Time for a radical rethink

Posted on February 14, 2022 by John Howson

How many years can the government continue to let the labour market for teachers remain relatively unregulated? After nearly a decade during which the supply of qualified new entrants into the teacher labour market across many secondary subjects has failed to meet the predicted demand, as measured by the government’s own modelling through the Teacher Supply Model, there must be a genuine discussion about the consequences of the failure of the labour market to work effectively, and what steps might be taken to help meet the policy objectives behind the operation of the teacher labour market?

Over the past few weeks, I have written two opinion pieces on the working of the labour market for teachers – both reproduced on this blog – and also witnessed the fact that education has been included as an important component of the government’s levelling up agenda.

Can you really level up outcomes if the labour market for teachers, a key resource; indeed, the key resource in schooling even today, is insufficient to meet the needs of a market that is no longer just regional nor even national, but increasingly global in its scope.

To be fair to the government, it has taken some steps to intervene in the market. The DfE job board was one step, although that just competes with the other existing providers and its use isn’t mandatory for schools. The iQTS qualification to be trialled this year, is another interesting response to the development of a global market for teachers. Previous interventions such as highlighting the ability of academies not to require QTS of its teachers and granting QTS to American and some Commonwealth qualified teachers have had little noticeable impact on the labour market. In part, this has been because of the visa system in place in England, and the operation of the Migration Advisory Committee in determining ‘shortage’ subjects.

So, what might the government do now? One area to consider is teacher preparation There is a policy for teacher preparation. However, it needs to be set against the trend in the school population over the next decade. The years of massive growth in the school population are now coming to an end, and once again stable or even falling pupil numbers across the system will have an impact upon training needs, if other factors affecting demand remain constant. However, it seems possible that schools might need to finance at least some of the future pay rises from within their budgets. In the past, such a strategy has reduced the demand for teachers. However, it also has an effect on the demand for those other than teachers working in schools.

Reducing numbers in training in popular subjects such as history, art and physical education in the face of reducing pupil numbers may mean painful decisions about whether small providers will want to continue offering courses, especially if there is also a squeeze on funding for training. Will the approach to policy continue to encourage schools to create training places for the requirements locally or recognise that larger regional units offer better prospects for research and development of pedagogy and links with subject departments, not to mention the sustainability of small subjects where group sizes are often unviable even when recruitment into training is buoyant.

These are not new issues; they appear every time there is a change in the direction of pupil numbers. The new factors this time are the levelling up agenda and the issue of who manages the administration of places; schools or other bodies, including higher education?

The other issue is how you manage the move from preparation to employment in the teacher labour market? Does the government have a role here? That’s a discussion for another day.

Funding schools: how far to hypothecate?

Posted on February 11, 2022 by John Howson

No sooner do we have a National Funding Formula for schools than it starts to dawn on some people that’ equal’ shares may not be the best way to achieve the policy goal of levelling up outcomes. How funds are distributed to schools are key to education outcomes, and have been ever since the State mandated schooling as the default position for the education of children whose parents did not, could not, or would not make other arrangements.

At the heart of the debate about the distribution of funds are two key principles: equity and the identification of the point of decision on how to spend funds. For much of the past 100 years the issues around the degree of hypothecation of funds was centre stage. With the devolution of budgets to schools in the 1990s, this issue was replaced for a long period by the debate over how much cash should be allocated to schooling.

Of course, the problem of creating an education system where all may enjoy success meant that the issue of how funds were allocated didn’t entirely disappear from the political agenda. However, the simple view of a hard National Funding Formula approach that put the view that ‘equal means the same for all’ centre stage – except of course that pay differentials and London weighting meant that it was never as simple as some would have liked – gained supremacy in thinking, although there were always other exceptions such as Education Opportunity Areas.

Funding policy is now under scrutiny once again, with the national levelling up agenda taking centre stage in the political agenda around policymaking. This policy hasn’t been fully worked through in terms of what it means for education and the hypothecation agenda. I wrote in an earlier blog post about how you enforce retention payments to teachers if that is a mechanism to be used in the prosecution of levelling up. Mandate schools and provide a hypothecated grant?

