Category Archives: employment

Depriving the deprived

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Levelling up is not just an issue for the north of England. Ahead of their Spring Conference, the Liberal Democrats obtained data about reading levels at Key Stage 2 and the percentage of pupils not achieving the expected standard at Key Stage 2 in 2019, the last set of data because of the pandemic. The most revealing data are that for the parliamentary constituencies in England – education is a devolved activity, so the data only covers constituencies in England – of which there are some 533.

My especial interest is, of course Oxford. The west of the city is in the Oxford West and Abingdon constituency that ranks 91st worst in the list at the same place in the table with Henley constituency. However, the Oxford East constituency is ranked 502nd worst out of the 533 constituencies in England. This is a really significant difference between the two parts of Oxford.

One issue that this brings into sharp focus is the problems associated with a national funding formula model for schools; a formula that is based upon the needs of a random collection of local authorities responsible for special education and although budgets go to schools not divorced from the way the overall formula is calculated. If you level up by authority, then you miss pockets of need, such as those parts of Oxford East contributing to the outcome for the Oxford East constituency as a whole.

To be fair to teachers in Oxford, way back in 2011, the City as a whole ranked as the worst local authority for Key Stage 1 outcomes, so this looks like an improvement, albeit on different data.

Nevertheless, children in East Oxford need to be able to access the required degree of resources to allow them to reach parity with their peers across the city and elsewhere in England.

London boroughs are disproportionally represented in the list of constituencies with the lowest percentages of pupils failing to reach the expected standard, whereas both rural and urban areas outside of London are to be found among those constituencies with the worst outcomes.

Oxford as a university city – with two universities – has a proportion of children with English as their second languages, but it is not clear that these pupils are disproportionally located in the east of the city, since university accommodation can be found across the city as a whole.

The Conservatives adapted from Labour ideas by inventing Opportunity Areas to offer extra support to areas needing it, but I have not seen any analysis of the outcomes for such areas. Oxford East seemingly didn’t qualify.

It is worth comparing Oxford with Blackpool for reading outcomes, as both are areas with two different parliamentary constituencies. Blackpool’s constituencies are ranked 73rd and 340th while Oxford’s rank 91st and 502nd. Blackpool is, of course, an Opportunity Area: Oxford isn’t. One might well ask why Oxford is not an opportunity Area on the basis of these figures?

Perhaps it is a matter of perception rather than hard evidence. Blackpool isn’t a wealthy university town and has high levels of unemployment. Oxford is viewed as affluent and successful, and a great place to live. To live, but not, at least as far as the East of the City is concerned, to learn.

Phoenix rising

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The DfE has today published a Policy Paper putting more bones on the body of the idea of a career development framework for teachers Delivering world class teacher development policy paper (publishing.service.gov.uk) To those of us with long memories it reads a bit like the early 1990s justification for the creation of the Teacher Training Agency. At that time QUANGOs were fashionable, nowadays government departments like to keep a tighter hold on policy, and don’t let the overall control of this sort of structure outside of the Department’s oversight.

Today’s document is a bit of a curate’s egg. The clickthrough for the Institute of Education on page 8 goes to the document New Institute of Teaching set to be established – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) not updated since January 2021, and containing quotes from (Sir) Gavin Williamson, the then Secretary of State and Nick Gibb, the former Minister.

Strangely, for a Policy Paper, readers are told to contact their local Teaching Hub to find out more than is in this relatively slight document. I hope that there is a coordinated response for those that do take the trouble to make contact.

The different strands linking together career development paths are ambitious, but necessary. However, it all looks a bit artificial and lacking in both sticks and carrots. Should teachers be required to recertify every few years or would such a move reveal the inability of the system to properly train those asked to teach our young people.

The lack of any mention of special needs, the sector with the highest percentage of unqualified teachers is disappointing, and the numeracy lobby will wonder why literacy is singled out for a specialist NPQ, but they do rate a mention?

