About John Howson

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

Gifts may not be the same as presents

Posted on October 17, 2019 by John Howson

As many readers of this blog will know, the DfE is planning a new digital application service for prospective trainee teachers. Apart from being trendy, I am not sure what the word ‘digital’ adds to the title, as surely nobody would create a new paper-based application service these days.

You can read about the service at https://dfedigital.blog.gov.uk/2019/09/05/testing-apply/ The new service will eventually replace the existing service run by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), probably by the start of the application round for 2021 courses, if the trial stages go well.

Now, I have had my differences with UCAS over the present system, introduced when I sat on a Committee representing ITT interests as an independent member. Some of my concerns seems to be being replicated by the DfE in designing their system. However, I have a much more fundamental concern than the design of the system about the DfE’s proposal. UCAS isn’t a government body. Instead, it is owned by its members. The new system will transfer ownership of the postgraduate application process for teaching to the government.

Is that change of ownership a good idea? Certainly, it will directly save both candidates and the providers of courses money as, like the DfE teacher recruitment service, it will be free at the point of delivery. It am sure it will also be well designed.

However, ownership of the process will then be in the hands of politicians and not the providers. Imagine a future government that recognises the need to balance supply and demand for teachers across the country and closes off courses when sufficient applications have been received, but before providers have made their choice of applicants. This could force later applicants to choose from the remaining courses that are short of applicants. Now, in some ways this is similar to the recruitment controls imposed upon the sector a few years ago. Any such regulation might reduce the freedom of providers to select candidates. You could envisage other interventions.

The DfE team running the service will need to know a great deal about the complexities of the teacher preparation market. If it is an in-house set-up at the DfE, what oversight will there be? Is there to be an advisory board or some other form of governance structure or will the system just be run by a changing stream of civil servants, supervised by a senior policy officer and just keeping ‘in contact’ with the providers?

As a government function, the application service will always be subject to Ministerial oversight and direction. Whether that is a ‘good thing’ or not will depend upon your views about services run by government. Certainly, as a public service, there should be more data available than is currently the case with the UCAS service.

It is also worth recalling that the DfE ran the admissions process for School Direct in 2013 and allowed me to comment in May of that year about the state of applications in a post entitled Applications Good: Acceptances better. https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/applications-good-acceptances-better/

As Ed Dorrell of the Tes remarked at the NABTT Conference, during his talk on teacher supply, Ministers don’t like talking about a crisis, and my analysis of the data that year certainly landed me in hot water, as anyone that reads the August 2013 posts on this blog can discover.

Whatever I think, the DfE is presenting the new system to the sector. I just hope it is a gift worth receiving.

Change and Renewal: NASBTT’s key priorities for the year ahead

Posted on October 16, 2019 by John Howson

Earlier today I was the guest of The National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT) at their annual conference. I suspect the fact that TeachVac sponsored their Administrator of the Year Award in the summer may have had something to do with the invitation. Curiously, the Awards didn’t rate a mention in Emma Hollis the Executive’s Director’s Review of the Year.

Anyway, NASBTT has grown from a small organisation, representing a few SCITTs in an out of favour section of the teacher preparation sector, to a dynamic orgnaisation now commanding a growing influence in the market for training teachers.

At the conference, Emma Hollis outlined five key priorities for 2019-20, which includes NASBTT playing a pivotal role at the forefront of Initial Teacher Training (ITT) policy formation..

Emma Hollis told the more than 150 delegates attending the conference how “the world of education is ever shifting and the wider political upheaval has meant that, perhaps even more so than usual, there has been uncertainty about the future”.

Emma highlighted how NASBTT is represented on the Department for Education (DfE) Initial Teacher Education (ITE) curriculum content advisory group, which has drafted new guidance that will underpin the training programme for new teachers, starting with the core content for ITT and leading into the Early Career Framework (ECF).

Secondly, NASBTT is part of an ITE advisory group which is supporting Ofsted as it designs its new framework for the inspection of ITE, aligning it more closely with the Education Inspection Framework for schools. “

Thirdly, NASBTT is prioritising subject knowledge enhancement for trainee teachers – creating a Subject Knowledge and Curriculum Design toolkit, teaming up with a range of subject specialists including Vretta, and its innovative Elevate My Maths online programme.