This week there have been two helpful additions to help the discussions on the funding debate. The House of Commons library has published a research briefing, excellent, as always, on School Funding https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8419/CBP-8419.pdf

Teach First, the charity whose aims now extend well beyond just training teachers to work in schools with high levels of disadvantage pupils, has published a report around rethinking the Pupil Premium Rethinking pupil premium: a costed proposal for levelling up | Teach First The Pupil Premium is, of course, a great example of a semi-hypothecated grant to schools, in that its criteria for distribution are made clear, but its actual use by schools is not determined closely as part of the funding.

At present, different rules also apply as between maintained schools and academies and Academy Trusts in how funds distributed through the National Funding formula may be aggregated to cover central costs. This is an interesting area of the hypothecation debate that merits further discussion.

But in the end, decisions about the allocation of funds will always be in the hands of those that provide the funding. Local council taxpayers can be grateful that funding schools is no longer a part of their costs in urban areas. In the countryside, and where there are large bills for special needs transport, it is a different matter, as school transport costs are left to local council taxpayers to cover.

Not much of a Christmas Present

Posted on February 10, 2022 by John Howson

There is a need to be cautious about making too much of the latest DfE data on applications to start graduate training as a teacher in Autumn 2022. The newly published data covers the period up to mid-January 2022. However, this included both the Christmas break and the omicron infection surge of covid cases plus the first Christmas break for the new DfE application process.

Any one of these factors might have been a reason for treating comparisons with previous years cautiously. Taken as a whole, there must be a view that it won’t be until the February data – the half-way point in recruitment – that a clear picture will emerge, especially because of the large number of applications awaiting a decision from a provider.

Nevertheless, some comments are possible. In the primary sector, applications are close to the level of January two years ago at 18,300. In reality, this is the lowest January number for many years for applications, but should not be a cause for concern. In the secondary sector, the 20,254 applications are some 2,000 below the 2020 figure for January and 8,000 down on the admittedly high 2021 number. Comparison with 2020 is probably more helpful. In terms of applicants, there were about 750 more than at this point two years ago, but some may be making fewer choices.

Translating the overall number of ‘offers’ into issues for individual subjects produces four different groups. Firstly, those subjects where ‘offers’ – note ‘offers’, not applicants as that data aren’t available – are up and the expected recruitment level should be met. Amongst the subjects tracked, there are no subjects in this grouping. Secondly there are subjects where there are more offers, but the recruitment level won’t be reached on present levels. Physics, design and technology and chemistry fall into this group.

The third group is where there are either similar offer levels to two years ago or fewer offers than at this point in the cycle two years ago, but recruitment targets should be met. History, physical education, biology and art fall into this group.

Finally, there are subjects such as languages, religious education, music, mathematics, geography, English, computing and business studies where ‘offers’ are below the same point two years ago and unless the number of ‘offers’ made picks up, recruitment target may well not be met. As noted earlier, this list should be treated with some caution for the three reasons stated earlier.

Slightly worryingly, the largest increase in applicants seems to be amongst those in the oldest age groupings, with 140 more applicants aged over 55 at the point that they made their application than two years ago. New graduates still form the bulk of the applicants, but the 2,989 age 21 or under compares with 2,830 two years ago from this age grouping: an increase, but not a massive endorsement of teaching as a career. For the 22-year-olds the increase is from 2,080 to 2,098: hardly noticeable. London and The South East account for around a third of applications. This is good news if there are sufficient places on courses and the applications are spread across all subjects, as these are the two regions where demand for teachers is at the highest levels.

In summary, there is a degree of caution about the data in this monthly release, but there is almost certainly work still to be done to avoid another year of under-recruitment and a tight labour market for schools in 2023.