In the end, the success of the project will come down to the cash on offer, and how career development will be paid for. The offering in today’s document is still a long way from Mrs Thatcher’s sabbatical term idea based upon the James Committee Report that was scuppered by the 1970s oil crisis. Indeed, it might be worth having a look in the library for a copy of that White Paper; Education – a Framework for Expansion that appear half a century ago.

Teaching Hubs and Regional School Commissioners are no real substitute for a coherent middle tier that can manage the local career development offering for teachers across a local area.

I would like to think that a career framework for all teachers wanting to make the profession their career for the whole of their working life will counter the notion of everyone having several different careers in a lifetime, but it is difficult on the basis of past outcomes to be anything other than sceptical about the needs of individuals rather than the wishes for a system. Will Phoenix make it out of the ashes of past attempts at career development for teachers? I am not sure based upon this Policy Document.

London teachers more likely to receive additional payments

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On 11th February 2018, I wrote a blog post about pay flexibilities for teachers, and the use of allowances. Pay flexibilities for teachers | John Howson (wordpress.com) The DfE’s 2022 evidence to the STRB, referenced in recent posts on this blog, has a table on page 65 that allows an update for the position in November 2020.

According to the DfE’s evidence to the School Teachers Review Body (STRB) in 2018 only 64%, just fewer than two out of three schools, paid any of their staff Teaching & Learning Responsibility allowances (TLRs as they are usually known). I guessed in 2018 that most of the remaining nearly 8,000 or so schools were mostly small primary schools, with only a handful of teachers and a head teacher? In November 2020, the percentage of schools paying a TLR was almost the same as in 2018, at 63.7% of schools. Presumably, it was still the small primary schools where there were no TLRs paid to staff.

Interestingly, the DfE record that 76.7% of schools in 2020, compared with 75.2% of all schools in 2018, make some form of payment to some of their teaching staff. The lowest percentages were for schools in the East midlands and Yorkshire and The Humber Regions.

In 2020, 20.7% of schools were using SEN payments, rising to 27.8% of schools in the South East of England. In the Yorkshire and The Humber Region only 14.2% of schools were making SEN payments: not far short of half the percentage of schools making such payments in the South East of England. This difference seems significant enough to need further investigation.

Even less common than SEN payments, despite all the talk about a recruitment crisis, has been the use of recruitment and retention payments to teachers; only 8.9% of schools across England were recorded as making such a payment in November 2020. However, the percentage does rise to 18.2% schools in the Inner London area – That’s not technically a region and the DfE evidence doesn’t define what it means by Inner London and whether it is pay area or some other definition. By contrast, only 4.7% of schools in the South West makes any payments to a teacher or teachers for recruitment and retention reasons. The DfE doesn’t make clear how many teachers in the schools receive such payments. It is enough for just one to teacher to receive a payment for a school to qualify for inclusion in the table.

The use of additional payments to teachers doesn’t seem to have changed much during the past few years. This despite the challenges schools have faced in recruiting teachers with some specific subject knowledge. The pressure on school budgets may well have accounted for an unwillingness to spend more of the school’s funds on extra allowances, over and above those already in the system.

It will be interesting to see how schools will react to the challenge of the £30,000 starting salary and the need to motivate more experienced staff if differentials are reduced, especially if new teachers retain the right to a lighter timetable.

Middle Leaders need attractive salaries as well as new entrants

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Contained within the DfE document to the STRB that was discussed in the previous post is the annual update on retention and wastage rates for teachers. This year, as part of a much more detailed analyses, there are tables for different subject groups and phases as well as for different parts of England.

As usual, the data are presented as percentages that need to be converted into numbers to make real sense what is really happening. The gross numbers for the profession as whole for entrant and those still in service after a year for the recent past are shown in the table.

New entrants into teachingentered serviceend Year 1loss in Year 1
201223998208783120
201324490213063184
201425927222973630
201526780230313749
201625560217263834
201723754201913563
201823872202913581
201923338198373501
Teachers in service

The number remining can vary by several thousand depending upon the starting number. Thus, 2015, a good year for recruitment into training, resulted in 23,031 new teachers in service at the end of year one. By contrast, in 2019, although nearly 250 fewer teachers departed than from the earlier entry year, the lower starting number resulted in only 19,837 of that cohort of teachers remaining. That’s some 3,000 fewer than from the 2015 cohort of starters.

