Is there a leadership crisis in England’s state schools?

Posted on April 4, 2026 by John Howson

First, a health warning: the percentages of schools re-advertising a head teacher vacancy reported in this post will probably not be the final figure by the end of the current school year. This is because the 289 first advertisements recorded during March 2026 have yet to contribute any re-advertisements to the total.

The data for this post are collected from both the DfE vacancy site and other key job boards twice a week, and entered by myself into the database. A re-advertisement is recorded for any headteacher vacancy re-appearing with a new closing date more than 14 days after the original closing date. This allows two weeks leeway for short-term extensions of the closing date to be ignored.

I reported on the initial outcomes for the first 1,000 vacancies in a post on the 8^th March What the first 1,000 headteacher adverts tell us | John Howson so this is by way of an Easter catch-up.

The database now has details of 1,261 advertisements for headteacher vacancies, posted by 1,110 schools.

The current re-advertisement rate for special schools stands at 27%. This is down two points from the 27% recorded in the 8^th March post. However, it is still significantly higher than any other re-advertisement rate for a sub-set of schools: the current overall re-advertisement rate for all schools is 12% of all advertisement or 14% of first advertisements. This latter percentage reflects the fact that a small number of schools have now re-advertised their vacancy more than once. In March the percentage of all adverts that were re-adverts was 11%, so on that basis, at 12%, the overall position has worsened slightly.

As reported in the 8^th March post, faith schools are more likely to appear in the list of schools that didn’t fill their headteacher vacancy at their first attempt. Based on a percentage of all adverts for the faith group, Roman Catholic schools’ re-advertisement rate currently stands at 19%, compared with 16% in the 8^th march post. If re-advertisements as a percentage of schools advertising is considered, rather than the percentage of all advertisement, the re-advertisement rate for Roman Catholic schools, including the three schools that have re-advertised twice, rises to 23%. For Church of England schools, the percentages are 13% and 15%., just one percentage point above the average for all schools.

So, is there a crisis in headteacher recruitment? As my post of yesterday (3^rd April) revealed, headteacher turnover is nowhere near the levels I recorded twenty years ago, so the volume of vacancies cannot be a reason for the current level of re-advertisements.

The mix of schools has no doubt contributed to the current level of re-advertisement by schools failing to make an appointment for their new headteacher or, in a few cases, co-headteacher on a job share.

I am wary of declaring a crisis at this stage of the year. Those that have read my book* of the 2013 blog posts know that when I called the teacher supply crisis in the early summer of that year, the DfE accused me of scaremongering. I would hate to be accused of such behaviour once more, so let me end by saying that the fate of pupils with SEND in special schools will not be helped if such schools cannot recruit headteachers.

I propose to write an interim report on the outcome for the year during August and the final version, allowing for re-advertisements during the autumn term will hopefully appear in January 2027.

*Teachers, schools and views on Education – available through amazon or on request directly from myself/

Headteacher vacancies – a changing trend in advertising date?

Posted on April 3, 2026 by John Howson

One of the advantages of studying the same field for more than 40 years is the opportunity to investigate interesting hypotheses.

But first, a bit of background. When I started collecting vacancies for headteacher posts in state schools in England, way back in the 1980s, an advert in the TES was virtually the only source for jobseekers, so data collection was easy. The exception was the 12 months in the 1980s when News International titles, including the TES, were affected by a strike that prevented publication.

From around 2000 onwards, the TES had both print and on-line vacancies to check for headteacher vacancies. These days the main source of data are the DfE vacancy site, at least for headteacher vacancies. Even so, some schools still advertise in the TES, and a few on regional job boards, especially in the North East region.

My first hunch, not really a hypothesis in the 1980s when I started the work of collecting headteacher vacancies was that faith schools had more difficulty recruiting a new headteacher than other schools, based upon the number of such schools re-advertising. An early analysis supported the hunch, and the challenge facing faith schools is still with us in an increasingly secular society.

My next hypothesis was that most vacancies for headteachers came as a result of retirements. For a number of years, the annual study of senior staff vacancies I conducted for the NAHT validated this hypothesis, at least for headteacher vacancies.

In the days when all schools in the state sector were linked with a local authority, headteachers retiring at the end of the school-year might inform their governing bodies of their decision to retire at the last meeting in the autumn term. The result, a rash of advertisements for headteachers in January, and the bulk of vacancies for headteacher posts were either advertised or re-advertised between January 1^st and 30^th April.

As a result of the increasing number of schools that are now academies, I have created a new hypothesis. I wonder whether the absence of any real local governing body for each academy might have resulted in headteachers postponing announcement of their retirement to the Trust until a later date in the term starting in January and, as a result, advertisements for headteacher vacancies are now being skewed to the second half of the first quarter of the year, with fewer January advertisements?