However, Emma emphasised a wider issue. “NASBTT members remain concerned about the difficulty of training teachers ‘in depth’ in all subjects within the timeframe of teacher training,” she said. “It is particularly unclear exactly how much subject knowledge is expected of primary teachers. I would add especially as once QTS is granted a teacher may still be asked to teach anything to anyone regardless of their level of knowledge and expertise.

Fourthly, and linked directly to the need for ongoing professional development for subject knowledge enhancement, and other areas, is the ECF delivery mechanism. To this end, NASBTT has established a professional framework for teacher educators to be launched later this year through their new Teacher Educator Zone.

My thought was about the trainees that don’t take up a job until January, how will the ECF work for them? For, as this blog has pointed out in the past, if the market works properly, the most able trainees are employed before those that fared less well on their preparation courses, and they surely need support the most support, even if they start later in the year.

NASBTT’s fifth – but by no means least important – priority for the next 12 months is in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of trainee teachers. Emma pointed out that “The prominence and importance of mental health and wellbeing is growing in schools – both for pupils and school staff.”

I would add that both teacher preparation courses and the first years of teaching can be very stressful times. The courses demand a degree of concentration and effort not always recognised, and certainly not rewarded in the case of all trainees, especially those preparing to be primary school teachers.

Finally, I have watched NASBTT’s growth over the years, and wish it well for the future. As the organisation grows, so will both its confidence in dealing with government and the range of challenges it will face. I wish it well for the future.

A weak economy won’t help school funding

Posted on October 15, 2019 by John Howson

According to information contained in a House of Commons Library research Report on Education Funding, the government is either shooting itself in the foot or presenting statistics in a manner that makes already challenging comparisons difficult, if not impossible.

The Library Research Paper, BRIEFING PAPER Number 1078, 9th October 2019 entitled: Education spending in the UK, states on page 11 that

“the Department for Education currently records all spending on academies under secondary education. Secondary schools account for most of the spending on academies, but there are also include large numbers of primary and special academies. They are looking to improve the separation of spending across the education categories in the future. This skews the primary/secondary breakdown somewhat and limits the comparisons of primary and secondary spending between the home countries of the UK.” (Their emphasis, not mine)

As the number of academies in the primary and secondary sector increases, this method or recording allied to the fact that academies and free schools have a different financial year to maintained schools makes comparisons even harder than before.

Nevertheless, the Report is able to demonstrate how closely funding follows two key influences; demography and the state of the economy. For the past few years, both of these have been negative in the sense that the economy took a hit after the banking crisis at just the time when the birth rate was rising to higher levels than previously. Both factors created an almost perfect storm, not least because rising pupil numbers means a greater percentage of education expenditure has to be used for capital projects rather than revenue spending. Add in the laudable decision to raise the learning leaving age to 18 from 16, and another funding pressure was added to the equation.

The cuts facing schools would undoubtedly have been worse, unless taxes had risen, if the contribution of participants to the funding of higher education had not been increased by the raising of tuition fees and also the manner in which these loans were accounted for on the government’s balance sheet.

The Report also notes that “In 2017 an estimated £23 billion was spent privately on education.” Citing Consumer trends, ONS, as the source of the figure. Now, I assume this will include all the funds parents spend on private tutoring ahead of exams, and on Maths Centres that have sprung up around the country, as well as what the Labour Party includes in its definition of private education that it would seek to abolish.

Apart from probably driving at least part of that provision of schooling offshore, where the export income would be lost to the National Exchequer, there would obviously be the cost of educating such pupils as needed to be educated by the State. I don’t know how many billions that would cost, but it would have to be found from somewhere.

However, I understand the feeling that education is so important that it cannot be left to personal choice, but only offered by the State. From there it is but a short step to mandating only one type of state school that parents have to send their children to attend. As a Liberal, this is not a road that I would want to go along.

Some reduction in workload, but not enough

Posted on October 14, 2019 by John Howson

The DfE has recently published the result of the 2019 Teacher Workload Survey, carried out on its behalf by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NfER). https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/838457/Teacher_workload_survey_2019_report.pdf

From the results, it seems as the high level of publicity given to the term-time workload of teachers has produced results, since teachers and middle leaders report working fewer hours in total in 2019 than they did in 2016. Senior leaders also reported working fewer hours in total in 2019 than they did in 2016.

