Category Archives: employment

London teacher labour market most active

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August was a more active month than normal in the labour market for teachers. Although vacancies in the primary sector were subdued, the secondary sector remained active, with nearly 800 new vacancies published during the month according to TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk

Nearly two thirds of the vacancies, 64%, were posted by located schools in London, the South East and East of England regions, with the remainder of the country accounting for only around a third of vacancies. In some subjects, the percentage was even higher, with 29 out of the 40 posts for teachers of geography listed by schools in these three regions. No such posts were tracked across either the North East or North West regions.

As might be expected, demand for teachers of history during August was limited, with just 14 posts identified. Interestingly, only two of these posts were advertised by schools in London and the three regions of London, the South East and East of England only accounted for 5 of the 14 vacancies.

TeachVac provides a regular monthly newsletter for both schools and teachers. The service is free to teachers, as is the use of the jo board to match teachers to vacancies on a daily basis.

Schools pay a nominal fee of £10 for their newsletter.

From the end of this month, TeachVac will end its free matching service for schools. To cover its operating costs, and ensure that data collection remains of the highest quality, from October schools are being asked to pay £1 for every match made between a teacher and one of their vacancies. There is an annual limit of £500 per secondary school, beyond which point remaining matches in the 12 months are free. For primary schools, the cap is set at £75. This means just 75 matches are required to hit the limit, and all further matches that year are free.

During September, TeachVac has put in place a special offer of £250 for secondary schools and just £50 for primary schools: effectively, half-price for an annual subscription regardless of the annual number of matches made during the year.

To date, in 2022, TeachVac has made 1.95 million matches between jobseekers and schools with vacancies, covering both state-funded and private schools across England. By the end of September, the 2 million matches mark will have been passed.

Schools, MATs, diocese and other groups signing up now at enquiries@teachvac.co.uk will always be placed at or near the top of the daily matching algorithm, ensuring teachers see their vacancies first. This is an added bonus on top of the half-price offer.

If you would like more information, either email enquiries@teachvac.co.uk or send me a message via the comment section.

Please circulate this post to those responsible for recruitment in schools. Sign up in September for a half-price fixed fee. If you need convincing, ask TeachVac how many matches have been made in 2022 for your school or group of schools using the email address above and the code MATCH22.

Bring Back Circular 1 each year?

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Recently, I wrote a post about a Schoolsweek’s story about the DfE and the need to manage ‘sufficiency’ ITT review: DfE forms ‘sufficiency’ group amid places fears (schoolsweek.co.uk) by creating a new group than most people either didn’t seem to be aware of or didn’t know who comprised the membership. ITT places need a review: but not behind closed doors | John Howson (wordpress.com)

Anyway, I was thinking about what the Group might consider if its aim is to ensure that as many schools as possible are able to recruit the most appropriately qualified teachers to fill their vacancies.

Of course, apart from cutting the numbers of trainees to keep them in line with the predictions from the Teacher Supply Model, the Group could decide to do nothing, and just let the current market-based system continue with vacancies advertised, and teachers applying and the private sector making £40,000,000 or more per year from recruitment. (n.b. I am Chair at TeachVac, the job board).

At the other end of the intervention spectrum, the DfE could follow the actions of their predecessors in the Ministry of Education and return to publishing circular 1. This told local authorities each year how many new entrants from training they could employ. If they wanted more teachers, then there were either returners or teachers moving schools or unqualified staff that could be employed. This draconian approach no doubt worked well in the total planning economy of the immediate post-World War Two years, but probably wouldn’t work now, especially with the disparate system of school governance and the lack of a coherent middle tier in schooling that currently exists across England.

However, a variation on that theme would be to create all teachers as government employees and assign them to schools, as happens in some other countries. My guess is that model won’t work with a government pledged to reduce the civil service by some 90,000 employees.  Creating teachers as civil servants might seem to send out the wrong message about the power of the state.

So how else might the government manage the distribution of the ‘sufficient’ new teachers they are aiming to train to help reduce the inequalities currently in the system? Two possible solutions are, either tighten up on QTS by first making it a requirement for academies to ‘normally’ only hire teachers with QTS, and then segment QTS so it is aligned with the preparation course a person undertakes. This would mean those on primary sector courses would not have QTS to teach in the secondary sector, and visa versa. At present, any teacher with QTS can teach anything to any child at any level. In the secondary sector, QTS might become subject specific.