Now we are in April, it is possible to consider the data, and compare the data for 2026 with 2006 and 2018 – sadly TeachVac didn’t collect headteacher vacancies in 2016, but at that time just concentrated on classroom teacher vacancies.

The first thing to note is that there appear to be fewer headteacher vacancies advertised in 2026 compared with either 2006 or 2018.

Year		JANUARY	FEBRUARY	MARCH	TOTAL
2006	TOTAL	509	394	442	1345
2018	TOTAL	358	380	339	1077
2026	FIRST	175	203	289	667
2026	READVERT	13	22	85	120
2026	Total	188	225	374	787

Source Headbase 2006; TeachVac 2018; John Howson 2026

In 2006, the demography of the teaching profession was very different to that of today. Many more headteachers were approaching retirement in 2006, and often decided to retire before reaching the then official retirement age. Nowadays, there is no official retirement age, pension rules have changed significantly, and I suspect the actual number of headteacher retiring each year has decreased.

However, the more interesting piece of data relates to the percentage of vacancies recorded each month. In 2006 and 2018, data collection did not distinguish between first advertisement and re-advertisements during the three months, but counted all but ‘repeat’ vacancies published.

The 2026 data collection exercise I conduct is based upon a collection date, accurate to within three days of a vacancy being published, and a re-advertisement data based upon a new closing date more than four weeks after the original closing date for the vacancy for a headteacher. Re-advertisements with an April closing date have been assigned to March for the purpose of this exercise on the basis of three to four weeks between vacancy being published and closing dates.

Year		JANUARY	FEBRUARY	MARCH	total
2006	TOTAL	38%	29%	33%	100%
2018	TOTAL	33%	35%	31%	100%
2026	FIRST	26%	30%	43%	100%
2026	READVERT	11%	18%	71%
2026	Total	24%	29%	48%	100%

Source Headbase 2006; TeachVac 2018; John Howson 2026

The data does seem to offer some support for my hypothesis, as January only accounted for 26% of vacancies in 2026 (24% if re-advertisements are included) compared with 38% in 2006, and 33% in 2018, when academies were already a feature of the school landscape.

March 2026 accounted for 48% of headteacher vacancies, compared with 33% in 2026, and 31% in 2018. In a future post, I will delve into the issue of re-advertisements that accounted for five per cent of the vacancies in March 2026.

At some point, I will compare academies and non-academy state schools to see whether their advertising patterns for headteacher vacancies in the first three months of the year vary, and will report my findings in a future post.

What’s in a name?

Posted on April 2, 2026 by John Howson

I was recently surprised to find that a school called John Spence Community High School in North Shields was in really an academy. I am sure the school serves its community, but I wondered how common is it for schools that are academies to use the term ‘community in their name? Well, there is Barnhill Community High School in Hillingdon, part of the Middlesex Learning Trust – itself a name that represent little more than the name of a county council abolished in the 1960s. There is also the Abbeywood Community School’ part of the Olympus Academy Trust in the Bristol area.

So, it seems that is not uncommon for schools to retain their existing name when converting to an academy. Other confusing names for schools that might catch out unwary parents, and even employers reading references include – grammar schools that aren’t selective schools – Enfield Grammar school springs to mind, but it is not alone. Indeed, Enfield is also the home of Enfield County School, located in Enfield that was once part of the county of Middlesex, and a selective school for girls while a Middlesex County Council School. Again, it is not the only school to retain the term ‘county’ in its name. At least the ‘county’ schools in Essex and Surrey can at present claim to be part of a county. Post-local government reorganisation means that they will eventually join Enfield and Edmonton County Schools as representing areas that no longer exist in any local government sense.

High School is another meaningless term for a school. Such schools can be 11-16 or 11-18, selective or comprehensive, depending on where they are located. Even more confusing to anyone moving to the Derby area could be Risley Lower Grammar CE (VC) Primary School. What on earth is a ‘lower grammar school’? Like First school, lower schools are usually school taking pupils up to the ages of eight or nine, when they are not the used to describe a site for the first few year groups of a secondary school, or even, in the case of The Basildon Lower Academy in Essex, a school for pupils in Years 7-9.

If school types are confusing, then hopefully one can assume that all schools named after saints are church schools. Sadly, no. One of my favourite exceptions is a primary school in Watford. The school’s prospectus tell parents how the school acquired its name as follows:

“St Meryl School was built in 1951 and is situated on a large attractive site in a central position within Carpenders Park. The name of the school, St Meryl, does not indicate any affiliation with a particular religion or religious denomination; in fact, “Meryl” was the name of the builder’s wife!” st-meryl-school-prospectus-2025-2026.pdf

I made use of this idea when naming he school in my recent play about falling rolls.