Wastage doesn’t stop after the first year, and the DfE document considers wastage over time between STEM and non-STEM secondary subjects, although it doesn’t provide data for individual subjects. Taking design and technology as a STEM subject, the DfE’s 2013 ITT census had a total of 410 trainees. Now assuming the 82% STEM subjects after QTS is based for that group based upon the ITT census would leave some 336 teachers still working at end of year one.

Assuming the data is actually those granted QTS, and allowing for a 5% non-completion of the course, this brings the entry number down to 390 and those remaining after a year to 320.

From the 320/336 teachers must eventually come those to be promoted to TLRs, including as heads of department. Now, after five years of service, those with continuous service and excluding those with a broken service record, might be in the range of 220/250 teachers across the subject using the DfE’s percentage remaining in service for STEM subjects.

According to TeachVac’s database, there were 390 recorded vacancies with TLRs in 2020 across design and technology as a subject area, and 470 in 2021. Up to the end of the first week in March 2022, there had already been 228 advertised vacancies with TLRs in design and technology. Now some of the vacancies will have been repeat advertisements, and others re-advertisements. However, even if half were discounted for these reasons, it might still mean 200 or so posts each year. Such a number would be a very large percentage of the cohort of teachers in the subject and adds a further level of concern to the future of the subject.

Middle leadership is of vital importance to the successful operation of our schools, and in concentrating on the starting salary the DfE and STRB must not lose sight of the need for successful teachers willing to spend their careers in our state school system.

Is £30,000 enough?

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Congratulations to the team of civil servants at the DfE. Now that’s a sentence you probably didn’t expect to read on this blog. However, the detailed evidence from the DfE to the STRB issued yesterday 2022 pay award: Government evidence to the STRB (publishing.service.gov.uk) marks one of the most comprehensive analyses of the functioning of the labour market for teachers that has been published in recent years.

Perhaps, I can now retire, since the government has accepted almost everything that I have been pointing out for the past decade, and has also provided the evidence in minute detail that might provide some interesting posts for this blog over the next few weeks.

When a starting salary of £30,000 for teachers was first mooted, it was generous. Now with inflation running at a ten-year high, and the world looking like it might be facing a re-run of the 1972 oil price shock that led to a decade of high inflation and wage erosion, and incidentally did for the plans for much better CPD for teachers in the wake of the James Report, the £30,000 figure may not be as generous as intended. Time will tell.

There are two anxieties behind the good news. The first is whether small primary schools with falling rolls due to a decline in the birth rate will be able to afford the new pay structure? The DfE evidence could have done more to model this scenario, and the possible consequences for different parts of rural England in particular.  Church schools in urban areas may also be affected.

My second anxiety revolves around the extent to which the DfE has taken on board the relationship between training and employment and the global nature of the teaching profession. Of course, a willingness to work overseas might change, but with the growth in international schools being largely outside of Europe, might mid-career teachers witnessing their differential to less experienced colleagues diminish consider whether they could earn more teaching overseas? Perhaps, TeachTapp could ask that question?

Schools can restore differential for mid-career teachers by the judicial use of Recruitment and Retention Allowances, and it is interesting to see how these have been used across England, with areas where the labour market is tight seeing schools more willing to use such awards. Of course, it also depends upon having the cash in the budget to be able to do so.

Schools in parts of South East England outside the London pay structure, but with strong competition from the private school sector, such as in Oxfordshire, may well also be concerned about the likely consequences of this pay settlement.

One sensible move that doesn’t need to STRB involvement, would be to better match training to employment to guarantee sufficient supply to all areas. At present, the supply pattern isn’t anywhere near as effective as it should be, especially with the levelling up agenda.

If you are interested in teacher supply, do please read the DfE evidence as it is well worth the effort.

Not the ITT data for any predictions

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This isn’t the place to discuss a knighthood for a former Secretary of State for Education, except to say I haven’t been more surprised since the time when a Prime Minister knighted his raincoat maker.