The Labour market for Teachers in England – some thoughts for 2022

Posted on February 8, 2022 by John Howson

The following piece first appeared in a recent SSAT Sunday Supplement piece

As recently as a decade ago, the process of advertising for teachers was simple. A school advised with its local authority HR department’s bulletin and paid for an advert in the TES. This ritual hadn’t altered much since the early 1990s when schools gained control of their budgets for the first time. However, much has changed in the past few years: tes is on its fourth set of owners, and now most schools pay a subscription fee; the DfE has entered the market with a job board; local authority job boards mostly don’t handle vacancies in academies, and recruitment agencies along with a plethora of new entrants on-line are seeking custom from schools with ever more eye catching products that are handling advertising and selection as a package.

After a lifetime in education, and forty years studying the labour market for teachers, I set up TeachVac to demonstrate what a low-cost model for advertising teacher vacancies, and indeed all vacancies in schools, would cost. Eight years on, TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk handled 64,000 teaching vacancies in 2021, with more than 1,000,000 matches of interested teachers with schools.

As a spin-off to its main service, TeachVac provides significant data about the labour market for teachers. The remainder of this piece is about my predictions for the 2022 recruitment round for teachers in England. Necessarily, the comments will be general, but TeachVac has much more data that it can share with schools about local trends and matches being made.

Any current analysis of the labour market starts with the publication of the DfE’s latest ITT census of numbers on preparation courses to become a teacher (This appeared in December 2021). For the secondary sector, these trainees are mostly on course lasting one academic year. So, registrations for 2021 will be a major source of recruits for September 2022 vacancies. The other source of teachers are returners, whether from a career break or employed elsewhere, including teaching overseas and finally there are those teachers that are either switching jobs or seeking promotion.

Demand is led by an increase in pupil numbers, as in the secondary sector at present; departures, with any increase in departure boosting demand. At present, the growing international school sector is an important source of demand. One UK private school is to open its sevenths overseas campus in Tokyo. Another key source of demand is from teachers taking a career break. Finally, there are those leaving state schools for other employment in the private sector; further education or careers outside of education.

With a strong finish to 2021, and 8,000 recorded vacancies in January 2022, schools will need to pay attention to market trends if they are going to have a need to hire teachers in 2022. As the primary sector market for classroom teacher is well served with candidates, schools should not face issues at the national level, the secondary sector market is more complex and divides into three subject groupings.

Schools seeking to recruit teachers in subjects such as history, physical education, art and drama should face no issues at the national level, even for January 2023 appointments. At the other end of the scale are physics, design and technology, business studies and some of the specialist subjects such as law and psychology where recruitment is already challenging for some schools and all schools will face issues trying to recruit as 2022 progresses, and certainly for January 2023 appointments. All other subjects lie somewhere along this continuum, with some parts of the county experiencing more challenges that others, and some facing challenges earlier in the recruitment round, but all likely to face some difficulty for January 2023 appointments.

Schools that are better placed than others to deal with recruitment issues are those fortunate enough to be able to recruit trainees through school-based preparation programmes or Teach First. Next in line are those schools working with other training providers, such as universities, where they have access to links to students via mentors and school placements. Finally, those schools needing to trawl entirely on the open market are most in need of up-to-date information on the working of the labour market. MATs and MACs grouped close together geographically may be able to swop staff and certainly offer promotions to staff.

The ability to manage staff development is becoming increasingly important, as the DfE now realise, since several years of missed training targets are now affecting the market for middle leaders in some subjects and parts of the primary sector. The middle leader market is under-researched, but vital to the levelling-up agenda.

Finally, the market for headteachers in the secondary sector remains, as ever it was. Schools advertising at a sensible time of year and without specific demands usually manage to recruit. Recruitment of headteachers in the primary sector is more of a challenge, especially for faith schools in an increasingly secular society, and for specific types of school, such as infant or junior schools. Succession planning within MAT/MACs seems like a good policy at all levels, but especially for headships.

John Howson

Chair, TeachVac

Military families missing out

Posted on February 2, 2022 by John Howson

Neither Oxfordshire nor Wiltshire were included in the published list of Education Investment Areas designated as part of the government’s levelling up programme. Package to transform education and opportunities for most disadvantaged – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) This may be important because these are two of the local authorities with large concentrations of military families attending schools within their areas.