However, it is now the name of schools that worries me most, but that the term ‘teacher’ is not a reserved occupation term like ‘engineer’ or ‘accountant’. Anyone can call themselves a teacher, regardless of whether they have any qualifications.

To me that is an insult to the many thousands of teachers that gave gained QTS, often at great personal expense. There is still time to insert a clause in the Bill before parliament to remedy this oversight and grant legal status for qualified teachers.

Celebrating the spaghetti harvest

Posted on April 1, 2026 by John Howson

As today is April 1st, I thought about writing a post to celebrate All Fool’s Day. However, I didn’t have the heart to do so after reading Mark Pack’s brilliant parody of focus groups and political leaders. EXCLUSIVE: New focus group insights on political party leaders

My thought was to parody the mess the governance of schooling is in England at present by linking it to the opportunity offered by local government reorganisation. The post might have read something like this:

A leaked memo has suggested that the new councils created from local government reorganisation should have Education Committees. For those that are unaware of their history, such Committees existed for over a hundred years until Tony Blair imposed the cabinet style of government on local government, around the turn of the century, and abolished committees.

As a result, many decisions about education are currently taken by one person, the cabinet member, ratified, if necessary, by the cabinet, and then subject to scrutiny either before or after introduction. Although, as the civil service knows, cabinet government works well for the DfE, but it hasn’t always worked well at local levels, where coalition government is more commonplace. Local decisions about academies are often taken without any local scrutiny at all.

There is a pressing need to control the sprawling and out of control school scene, where two parallel school systems – academies and maintained schools – operate alongside each other with two sets of costs and a third diocesan system cuts across both. Education Committees could create single MAT for an area, including all schools, and make each school subject to democratically appointed governing bodies, voted in each year by the use of an app on mobile phones. Local employers would also have a vote, as would the Schools Council.

Schools forums would be abolished. Each Education Committee would establish a group of expert teachers to help schools and act as a buffer between schools and ofsted. In fact, ofsted would only visit schools either where Education Committees were concerned about the school or as part of a national sampling exercise liked to specific areas of national concern.

Education Committees would be part of a partnership of schooling that reflected a national service locally administered. Their understanding of place ….

At this point, the next page of the memo is lost. However, there is a note in the margin in scrawly handwriting that the current system is expensive and we should take a leaf out of the Department of Health’s recent mergers of ICBs to cut costs. We are worried that the growth of new upper tier authorities replacing the remaining ‘shire’ counties will increase costs with many new Directors each requiring need liaising from the department.

For those that don’t understand the heading, I suggest a visit to The Best April Fools’ Hoax Ever – GreekReporter.com Next year will be 70^th anniversary of the programme’s first broadcast. What a different world we now inhabit.

The Future of Education – a talk from 2024

Posted on March 31, 2026 by John Howson

In the summer of 2024, I was asked to lecture on the future of education. Two years on, it is interesting to see how even more relevant today the content of the talk is. Sadly, there are still no answers to many of the questions posed in my talk.

Thank you for inviting me to talk to you this evening. I arrived in Oxfordshire some 45 years ago, about the same time as the late Sir Tim Brighouse. This was only a couple of years after Prime Minister Sir Jim Callagham’s visit to Oxford, and his famous Ruskin College speech that started The Great Debate about education and schooling in England. A debate that has ultimately led us to where we are today.

Starting this talk with a look back at history reminds me that if this were a sermon, I would start with a text. Perhaps, ‘Acts Chapter 2 Verse 17’. I won’t read it out, as those that want to know what it says can look it up on their phones.

However, what I want to talk briefly about this evening is RATS -I have to say that thankfully you are spared the PowerPoint picture at this point.

However, RATS stands for:

Responsibility

Accountability

Technology

And

Schooling

RATs or ARTS is better, even if the order is wrong.

First Responsibility

Who is responsible for what in education

People still cheerfully talk of ‘Oxfordshire’s schools’ but in reality, as cabinet member, I deal with only a limited number of functions these days:

-Admissions to school, but not in-year admissions to academies

-Transport to school, but not for over 16s, as this is discretionary and there is no cash, despite raising the learning leaving age to 18, except for SEND pupils where we still support those where we can. So, a young person can receive free transport from Years 7-11 and then nothing.

-School building – we have built more new schools in the past decade than the previous 50 years. But as ever this area is highly regulated.