Primary and secondary teachers and middle leaders reported spending broadly similar amounts of time on teaching in 2019 as they did in 2016. However, most primary and secondary teachers and middle leaders reported spending less time on lesson planning, marking and pupil supervision in 2019 than in 2016, so the reduction hasn’t come in face to face teaching but in all those other activities that make up the task of a teacher.

Primary teachers, middle leaders and senior leaders were less likely than those in the secondary phase to say that workload was a ‘very’ serious problem. I wonder whether this relates to the fact that secondary classroom teachers have to manage interactions with far more pupils than do their primary counterparts and many senior leaders.

Even with the reduced workload from the last survey in 2016, most respondents reported to the NfER that they could not complete their workload within their contracted hours, that they did not have an acceptable workload, and that they did not achieve a good work-life balance. So, the reduction reported is not enough to create a profession satisfied with its term-time workload.

Interestingly, most teachers, middle and senior leaders were positive about the professional development time and support they receive according to the Report. While I am pleased with this outcome, I do find it slightly surprising. Maybe the bar is set very low in the minds of many teachers these days.

Certainly there seems to be much less leadership development than there was in the past, and the abolition of the National College looks like a retrograde step that may still haunt the profession for years to come unless action is taken to properly develop future generations of school and system leaders. To a great extent, the profession is living on investment from the past, and not looking to the future.

As the report concludes:

… with about seven out of ten primary respondents and nine out of ten secondary respondents still reporting workload is a ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ serious problem, it is also clear that there is more work to do to reduce unnecessary workload for teachers, middle leaders, and school leaders.

If the government is to solve the recruitment crisis facing schools, then it has to ensure teaching is a profession that offers not only a good salary, but also a satisfactory work-life balance. On the basis of this report, although progress has been made since 2016, the goal of profession satisfied with its lot has not yet been achieved.

Is the teacher job market changing?

Posted on October 12, 2019 by John Howson

Earlier this week Will Hazell, the relatively new education reporter for the i newspaper and a former TES journalist, produced a piece about agencies charging schools a ‘recruitment fee’ after signing up teachers looking for jobs. Since governments of all complexions have been happy to leave teacher recruitment as a free market activity, why wouldn’t commercial organisations aim to help schools solve a recruitment issues for a price. After all, schools have been paying local authorities, the TES and other newspapers to place job adverts for many years. Indeed, even search agencies are also not a new phenomenon in the marketplace. In addition, there are other new approaches to recruitment as schools seek direct marketing and MATs use central recruitment pages for all their schools.

However, what might be acceptable as a fringe activity affecting only a small number of schools can become a matter of public concern if a greater number of schools are involved and the sums being made reach significant amounts.

As I have written before on this blog, why wouldn’t busy teachers and trainees take the bait offered by agencies if it makes their life easier? Selling yourself on every application form you complete takes far more time compared with filling out just one registration form per agency you register with and is a no brainer, especially with the amount of work teachers and trainees face during term-times.

Even where jobs are easy to find, because the supply exceeds demand, teachers can benefit from a system that reduces their need to complete a series of application forms on the off chance they might come second in an interview. But all this costs schools money. Even so, advertising hasn’t traditionally be free, and can take up more time an effort if there either isn’t much interest and either a re-advertisement is necessary or there are lots of applications and time has to be spent by a group of staff short-listing candidates for interview. These costs need to be set against any finders fee.

In the past, I have pointed out that knowing the state of the job market helps schools to choose the most cost-effective path to recruitment. Want a business studies teacher in London or the Home Counties, then paying an agency on a ‘no find, no fee’ basis might be cost effective from the end of February onwards. Want a PE teacher or a historian at the same time of year, and agencies might still be cost effective in saving staff time sorting through lots of applications, especially with the risk of ensuring there is no discrimination in your short-listing process.

So, should there be a public sector registration point where candidates must register if they want a teaching post, and that can manage supply and demand more effectively than the market?

TeachVac already knows where the bulk of the jobs are and can offer schools a service telling them how many potential applicants have been match with a vacancy. TeachVac can also tell candidates how many jobs in a selected area meet their parameters in a given time period, and also advise when a candidate’s search area is not wide enough for them to expect to have a good chance of securing a teaching post. This data changes as the school-year progresses.