The RAF will generally benefit because the whole of East Anglia and Lincolnshire are included in the list of authorities and that is where many RAF bases are located. The inclusion of Plymouth and Portsmouth will cover many naval families. However, the families of troops based on Salisbury plain at Tidworth and many other barracks in Wiltshire will still need to rely just upon the Service Children’s Premium and the Pupil Premium for extra support. The same is true for garrisons in Oxfordshire at Bicester, Abingdon and Didcot, and the RAF bases at Benson and Brize Norton.

Troops moving from Catterick in North Yorkshire or RAF bases in Lincolnshire to Wessex will find the support for their children’s education may reduce under these plans.

Now, our armed forces may be a small part of pupil population, but they do serve to highlight the fact that there are children that don’t stay in one place for their school life. Levelling up probably needs to be more than just about geography and picking areas off a map.

A geographical strategy is anyway easier to achieve when there is a coherent basis for local government areas. Sadly, that is not the case at the present time. Cambridgeshire includes the successful parts of Cambridge, although I acknowledge that like Oxford the whole of the city is neither affluent not without need for extra funding. Was Cambridgeshire included because it is part of a combined authority with a mayor, whereas Oxfordshire is one of the few remaining two-tier local government setups, with no unitary authority.

I wonder how Medway and parts of Cumbria feel looking at the list of Education Investment Areas? Do they feel that they have missed out?

As I wrote, in the previous post on this blog, the education measures will need to be backed up by hard cash to have any real effect. In terms of teaching staff turnover, TeachVac has provided a number of the Opportunity Areas with data about their local teacher labour markets and can do so for the new Education Investment Areas.

One thing is certain is that teaching cooking and healthy eating to secondary school pupils is going to need a rethink about staffing as within design and technology – a subject that attracts few to teaching these days – food technology is the most challenging discipline in terms of finding teachers anywhere in England.

Levelling up is as important today as ever for our schooling system. How far these moves will help is a matter for debate.

Bizarre

Posted on February 1, 2022 by John Howson

The DfE’s helpful note issued ahead of tomorrow’s White Paper contains the following:

“In these new ‘Education Investment Areas’, the Department for Education will offer retention payments to help schools keep the best teachers in the highest priority subjects.”

My first reaction was a sense of ‘Deja Vue’ as this was an idea tried in the 1970s under the label of payments for teachers working in schools of exceptional difficulty. There was an initial salary uplift of £201 for all teachers and after three years of service this increased to, I think, £279.

Then I thought, what about the permission that already exists within the Pay and Conditions document for recruitment and retention payments. This permission appears in Section 27 of Part 4.

27. Recruitment and retention incentives and benefits

27.1 Subject to paragraph 27.2, the relevant body or, where it is the employer in the case of an unattached teacher, the authority, may make such payments or provide such other financial assistance, support or benefits to a teacher as it considers to be necessary as an incentive for the recruitment of new teachers and the retention in their service of existing teachers. A salary advance scheme for a rental deposit may be one of a number of tools that schools may wish to consider using to support recruitment or retention.

27.2 Where the relevant body or, where it is the employer in the case of an unattached teacher, the authority, is making one or more such payments, or providing such financial assistance, support or benefits in one or more cases, the relevant body or authority must conduct a regular formal review of all such awards. The relevant body or authority should make clear at the outset the expected duration of any such incentives and benefits, and the review date after which they may be withdrawn.

Teachers Pay and Conditions document England 2021-22

So, the powers are there. This will only mean anything if it creates a hypothecated grant to schools singled out for support. Such an action would be a move away from the idea of the National Funding Formula. Since, I expect, many of the schools are in areas where the Pupil Premium is already being paid at relatively high levels, this will be an interesting measure to examine in detail once the White Paper appears.

Will it be paid to all classroom teachers or just some subjects in secondary schools but all primary school teachers or perhaps no primary teachers at all?

Then there is the issue of how any such payments will be funded if there is no extra grant? Will schools be directed to pay the additional salary and left to sort out the budget implications? It is difficult to see how such a move helps levelling up if some other useful programme is to be cut to fund salary increases for teachers but not for other staff.