To deal with ‘shortages’ emergency certification could be provided for a limited period, with CPD to allow for full certification if the teachers was going to be employed teaching in that area permanently. This would also show where shortages were affecting schools and make effective use of the CPD budget.

The other alternative is to expand the Opportunity Area scheme by providing certain schools with additional cash to compete in the market to hire teachers in shortage subjects. However, without caping the spending of other schools, this approach just risks developing a race to see who can pay the most for their teachers. Good news for teachers, especially in shortage subjects, but possibly not the best use of resources.

With a significant number of career changers thinking of teaching as a career, a training salary might be a useful tool ensure these would-be teachers can make the switch into teaching. At the same time, ensuring a job for every successful trainee in the September after their course ends is worth considering. At present, those teachers needed to fill January appointment can find themselves without a job during the autumn term; a waste of talent and a loss of skills. Taking such teachers on as supernumeraries, paid from central funds, on the understanding that they are applying for posts would be worth considering.

Of course, none of these initiatives may be necessary if the recession throws up lots more returners to teaching that are the right mix of skills and in the right locations.  

To make decisions about any such scheme to consider needs high quality up to the minute knowledge of the labour market for teachers and school leaders, as well as the ability to understand the data and its implications. Fortunately, in NfER and our higher education sector, the government has the skills available to it to help answer these questions.

But it could abandon levelling up and just leave it to the market for teachers that is now not local, nor national, but global, in its reach for the high-quality teachers produced through the current teacher preparation system in England.

Batten down the hatches

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The DfE has finally provided the August data on ITT applications. Flagged for the 22nd August publication, the data are now in the public domain. As expected, they make grim reading for anyone at all interested in teacher supply.

At this stage of the year there are two numbers that matter; the absolute number offered a place on a postgraduate ITT course, and how that number relates to the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model (TSM) and its calculation of how many teachers are needed to be trained each year.

First the good news, there are more offers in design and technology than in August last year; nearly 100 more. However, nowhere near enough to meet the probable TSM number, based upon past levels.

Now the bad news. Several subjects are at their lowest level for offers for any year since before the 2013/14 recruitment round. These include:

Languages

Religious Education

Physics

Music

Mathematics

English

Computing

Biology

None of these subjects will recruit enough trainees to meet the likely TSM number.

Physical Education

History

Drama

Will probably recruit enough trainees to meet targets, as should the primary sector, where there are around 12,000 offers. Much depends upon the numbers made offers that fail to turn up when courses commence.

In total, around 24,000 candidates have been recruited, and have either fulfilled all requirements or have ‘conditions pending’. The 13,850 of the 24,000 in the latter category are a worry. There should not be that many at this stage in the cycle. Perhaps course administrators haven’t updated the records during July and August. But it cannot be because candidates are awaiting degree results, so presumably it is either DBS checks or some other administrative issue.

24,000 is still an impressive number, and it should hammer home to Ministers in the new government how important teaching is as a career. With approaching a decade of under-recruitment to training, parts of the school system are now facing serious issues with staffing.

So, how serious is the present situation? In August 2021 there were 46,830 applicants to courses. This August, the number is 38,062. New graduate numbers have dropped from around 14% of the total to 13%, but the decline is greater in percentage terms than the nine per cent overall decline. Teaching is becoming more reliant upon career changers once again.

There have been 5,000 fewer female applicants this year compared with August 2021, and 2,500 fewer men, although the level of applications from men is still higher than it was 30 years ago when applicant numbers struggled to reach the 10,000 level.

While there has been a slight increase in applications for the PG Teaching apprenticeship route into teaching, some other routes are below last year. HE is down from 55,000 to less than 53,000 but SCITT are only marginally down from 15,000 to just over 14,600. The School Direct Salaried route has attracted less than 6,000 applications, compared with some 9,000 last year. With just 760 offers, this route is no longer of any more than passing interest in supplying new teachers to the profession.

If there is another spark of good news it is that applications to courses in London at 27,460 this August are only marginally below the 27,600 recorded last August. Might this be where a significant number of career changers are seeking to enter teaching. Should more ITT places be allocated to the providers with courses in the capital?

This is the last set of data because courses commence in September, and whoever is Secretary of State in September would be well advised to seek an early briefing from the newly appointed SRO for the ITT Reform Project as to how he will ensure sufficient high-quality teachers for all our state-funded schools. The current recruitment campaign isn’t working, and relying upon a recession to make teaching more attractive as a career is akin to crossing your fingers and hoping.