At present, TeachVac offers its service free to both schools and those seeking teaching jobs. Providing the data about jobs to both schools and teachers has a cost, but it wouldn’t be very high; perhaps £5 per search. Let me know what you think?

Education for All

Posted on October 11, 2019 by John Howson

The new Report from the Education Policy Institute (EPI) about exclusions, building on their work earlier this year, is deeply worrying. https://epi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Unexplained-pupil-moves_LAs-MATs_EPI-2019.pdf

Among the most concerning of EPI’s new findings are;

Amongst the 2017 cohort of pupils, we also found that approximately 24,000 children who exit to an unknown destination do not return to a state-funded school by the spring term of year 11.

The vast majority of unexplained exits do not appear to be a managed move.

51.9 per cent of all unexplained exits are to an unknown destination in the term following the exit.

Both LAs and MATs among the school groups with higher than average rates of unexplained exits, i.e. this is not a problem that is most prevalent amongst a particular structure of school governance. However larger MATs (those with at least ten schools with secondary pupils) all have above average rates of unexplained exits.

These snippets, taken from the Key Findings of a long and detailed report, suggest a system that is not operating to educate all children. Some teenagers have never been easy to educate. Indeed, challenging though schools are today most are not the same as they were up to the 1990s.

There is undoubtedly a trade-off to be had between the cost of educating challenging pupils and the funding a school receives. This trade-off may be starker in areas where Pupil Premium and High Needs Block funds are lower because of high employment and government funding calculations.

Nevertheless, the issue cannot and should not be solved by schools excluding pupils with nowhere to for them to go. EPI might also like to look at pupils that move into an area mid-year and the extent to which some of those with challenging problems are not offered school places.

The education of all our children is an issue for government to tackle. In the present governance hiatus, only central government can identify and tackle both the root causes of the problem and those schools and MATs that are the worst offenders. Ministers have been willing to take on academy trusts over the issue of high pay for Chief Executives. This is another issue for action by central government, with Ofsted, Regional School Commissioners and the Education and Skills Funding Council all acting together.

There is little local authorities can do except identify the size of the problem in their area and ensure missing children are identified and then put pressure on schools. But, with budgets largely in the hands of schools, there is little authorities can do even with maintained schools, and virtually nothing with these academy chains, often with headquarters located far away in another part of the country.

Sadly, one casualty of any intervention might be the right of genuine home schoolers to educate their children as they see fit without the need to keep the authorities informed. This principle goes back to 1870 and the start of state education. However, it must be at risk if it allows for a system that lets so many young people disappear from sight before the end of their statutory education. Out of sight must not mean out of mind.

Illness still main reason for pupil absences

Posted on October 10, 2019 by John Howson

The DfE has just published the data about absence rates during the autumn term of 2018 and the spring term of 2019. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/pupil-absence-in-schools-in-england-autumn-2018-and-spring-2019 Some of the figures are slightly better; others slightly worse than the previous year. As ever, illness accounts for the largest single number of absences. Even so, around a million pupils, or some 14% of enrolments seem to have avoided any absences during these two terms.

I guess that to some extent the severity of any flu outbreak will influence annual outcomes. As a result, inoculating all primary school pupils with the flu vaccine should reduce the absence rate this year. But, it measles breaks out again due to mis-placed concerns over vaccination, then that might push up absences in the primary sector.

There has been a continued rise in pupils taking unauthorised holidays in term-time. More than 600,000 pupils took at least one day off for this reason during these two terms, up by around 100,000 in just two years. This is despite the Supreme Court judgement in the Isle of Wight case that took a severe line about children missing school without agreement.

There are still too many medical or dental appointments during the school day, with nearly 2 million pupils losing at least one session for this reason.

The issue of persistent absentees isn’t going away, with more than one in ten pupils classified as a persistent absentee. That’s potentially three pupils in a primary class of 30 pupils. The percentage is higher in secondary schools than in the primary sector, and worst in Years 10 and 11, suggesting some pupils have stopped engaging at that point in their education. There is also a worrying spike in Year 1, where absence rates are the highest in the primary sector. Given that most children start some form of education before year 1 these days, this might be worth looking into as this is a really vital year for establishing basic knowledge foundations.

Pupils eligible for Free School meals and those with SEN are also likely to have higher absence rates. The latter group is understandable, as there are often reasons for the SEN classification that might affect absence.