HR for maintained schools – this means small primary schools have to pay the Apprenticeship Levy – a tax by any other name.

School Improvement – although the £400,000 annual DfE grant ends this month and next year we are funding it from Council Tax.

-SEND – and we will spend £20 million more than the government provides us with funds in this area and end this financial year some £60 million overspent.

That overspend lead me nicely into considering Accountability

If there is confusion over responsibility, is there any clarity over accountability for our school system?

As I mentioned, Oxfordshire has overspent on SEND and by 2026 this may be as much as £140 million

Schools receive their budgets calculated on formulas where Oxfordshire as a local authority has no vote, and merely acts as the banker. Schools may end the year in surplus or in deficit

If you look at academy chains in Oxfordshire, several have schools with balances of £1 million and other have deficits nearing the same figure.

Who is accountable for these outcomes and how will they be dealt with?

If the RSD is prepared to accept academies in deficit that they add to each year, why should Oxfordshire as a local authority wipe out deficits on schools transferring to become an academy: perhaps we will explore issuing an IOU to be paid when there are no deficits in the academy sector.

Last year, council tax payer transferred £200,000 for a school becoming an academy to wipe out is deficit: that’s a lot of potholes we could have filled. At the end of this month, I expect deficits in maintained schools to top the £3 million mark: enough to mend most of our roads.

Let’s consider some other accountability issues:

Who is responsible for ensuring there are enough teachers for Oxfordshire schools? Is it schools; MATs and the dioceses; the LA or the government at Westminster?

Who is responsible for school improvement, so when ofsted comes knocking a school can be judged outstanding, as a primary school in the north of the county has been recently.

Who will deal with the digital divide?

This last question is one that that neatly brings me onto the third theme for this evening:

Technology

Since I came to Oxfordshire at the end of the 1970s there have been three waves of new technology

The microprocessor revolution of the late 1970s and early 1980s that brough BBC B, turtles, and eventually the Apple/PC dominance of our interface with IT. Indeed, my MSc thesis in 1980 was the first produced on a word processer for any course at Norham Gardens.

The second technology revolution started in the early 1990s, and became part of our lives in the first decade of this century when we all embraced the internet and started exchanging emails.

This revolution had a second phase when the phones in our pockets suddenly became mini computers in their own right, and a whole new set of challenges opened up for education. This saw the surge in new social media platforms, and the current heads-down culture that pervades so much of society these days. I won’t ask how many have already googled my suggested text for this talk.

Although schools have made adaptations to accommodate these changes in technology over the past 5 decades, we still rely upon a teaching and learning strategy that has many elements that would be familiar when state education began more than 150 years ago.

In passing, I am sorry that the covid pandemic didn’t allow us to celebrate the 150^th anniversary of the 1870 Education Act in a manner that I think would have been fitting.

The 2x4x8 model of learning may not be as rigid as it once was, but secondary school ‘timetablers’ are great fans of it as a strategy.

Anyway, so much for the first two waves of technological change: what of the third and developing wave, currently described by many as the AI revolution?

Does a knowledge rich curriculum meet the needs of a generation that started school last September and possibly won’t retire from employment until the last decade of this century. Those that started school 100 years ago, around the time of the birth of the BBC and radio, retired just as the internet was becoming a viable communication strategy: what will the class of 2024 experience in their lifetimes, and how will we prepare them for adult life?

This is not to decry the role of knowledge in schooling, and especially the building blocks of literacy and numeracy. Technology has almost made handwriting redundant, except as an art form. Can technology help us deal with the learning gap at Key Stage 1 between children on Free School Meals and those whose parents have a higher degree?

If so, to return to my themes of accountability and responsibility, where does the impetus for change lie? At school or Trust level; at local authority level or nationally?

We have seen initiatives such as the Oak Academy created nationally post-covid. We also saw how Oxfordshire as a local authority dealt with covid in acting as a conduit for information.

How will the system take change forward. Who has the vision.

Perhaps parents will dictate change for us as educators?

Home schooling has increased significantly: a passing phase or signs of a new order?

I saw this week suggestions that teachers will need to be paid more if they have to work a five-day week when four days becomes the norm. It is worth noting that teachers, as a group have seen no change in their holiday entitlement over the past 50 years while all other workers have benefitted from increased time off.

So let me conclude by asking whether one might one view a model where technology, and indeed any other approach to teaching and learning, is like a table top resting on the twin legs of responsibility and accountability.

Wobbly legs can mean an insecure platform for learning, and certainly for the development in an orderly manner of how technology can change the landscape of education.

I started with the term ARTS, so my final word must be about schools.

