960s onwards. It is sobering to remember that in the late 1940s there were something like 1,000,000 British forces personnel in Germany waiting for a war that thankfully never came. But, most of them were conscripts.

I fear now that defence of the realm will consume a much larger part of national resources, and that education as a sector may suffer as a consequence.  

More thoughts on funding schools, ahead of the spending Review

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Yesterday, I published a post about my initial thoughts on the forthcoming spending review, due next week, and how saving might be made in the education sector.  For a more detailed analysis at the macro level there is also the Institute for Fiscal Studies review Schools and colleges in the 2025 Spending Review | Institute for Fiscal Studies that lays out the options for the government against the background of falling rolls and the challenging economic situation, and now The Defence Review, and all that entails for government spending priorities.

My guess is that the government will direct any extra funding in education to skills and the college sector, especially where it is related to spending on training for employment, and let the schools sector sort out its own future. One exception to this general thesis is SEND, where the government will have to take some action. Sadly, without yet a Report from the Select Committee that has been looking at SEND for the past sixth months.

The nuclear option on spending open to the government, and one that local authorities might have used in the past when they controlled the financing of the schools’ sector, would be to top slice the Schools Block and transfer that funding to the High Needs Block, used to fund special needs, and leave the schools sector to sort out the consequences.

Afterall, education is low down in the polling pecking order for national elections. This also makes sense with the supposed reorganisation of local authorities making the issue of the SEND balances and off-balance sheet deficits being carried by local authorities more of a challenge to fund in the future. However, my bet is that local government reorganisation will be off the agenda while Reform is riding high in the opinion polls. As a result, a top slice this year could be an option.

The Secretary of State has also solved the issue of how to deal with the underachievement of poor White families, by setting up an inquiry. In my view that approach is just kicking the can down the road to avoid taking difficult decisions in the Spending Review. Everyone in education knows the issues, and probably the answers as well: bring back Sure Start or something like it for the under-5s, and focus on making the secondary school curriculum more meaningful for those pupils not heading for higher education at eighteen, and who will probably leave school for college at sixteen.

The Spending Review also needs to come clean on what the pledge around the 6,500 extra teachers means, and how they will be paid for? The IFS makes the point that the college sector needs more than 6,500 extra lecturers to cope with the fact that rolls there won’t be falling over the next few years, and any added working in adult learning will put up the demand for lecturers even more. Switching funds to the college sector solves the issue of how to pay for these extra staff, but will leave the secondary sector with a pupil-teacher ratio in many areas little different to what it was 50 years ago. Hard times for schools ahead?

The Spending Review and savings

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Next week will set the direction for government spending over the rest of this parliament. Although education is a ‘protected’ department that may not mean as much now as it did last year at the time of the general election.

Changes in the geopolitical situation, and an economy where the green shoots are barely peeking through the surface, and could be killed off by the equivalent of one night of freezing temperatures doesn’t bode well for the education sector. This is especially the case when set against falling school rolls and the crisis in the higher education sector. The skills sector might be the one bright spot, and it wouldn’t surprise me if that is where most of the investment will be directed.

The present government is lucky in that the weakening job market means recruiting new teachers will be easier, and the pressure for pay rises might also abate if the choice is more pay for some and redundancies for others. Unions would, in my view, be wise to tackle conditions of service rather than majoring on pay rises and the risk of confrontation with a government that has been generous so far, but might not want to see the limits of that generosity tested.

So, might there be saving to be made?

If there are school closures, will this allow the most expensive and inefficient buildings to be removed from the estate. Why spend time taking out asbestos, if you can just close the school? How would such a policy be managed? Frankly, I have no idea, but to let market forces prevail might have an unnecessary cost attached. So parental choice or rational use of buildings?

And then there is the muddle of academies and the maintained sector.

I looked at the accounts for the period up to August last summer for the 30 single academies and Multi Academy Trusts with schools in one local authority area. The total pay bill for their single highest paid employee came to around £4 million pounds. Now, take out of that total the Trusts where the headteacher is the single highest paid employee, and the total might be around £2 million. Cut this to just five trusts: one each for the two main Christian Churches (CofE and RC) and one each for other primary, secondary and special schools and what might be the savings?

Then there is the audit, legal and professional fees. I doubt whether the private sector charges the same rate as local authorities do to maintained schools. Perhaps academies should be required to employ local authority services, if the quote is lower than that from the private sector?

SEND is the other area where spending needs reviewing. For many, the cost of an EHCP started early in the primary sector should be the first point of focus. Are there differences between schools in different locations, and if so, then why? Can an early diagnosis save costs.

What of Education Other than at School packages? How much are they costing the system, and why are they necessary in such a growing number of cases?

With 150 plus local authorities, how much might be saved from present budgets in order to support investment in teaching and learning in the new world created by the latest technological revolution?