About John Howson

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

Ethnicity issues remain for new teachers

Posted on August 5, 2025 by John Howson

Data published by the DfE for the 2023/24 postgraduate cohort of trainees achieving QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) showed that differences still remain in regard of entry into the teaching profession between different ethnic groups on two counts. Firstly, the percentage trainees achieving QTS, and secondly, the percentage employed in State-Funded schools.

Ethnicity		Postgraduate
		2023/24
		Number of trainees
		Total	Achieved QTS		Did not achieve QTS
		Total	Total	Teaching in State-Funded School	Total
	Asian / Asian British	2,931	2,704	1,868	227
	Black / African / Caribbean / Black British	1,206	1,106	821	100
	Mixed / Multiple ethnic groups	872	814	611	58
	Other Ethnicity	410	380	268	30
	White	16,082	15,048	11,570	1,034

Initial teacher training performance profiles, Academic year 2023/24 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

The outcomes were more favourable for the dominant White group. 94% of this group achieved QTS, compared with 93% for the Black and Mixed Group’s trainees and 93% from the Asian Group.

Teachers from the White group were also more likely to be working in a State-Funded school by the time the data was collected. 77% the White Group that had achieved QTS were teaching in a State-Funded school. This compared with 75% of the Mixed and Multiple ethnic groups; 74% of the black Group and just 69% of the Asian group.

Despite the number of teachers from the Asian group not working in State-Funded schools, this group still accounted for 12% of entrants. The black group accounted for 5% of entrants and Mixed and Other ethnic Groups together made up another 6% of entrants. The White group, of some 11,570 teachers, accounted for 76% of entrants.

Sadly, it isn’t possible to track the whole journey from application to train as a teacher through to working as a teacher with QTS for each ethnic group. It is also not possible to see whether certain routes are more or less favourable to certain ethnic groups. Both those sets of data would help illuminate possible areas of concern within the process of how graduates become a teacher.

The DfE has also included some experimental regional data about outcomes that would also be useful to see by ethnic groups because, historically, the Asian and black groups applicants and trainees have tended to be concentrated in specific urban areas.

The DfE data suggested that fewer trainees achieving QTS were employed in State-Funded schools in the north of England than the south. The region with the highest percentage employed was the East of England, were 82% of those achieving QTS were employed in a State-Funded school.

Another indicator where there are no published data on trainees by ethnic groups are in respect of new graduate and career changers. For the purpose of the employment data for those with QTS, the DfE splits the trainees into two groups; those under 25 that might be assumed to be mostly new graduates and those over 25 that will predominantly be career changers. Those in the over-25 group were less likely to achieve QTS, but there was no difference among those with QTS in terms of the percentage working in State-Funded schools.

Less than 400 teachers of physics entered service in 2023/24

Posted on August 4, 2025 by John Howson

As a result of the latest data from the DfE, it is now possible to start to see the consequences arising from the collapse in ITT recruitment to secondary courses in 2023/24.

It is interesting to compare the turnaround from the improvement in recruitment brought about by the covid epidemic with the poor recruitment figures for just three years later.

Year Achieved QTS	Achieved QTS	Did not achieve QTS	% Did not achieve QTS
2017/18	25490	1304	5
2018/19	26402	1348	5
2019/20	27542	1191	4
2020/21	30706	1606	5
2021/22	29715	2241	7
2022/23	22437	1840	8
2023/24	21210	1550	7

Initial teacher training performance profiles, Academic year 2023/24 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

The reduction in numbers achieving QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) from 30,706 in 2002/21 to 21,210 in 2023/24, a reduction of some 8,500, or more than a quarter in just three years, goes some way to demonstrate the depth of the problems with recruitment schools faced in September 2024 and even more so in January 2025.

Hopefully, these numbers represent the lowest point for secondary trainee numbers over the next few years, after adjusting for the changes in targets that result from falling rolls in schools.

The data on the percentage achieving QTS might suggest that when it is difficult to recruit trainees, more marginal candidates are offered a place by training providers, and, as a result, the percentage not achieving QTS increases.

Because the DfE only records those with QTS teaching in a State-Funded ‘school’ it does not count those employed in a Sixth Form College or other further education college and, does not count any teachers from the cohort with QTS working in the private school sector. This latter omission might account for why only 49% of those trained to teach Classics were teaching in a State-Funded school.