It is right that schools and their staff must be at the heart of the landscape, but the challenge that is currently keeping me awake at night is the relationship between a national funding formula created during a period of increasing school rolls, and the current situation of falling rolls faced by many primary schools.

How will hard decisions on whether all schools survive be taken, if pupil numbers continue to decline? For instance, who decides on whether we keep primary schools in local communities or face competition between schools for pupils to keep their own school open?

What part can technology play in solving this dilemma? I don’t know, but I do know the relationship between falling rolls and school funding is not one we can duck going forward.

But let me finish on a brighter note. This week, I met with three young entrepreneurs interested in working with schools on drone technology. Indeed, they have started a series of books that might be the 21^st century version of Thomas the tank engine.

Let me introduce you to Ruby Rescue and the big fire – a tale from Drone City and possible future firefighting techniques.

I started my teaching career in Tottenham with the stewardship of 16 mm projectors; reel to reel tape recorders; an epidiascope, and little other technology but in a certain landscape for schooling.

I don’t want to dream of a past, but rather to challenge us all to set out a vision for the future landscape of education that can work for the good of all.

Thak you for listening.

Are small sixth forms a good idea?

Posted on March 29, 2026 by John Howson

In a post in January, I mused about the issue of how falling rolls might affect schools particularly if it meant less funding, where school funding is based upon a per pupil funding model. Fewer pupils = less cash. Accountability and falling school rolls. Was it different in the past? | John Howson

One of the possibly solutions discussed in that post was a reform of post-16 education. In a cash-strapped school system, is it possible to justify schools with small sixth forms? Are such sixth forms in the best interest of the students?

In order to think more deeply about this issue, I have looked at the ‘A’ Level results from one local authority, as published on the DfE’s website. 11-16 schools are excluded, as are schools that will eventually expect to have a sixth form, but aren’t currently at that stage, and also colleges. What’s is left are the details for the outcomes on ‘A’ Level results for 34 schools, as shown in the table below

pupils entered	best 3 score	progress score	average or above
312	39.88	0.2	AA
211	35.75	0.08	A
125	40.77	-0.13
117	41.68	0.02	A
110	31.45	-0.30
107	33.24	0.00	A
96	34.34	0.00	A
94	38.3	0.17	AA
90	36.33	0.19	AA
89	35.51	-0.12	A
87	31.53	0.08	A
82	39.15	0.80	AA
82	36.42	0.07	A
79	34.57	-0.33
69	29.47	-0.21
66	35.1	0.26	AA
66	32.37	-0.10	A
65	35.64	0.03	A
64	33.39	-0.15
62	35.7	0.20	AA
59	34.69	-0.09
57	32.52	0.06	A
46	34.57	-0.33
42	33.65	-0.11	A
41	31.14	-0.46
30	14.67	-0.69
28	36.31	0.21	A
25	25.07	-0.02
22	34.85	0.70	A
14	24.52	-0.83	A
13	18.21	-0.75
9	24.52	-0.83
9	37.78	0.35	A

For comparison purposes, the average score for state schools in England was -0.03 for Progress and 35.76 for the best £ ‘A’ Levels score. There are other measures that could be used, but these are three I chose to use for this blog post.

Nine out of the 34 schools beat the national average for ‘best score’, although another couple of schools narrowly missed the national average, so it might be better to conclude that 14 schools were either close to or exceeded the national average for ‘best score’, leaving 20 schools that were below the national average.

Progress score is a more contentious measure. Here 15 schools did less well than average. The same schools often feature in both lists. Most of these schools entered less than 100 pupils for three subjects at ‘A’ level. Some pupils might have taken either two subjects and a vocational qualification or just two subjects at ‘A’ Level.

Schools that entered more pupils for 3 ‘A’ Levels were more likely to receive an ‘average’ or ‘above average’ grade.

The data forces me to ask the question – is the current arrangements for ‘A’ Level study across these schools producing the best outcomes for students? Two subsidiary questions are; if this is the outcome close to the top of the demographic cycle, what might happen to sixth form sizes in these schools once rolls start to fall in a few years’ time? The second question is, what is the cost of tuition per pupil under the present arrangements.

To answer the latter question, let’s assume a Year 7 class of 30 for mathematics taught by a newly qualified teacher on the bottom of the Main Scale for five period a week for 40 week, and an ‘A’ Level group taught for 5 periods a week by the Head of Department, on the top of the Upper Pay spine, and with a TLR 2A in addition.

The newly qualified teacher teaches 6 classes per week for 40 weeks, while the Head of Department teaches two ‘A’ Level, sets one of which has 10 weeks examination leave in Year 13. In addition, the Head of Department teaches four classes of 30, one of which has exam leave in Year 11.