I was almost as surprised to find the DfE publishing the February ITT applications data today. Well done for producing the data much faster than UCAS used to achieve. However, it is less helpful not to have a pre-announced timetable for these publications. If there is one, I haven’t seen it.

February marks the mid-point in the annual recruitment cycle, and is the month when it is normally possible to ‘read the runes’ and speculate on the final outcome of the recruitment round, and hence, the labour market for the following year.

At present, 2022 looks a lot like 2020 was at this point, but any predictions made that February turned out to be wide of the mark. I fear that with the war in Ukraine, any predictions this March based on the February data would only be on the basis of a ‘normal’ recruitment round. The remained of 2022 is not going to be anything like normal.

As a result, I am confining myself to saying that the indications to date are less interest from home students and that 10%+ of applications have come from applicants domiciled outside of England. This includes 482 applicants from Northern Ireland and 1,427 for the ‘rest of the world’ category. There have also been 318 applications from people in Wales to train in England.

An interesting piece of analysis made possible by the DfE dataset is the percentage of applicants offered a place, awaiting a decision and unsuccessful with their current application.

The offer category includes those shown as recruited; conditions pending; deferrals and received an offer.

Subject% offers% unsuccessful% awaiting offer
Classics26%49%26%
Music26%49%25%
Business studies15%59%25%
Design and technology26%53%21%
Religious education24%55%21%
Computing18%62%19%
Drama27%51%22%
Physics20%54%26%
Art and design25%52%24%
Geography26%52%22%
Other25%57%18%
Biology21%58%21%
Chemistry20%56%25%
Modern foreign languages20%52%28%
History25%56%18%
English24%58%18%
Mathematics20%58%22%
Physical education24%64%12%
Source: DfE dataset

The table is ranked by the number of applications received, with the subject with the lowest applications at the top and physical education with 4,589 applicants at the bottom of the table. Interestingly, lots of applicants doesn’t always mean a high percentage of offers. Similarly, small numbers of applicants may also mean high percentage of unsuccessful applicants, as in physics (54%) and computing ((62%). Does this mean that quality is not being compromised, perhaps because of concerns over ofsted judgements?  Perhaps, it means more and better applicants might come along later, so it is worth keeping places for them. Unsuccessful applicant percentages will increase as courses fill. Thus, physical education already has the highest percentage of unsuccessful applicants.  

There are still lots of interesting data needed, such as ethnicity of applicants and their outcomes and outcomes by type of course. Perhaps providers could lobby for these changes?

Private schools: important sector of job market for teachers

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Nearly one in five vacancies for teachers of mathematics that were advertised during the first two months of 2022 placed by schools in England came from private schools responsible for educating children of secondary school age. This included both senior and preparatory schools across England. However, the vast majority of posts from private schools were advertised by located by schools in London and the South East of England. There were relatively few vacancies from schools across the north of England.

The data produced by TeachVac, the national vacancy service for teachers, shows that the private sectors share of the job market for teachers so far in 2022 has increased from, around 12% of vacancies in the first two months of 2021, to 14% across the first two months of 2022.

Other subjects, apart from mathematics, where the private sector dominate the job market for teachers include, perhaps not surprisingly, classics, but also some posts for teachers of specific languages, including Russian, where there have been three recorded vacancies so far in 2022.

Schools in the state sector usually advertise for teachers of modern languages rather than for teachers of specific languages. The same balance between advertising for teachers of specific subjects and a generic vacancy is often also seen in vacancies for science teachers. Private schools favour vacancies for teachers of specific subjects, whereas state schools advertise for teachers of science, at least at the classroom teacher grade.

As with the state sector, there has been less demand for teachers of arts and humanities so far in 2022 by private schools. At least in England, this is not a part of the curriculum likely to absorb the over-supply of such teachers being trained at the public expense.

The next three months will cover the period between March and May when the majority of vacancies for teachers will appear. Nationally, across both state and private schools, and the primary and secondary sectors, nearly 20,000 vacancies for teachers have already been advertised in 2022 according to TeachVac’s records. 2022 might well see a total for the year of close to 70,000 unless demand falls away later in the year.

