Author Archives: John Howson

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About John Howson

Former county councillor in Oxfordshire and sometime cabinet member for children services, education and youth.

Reflections on half a century of education

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Half a century ago this week I started my teaching career at a comprehensive school in Tottenham. I have before me, as I write this blog, the actual letter, dated 4th December 1970 from the Chief Education Officer’s representative, appointing me to the unestablished staff of Haringey Council, as an assistant teacher at Tottenham School for the spring term of 1971. Interestingly, it was during the only period of the Council’s history when it was under Conservative control (1968-1972).

The letter from the council also contained the phrase ‘or such other school maintained by the Council to which you may be called upon to serve’. In practice, I remained at the school until December 1977, when my journey to Oxford and a very different future began. I also have the letter detailing my starting salary of £1,325 per year including a London Allowance payment of £85 per year and the grant of one increment for post-18 study! As I marvelled at the level of my father’s starting salary in 1936, so readers of this blog just starting out may wonder at such an apparent paltry sum of little over £100 a month before stoppages.

At least one regular reader of this blog will recall, Tottenham School had a reputation for music and drama that continued from the selective school from which the comprehensive school had emerged. The comprehensive school was a tough baptism for a new and untrained teacher, because many of the staff had never before taught those that had not passed the 11+ examination and had previously been educated in secondary modern schools, where the class teacher model rather than the subject teacher approach had been the norm. Both pupils and teachers found it difficult to adapt to the new situation.

My appointment had come about as a result of a staffing crisis facing schools as pupil numbers were on the increase, as now, and insufficient people were being trained as teachers. I joined as an untrained graduate, expecting to stay until the summer and then to undertake a higher degree course, perhaps at a Canadian university. The departure of the Head of Geography for a deputy headship at the end of May changed all that, especially as the other full-time geography teacher was expecting to emigrate to Australia the following December. Suddenly, I became acting head of department after two terms of teaching. Not a promotion that I would now encourage, but one that I was happy to take at the time.

The highlight of my six years at the school was seeing the first comprehensive sixth from students win a prestigious adult drama festival with a production of The Bald Prima Donna by Eugene Ionesco. The low point, probably the classroom stabbing in January 1977.

There were many great colleagues and pupils that I came into contact with during those years. Some, sadly no longer with us. There were many things that happened that would be more than frowned upon today, but a happy accident of chance set me on a road I still enjoy travelling.

Teacher Education and Professional Development

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Teacher Education and Professional Development

By John Howson

This first appeared in 2014 as a chapter in 21st century Education: A Social Liberal Approach

Edited by Helen Flynn and published by the social Liberal Forum

In view of the DfE’s announcement yesterday about an Institute of Teaching I thought it was worth dusting it down and reminding myself what I wrote all those years ago.

Summary

Qualified Teacher Status should be restricted in the subjects and phases where teachers are allowed to practice.

Teacher Training, and especially training for primary teachers, needs a radical overhaul. All teachers should be expected to study to a Masters level.

A College of Teachers should be established to allow a professional voice for teachers.

All teachers should have access to funds for professional development, and the College of Teachers should help devise suitable programmes to meet the needs of all teachers.

Keep in touch and re-training opportunities for those taking time out of the classroom should be established to help those wishing to return after a career break to do so without any loss of expertise or seniority.

Teacher should be a reserved occupational title only allowed to be used by those with current Qualified Teacher Status.

Introduction

Liberal Democrats won’t achieve anything in education without the help of those who work in our schools. There are two key challenges facing schools during the next parliament that no government can duck: coping with the largest increase in the primary school population since the 1970s, and ensuring that the first increase in the learning leaving age for more than 40 years brings positive benefits to students, communities and the wider economy.

How we deal with these demands whilst ensuring a more representative and less divisive schooling system will reflect our ability as a Party to translate our values into actions. Nowhere will this be clearer than in the fields of teacher education and professional development. In this section I propose new arrangements for initial teacher preparation programmes; a discussion about arrangements for the transfer from trainee to employment; and a programme of staff development that recognises the need for self-renewal and development throughout the working life of a teacher.

Teacher Education

It is worth recalling that schooling alone, even without the further and higher education sectors, is a large-scale enterprise in England. Currently about 40,000 people are on different types of courses to become a teacher: about 6,000 are undergraduates, and the remainder graduates. Overall, these trainees represent more than a third of the current size of the British land army before its recent downsizing. Overall, there are probably around half a million teachers working in state and private schools across England in any one year. Most make teaching their career for life, if they last beyond their first five years in the profession, and, despite the frequent talk of ‘many careers in a lifetime’, most start teaching as their first career.