Then end of this cycle of recruitment marks my 35th year of studying trends in teacher recruitment, ever since I was appointed to the leadership team at Oxford Brookes then newly formed School of Education.

The next number that really matters will be the ITT Census, to be published late in the autumn, when the whole reality of the 2023 recruitment round will become apparent to schools.

My advice to schools, don’t wait until then, start planning now for a challenging recruitment round in 2023, whether for January or September appointments.

Leadership turnover and Free School Meals

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Earlier this summer I published a post about vacancies and the Free School Meal percentages of schools. I promised that I would look at headteacher turnover by the percentage of Fee School Meals at those schools advertising for a new headteacher this year.

The data by regions for the period of adverts from 1st January 2022 until last Friday is in the table below

1st JAN TO 19th AUGUST 20220-9.9% on FSM10-19.9% on FSM20%+ on FSM
East Midlands29%32%39%100%
East of England28%40%32%100%
London21%30%50%100%
North East21%25%54%100%
North West30%27%43%100%
South East40%32%28%100%
South West24%43%34%100%
West Midlands24%30%46%100%
Yorkshire & Humber24%27%49%100%
AVERAGE27%32%42%100%
Source: TeachVac

Now this is a crude piece of analysis, as it just takes the school and places it in one of three bands for Free School Meals percentage at the school, as recorded by the DfE. The table also incudes both primary and secondary schools, and also does not distinguish between schools that have only advertised one and those that have advertised more than once. There has been a discussion about trends in re-advertising amongst primary schools using data from one authority in another recent post on this blog.

Anyway, urban areas, not surprisingly, have the highest percentages of schools in the 20% plus grouping, with London having 50% of advertised headships from such schools, compared with 28% of headships in the South East and 32% in the East of England falling in this grouping; both areas with high employment and significant areas of affluence. The South East had the largest percentage of schools in the lowest groups of less than 10% of pupils in the school eligible for Free School Meals. This compared with just 21% in London and the North East regions schools that have advertised for a new headteacher.

If I have time, I will look at both re-advertisements and create a standard number based upon the size of the school roll to consider whether this has any effect. Separating out primary and secondary schools, and perhaps schools of a religious character and other schools might also be interesting.

We can expect the current average of 22.5% of pupils eligible for Free School Meals to increase as any recession bites. How much may depend upon how government help with energy bills is counted in a family income total.

ITT places need a review: but not behind closed doors

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A quarter of a century ago I had a job at the then Teacher Training Agency. My post was titled as ‘the Chief Professional Adviser on Teacher Supply’. The job title was an oxymoron since I wasn’t a chief and I had no professional qualification for the job. However, I did have experience in researching teacher supply and I have continued to do so after my departure from the TTA, after only one year, and up to the present day.

The re-accreditation of teacher education providers, started after the Market Review, was set fair to become a case-study in how not to manage change even before today’s Schoolsweek story about the need to manage ‘sufficiency’ ITT review: DfE forms ‘sufficiency’ group amid places fears (schoolsweek.co.uk) Interestingly, today, the DfE also published the terms of reference of the civil servant responsible for ITT reform as the Senior Responsible Officer. DfE major projects: appointment letters for Senior Responsible Owners – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Schoolsweek in their story concentrate on the fact that the government has launched a teacher training “sufficiency steering group” amid fears its ITT market review will slash provider numbers by a third and leave England with a shortage of places.

As I remarked in my previous blog post about the re-accreditation process, the battle between quality and sufficiency of places across the country has always been settled in favour of quality providers with scant regard to geography. End ITT deserts | John Howson (wordpress.com) I argued that was a mistake.

However, the maintaining the current number of courses at a time when pupil numbers are falling in the primary sector, and will stop increasing soon in the secondary sector may not be sensible, and does need a re-think. If that re-think provides a better geographical balance, all well and good. However, does it also need to provide for a range of different type of provider; from higher education to school-based routes, as well as salaried trainees to courses funded through the student loan route?

These ground rules really should have been settled before the re-accreditation process commenced. Worrying about sufficiency half-way through could make a mockery of the whole process.

There is also the issue of how to handle shortfalls in recruitment, should they arise. Will providers be paid to stay in business even if they fail to recruit sufficient trainees to cover their costs?

An open discussion at the time off the Market Review about how and where we train teachers and how many we need to train would have prevented the current atmosphere of suspicion surrounding the whole process of re-accreditation.

With teaching now having become a global profession, we cannot afford to make a mess of the management of the process of preparing the next generation of teachers. However, it has to be recalled that the present policy of quality taking precedence over location has led to an uneven distribution of courses across the country. Schools, and even universities, don’t have to train teachers, and it is well worth remembering that fact.