Should some universities decide to withdraw form government funded teacher preparation courses then they may well still be able to maintain initial teacher education by providing recruits for the private school sector. As academies don’t need to employ qualified teachers, any universities outside the government scheme can also provide new recruits for that sector, providing that a funding route can be found for trainees, perhaps based upon a greater use of a salaried scheme funded by schools. It would be interesting to speculate what such a divergence of public and private training might do for the levelling up agenda?

Levelling out

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Under the government’s latest plans, I might not have gone to university. This was because I struggled to pass what was then ‘O’ level English. Fortunately, I found six different degree courses that didn’t make English ‘O’ level a requirement of entry. Even in the 1960s that was a bit of a struggle. However, LSE, with a large number of mature and non-standard entry students, was happy to review the person and not the exams that they had passed when considering who to accept.

My experience, more than half a century ago, made me think about today’s announcement that might be seen to threaten the autonomy of higher education institutions, if government funding is restricted to universities only accepting those with certain qualifications. Of course, there will need to be exemptions for young people with special educational needs. Hopefully, mature entrants also won’t be put off returning to learning by an overly difficult access programme, especially if they don’t have English and maths qualifications.

There are good reasons to expect a degree of literacy and numeracy of our graduates, even in subjects where, say, mathematical knowledge, might not be of any obvious use. With developments in technology, who knows what will be needed in the future in terms of skills.

More pernicious would be the reintroduction of student number limits just at the point the number of eighteen-year-olds is starting to increase once again. I titled this post ‘levelling out’ because any cap on student numbers will undoubtedly hit the most deprived hardest. UCAS recently reported that applications from those living in deprived areas, for university places in 2022, was on the increase. Disadvantaged students show confidence in applications as they approach exams | Undergraduate | UCAS “28% of young people from the most disadvantaged areas (quintile 1 using the POLAR4 measure) have applied – up from 17.8% nine years ago in 2013” according the UCAS Press Release.

Surely, the government doesn’t want to slam the door in the face of this growth in interest in higher education. Restricting the number of places at universities will increase the required criteria for admissions and that will certainly work against pupils in schools that are struggling to recruit teachers, either across the board or in certain subjects. Do we want to deprive these young people of the chance to attend a university just because an accident of birth?

A well-developed apprenticeship route is a necessary part of the education and skills offering, but a lack of money should not deprive anyone of a university education. It is bad enough being saddled with debt with punitive interest rates, but to be excluded from life chances because of the school you attended seems to be turning the clock back a long way further than is acceptable.

There are those that think too many already go too university and that they waste their three years partying and drinking, before starting a life on the dole. But, who would have thought studying a degree in video games a decade ago would have been the start of a billion-dollar industry?

Does anyone care about Design and Technology teaching?

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It wasn’t just trees that were falling on Friday. Available new entrants for teaching jobs in September in design and technology hit new lows on TeachVac’s index.

Here is a snapshot of the first seven weeks of the year in terms of remaining trainee numbers in D&T matched to vacancies on a score of two vacancies means one less trainee available for future jobs.

Datevacancies 2016vacancies 2017vacancies 2018vacancies 2019vacancies 2020vacancies 2021vacancies 2022
01/01/2021
08/01/2021412.5371.5217219343580231
15/01/2021399356201.5202312561178
22/01/2021381.5342.5181.5191270533114
29/01/2021370321172.513122650353
05/02/2021352.5311.5157.5971854780
12/02/2021341290.514174136444-63
19/02/2021332.5286126.54478427-116
Source; TeachVac

Now we can debate the methodology, but it has remained consistent over the eight years, so even if the numbers are too alarming this year to seem to be credible, the trend is still there to see. The numbers in the table are for the whole of England, so some areas may be better, but others might be worse. The data doesn’t include Teach First or other ‘off programme’ courses that are not reported as a part of the core ITT Census from the DfE. The index does make some assumptions about completion rates based upon past evidence and that those on salaried routes won’t be looking for jobs on the open market.