Subject	Postgraduate
	2023/24
	Number of trainees
	Total	Achieved QTS	Teaching in a State-Funded School (of those achieved QTS)	Teaching in a State-Funded School (of those achieved QTS)
Classics	69	67	33	49%
Physical Education	1,485	1,438	965	67%
Primary	9,378	8,712	6,271	72%
Business Studies	227	201	146	73%
Art & Design	401	382	286	75%
Computing	413	374	282	75%
Total	22,760	21,210	15,921	75%
Modern Foreign Languages	1,024	970	739	76%
Other	327	310	237	76%
Drama	246	227	175	77%
Physics	540	485	373	77%
Secondary	13,382	12,498	9,650	77%
Geography	822	771	601	78%
Chemistry	764	691	544	79%
Mathematics	1,900	1,762	1,385	79%
Biology	885	818	652	80%
Music	237	223	179	80%
Design & Technology	576	540	437	81%
English	2,210	2,062	1,661	81%
History	977	919	744	81%
Religious Education	279	258	212	82%

It is interesting to note that the percentage of those trained to teach physics teaching in a State-Funded school was the same as the overall average, at 77%. However, that meant that there were only 373 new physic teacher entrants into State-Funded secondary schools from this cohort. It would be interesting to know the routes these 373 took before taking up their initial posts? How many of these 373 were from the PG Salaried High Potential ITT route? (Better known as Teach First).

The relatively small percentage of physical education trainees recorded as working in State-Funded schools may well be a result of the numbers recruited into training compared with the target.

Where trainees are required to pay a tuition fee for a course, what responsibility does the government and the course provider have to the trainee to ensure that there are not way too many trainees for the number of vacancies likely to arise? If this means that the student debt is less likely to be recovered, is this a waste of public money?

In a future post I will explore some other aspects of this dataset.

Windfall profits and SEND

Posted on August 1, 2025 by John Howson

There is no doubt that the rise in demand for special school places over the past few years was neither anticipated nor effectively dealt with by the State. One consequence is that large amount of off-balance sheet debt being carried by many local authorities responsible for schooling in England. Another consequence, highlighted by the Liberal Democrats in a press release issued today, is what might be described as the ‘windfall’ profits being made by a few in the SEND sector. Lib Dems demand cap on SEND providers profits as top firms rake in £100m – Liberal Democrats

When the highest paid director of a company operating both care homes for children and special schools is paid over £300,000, or more than twice the salary of a Director of Children’s Services commissioning the use of places in the schools and homes, it seems sensible to question whether such use of public money should continue.

At this point, I must make clear that I am a capitalist. The 40 years I have traded on my own account and through a company, as well as held a portfolio of investments in other companies. However, there are two issues that concern me. Where should the boundary line between services offered by the State and those run by the private sector be drawn? And how should price be determined?

It is interesting, as I have noted before, that in the USA and many other countries, public transportation is just that: a service run by the State. In England it has become a battleground between the State and private enterprise and the differing political opinions. Most would expect SEND to be a public service.

What often seems to be lacking is a mechanism to regulate the costs of suppliers to the State. When the private sector funds its enterprise by borrowing to provide the services and then expects the State to service that debt with a profit element added, it seems to me like time to take the service out of the private sector, and back into public provision.

In the case of SEND school places, national and local government should work together to prove places in state-run schools that would obviate the need for private sector intervention. This means the State, in this case the DfE, being much more interventionalist than has been the case.

The Liberal Democrats, of which I am a member and activist, noted in their press release that

‘Research commissioned by the party and carried out by the House of Commons Library showed that the top handful of profiting companies each took home tens of millions a year. One Group, operators of 28 special schools, turned over just over £200 million a year, making £44 million in profit – a margin of over 20%. That profit is 150% what the company made in 2022.’

How many more teachers might the £44 million have funded? While we wait for the government to produce a White Paper on SEND, perhaps the Local Government Association should set up a taskforce to remove the need to use the private sector.

I am sure that when John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth century philosopher, said that’ it was the duty of the State to see it citizens were educated, not to educate them itself’ he did not expect the cost to the State to be more than a reasonable amount.

NEETS: Why is London so different to the rest of England?

Posted on July 29, 2025 by John Howson

London seems to be a different world to much of the rest of England when it comes to looking at a range of different indicators about education. The latest one where the statistics raise an interesting question is the percentage of 16- and 17-year-olds that are NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training).