Government policy for the teaching profession was set by the coalition in the 2010 White Paper, ‘The Importance of Teaching’. It is not clear what, if any input Liberal Democrats played in this White Paper that followed hard on the heels of the 2010 Academies Act, but it marked a determination to shift training away from higher education and into schools. A detailed analysis suggests that the model proposed was very secondary school centred, with little thought for the needs of teachers seeking to train for the primary school sector. The House of Commons Select Committee on Education in reviewing teacher education said that Partnership between schools and universities is likely to provide the highest-quality initial teacher education, the content of which will involve significant school experience but include theoretical and research elements as well as in the best systems internationally and in much provision here. That view seems to have cut little ice with the coalition government.

Too often ignored in this debate are the training needs of those seeking to enter the teaching profession. Teacher preparation programmes will only be fit for purpose if they successfully turn those who start such courses into successful teachers. Starting with the needs of trainees rather than schools or higher education should be the key to a successful training programme.

To be a successful teacher requires a range of different qualities but, at least in the secondary sector, there ought to be a minimum level of subject knowledge equivalent to two years of an honours degree. Anyone without this basic level of knowledge should be offered Subject knowledge Enhancement courses to allow them to acquire sufficient knowledge. Even those with the requite degree may still lack expertise in areas of the school curriculum in their subject and ways should be found to allow them to continue to acquire such additional knowledge. This programme would allow for Qualified Teacher Status to be restricted to specific subjects and phases rather than continue to be generic as at present where a teacher with QTS can teach anything to anyone at any level of schooling. The fact that more than 20% of those teaching some Mathematics in our schools do not have a qualification above ‘A’ level in the subject may explain why many children neither enjoy the subject nor do well in it.

Qualified Teacher Status should be restricted in the subjects and phases where teachers are allowed to practice.

However, it is in preparing teachers for the primary sector that most attention needs to be paid. The present post-graduate course attempts to cram the equivalent of a quart into a pint pot. Many curriculum areas receive scant attention, and there is no guarantee that the time in school will effectively dovetail in developing the time spent on the programmes outside the classroom. It is time for a thorough overhaul of how primary teachers are prepared. In the first instance, the undergraduate training route should be replaced by a wider first degree programme that would prepare graduates to work in a wider range of services including youth and social work as well as teaching. The specific training to be a teacher would be entirely postgraduate. Such a new degree would prevent undue early specialisation among those entering university straight from school.  It would also avoid the bizarre situation created by the coalition whereby graduates wanting to become a teacher are subject to a minimum degree standard, but no such standard is imposed on undergraduates. As with the secondary sector, where there are already virtually no undergraduate teacher preparation courses, graduates of the new courses would not be licensed to teach at any level in the primary school, but would be certified to teach at a particular Key Stage.

Overall, graduate training would be on a two year model leading to a Masters degree with the possibility of appropriate credit against the subject components of secondary subject training for those with appropriate honours degrees.

Teacher Training, and especially training for primary teachers, needs a radical overhaul. All teachers should be expected to study to a Masters level.

The partnership model for teacher preparation that developed during the 1990s has generally served the profession well, with Ofsted recognising that teachers are better prepared than in the past. However, if we are going to maintain national standards for teaching, it is imperative that there is a body that can offer support and guidance in this area and oversee standards independent of government. The unfortunate abolition of the General Teaching Council in England was a short-sighted and politically inspired move. The creation of a new College of Teachers with oversight of the profession and responsibility for determining standards of entry to the profession is an urgent requirement. Such a body should be independent of, but accountable to, government. It should have a strong research ethos and assist in bringing together the best practice in teacher preparation from around the world as well as working to develop such practice in this country. Not only could the College provide professional status for teachers but it would also provide a centre for determining effective career development in a manner that the present National College has seemed unable to do effectively outside of its original remit of leadership development.

Professional Development

A College of Teachers should be established to allow a professional voice for teachers.

A lack of coherent professional development has been one of the key shortcomings of the present management of the teaching profession. Although the pressures created by the addition of extra pupils will make it difficult to fund a comprehensive programme of professional development during the next decade there should be funding for a number of hours of personal development each year. The present five days allocated for school-funded training should be used for development related to the needs of the school, and should be linked to the use of accredited trainers. Teachers in their first year of employment should be mentored and provided with a reduced timetable, as at present. In addition, provision should be made for the professional development of those either not currently employed but seeking work as a teacher or employed on temporary contracts. These groups should be offered five days paid training a year including travelling expenses.