Design and Technology is a portmanteau subject, and the data cannot reveal whether particular aspects are faring better or worse. Of course, some posts may attract art and design teachers, where there is no shortage of trainees, but they won’t help in any shortage of say, food technology teachers.

What’s to be done? First, there has to be an acknowledgement by policymakers that there is an issue before solutions can be found. Then, we need to ask, is this a subject we still need to teach in our schools? Will our nation be impoverished if it disappears? I think the answer to that is in the name of the subject.

Do we need a strategic approach that also recognises the current situation impacts upon the levelling up agenda cherished by the present government? In my humble opinion we do.

Perhaps the Education Select Committee might like to take an evidence session on the topic of ‘teaching D&T in our schools’. The DfE has this evidence now that it is managing a job board, so cannot claim ignorance of any problem. However, it can produce evidence to prove me wrong in my assertions in this post. Does ofsted have a role here? Should they conduct a thematic review of the teaching and staffing of D&T departments to advise Ministers?

How many of the trainees funded by student loans and public money end up in the private sector or in further education, or even teaching overseas? Do these losses compound the problem?

Finally, where do we go from here with Design and Technology, if I am correct in my judgement that the issue is now too serious to ignore?

opportunities for would-be teachers

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Many years ago, I used to report monthly on the percentage of ITT courses with vacancies. This was a second and rather cruder measure of the state of recruitment into postgraduate ITT courses. The number of ‘offers’ is still the measure that I use in my regular blogs about the state of the market. I am delighted to see that the new owners of tes – Companies House sent me an update on their progress with the company last week – has flagged up the 24% decline in applications that was reported by this blog last week.

Anyway, I thought that I would have look at how many courses listed on the DfE application portal no longer had any vacancies. Of course, some of the ‘no vacancies’ might be because the course was no longer on offer, rather than because it was full. Either way, this is a measure of how hard an applicant might need to work to find a course with vacancies.

The following table shows the number of courses and the number of courses with vacancies at 14th February, taken from an analysis of the DfE’s site.

SubjectCourses with vacanciesAll courses% with vacancies
Psychology6010657%
Social Sciences6510960%
Heath & Soc Care223269%
Physical education38954172%
Dance546978%
Comms & Media Studies303781%
Economics283482%
Business studies22326185%
Drama29533688%
History54361788%
English68877289%
Design and technology41345890%
Religious Education41946191%
Modern Foreign Languages83291591%
Art and design42546791%
Music34337492%
Computing50054592%
Geography60165192%
Biology65670993%
Mathematics77783593%
Chemistry69574394%
Citizenship171894%
Physics73177195%
Science222396%
Classics1818100%
Latin1212100%
ITT courses – percentage with vacancies 14th February 2022

Not surprisingly, of the subjects with many different courses on offer to applicants, physical education is the one with fewest remaining courses with vacancies. However, more than two thirds of physical education courses are still showing vacancies, and presumably accepting applications. In many subjects, including Art, more than nine out of ten courses are still listed as having vacancies. Even in history, 88% of the 543 courses are still shown as with vacancies.

Modern Languages consists of a number of different languages, and the position in each is as follows.

SubjectCourses with vacanciesAll courses% with vacancies
Russian2450%
Mandarin202580%
Italian7888%
German20723389%
French43147790%
Spanish36540091%
MFL25326994%
Japanese55100%
ITT Modern Languages: courses – percentage with vacancies 14th February 2022

The small number of courses in specialist languages; Russian, Mandarin and Italian are faring relatively well. However, mainstream languages are in a similar position to most other secondary subjects.

What of the primary sector? Normally, by mid-February, many courses would have the ‘course full’ sign on the door. This year, as 14th February, 86% of the 1,655 different course options across the primary sector still had the vacancy sign posted. This looks like rather a high number of courses with vacancies at this point in the recruitment cycle for the primary sector.

The data around courses with vacancies supports the view that 2022 has so far proved to be a challenging round as far as persuading applicants to train as a teacher is concerned. Whether it merits offering raffle prizes as an inducement will be discussed in a later blog.