With the raising of the suggested ‘learning leaving age’ to eighteen (the official age is still sixteen) it is expected that almost all students in what is Years 12 and 13 should be in some form of certified education or training. The DfE asks local authorities for data each year bout the percentage participating in education or training and produces scorecards on-line. I wonder how many local authority scrutiny committees ever see this data? Participation in education, training and NEET age 16 to 17 by local authority, Academic year 2024/25 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

The scorecard for Oxfordshire can be found at Oxfordshire_neet_comparator_scorecard.pdf

Looking through the data for all local authorities for both 2019 and 2025 what struck we was there was a definite London effect. 28 London boroughs had higher participation rates in 2025 than in 2019. For the rest of England there were only 37 other local authorities with higher participation rates in 2025 than in 2019.

One explanation is the inclusion of ‘no data’ in the NEETs percentage. As the DfE noted;

‘NEET/not known rates at the end of 2024/start of 2025 ranged from 0.0% City of London to 21.5% in Dudley. Dudley’s rate includes 2.4% NEET and 19.1% activity not known.’

So, either London boroughs are better at collecting the data – quite possible, given their relatively small size and close geographical cohesion, or there is something else going on.

On the other hand, only seven ‘shire counties’ had higher participation rates in 2025 than in 2019. Might the decimation of rural bus services and the effect of a punitive motor tax on those without a no claims bonus be something to do with this change? Could it be that in large counties there are no longer the staff to badger multi-academy trusts (MATs) to provide accurate data about the destination of Year 11 leavers?

I think the DfE data should make clear both the known percentage of NEETs and the percentage of the age group where these is no data available. Perhaps, there might be a scorecard of MATs to identify those that provide high quality data, and those where hard pressed local authorities have to waste time and money chasing the data.

With the job market looking increasingly challenging over the next few years, and fewer incentives for employers to offer jobs with training to school leavers, the percentage of NEETs is an issue that needs more visibility, especially with the rapid growth in EHCPs. Will the significant increase in young people with mental health issues result in more NEETs, and if so, will London be different?

It’s a funny old world

Posted on July 28, 2025 by John Howson

On the day when nurses look as if they will join resident doctors in demanding more pay, figures about applications from graduates to train as a secondary school teacher hit decade high levels, even after removing the degree apprenticeship numbers from the totals. This month, according to DfE data, 58,880 candidates have submitted one or more applications to train as a teacher. This compares with 46,696 list July and 45,000 in 2108, before the pandemic. Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2025 to 2026 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK

This July, there were 36,283 candidates applying to train as a secondary school teacher, compared with 17,997 wanting to train as a primary school teacher.

By comparison in July 2018, 26,060 women had applied, whereas in July 2025 that had increased to 31,439. However, applications from men had increased from 12,680 in 2018 to 18,904 this July

Traditional higher education and SCITT courses still account for the bulk of the routes into teaching selected by candidates. However, candidate numbers on traditional salaried routes were down this July, from 8,927 to 7,636, but that may be partly the 7,332 candidates that have applied for the Postgraduate teaching apprenticeship route, up from 6,433 last July.

The new Teacher Degree Apprenticeship route that has attracted 1,079 candidates so far this year. This is a new route and, presumably isn’t open to graduates.

Although applicant numbers from the ‘rest of the world’ group are down this July, from 9,586 in July 2024, to 8,563 this July – this number still represents nearly 20% of all candidates.

Some subjects, including art, physical education, physics, mathematics and computing have recorded their highest level of ‘offers’ this year since the 2013/14 recruitment round. How many are multiple offers or from candidate’s not able to fulfil visa requirements won’t be known until the courses start in just over a month’s time. Interestingly, offers for English courses are below the number of offers made in July 2024.

Despite the significant increase in candidate numbers, some subjects will not hit their targets set by the DfE this year. Subjects most likely to miss their targets are business studies, drama, religious education, music and design and technology. In English, it looks touch and go at this moment in time as to whether or not the target will be hit.

In some subjects, such as physical education, where the target is 725, there is a risk of a significant overshoot in offers. Such a situation might leave large numbers of trainees with additional debt and little chance of a teaching post in England next summer. The DfE will need to be alert to this issue, especially if the growth in ‘AI’ changes the labour market for those with degrees in physics and mathematics, so as to make teaching look like an interesting career at current salary levels.