I hope the next Secretary of State will want to work with the sector on ensuring high quality teacher preparation provision spread across the country to meet the needs of schools. However, I am not holding my breath.

Headship: does school type matter when recruiting?

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How much does the type of school matter when trying to recruit a new headteacher? More many years than I can count, indeed almost since I started researching the labour market for school leaders in England, way back in the1980s, it has seemed that data has always pointed to certain schools finding recruitment a challenge.

So, with a bit of spare time, I thought I would look at the experiences in one large shire county (not Oxfordshire) in the period between January 2021 and the end of July 2022.

Vacancies for headteachers in state-funded primary schools – one shire county Jan 21-July22

ADVERTSINFANTJUNIORPRIMARY – MPRIMARY – CEPRIMARY – RC
1108891
265790
320010
431000
502020
6+00020
TOTAL211615231
2+1177140
% 2+52%44%47%61%0%
Source TeachVac

Interestingly, although Infant schools appear to fare better than other schools in terms of recruiting after a single advertisement, three of the ten schools in the table placed their first advertisement during either June or July of 2022. Discounting those schools produces a 2+ percentage for infant schools of 61% and not 52%. This is the same as for Church of England Primary Schools.

However, although most infant and junior schools in this locality are Maintained schools, there are some Church of England Infant and junior schools, and they seem more likely than the maintained schools to have to re-advertise.

Indeed, Church of England schools account for all of the primary schools with more than two rounds of advertisements for a headteacher. These include one school with the original vacancy plus six rounds of re-advertisements and another school with the original advertisement plus nine further rounds of advertisements between May 2021 and June 2022.

In any normal year, about half of headteacher vacancies appear between January and March. Vacancies advertised later in the year tend to be harder to fill unless there is local interest in taking on the school. Unless a primary school has access to subscription advertising for its vacancies, this can become an expensive business, especially for a small primary school. MATs may be able to cover these costs, but with local authorities not able to top-slice school budgets in the same way, this can be an expensive problem for governing bodies, especially if headteachers only stay in post for a few years in such schools.

There is much less of an issue in filling vacancies for headteachers of secondary and all-through schools, although some of the same caveats about timing remain. Also, for the secondary sector, the type of school and its Free School Meals ranking outside of recessionary times may affect the degree of interest. These issues are discussed further in TeachVac’s annual review of the leadership labour market in England.

So, a community primary school advertising in January each year should have little difficulty finding a new headteacher. The governing body of a Church of England school whose headteacher needs replacing in June will probably find themselves facing a challenge in their search for a replacement.

Banning teachers

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Between January and the start of August this year, the body charged with regulating the teaching profession announced decisions on the futures of just over 90 teachers. Outcomes have ranged from ‘No Order Made’ to indefinite prohibition from working as a teacher anywhere in England to prohibition with the opportunity to seek reregistration after a set period of time, although a return to the Register of Qualified teachers isn’t guaranteed.  In passing, it should be noted that the term ‘teacher’ isn’t restricted in its use only to those on the Register: anyone can call themselves at teacher.

Men outnumbers women in those barred from teaching in these announcements, by around two to one, even though men are in the minority in the profession as a whole. The overwhelming majority of men barred from teaching were as a result of an issue to do with sex in some form or another; usually involving someone underage. More than 40 men were barred from teaching for this reason in announcements just in this seven-month period of 2022; along with just three women.

Two women were barred for misconduct associated with assessment. This low number may well reflect the nature of schooling and assessment since the start of the pandemic. Similarly, there were only two barring for financial reasons. There were however, a number of barring resulting from inappropriate behaviour towards pupils. This ranged from actual assaults to other behaviour seen to have crossed the line from what is acceptable.

Two teachers were struck-off for running an unregistered school, while there were a couple of cases of false references supplied by teachers in connection with job applications.

Not all incidents took place in or even involving schools. Teachers can be barred for incidents outside schools, including their use of social media and who they live with.

If you live with someone caught supplying drugs then you must tell the school authorities and your line manager straight away, especially if your premises is searched for drugs. Similarly, if you end up in court for almost any reason it is wise to declare the fact as soon as possible and indeed normally well before charges are brough if you are arrested and placed on bail. If you are remanded in custody, the school will likely know, as you won’t be able to turn up for work but you should still inform them.