Generally, absence rates in both the primary and secondary sectors increase in the regions that are further away from London. Both Inner and Outer London have the lowest absence rates and this may partly account for the performance of pupils in the capital’s schools. Both the North East and South West have the highest regional absence rates for these terms.

Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the local authorities with the highest levels of deprivation have some of the highest absence rates in the secondary sector. Why Cornwall has the highest primary rate in 2018-19 might be worth exploring further.

Of concern to me is that Oxfordshire is ranked around the 105^th lowest local authority level for primary sector absences, but is ranked 20^th for local authorities in the secondary sector. This is a big turnaround between children that attend primary schools, but whose attendance seems to fall away in the secondary sector.

Who cares about school leadership and governance?

Posted on October 9, 2019 by John Howson

What’s happening to both the Teaching Schools programme and the idea of National Leaders of Education and of Governance? The DfE faithfully reports the numbers in each of these categories https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teaching-schools-and-system-leadership-monthly-report with reports from September 2019 back to June 2018 on the DfE Website. Earlier reports seems to be archived and are not easy to find.

The DfE notes that Designation rounds for National Leaders of Education and teaching schools closed in May 2018 and designation rounds for National Leaders of Governance closed in May 2017.

The DfE is currently reviewing the current structure of system leadership to ensure the quality of system leadership remains as high as possible. The teaching school hubs test and learn phase, launched in May 2019, builds on the success of the teaching schools programme and is the first part of the department’s plans to review system leadership.

The number of system leaders who are currently designated is actively managed and the department keeps these matters under review.

As a result, it is perhaps not surprising to find that numbers in the different categories have reduced across the board between June 2018 and September 2019 as presumably few new additions have been made to replace those lost for various reasons.

June 2018 September 2019 Change Percentage Change

Teaching

Schools 668 618 -50 -7%

Alliance

Teaching

Schools 835 734 81 -10%

National

Leaders of 1319 1087 -232 -17%

Education

National

Leaders of 442 363 -79 -18%

Governance

Source DfE publications for relevant months

Probably most worrying is the reduction in National Leaders of Governance. With an education system where governance is a muddle and different schools operate under vastly different rules depending upon whether they are Maintained, Voluntary and Maintained, Stand Alone academies or Free Schools or members of Multi-Academy Trusts, there is a need for leadership that NLG can help provide.

Without the backing of the National College, now fading into little more than a memory, there is a need to provide support and development for leadership and career development the system. It is not clear where the impetus is now coming from. Perhaps the Secretary of State might care to make a keynote speech about this? However, I suspect nothing will happen this side of a general election and it will be anyone’s guess who might be occupying the Minister’s Office in Sanctuary Buildings then.

When I started in teaching in the early 1970s, there was little support for leadership, but it became an issue as the decade progressed, so much so that in 1978 I ran my first leadership course for middle leaders in schools. Sometimes it now feels as if the whole of the work undertaken since then has been discarded, and we are back to a free for all with no clear direction of travel for leadership training, development and support.

No doubt the review of the present structure will make suggestions: they cannot come soon enough in my opinion.

£26,000 for some trainee teachers in 2020

Posted on October 5, 2019 by John Howson

Why should a new teacher of mathematics starting work at one of the best selective schools in England receive a £1,000 a year bonus for staying in the school for up to five years, while a similar teacher starting in a non-selective school anywhere in South East Essex won’t receive this salary boost?

Are house prices higher in Reading than in Southend on Sea? Is the level of deprivation far greater in Reading than on Canvey Island or in Thurrock? Teachers in Bracknell Forest will also be favoured with this extra cash, while their compatriots working in Slough won’t be so lucky.

The government’s recent announcement on support for trainees and new teachers reveals an ever yet more complex scheme as Ministers and officials try to stem the teacher recruitment crisis now entering its sixth year https://www.gov.uk/government/news/up-to-35k-bursary-and-early-career-payments-for-new-teachers

Long gone are the days when DfE officials and Ministers tried to deny there was a crisis building in teacher recruitment and retention. Now, the answer seems to be ‘throw money at the perceived problem’, but still favour EBacc subjects over the more vocationally orientated areas of the curriculum.

Thus, the announcement for trainees being recruited to start training in September 2020 of the following postgraduate bursaries and scholarship.