Using this data, and ignoring any other time spent on non-teaching duties, the Main Scale Teacher costs work out at 0.91p per pupil, while the Head of Department costs are £2.33p per pupil.

If the ’A’ Level groups were smaller than 15 in each year, as they well might be in some schools, then the cost per pupil increases unless the Head of Department receives a lesser amount in TLR.

In an 11-16 school, where the Head of Department might teach five classes for 40 weeks and one for 30 to allow for examination leave, the cost per pupil for the Head of Department reduces to below £2 per pupil. If the school has only long-serving teachers then the per pupil for teachers increases to nearer £1.50 per pupil.

For small schools with settled staffrooms, the difference in cost between the cost of teaching Years 7-11 and Years 11-13 may be marginal. The issue then becomes one of teaching and learning. Do small sixth forms produce as good examination results as larger sixth forms? The evidence from the table would suggest they are less likely to do so.

What of the student experience? Is it better to be either ‘a big fish in a small pool’ or ‘a small fish in a larger pool’? Has anyone ever asked students their views?

I think that there is a debate to be had about school organisation and size of school sixth forms when rolls fall, especially if school funding comes under pressure from increased government spending on both defence and welfare, and especially if we are in a recession.

As my colleagues in Haringey found out in the 1970s, such debates about changes to sixth forms can be fraught with political pitfalls for anyone suggesting change. But, is that a good enough reason not to at least discuss changes?

Note: I have only used salary costs in the modelling and not included on-costs from National Insurance and Pensions. I have also ignored premises and other staffing costs, as I assumed the to be low in a subject such as mathematics.

Reviving Music Teacher Bursaries: A Necessity

Posted on March 28, 2026 by John Howson

Regular readers of this blog will know of my campaign to see the music bursary restored to graduates training to be teachers of music. Recruitment to ITT is well below the same level as last year, when there was a bursary.

Music teacher shortage: the situation worsens | John Howson and more recently ITT – 9 subjects with fewer offers than March last year | John Howson

I was therefore delighted to see this speech by a Labour peer in a debate in the house of Lords on Thursday.

Baroness Keeley (Lab)

The review found that inequalities in music education are substantial, with music showing the widest disadvantage attainment gap of any subject, driven by unequal access to instrumental tuition and wider inequities in school and community resources. I have also raised with Ministers the fact that music teacher supply is a related problem. Since 2010, we have seen persistently high vacancy rates for music teachers. In fact, in 2023-24, that vacancy rate was among the highest of all subjects, and the Department for Education has missed its music teacher recruitment target in 12 of the past 13 years. There was a small increase in recruitment during 2024-25, after the brief return of the £10,000 bursary, but recruitment still reached only around 40% of target.

The conclusion is clear. The music teacher bursary must be restored. The Government’s opportunity mission makes it clear that we want high-quality music and arts education for every child in all state-funded schools. The curriculum review has recentred music and arts as core to a rounded education, not as optional extras, and it has challenged the narrowing of the curriculum that has squeezed music out of timetables, particularly in disadvantaged areas. Debate: Curriculum and Assessment Review – 26th Mar 2026 my highlighting

I would also welcome the comments in that debate by both Baroness Sue Garden and Tim Clement-Jones, Liberal Democrat Peers.

Despite the pressure on government finances, there really is a need to find a way to attract more graduates into training as music teachers. Any failure to do so will risk a Labour government committing the sin of removing music from out state schools, and leaving the subject residing just in the independent sector and international schools staffed by teachers trained in England.

Not only does music give great pleasure to many, it is also a major expert industry that the government ought to be nurturing. Two good reasons to reintroduce the bursary.

Of course, as Chair of the Oxfordshire Music Service Board, I have an interest to declare, but that interest isn’t contradicted by the evidence of declining enrolment, re-advertised vacancies and an apparent lack of interest in the DfE about the training of teachers of music for state schools. Presumably, they see this as a DCMS issue, since funding for music services is via the Arts Council.

Funding for teachers is, however, very much the brief of the DfE, and if they cannot find the cash for the bursary the they should urgently start work with the Arts Council to devise a scholarship scheme, such as already exists in certain other subjects. To do nothing is not an option if music is to survive in our state schools.

My 2016 post on Geopolitics and macroeconomics

Posted on March 26, 2026 by John Howson

Sometimes it is worth re-posting something I have written before on this blog rather than writing a new post. Recently, I wrote about my thoughts about how education, and schools in particular might be affected by the current global war. In 2016, well before the AI revolution, I wrote a wider-ranging piece about macroeconomics and geopolitics that also considered advancements in technology, without actually referencing AI. I thought it worth re-publishing the post that first appeared on:

January 5, 2016 So here it is in full and unedited.