Two issues arise from considering these judgements. Firstly, what about others working in schools that commit similar acts. Presumably, they are sacked for gross misconduct, but should there be a way of barring them from working with young people even if they are not professionals?

Secondly, there seem to be some areas where perhaps ‘sentencing guidelines’ might now help both panels and teachers to judgements. One such area is driving under the influence of alcohol. The small number of cases this year did seem to produce a range of outcomes. Aggravating factors might be ‘on school premises’ or ‘in the presence of children’ while mitigating factors could be ‘declared treatment started before the incident’ and ‘extreme stress in work and home life’. Clearly, letters of support do seem to swing the judgement about outcomes, and the weight of ‘being an excellent teacher’ should be signalled clearly in guidance.

The Secretary of State must sign-off panel judgements, with an appeal to the high court being the only further outcome. Should the Secretary of State, or in reality a civil servant, have this right of judgement of the panel’s decision or should panel outcomes only be subject to an appeal to a court?

Teamwork: the skill for the future?

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In my first lectureship in higher education, during the early 1980s, at what is now the University of Worcester, I introduced an assessment task that involved students collaborating together to produce a presentation using recorded sound and images. Fortunately, the External Examiner was farsighted and endorsed the idea. Later, in the 1990s, while part of the leadership team at Oxford Brookes University, their School of Education developed several modules that required students to work together on assessed coursework.

Why am I mentioning these events today? The DfE has just published an interesting piece of research about skills needed for the future workforce across a number of different sectors. Skills needs in selected occupations over the next 5 to 10 years – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

In the research it says that:

‘Improvement is needed in how teamwork skills are taught across educational and professional settings Workshop participants identified weaknesses in the previous and current development of teamwork skills in schools, universities and workplaces. It was suggested that engaging university students with teamwork learning can be very challenging. Some speculated on individualised versus collaborative pathways to academic achievement, comparing BTEC and A-Level students’ different attitudes to teamwork. It may be that assessment structures with less focus on individual attainment allow for increased development of collaborative and creative skills in young people.’ Page 33 footnotes omitted

This led me to wonder whether at both GCSE and A level there ought to be opportunities for collaborative learning as well as the traditional individual competition for grades? Could it replace the extended individual project?

Elsewhere in the report there is a focus on the need for greater digital literacy.

‘Digital literacy is becoming a basic skill requirement for the majority of occupations across all sectors in the UK labour market, including productivity software tools such as spreadsheets and word processing programmes. OECD PISA analysis has also shown that educational access to technology and subsequent building of digital literacy is increasingly important across the globe, leading to better academic performance and competence. Basic digital literacy skills are considered to be those needed to carry out tasks such as communication via digital applications and internet searches or navigation.’ Page 11 footnotes omitted

The report also acknowledges that the collection, handling and analysis of data will also be important across the future workforce: something that is music to my ears after years of collecting data about the teacher labour market for teachers Labour Market Report – January to July 2022 (teachvac.co.uk)

Now the purpose of schooling is not just to prepare children for adult life, but how far it should balance the need to progress to higher education against life beyond education is an interesting debate. Team games obviously help with developing skills and after this week I hope there will be no more talk of selling of school playing fields for housing or other uses. But not all pupils enjoy sport and different teams need different skills sets.

The school children entering primary school this September probably won’t retire until 2084. What will their working life look like and should those of us concerned with education care?

Success in ITT, but at what price?

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In my previous post about the July postgraduate ITT numbers, I concentrated just on the headlines, and the potentially dire implications for the 2023 teacher recruitment round if the collapse of the economy doesn’t both stem departures from teaching and encourage more returners back into the profession.

In this post, I want to look in more detail at the data in the July numbers, now published by the DfE. Monthly statistics on initial teacher training (ITT) recruitment – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) The total number of candidates applying has reached 35,633, but this compares badly with the 44,970 of July 2021. More alarming is the fact that the ‘recruited’ total is down from 8,620 in July 2021 to 3,911 this July. That’s the number in the bag, so to say, and most likely to turn up when courses commence. Even more worrying that the number with ‘conditions pending’ is down from 23,030 to 18,699. The number of withdrawn candidates has increased from 1,281 last July to 2,010 this July.  These are not good numbers for the health of the profession.

Comparing the ‘other’ column against ‘all applications’ in the July 2021 data and the ‘unsuccessful’ against ‘all applications’ in the July 2022 data shows that across all subjects more applications have been successful.