It would be a funny old world if incentives to train as a teacher had to be switched from mathematics and the sciences to English and the arts.

Homelessness and schooling

Posted on July 27, 2025 by John Howson

Is the education of children made homeless well enough safeguarded? Compared with the education of children in some of the world’s worst trouble spots, this may seem like an irrelevant question to ask of society in England. However, as a recent report from a House of Commons Select committee has made clear there is more that we can do in this country for this group of young people. England’s Homeless Children: The crisis in temporary accommodation

I am slightly surprised that the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee didn’t decide to conduct a joint inquiry with their colleagues at the Education Select Committee on this topic, but, perhaps, they initially didn’t think that schooling would be an important feature of their report.

Homlessness almost always means a move from one accommodation to another. For a school-aged child this can have one obvious consequence; their status has changed. This change in status isn’t something the family is likely to share easily with the school, although I suspect sensitive primary school class teachers and heads will notice the change fairly quickly. In secondary schools, unless the class tutor picks up on the change, it may well go unnoticed until it becomes an issue.

The most likely issue for schools is that the change in accommodation may mean a different, and possibly longer route to school. This might mean children that used to arrive on time may now be late through no fault of their own. The temporary accommodation might also not provide adequate space for learning and homework, so that might deteriorate as well. How schools deal with this situation explains a lot about their policies and the values behind them.

In more extreme cases, homelessness means that a child must change school mid-year, with all the attendant bureaucracy that entails. The Select Committee were concerned that there was no requirement to inform schools.

‘Currently, schools are not always notified when a pupil becomes homeless or changes school due to a move into temporary accommodation. This prevents schools from offering additional support which those children may require. Similarly, GPs are often unaware that families are experiencing homelessness, leaving an incomplete picture of the health impacts of homelessness on children’

The Committee recommended that

‘As the Government seeks to establish ‘consistent identifiers’ for children through its Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, it should ensure that these can be used as a formalised notification system, so that a child’s school and GP are alerted when they move into temporary accommodation.’ Page 30

At least the current Bill before parliament will stop academies and Trusts from stonewalling on accepting in-year admissions.

I would go further an require a child moving school to be placed on the roll of a virtual school run by the receiving local authority, if a school place could not be identified within two weeks, regardless as to how long or short the period of homelessness might be. Children need some degree of support and continuity and to see that their schooling is important to those responsible for supporting the family.

The crisis in physics teaching

Posted on July 23, 2025 by John Howson

NfER has published some interesting research about the distribution of physics teachers A widespread lack of specialist physics teachers persists due to recruitment and retention challenges – NFER The most alarming statistic in the report is that 26% of state-funded secondary schools that responded to the School workforce Census had no qualified physics specialist in their science department.

However, there is a caveat to making too much of the data. This is because it is taken from the School Workforce Census. As this is a self-reporting census, the data must be regarded with a degree of caution, as there could be some under-reporting.

As the School Workforce Survey is conducted by the DfE each autumn term, it should have a degree of reliability. However, the NfER report only contains data from 2,296 of the 3,456 state-funded secondary schools in England.

Even so, assuming all the remaining schools have at least one qualified teacher of physics that would mean at least 12% of schools were without a qualified teacher of physics, and more than a third of schools (36%) has either no teacher or only one teacher.

Now some of these schools are 11-16 schools, and a few the remaining middle schools classified as secondary schools. These schools don’t need a teacher for ‘A’ level courses. But who is teaching the GSCE physics courses, and how many pupils from these schools go on to study physics at ‘A’ level?

For the 11-8 schools with no qualified teacher of physics, what arrangements are being made for pupils that want to study the subject at ‘A’ level. If it is matter of having to change school, then what are the costs to the pupils and their families. This is another example of where transport costs may affect choice of courses post-GCSE.

Do schools support each other? This was easy when all schools were maintained schools. In the 1960s, the local girls’ school where I lived could not support Chemistry ‘A’ level, and those girls wanting to study the subject joined the ‘A’ level class at the school I attended. This must be more challenging to arrange these days with competing Multi Academy Trusts.

Interestingly, if you add up all the qualified teachers in the table in the NfER survey it amounts to more than 3,500 qualified teachers of physics: enough for one for every school. However, our distribution system for teachers is based upon open market principles, with teachers free to apply for any post, and teach where they like. Is this the best system for the education of all children, if it means that some are deprived the opportunity to study subjects such as physics because there is no qualified teacher?