In addition to the five in-school training days, teachers as professionals should be expected to undertake other forms of professional development. The College of Teachers should be responsible for research and development of the best practice in on-line learning building upon the experience gained with the TeachersTV experiment and current developments within both the higher education and the private sector. For teachers with more than five years’ experience, the State should be prepared to fund part-time Masters’ degrees in pedagogy. In addition, funding should be available for middle leadership training to meet the needs of schools.

All teachers should recognise the changes that technology has wrought on society over the past four decades and that methods of learning for all are not immune to such developments. Whether it is the infant with the ‘tablet’ they already think they know how to use when they arrive at school or the sixth former studying an open access course at Harvard alongside their ‘A’ levels, the notion of the role of the teacher is already being challenged. Elsewhere in this book the view of teachers as ‘facilitators’ of learning, partially, but not entirely, a secondary inspired notion, must cause everyone to reflect about how teachers are prepared for the learning environment, and the need for those teachers already in the profession to constantly challenge their thinking about teaching and learning.  We need a profession that is supported to be open and questioning about how to educate the next generation as well as constantly reflecting upon their practice in the classroom.

All teachers should have access to funds for professional development, and the College of Teachers should help devise suitable programmes to meet the needs of all teachers.

Children with special educational needs should have access to the very best learning that the teaching profession can offer. All too often at present that is not the case, and such schools often have higher vacancy rates and less well-qualified staff than schools in general. A funded programme of training for teachers that want to work with such pupils should be widely available, and managed on a regional basis. This programme would include provision of SENCO training and oversight of the provision of Educational Psychologists. It would also cover training for support for those working in Virtual Schools and learning centres.

After a number of years of teaching some classroom teachers wish to specialise in other areas such as guidance, both pastoral and career orientated, or in the wider role of a counsellor. Others teachers may wish to pass their knowledge on to the next generation of teachers as advisory teachers, advisers, or helping with the preparation of the next generation of teachers. Career opportunities are haphazard, and training for such positions unclear. The government should work with the College of Teachers to develop a career route for this important group of future leaders of the profession. Teachers can certainly play a more important part in the assessment of their pupils. The College of Teachers could work to create chartered assessors with the responsibility for more internal assessment and less dependence of the marking of outside markers whose judgements are constantly being challenged. If a new lecturer at a university can mark the critical paper in a the degree examinations of a final year student we ought to be able to trust a competent and trained teacher to achieve the same degree of integrity and objectiveness with their pupil’s work. Moderation would remain necessary, but the qualification of a chartered teacher assessor should be one that every classroom teacher should aspire to achieve. As a by-product it might reduce the cost of external examinations or even do away with the need for such an expensive system at sixteen now that the education participation age has been raised to Eighteen.

In a profession where two thirds of the teachers are female and half the profession is below the age of thirty-five, it is likely that a significant number of teachers will, at any point in time, either be on maternity leave or taking a career break. This group represent a valuable resource for our schools. However, their professional development is often neglected during their time away from teaching. It would seem a sensible investment to offer both ‘keep in touch’ arrangements, and the opportunity for formal professional development during any sustained period away from the classroom. One result of this might be that QTS, which is currently held for life once granted except in very limited circumstances, would only be retained on participation in approved professional development. Once relinquished QTS would only be regained following a period of certified re-training offered by a training provider.

Keep in touch and re-training opportunities for those taking time out of the classroom should be established to help those wishing to return after a career break to do so without any loss of expertise or seniority.

One major problem with the present system of training and employment is that apart from those training through School Direct Salaried scheme, and on Teach First, teachers are not guaranteed a job after qualification. This lack of a guarantee of work might not have been of concern when the State funded teacher preparation courses, but now that those not guaranteed jobs are required to fund their training through the payment of tuition fees of up to £9,000, and in some cases receive no bursary support, this may prove to be a disincentive to train as a teacher, especially in a buoyant economy. It is time to look at alternative arrangements that allow either a salary for all during training, as in many other graduate training programmes, or the repayment of fees for those who remain in teaching for more than a set period of time. While the latter option might seem the more appealing to the Treasury, it could well fall foul of equal opportunities legislation. The saving from not needing to train more teachers than required might well make the funding of a salaried scheme affordable, especially if the undergraduate route was abolished at the same time. Any shortfall in training numbers can be filled through returners and those entering teaching with overseas qualifications or from another sector such as further education.