Whether the world is a more dangerous place this January isn’t for me to say. However, to balance my short-term views about teacher supply problems I thought it worth thinking about what the combined effects of a downturn in China; tensions in the Middle East; falling oil prices and the possibility of rising interest rates might do to the longer-term teacher supply position.

An analysis of data over the past fifty years suggests teacher supply problems ease when the economy is subdued or in recession. Whether there is a direct link between these two facts may be arguable, but while there is a need to educate children there will be a need for teachers. Again, over the past fifty years, there have been massive strides in technology since the famous BBC programme of the late 1970s ‘The chips are down’ about the microprocessor revolution. Classrooms have adapted to make use of the new technology, but there has been no seismic shift away from traditional patterns of pupil teacher numbers. Indeed, in secondary schools over the past decade, pupil-teacher ratios have even improved, according to DfE data.

The recently reported growth in home schooling may be the first signs of a coming revolution, driven by parents no longer satisfied with the current model of schooling. Tablets, TVs and computers can provide more learning power than any school library of a couple of decades ago. What is needed is the means of instruction and the method of motivation to keep youngsters on task. How much more likely is that in a home environment than when youngsters are faced with the distractions caused by 25 or 30 other children: could learning me more focused and take less time in the home than the classroom?

No doubt, parents would still want children to socialise in order to learn team games, sing together and undertake risky science experiments under the control of a qualified person. However, that might mean only sending your child to school for a couple of days a week. Such a shift might also boost the market for tutors as parents just buy in specific skills where their offspring are facing issues with learning.

As the BBC recently highlighted, the spirit of enterprise is abroad in Britain at the present time. I am sure that there are many developers in both large companies and small start-ups eying what could be a lucrative market that has world-wide potential; some of which will be on display at BETT.

Such a shift in technology from a labour intensive to a technology driven learning process could have a profound effect on both the need for teachers and the spending by the State on education. However, in the short-term, the geopolitical and macroeconomic signals might suggest that if a downturn is coming then teaching might benefit from renewed interest as a career choice.

As I have said at several conferences recently, I am one of the only people that might see benefits from a slowdown in China, even if it only reduces the inflow to that country of UK teachers to work in the growing international school market.

However, with the allocations for 2016 entry into teacher preparation courses set and fewer places available on non-EBacc subjects than in 2015, none of this will matter before 2017 unless, as in 2009, any downturn in the world’s economy bring back greater numbers of returners into teaching: such an effect could dramatically alter the picture of teacher supply, even for 2016, were it to come about.

ITT – more applicants doesn’t always mean more offers

Posted on March 24, 2026 by John Howson

In my previous post, I noted the increase of nearly 6,000 I the number of candidates applying for a place on a graduate teacher preparation course. Up from 21,436 in March 2025 to 27,352 in March 2026. This post explores the relationship, both this March and last march, between candidates and places offered to those candidates.

Firstly, the number of candidates and the number of ‘offers’ to candidates in each secondary subject.

	candidates		offers
	2025	2026	2025	2026
BIOLOGY	2161	2044	713	332
ART&DESIGN	960	1026	451	366
MFL	1876	2246	821	733
PE	1988	2219	1149	1043
PHYSICS	3329	6522	825	918
COMPUTING	1270	2394	341	420
GEOGRAPHY	1089	843	476	292
OTHERS	926	1342	281	310
CLASSICS	67	62	34	27
D&T	661	861	273	295
RE	699	693	255	208
MUSIC	311	275	173	136
MATHEMATICS	4006	5346	1277	1398
ENGLISH	2561	2830	1032	990
HISTORY	1142	1281	592	624
BUS STUDIES	607	923	132	173
DRAMA	336	384	162	176
CHEMISTRY	1662	2207	441	675

Note, not all subjects have seen increased candidate numbers within the overall increase.

Secondly, the next table shows the percentage of candidates so far ‘offered’ a place for 2026.