Postgraduate bursaries and scholarships

	Scholarship	Bursary (Trainee with 1st, 2:1, 2:2, PhD or Master’s)
Chemistry, computing, languages, mathematics and physics	£28,000	£26,000
Biology and classics	No scholarship available	£26,000
Geography	£17,000	£15,000
Design and technology	No scholarship available	£15,000
English	No scholarship available	£12,000
Art and design, business studies, history, music and religious education	No scholarship available	£9,000
Primary with mathematics	No scholarship available	£6,000

Almost the only subjects missing from the list are physical education and drama. Why classics should merit a bursary of £26,000 when art and design and business studies only merit £9,000 is for Ministers to explain. The level of payment to geography trainees also seems out of line with demand unless the DfE is expecting these trainees to help fill gaps elsewhere, such as a shortage of mathematics teachers.

The School Teachers’ Review Body needs to consider evidence as to how these schemes have been working over the past few years? Is the School Direct Salaried route now ‘dead in the water’ for secondary trainees in the face of bursaries and scholarships that cost schools nothing like the School Direct Scheme?

On the evidence of recruitment into training in 2019, discussed in a previous post, the fact that both mathematics and physics are recording some of their lowest levels of new entrants into training for many years suggests that it isn’t just cash incentives that are needed to attract talent into teaching.

Teacher workload and morale are as important as pay in a labour market where many other employers can offer better conditions of service and more flexible working conditions. Yes, teachers still have a better pension scheme than many, although not as good as when I entered the profession. But, how much of an attraction is this to the average 20-30 year old seeking a career?

By Christmas, it will start to become clear whether these levels of support for trainee teachers are working or whether yet another recruitment strategy might need to be developed in 2020?

Teacher Labour Market 2020 – current thoughts

Posted on October 4, 2019 by John Howson

While I was away, UCAS published the September data about applications to postgraduate teacher preparation courses. Generally, any changes between these data and the end of cycle data are small. As a result, these data provide a guide to how many new teachers may be available in 2020.

The number of new teachers required is affected by the interplay of supply and demand. In the primary sector, although there may be local issues created by local circumstances, I do not think there will be any national problem over supply. This is because the birth rate is now lower than a few years ago and more teachers are working for longer, possibly as a result of changes to the pension age. Of course, any increase in departure rates might upset my calculations, but, for now, I don’t see the sort of issues the secondary and special school sectors will face confronting the primary sector in 2020.

The secondary sector is facing the challenge of more pupils in 2020 than in 2019. This generally mean a requirement for more teachers. Sadly, many subjects do not appear to have reached the DfE’s estimate of trainee numbers, as set out in their Teach Supply Model (TSM). I am especially anxious for both mathematics and physics, where the UCAS data has likely outcomes below the numbers accepted in 2018. In both cases this was not enough to satisfy demand from schools, even before the increase in pupil numbers is factored into the equation. Fortunately, the number of biologists is likely to be at a record level, and this supply line will help offset any shortages of physical scientists.

The lack of mathematics teachers will need to be covered by trainees from subjects such as geography where trainee numbers remain healthy, as they do in history and physical education. Many history trainees will need to find a second subject, as there is unlikely to be enough vacancies to support this level of trainee numbers. From the DfE’s point of view record numbers in history help the overall total of trainees and will allow Ministers to use a more flattering headline number that disguises issues within particular subjects. But, hey, with QTS any teacher can be asked to teach any subject to any child, so who cares about the details?

Happily, Religious Education has had a good year, with offers coming close to its projected need identified by the TSM, assuming all those offered places actually turned up at the start of their courses. Design and Technology fared slightly better this year than last year’s disastrous recruitment round, but will still fall far short of requirements, as will Business Studies. IT also appears to have suffered from a poor recruitment round into courses in 2019. Elsewhere, outcomes may be close to last year’s, so there should be enough teachers of modern languages overall, although whether with the combination of languages needed is not known. Similarly, the number of trainee teachers of English may cause problems in some parts of the country in 2020, most notably London and the Home Counties and any other areas where the school population is growing.

These predications will be validated later this autumn when the DfE publishes its annual ITT census. Until then they remain observations based upon more than 20 years of studying the trends in the teacher labour market in England.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Author Archives: John Howson