There are many other workers employed in schools these days. Their need for training and professional development should not be overlooked. Indeed, although many possess professional and administrative skills in their own right, it is important for them to understand the context within which they work. Whether as ‘learning assistants’; clerical or administrative staff; or in other roles; they should be offered the opportunity for regular professional development. Indeed, some, especially learning assistants, may wish to eventually progress to become qualified teachers. The opportunity to progress in this manner should be an essential part of a professional development framework.

The challenge for any government is to provide a coherent framework for those seeking to enter the profession as well as for serving teachers within a rapidly changing environment of the governance of education. I reject the view that teachers can be recruited with the need for no training at all. Indeed, the term ‘teacher’ should become a protected professional term, and only be allowed for those with Qualified Teacher Status. There are plenty of other terms such as instructor, tutor, lecturer, mentor and even preceptor that can be used to help parents and pupils distinguish the status of those responsible for the education process. The choice for schools and their promoters would then be whether to remain independent or to accept the standards of teacher preparation required for funding set down by the State. It may well be that some of the present ‘free schools’ funded by the State might not accept the need for training. Particular issues arise where the schools, such as those following the Montessori methods wish to receive state funding. With QTS more narrowly defined than at present, it should be possible to create certification that allows for such possibilities.

In a society where schooling by the State is not mandatory but the default option a significant private sector has continued to flourish for a variety of reasons: indeed, it now represent a significant generator of foreign income for the country as well as often being a socially divisive factor in society, although the ability of parents of children at state funded schools to but private tuition shows that it is as much a matter of the gap between the richest and poorest in society as it is the structure of the school system. Nevertheless, private schools often recruit teachers trained at the public expense, just as consultants in the Health Service undertaking private work use knowledge gained from training and experience funded by the State. The move to schools working with trainees and then employing them at the end of their training as exemplified by Teach First and School Direct might help to reduce the direct cost to Society of training teachers for the private sector, but is unlikely ever to eradicate the practice. What is critical is to ensure that there are sufficient teachers to satisfy the overall demand as, when there has been a shortage, the private sector has the ability to buy the teachers it needs in a manner that publicly funded schools do not.   

Teacher should be a reserved occupational title only allowed to be used by those with current Qualified Teacher Status.

It is acknowledged that an educated society brings social, cultural, and economic benefits to a country. As a result, the development of the workforce in schools, and especially of the teachers, is something that cannot be ignored by a government. Like any good employer of a business with multiple worksites, standards of training need to be created across the system both to ensure good practice and to allow for the interchange of staff between different locations, not least when, for whatever reason, a workplace unexpectedly experiences difficulties. This does not require the government to conduct the training. At present, a partnership between schools and higher education offers the most effective solution for national coverage, especially while the framework for the governance of schooling is so disjoined, particularly in the vital primary sector of schooling. However, the SCITT model has shown that leadership of the partnership can work with either partner in control. What is important is awareness that training programmes should be tailored to the needs of those undertaking them with a view to a qualification that meets the needs of the schools and promotes the desire for continued professional development.

Not all those who seek to become teachers may be suitable. But, for those who do, we need to offer high quality training, effective transfer into employment, and the opportunity for professional development that will help create and sustain a world-class education system.

DfE announcement on a Saturday!

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The decision to announce both a new Institute of Teaching and the recommencement of the review of the ITT market, following a pause due to the Covid-19 pandemic, wasn’t something I expected to read this afternoon.

DfE announcements on a Saturday afternoon are rarer than hen’s teeth. So rushed seems the announcement on the recommencement of the ITT Review that it is unclear whether the statement that ‘The review is expected to report in summer 2020.’ Should have read summer 2021?

Anyway the announcement of,

‘A new Institute of Teaching is set to be established in England to provide teachers and school leaders with prestigious training and development throughout their career.

… with the Institute being the first of its kind in the world.’

DfE https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-institute-of-teaching-set-to-be-established

May raise some eyebrows and questions about hyperbole in places as far apart as Singapore and Ontario.

This idea for this new Institute doesn’t seem yet to have the structure of the Area Training Organisations that existed across the country in the post-war period or even of the short-lived regional structure for leadership training in the days before GRIST and its derivatives.

Indeed, what of the wonderful National College created under the Blair government only to be axed by the Conservatives?  Admittedly that started with senior leadership and then expanded into other areas? Has it been air-brushed out of history?

To claim that the new Institute ‘will revolutionise teacher training and make England the best place in the world to train and become a great teacher’ will raise the question in many minds of what have the Tories been doing for the past ten years of trying to create a school-led training system. Is this an acknowledgement of failure?

There is no way that I believe the present system of ITT, or ITE depending on your point of view, is anything but high quality, but there is room for innovation, not least around technology and learning, as I have written in a recent blog.