Subject2021 Successful2022 SuccessfulDifference
Languagesna29%na
Computer Studies21%28%7%
D&T27%34%7%
Physics23%30%7%
Music28%34%6%
Art26%32%6%
Business Studies20%26%6%
Biology23%29%6%
Mathematics23%28%5%
PE22%27%5%
RE27%32%5%
English25%30%5%
Drama29%33%4%
Chemistry27%31%4%
Geography27%31%4%
History26%30%4%
Classics23%25%2%
Source UCAS and DfE data

Whether the increase in the level of success is due to similar numbers of acceptable candidates against a smaller overall pool or providers accepting candidates that they might not have accepted before cannot be determined from the data. Perhaps it is a bit of both strategies that is taking place.

Applications are lower across all age groups this round, with the key new graduate ‘21 and under’ group down from 5,650 to 4,591 candidates this July. Those who gender is recorded as male candidate has fallen from 13,350 to 10,591. This is despite the number not recorded as either men or women falling from 1,240 to 351 this July.

Applications have fallen for both primary and secondary phase courses. Down from 51,310 to 43,242 for the former and from 65,990 to 53,532 for the latter.

While numbers applying for postgraduate teaching apprenticeships increased from 3,610 to 4,427 applications; a modest increase, but, nevertheless an increase: all other routes had witnessed a decline in applications.

Hopefully, at least in the context of teacher preparation courses, this will be as bad as it will be, and next year the changes in the broader economy will once again swing the pendulum back towards the desirability of teaching as a career, perhaps aided by a recognition of the necessary rewards required to attract and retain teachers. If not, then the government will have set a record in terms of the length of the period of under-recruitment into teacher preparation courses.

Muck up or conspiracy?

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In August 2013, when this blog was in its infancy, I incurred the wrath of the DfE by suggesting that there was going to be a teacher supply crisis.

As reported by this blog on 14th August 2013 “A DfE spokesperson, helpfully anonymous, is quoted by the Daily Mail today as saying of my delving into the current teacher training position that there was no teacher shortage, adding: ‘This is scaremongering and based on incomplete evidence.’”

Regular readers know whose view of the situation was correct.

Why am I reprising this quote from nine years ago? Well, normally around the middle of the month the DfE, following the time-honoured tradition set by first the GTTR and then UCAS, publishes the monthly update on applications and offer to postgraduate ITT.

The DfE duly created the data on the 25th of July this year, but at least as far as my browser is concerned, the data didn’t appear on their web site. June’s data remained the latest in the public domain as I write this blog.  Monthly statistics on initial teacher training (ITT) recruitment – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) hopefully, by the time you read this the July data will be fully in the public domain. (The DfE updated their website with the July data sometime the same day that this post was published – thank you DfE.)

Now comes the key question: is this lack of transparency due to a processing fault within the DfE or is it due to not wanting the data widely known? Truly, the data on ‘offers’ so far this year is shocking.

Looking back at the period between the 2012/13 round of application for postgraduate ITT courses, and the 2021/22 round, it is clear that the total of ‘Recruited’ plus ‘Conditions Pending’ plus ‘Deferrals’ plus ‘Received and Offer’ are disastrously low in many secondary subjects this year. Leaving aside, Modern Foreign Languages, where the methodology is different this year, we see

Art, history, geography, chemistry and business studies no longer recording new records or offers and, in most cases, recording insufficient numbers to meet the expected Teacher Supply Model number. Only in history and art will there be sufficient numbers, and even in history the over-recruitment is likely to be less than in the past couple of years.

However, it is in

Religious Education

Physics

Music

English

Computing

Biology

Where the numbers of ‘offers’ look most worrying.

Jack Worth of NfER predicted earlier this year that fewer than 20% of the physics places might be filled this year in a presentation to the APPG on the Teaching Profession. His prediction now looks like it might well come about. All of the subjects in this list are hitting new lows for ‘offers’ since that 2012/13 recruitment round. The implications for recruitment of teachers, assuming the schools have the funds to recruit in 2023, look bleak.

Design and technology remain one of the few relatively better performing subjects, with more offers than last year. But, sadly, not enough to meet the required target.

With less than two months to go before courses start, and some providers closed down for the summer, there is unlikely to be a significant upturn in these numbers.

The DfE might well want to ask about conversion levels between application and offers and whether more risk might be taken with some marginal applications. The DfE will also need to ensure that they don’t de-accredit successful providers, as there is no guarantee potential applicants would choose another provider.

I do wonder whether the two contenders for Prime Minister will have anything to say about this issue, and whether anyone will even ask them?