Hopefully, the present position marks the bottom of the staffing cycle, and improved interest in teaching, as reported in this blog and on my LinkedIn pages, means more trainees with emerge into the labour market over the next few years. The issue then will be how to create teaching posts for them. Wil schools be required to either redeploy an existing member of staff or make them redundant? Those schools with falling rolls and a stable staff might find the former difficult. What is needed is a national plan for physics, and perhaps other subjects where there are teacher shortages. But, sadly, I doubt we will see such a radical idea from this government.

Class matters more than ethnicity

Posted on July 22, 2025 by John Howson

The end of the summer term is a curious time to announce an inquiry into White working-class kids in schools. The inquiry seems to be funded by private finance, but with government backing. Members revealed for white working-class kids inquiry

Two former Secretaries of State will be on the board, along with a DfE official, as well as many others representing the great and the good in schooling, but not perhaps either the churches or representatives of the under-fives lobby.

As SchoolsWeek pointed out in their news item, this is not the first such inquiry into the achievements or lack of them, of this group in society. Indeed, the House of Commons Select Committee has had two goes at the issue, in 2014 and 2020. HC No

As well as the Select Committee’s reports, and the evidence submitted to the Committee, The inquiry might also like to read the DfE’s Report on outcomes by ethnicity Outcomes by ethnicity in schools in England – GOV.UK published before the pandemic.

I am sure the inquiry will focus on what works, and no doubt discuss issues about what is being measured and over-reliance on Free School Meals data. They will also need to discuss the issues around definitions, as society has become much both more complex, and more polarised. The measurement of children – I prefer the term to kids – of mixed heritage has added many more sub-categories to the original list.

However, I cannot help thinking that the focus of the inquiry is wrong. All the evidence suggests that of the three factors of race, gender and class, it is the third one that really matters. Yes, they are often inter-related, but looking at socio-economic data it is often schools in deprived areas, regardless of the ethnicity of their pupils that fare less well in school performance table.

Is this due to the funding arrangements. Some areas, notably London, are better funded than other parts of England. Is it down to teacher deployment and the market system. Do the best teacher seek to work in the most challenging schools or those with the best outcomes. How much does support from home matter. Can poor teaching be overcome with support and tutoring from home. All these were issues considered by the Select Committee. Then there are issues such as school attendance and what happens at the Foundation State if pupils miss vital building blocks in language and mathematics. Does the class teacher system help or hinder these children?

In terms of funding, what effect has the Pupil Premium had on outcomes, and is there any evidence that where academies can pool the funds of all schools and move resources between schools whereas local authorities cannot do so that this arrangement can boost outcomes in traditionally under-performing schools?

I guess one measure is the percentage of pupils on Free School Meals across the country that pass the tests for selective schools. Will the inquiry suggest a fully comprehensive secondary school system? If not, how will it address this injustice.

I am disappointed that it has taken this Labour government a year to start the process of addressing this issue. What were they doing in opposition? After all, the Liberal Democrats pushed the Pupil Premium right for the start of the coalition in 2010, as it had been in their manifesto. How much does this government really care about those children that don’t achieve their full potential for whatever reason.

Schooling and the relentless march of technology

Posted on July 22, 2025 by John Howson

Teachers will not have been happy to read of employers paying workers the same money for a four day week where they used to earn for working for five days. I assume that productivity or output or company profits remained the same, so the company could afford to be this generous while not upsetting its shareholders.

Unhappy teachers might reflect on two things. As technology improves, so workers can produce the same output in less time: think handwriting letters, then dictating them to someone that then typed them and then word processing them. Of course, rewarding those workers that benefit could come at a cost to productivity and growth for all. Why not continue the five day week and produce more?

My parent’s generation worked a five and a half day week, with Saturday working being commonplace. Teachers have not benefitted from these changes, partly because their job has largely been unaffected by significant changes in technology that improve productivity. Now this may be because teaching is a public sector good and there is no profit element to spur on change for the benefit of both owners and workers.

As we can see from the imposition of VAT on private schools, the reaction of many was to increase fees, not to improve productivity, even by adding one pupil per class to their already small classes – special schools excepted – and absorb the cost.