The numbers quoted in the announcement also seem suspect. There are around 40,000 trainees teachers each year, so 1,000 represents about three per cent of the total. A higher percentage, of course, if targets for recruitment are not met. 2,000 early career teachers is an even smaller percentage and no figures are provided for the essential development of middle leaders where a national programme has been sadly lacking.

Where will the existing Teaching Schools fit into this new order, and how will geographical gaps be filled? Who will have oversight, and will there be a National Director of Training and Development with the ear of the Secretary of State?

A cynic might say this was an attempt to end a run of bad news for the DfE and its Ministers, and an attempt to regain the initiative. If so, I hope what emerges really does help develop the teaching profession.

Perhaps the Secretary of State can start by changing the rules about employing unqualified people as teachers. There is, after all, no point in an Institute focusing on initial teacher programmes if academies are free to employ anyone as a teacher.

A better announcement would have been that the term ‘teacher’ had become a reserved occupation term only allowed to be used by those with QTS.

Should schools re-open next week?

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There is probably no ‘certain’ answer at this moment in time to that question, but there is a political decision to be made. By the time the answer is certain, the time for decision will have passed and whether by default or decision there will have been an outcome.

Learning versus transmission seems to be at the heart of the debate. If the new variant of covid hadn’t appeared, then the answer would have been simple: open primary schools and secondary schools for Years 11 and 13, although I think classroom subjects for Year 13 could be taught on-line rather than face to face.

However, with the more transmissible strain now dominant in many areas, the issue is possibly more complex for some. Closing schools will affect learning and create issues for parents in terms of childcare, especially where they cannot work from home. Can we overcome the loss of learning time as a Society, if we put our minds to it? After all, we have created new forms of learning, so ought we not to be able to identify ways of recovering essential learning? Much may depend upon making the learning attractive to the learners. Boring rote learning won’t work. Will we need a National Reading Recovery campaign and a similar one for numeracy once the pandemic is over?

The NHS is always under strain at this time of year and the weather forecasters are suggesting a few weeks of cold weather. The consequences of that sort of weather pattern for hospitals needs to be taken into account, since other ailments haven’t taken a holiday just because of covid. Then there is the backlog of other treatments, especially in-patient treatments that need ICU beds. Do politicians need to take these factors into account when weighing up the issue of schools re-opening?

Now it is clear that mass testing for all pupils won’t be in place next week, whatever was said before Christmas, is it sensible to bring back pupils into setting where transmission is likely to be high either person to person or via surfaces? I would like to know whether the latest variant of covid lingers longer on surfaces. If so, that might be a powerful argument for not re-opening schools, because however often surfaces are cleaned, there as potentially just too many of them, not to mention those encountered on the way to and from schools and colleges.

Personally, based upon the public knowledge available to me, I would not re-open secondary schools and further education colleges for the first two weeks of term while patterns of transmission after Christmas become clear. I would re-open primary schools, but allow pupils living in high risk households not to attend until we know more about transmission rates among different groups. This is where the focus on ‘recovery’ learning will be most important going forward.

Finally, there are the issues of the mental health of young people to be added into the equation along with the physical and mental welfare of all the staff and their families. In the end, any decision is better than none.

Update: 1800 on 30th December. Seems like I was mostly correct, although I didn’t foresee the closure of so many primary schools. Next question: can exams survive?

DfE announces a bit of history

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Last week, the DfE published the annual results of revenue related exports and transactional education activity in 2018. That now seems like a different world. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-revenue-from-education-related-exports-and-transnational-education-activity-2018

Still, 2018 was a good year for education experts, with even the Further Education sector reversing the downturn of previous years and experiencing upturns in both fee income and income from living costs: albeit only by small amounts. Still, this was the first upturn in FE exports since 2010, the year when I think the data for the time series was first established.

Overall, across all areas, there was a 10% increase in export activity and a slight fall of 0.8% in transactional education activity in 2018

Higher Education once again earned the lion’s share of the income, accounting for 69% of all exports and transactional education activity in2018.  This was higher education’s largest percentage share, and some 9% more than their share in2010.

Further Education and English Language Training have been the main losers of market share since 2010, although both recorded upturns is 2018. ELT increased its market share by one percent to eight per cent. However, FE still saw its market share remain at one percent in 2018.

Independent schools market share reduced from five to four per cent at the end of 2018, back to their share in 2010. However, this was largely due to the strong showing from the higher education sector during 2018.

Transactional education activity, where the exports are delivered overseas through ventures such as satellite campuses and overseas consultancy lost ground in 2018, falling back to only 9% of total activity.