	2025	2026	Change
BIOLOGY	33%	16%	-17%
ART&DESIGN	47%	36%	-11%
MFL	44%	33%	-11%
PE	58%	47%	-11%
PHYSICS	25%	14%	-11%
COMPUTING	27%	18%	-9%
GEOGRAPHY	44%	35%	-9%
OTHERS	30%	23%	-7%
CLASSICS	51%	44%	-7%
D&T	41%	34%	-7%
RE	36%	30%	-6%
MUSIC	56%	49%	-6%
MATHEMATICS	32%	26%	-6%
ENGLISH	40%	35%	-5%
HISTORY	52%	49%	-3%
BUS STUDIES	22%	19%	-3%
DRAMA	48%	46%	-2%
CHEMISTRY	27%	31%	4%

Only in Chemistry, where because of the reduction in the size of the bursary to those applying for biology courses it seems likely that those with a choice between the two subjects have opted to apply for chemistry with its higher bursary for 2026. As a result, biology, with a 17% fall in offers this March when compared with March 2025, is the big loser.

Despite the change in candidate numbers, the percentages offered places in March 2026 follows a similar ranking to March 2025.

% offered
	2025	2026
MUSIC	56%	49%
HISTORY	52%	49%
PE	58%	47%
DRAMA	48%	46%
CLASSICS	51%	44%
ART&DESIGN	47%	36%
ENGLISH	40%	35%
GEOGRAPHY	44%	35%
D&T	41%	34%
MFL	44%	33%
CHEMISTRY	27%	31%
RE	36%	30%
MATHEMATICS	32%	26%
OTHERS	30%	23%
BUS STUDIES	22%	19%
COMPUTING	27%	18%
BIOLOGY	33%	16%
PHYSICS	25%	14%

Music is such a specialist subject that it generally only attracts candidates likely to be accepted. However, current ‘offer’ levels are still well below those recorded in the first four years of the century when the number accepted ranged between 68% (2001) and 78% (2003). (Source: John Howson’s collection of GTTR Annual Reports). 2003 was after graduates training to be teachers received a training grant and were also exempt from tuition fees.

Of course, the most interesting percentage of ‘offers’ is that for physics, where only 14% of candidates have so far been made an offer. It looks as if the better candidates for biology are those that have opted to apply for chemistry in 2026, resulting in a significant fall in ‘offers’ in biology.

For subjects such as history and physical education, it is wise for candidates to apply early in the recruitment round since places fill quickly.

Finally, is the present system fit for purpose? Should there be a closing date by which all applicants will be considered, rather than the drip feed approach as a present?

ITT – 9 subjects with fewer offers than March last year

Posted on March 23, 2026 by John Howson

Despite the increase in applicants for secondary ITT courses, from 21,436 in March 2025, to 27,352 this March, ‘offers’ from course providers are down in nine different subjects this March when compared with March 2025. The subjects with fewer offer so far this year are:

Subject	Offer March 2026	Offer March 2025	% change
Art & Design	366	451	19%
Biology	332	713	53%
Classics	27	34	21%
English	990	1032	4%
Geography	292	476	39%
Modern Foreign Languages	733	821	11%
Music	136	173	21%
Physical Education	1043	1149	9%
Religious Education	208	255	18%

I think one can discount both Physical Education and English from subjects where the declines are of concern. Elsewhere, the changes in bursary support are obviously having an effect. Those biologists that can do so are now applying for Chemistry – where there is still a bursary, and offers are up from 441 last march to 675 this March – but the overall offer across the two subjects are still below last March at 997, compared with 1,154 last March.

It is the arts subjects that seem to have been most badly hit. This is not surprising given the changes to the bursary scheme that saw the bursary axed completely for music and religious education, and reduced for biology from £26,000 to just £5,000, while it increased to £29,000 for chemistry. French and Spanish also lost their £26,000 bursaries. The reduction in ’offers’ in geography, down by 39% may also be due to the cut in the bursary from £26,000 to just £5,000.

Given the need for fewer teachers in the future, as secondary school rolls start to fall, these changes to bursaries do look like a gamble. How much of a gamble will be clear when the DfE finally announces the ITT training targets. But my hunch is that music and religious education along with geography will join the list of subjects not hitting their targets unless the current global war affects graduate recruitment in the summer. Will there be a late surge of new graduates looking to teaching, similar to that during the early months of the pandemic in 2020? The jury is out for the moment, but such a surge would not surprise me. However, as a precaution, reinstating a scholarship in the arts subjects might be a wise precaution. This might make it look less like a -U- turn than a reinstatement of the bursary.

Elsewhere in the data, candidates form the ‘Rest of the World’ accounted for 30% of all candidates this March, compared with 21% last March. The DfE really does need to show how this increase affects different subjects and how many of these candidates will be likely to receive a visa to both learn and then teach in England? Can we afford to waste funds on those with no prospect of teaching in England, while depriving potential home candidates of bursaries.

As expected at this time of year, there has been more interest from career changers than university students, with those under 24 showing an increase over last year of just 1,000 compared with an increase of more than 4,900 from those in the 25-39 age groupings.