However, it is the second implication of technological change and its effect on teachers and society that worries me just as much. Here’s another example. Driverless vehicles will become mainstream. Sure, there will be accidents, as there were when railways and aeroplanes were being developed. And these days society knows more about preventing those sorts of accidents happening to the same degree – think of the space race and the ratio of deaths to achievements. But, what of the many drivers that will join the ranks of porters, stenographers, bank tellers, coal miners and many others whose jobs have disappeared. Will technology create another set of new jobs for those with skills to do the jobs of today?

What are the implications for schools and their role in society? This should be the key question at the Festival of Education? What steps are politicians and the think tanks that provide them with research doing to consider the role of schooling in the second half of this century. After all, those that start school at age five this coming September will likely not retire on a state pension until 2090 or possibly even later.

Primary schooling with the acquisition of vocabulary and the social skills of living together in communities will become even more important than it has been seen by politicians in the past. Secondary education and subject skills might even become less important. The recently announced government inquiry into White working-class kids might want to think about this issue during their deliberations. Solutions for the problems of the past won’t help the kids facing an uncertain future.

Falling rolls

Posted on July 18, 2025 by John Howson

The projections for pupil numbers up to 2030 were issued by the DfE this week.

At the same time the Office for National Statistics (ONS) looked at the likely size of + the school population aged 5-15 National population projections – Office for National Statistics both have implications for the demand for teachers in England. This data can help determine how many teachers will be needed to staff schools and the attractiveness of teaching as a career.

The DfE concluded the following for the remainder of this decade;

State-funded nursery & primary schools

The overall pupil population in these school types is projected to be 4,205,000 in 2030. This is 300,000 (6.7%) lower than the actual population in 2025 (4,505,000).
The revised projection for 2028 of 4,319,000 pupils represents a 5.4% fall from 2024; this is 38,000 lower than the previous forecast, as last year’s projection showed a 4.5% fall over the same period.
The nursery & primary population is therefore still projected to drop and is doing so at a faster rate than previously projected.

State-funded secondary schools

The secondary school population is projected to be 3,135,000 in 2030. This is 97,000 lower than the actual school population reported in the 2025 school census of 3,232,000.
The revised projection for 2028 of 3,208,000 secondary pupils represents a 0.8% fall from 2024, and is 55,000 (1.7%) lower than last year’s projections which reverses the previously projected 0.9% increase over the same period.
The pattern of change in the secondary school population seems to indicate that it plateaued between 2024 and 2025, will remain at a similar level until 2026, and is then projected to start declining slowly. This suggested plateau is earlier than the peak in 2026 projected last year but will be subject to change if pupil numbers bounce back, fluctuate, or continue to plateau in future years.
The actual number of secondary school pupils in 2025 fell slightly as more pupils moved out of the secondary phase than moved in. Changing historical birth rates and trends in net migration are likely driving factors. National pupil projections, Reporting year 2025 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

According to the ONS projections, there are expected to be fewer children in the UK by the middle of both 2032 and 2047, compared with the middle of 2022. The ONS have based this on a view that the assumed fertility rates in the 2020s and 2030s will be even lower than those around 2001, when UK fertility reached a record low.

By mid-2032, the number of children (those aged from 0 to 15 years) is projected by the ONS to have decreased by 797,000 (a fall of 6.4%), from 12.4 million to 11.6 million. By mid-2047, the number of children is projected to remain around the mid-2032 levels. Of course, if the birth rate changes, these numbers could be either too high or an underestimate. Either way planners are no expecting the need for more teachers due to changes in the birth rate.

However, these numbers are just assumptions, and don’t take into account other changes in the numbers in the 0-15 age groups resulting from any net balance once both emigration and immigration have been taken into account.

Other factors, such as the departure rate from teaching, due either to the popularity of teaching or the availability of alternative employment opportunities, as well as the age-profile of the profession and the number of teachers retiring can affect the demand for teachers. Policy changes concerning how children are taught can also affect the demand for teachers. How will AI and attitudes to issues such as home schooling are two imponderables that might affect the demand for teachers.

These days, as well as the traditional modelling, the DfE has access to up to the minute data on vacancy rates for teachers, and how posts are filled. This new data, allied to more traditional methods of estimating the demand for teachers, should help to ensure teacher unemployment can be kept to a minimum. After all, there is little point in spending money training teachers only for them to be both burdened with debt and unable to find a teaching post.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

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