Among sub-sectors, equipment sales were strong in 2018, but educational publishing failed to maintain the growth witnessed in 2017. Most of the higher education student growth was, perhaps not surprisingly, in the non-EU student sector of the market. The latter remained stable. What will happen to this income stream in 2021 and future years will be interesting to observe, but it might be 2025 before data are published that reveal any trend post Brexit.

These figures may well be the penultimate in a run of good years for exports. There is little reason to believe that 2019 will not have produced further growth, although EU higher education income might have slowed down. Come the 2020 data, the results might be different. Will new income from distance learning have been sufficient to offset losses elsewhere resulting for the covid pandemic affecting the second half of the year?

Perhaps now is the time to remove overseas students from the immigration statistics, at least for those on first degree courses, even if not for sub-degree and postgraduate level courses where monitoring might be more challenging?

Still, let’s congratulate a successful export drive in 2018, and hope that covid and Brexit between them create new opportunities rather than decimate an otherwise successful sector of the British economy, since these are UK numbers and not just for England.

Pay Freeze: more churn?

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As expected, the main teacher associations acted with condemnation when faced with the Secretary of State’s remit letter to the STRB, the Pay and conditions of Service Review Body for the teaching profession.  In a joint statement from ACSL NAHT and NEU they said that;

The narrow remit issued to the STRB excludes the crucial and central issue of teacher and school leader pay, reflecting the Government’s unacceptable pay freeze policy.  Teachers and school leaders are key workers who have already seen their pay cut significantly since 2010.  With inflation expected to increase in 2021, they know that they face another significant real terms pay cut. 

How might their members react in 2021? We can expect a range of reactions. Some will say, there is no point in staying with no pay rise in sight – after all will the freeze really be just for one year? Head teachers at the top of their pay band, and having endured the prospect of two disrupted school years might well throw in the towel and take their pension as that presumably won’t be frozen in the same way; at least at present. We will look at that prospect and its consequences in more detail in a later blog.

Some teachers will seek promotion to secure a pay rise, and others a more appealing post either in a different school or in the private sector where there are no requirements for a pay freeze for teachers. Yet others may look overseas or to the tutoring market that will grow to support the increase in home schooling, especially if the government looks to regulation to ensure a minimum standard of education for all children regardless of how parents arrange to provide it. All these factors could increase ‘churn’.

With a profession dominated by women, at least at the level of the classroom teacher, how they and often also their partners view job security and new opportunities will also affect the rate of ‘churn’ if there is job movement around the country.

I actually think, at least in the first few months of 2021, there will be caution, and a desire to stay put and see what happens. With a labour market in teaching heavily skewed towards the first five months of the year, we could see fewer vacancies than normal in the early months of 2021. This will impact especially severely on two group of teachers: new entrants and would-be returners to the profession.

I well recall a Radio 5 Live interview in 2011, when callers were blaming each groups for taking jobs from the other. In reality, both groups were finding it more of a challenge to secure a teaching post, especially in some parts of England.

So, how hard will it be? We don’t know yet, so this is speculation based upon past trends, but I think some teachers will really struggle to secure a post in 2021.

Now might well be the time to revive ideas of a single application form for teaching, at least for personal details. This would leave just the free text statement to be written specifically for each vacancy being sought. The DfE should consider whether sponsoring that idea from those examples currently in development and on offer might be a better use of funds than continuing with their vacancy site that one person described to me in unflattering terms earlier this week.

In the next post, I will describe a new service from TeachVac to help teachers and schools assess the market and where vacancies might be found in 2021.  

Another Greenwich Judgement avoided

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Greenwich in South East London already features in education law history for the ‘Greenwich Judgement’ on school choice. Today, it seemingly avoided the possibly of creating a second precedent by accepting that it would not be in the interest of local people to spend money defending any legal action by the DfE on closing schools.

As usual, there are pros and cons to both the Council’s position and that of the government at Westminster. What is lacking is a clear understanding of guidelines that fit a changing set of circumstances. The BBC’s World at One programme interviewed the Leader of Basildon Council – a Tory – where several schools are closed because of very high rates of infection. He defended that situation.

Generally, opinion is that education is a ‘good thing’ and leaving parents to arrange childcare at short notice can cause problems that should be avoided if at all possible. All the current issues were foreseeable, and the present situation demonstrates the lack of cooperative planning that is the hallmark of the present administration, and might yet be its downfall.

The issues are the same, where infection leads to transmission to higher risks groups from lower risks groups there is a danger, but within lower risks groups it is less of an issue. This appears to be the case with university students that remain in a group and don’t interact with the wider community. Schools are different, by their very community nature.

Low income, multi-generational households, especially in the non-White community, remain at very high risk from the pandemic and it is understandable that schools can play a part in the chain of transmission. But low income families have less space for on-line learning even if they have access to the technology.

So, no easy answer. But a set of criteria

Local public health officials can assess the trends and liaise with schools and education officers. Where more than a certain level of infections are present, local officials should notify the DfE of intending closure of a group of schools and provide the evidence in the same as a single school would use and there shouldn’t be an issue.

Where it becomes complicated is the notion of a ‘preventative closure’ to try to stop a spike happening. Surely, by now, we have enough evidence to set some criteria for where it is appropriate to close schools, and where it is better to keep them open?

Even with the vaccination programme, it seems likely that next term is going to be a challenging one for schools, their pupils and for parents. The clearer the agreed guidelines the better.

ICO still monitoring the DfE

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The update issued by the Office of the Information Commissioner on their compulsory audit of the DfE passed me by when it appeared in October this year. https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-blogs/2020/10/statement-on-the-outcome-of-the-ico-s-compulsory-audit-of-the-department-for-education/ The executive summary of the original audit report had appeared in February 2020 and didn’t read like a ‘good news’ story for the Department.

It is good to know that the ICO is able to state in October that throughout the audit process the DfE engaged with the ICO and showed a willingness to learn from and address the issues identified and that the Department accepted all the audit recommendations and is making the necessary changes.

However, it appears that the ICO continues to monitor the DfE, reviewing improvements against pre agreed timescales and that the ICO warns that enforcement action will follow if progress falls behind the schedule.

The ICO carried out the compulsory audit following complaints received in 2019 regarding the National Pupil Database.

According to the Executive Summary in the Report, an Assessment Notice was issued to the Department for Education (DfE) on 19 December 2019. The audit field work was undertaken between 24 February and 4 March [sic]. The full report doesn’t seem to be available on the ICO website.

As with Ofsted inspections, key areas for improvement are identified for the DfE to consider and if necessary act upon. These included but were not limited to;

  • There is no formal proactive oversight of any function of information governance, including data protection, records management, risk management, data sharing and information security within the DfE which along with a lack of formal documentation means the DfE cannot demonstrate accountability to the GDPR. Although the Data Directorate have been assigned overall responsibility for compliance actual operational responsibility is fragmented throughout all groups, directorates, divisions and teams which implement policy services and projects involving personal data. Limited reporting lines, monitoring activity and reporting means there is no central oversight of data processing activities. As a result there are no controls in place to provide assurance that all personal data processing activities are carried out in line with legislative requirements.
  • Internal cultural barriers and attitudes are preventing the DfE from implementing an effective system of information governance, which properly considers the rights and freedoms of data subjects against their own requirements for processing personal data to ensure data is processed in line with the principles of the GDPR.
  • The Commercial department do not have appropriate controls in place to protect personal data being processed on behalf of the DfE by data processors. Which means there is no assurance that it is being processed in line with statutory requirements particularly where processing contracts are of low enough value to not be subject to formal procurement procedures. Processor and third party due diligence does not always consider whether appropriate organisational and security measures are in place to provide the DfE with assurance that personal data will be processed in line with statutory requirements.
  • There is an over reliance on using public task as the lawful basis for sharing which is not always appropriate and supported by identified legislation. Legitimate interest has also been used as a lawful basis in some applications however there is limited understanding of the requirements of legitimate interest and to assess the application and legalities of it prior to sharing taking place how it should be applied to ensure the use of this lawful basis is appropriate and considers the requirements set out in Article 6(1)(f) of the GDPR.

In all, 15 areas for improvement were listed in the report. This is both a comprehensive and very depressing list. No doubt since February, and despite the covid-19 concerns that have taken up the time of the Department, procedures have been tightened up. Perhaps this is behind the nature of some of the data requests regarding the monitoring of the pandemic in schools.

Unlike Ofsted, the ICO doesn’t award grades to its audits. Without sight of the whole report it would be invidious to offer a suggested grade of the ofsted type, but it clearly wasn’t a ‘clean bill of health’ for the DfE.

Thank a Teacher or perhaps not?

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When is a holiday for teachers not a holiday? Perhaps when announced by a government Minister. In my book, an in-service day is not a holiday. The Schools Minister’s announcement of an extra day before Christmas to allow teachers to have a “proper break” from working with test and trace to identify Covid cases doesn’t seem like a real holiday to me. More of a political announcement where a Minister hopes that nobody will read beyond the headline.

Apparently Mr Gibb told the Education Select Committee earlier this week that: “We are about to announce that ‘inset days’ can be used on Friday December 18, even if an inset day had not been originally scheduled for that day.

“We want there to be a clear six days so that, by the time we reach Christmas Eve, staff can have a proper break without having to engage in the track and trace issues.”

How seriously will school leaders take the additional opportunity for in-service training? Hopefully, they will suggest training at home rather than requiring attendance at the school site. Of course, some supply teachers stand to lose a possible day’s pay as a result of this announcement.  

With the looming pay freeze for next year facing teachers, I wonder how teachers will receive this badly wrapped present. A pay freeze may send some teachers overseas next year and others looking for promotion, so ‘churn’ may increase next year. At TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk we also expect more leadership vacancies than in recent years, especially in the primary sector, as leaders decide they have had enough of muddle and mixed messages about the handling of the pandemic.

The National Education Union has published a useful set of maps showing how covid-19 cases have ebbed and flowed for primary age pupils and the 10-14 age-group during the course of the autumn term between September to the first week in December. It is not clear what moves the government has taken to ensure vulnerable staff are properly protected. Looking back over this blog, I notice I made a suggestion about identifying possible staff ‘at risk’ and ensuring that they weren’t in contact with pupils. Figures for the cost of supply staff suggests that this wasn’t taken up as an idea.

Certainly my idea of employing NQTs without a teaching post as supernumerary staff wasn’t acted upon. I wonder whether this would have been a cheaper option than boosting the profits of the supply agencies.

Finally, I was struck by this paragraph from the report of an Ofsted virtual visit to a secondary school in early November

Teachers have checked what pupils remember and used this knowledge to help them plan lessons. Overall, they have found that the areas pupils needed help with before lockdown are even more of a priority now. For example, pupils who previously found reading tricky now need extra help. You are using some of the COVID-19 catch-up premium to address this by employing extra staff and purchasing additional resources.

Recovering the damage done by covid-19 to children’s education is going to be a key task for 2021 and beyond.

Teacher Vacancy Platforms: Pros and Cons

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In this post, I look at the three key sites for teacher vacancies in England. TeachVac; the DfE Vacancy site and The TES. Now this is not an unbiased look, because I am Chair of the company that owns TeachVac. Indeed, it might be regarded as an advertisement, so treat it in that way if you read on.

TeachVac is in the process of filing its accounts for the year to June 2020 with Companies House. The DfE doesn’t file accounts, and the TES has filed accounts up to the end of August 2019, with a forward comment about the possible effects of the covid pandemic in the year to August 2020.

All three sites cost teachers nothing to use during the last year. However, the DfE site only offers vacancies in state schools, and only a proportion of those schools. TeachVac estimates that in 2020 the DfE proportion of vacancies for teaching posts never rose above 40% of the vacancies open to teachers across both state and private schools. So, the DfE is worthwhile if you only want a job in a state-funded school. Both TeachVac and the TES offer vacancies in state and private schools, although TeachVac doesn’t cover all private schools with pupils below the age of eleven. The TES coverage depends upon those prepared to pay to advertise vacancies on their platform.

Both TeachVac and the DfE site have no direct financial cost to schools. However, the DfE site does require schools to input vacancies into the site. This is optional for TeachVac, and most schools are happy to rely upon the automatic vacancy collection process operated by TeachVac. The TES has a number of options, all require schools to pay for their vacancies to appear on the TES job site and be matched with teachers.

TeachVac also offers users a monthly newsletter on the state of the market for teachers.

The operating cost for TeachVac in 2019/20 was just £1.10 per vacancy processed. Neither the DfE nor The TES publishes a similar figure, but the TES accounts would suggest their cost per vacancy is much higher than that of TeachVac. To find out the cost of the DfE site would need a parliamentary question.

So, are teacher associations, governors and school business managers and those responsible for local authorities, diocese and MATs recommending TeachVac as the most cost effective means of displaying and matching vacancies? Of course not.

Are they recommending teachers to use Teachvac, some are, others aren’t. Course leaders preparing teachers are now recommending TeachVac as a place for trainees to look for their first vacancy. Those trainees are sticking with TeachVac to find subsequent jobs and promotion opportunities.

I am proud of the achievements of the TeachVac team in driving down costs of vacancy advertising. Next the team will start to look at other parts of the recruitment journey to see if there are saving to be made in other areas as well.

Incidentally, if anyone wants to sponsor the TeachVac site, my investors are always open to discussions.