DfE publishes data on funding for schools

Posted on January 28, 2022 by John Howson

Hard on the heels of the Treasury Select Committee report, covered by this blog yesterday, the DfE has now issued its own data on funding of schools and their pupils. The data confirms the reflections of the Treasury Select Committee. School funding statistics: 2021 to 2022 financial year – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

location	time period	Per pupil funding 2021-22 terms in £	Per pupil funding cash terms in £
England	2010-11	6370	5180
England	2011-12	6390	5270
England	2012-13	6370	5360
England	2013-14	6350	5460
England	2014-15	6390	5560
England	2015-16	6400	5600
England	2016-17	6250	5590
England	2017-18	6140	5590
England	2018-19	6180	5730
England	2019-20	6230	5920
England	2020-21	6240	6280
England	2021-22	6510	6510
England	2022-23	6780	6970

State funding for schools in England

Source: DfE

To quote the DfE’s own words about Per-pupil funding between 2010-11 to 2022-23:

On a per-pupil basis the total funding to be allocated to schools for 5–16-year-olds, in cash terms, in 2022-23 is £6,970, a 35% increase compared to £5,180 allocated per pupil in 2010-11.

After adjusting for inflation, funding per pupil was broadly flat between 2010-11 and 2015-16 at just under £6,400 in 2021-22 prices.

It then fell by 4.0% over 2016-17 and 2017-18, but subsequently increased by 1.4% over 2018-19 and 2020-21. Since then, funding increased by 4.5% over the course of 2020-21 and 2021-22 and then by a further 4.2% in 2022-23, reaching £6,780 (in 2021-22 prices).

These numbers only cover the funding of 5-16-year-olds, so don’t account for the reduction in funding for sixth form pupils during the same period. Assuming that the numbers for the most recent periods were subject to inflation deflators not based upon the current high rate of inflation, then, should inflation remain at high levels, it seems likely that the real increase projected for the year 2022-23 of £410 in 2021-22 terms may turn out not to be as great an increase in real terms. Much of the increase may also be taken up in achieving the £30,000 minimum starting salary for teachers promised by the government.

Many secondary schools are enjoying economies of scale at present as their pupil numbers increase, whereas many primary schools outside areas with new housebuilding face the opposite, with diseconomies of scale, as pupil numbers fall. A class of 25 pupils needs the same teaching support as a class of 30 pupils, but will generate somewhat less than £30,000 in income for the school. Tough times ahead for the primary sector if the government doesn’t want to support them, especially for small rural schools that many need the protection nearly two decades ago should insufficient funding lead to potential closures.

The data used by the DfE on funding covers the following grants:

Dedicated Schools Grant (excluding early years and post-16 high-needs funding);

Grants outside the DSG to the City of London, Isles of Scilly and City Technology Colleges;

Pre-16 high-needs funding in non-maintained special schools,

Special and alternative provision free schools;

Pupil premium (all pupil ages);

Schools supplementary grant (reception to year 11);

Supplementary free school meals grant;

Teachers’ pay grant (reception to year 11);

Teachers’ pension employer contribution grant (TPECG) (reception to year 11).

The DfE points out that the funding in 2022-23 is based on a combination of published funding allocations, and the budget settlement agreed at the 2021 Spending Review, and some estimates of small-grant and high needs spending.

Schools have had a tough time over recent years and many have made great strides at achieving financial stability. The risk now is of high inflation and falling rolls continuing that period of challenge into the foreseeable future.

Education spending: government less than generous

Posted on January 27, 2022 by John Howson

The House of Commons Treasury Select Committee has today published its Report on the Autumn Budget and Spending Review 2021. Normally, this blog doesn’t read Treasury Select Committee reports, but this Report did have something to say about government spending on education.

In paragraph 48 the Committee noted the evidence it received from Dr Tetlow and in paragraph 54 it made its own comment, noting that the DfE …’ , did not receive such a generous settlement’ and that ‘School funding per head has only now returned to 2010 levels following the latest Budget.’

The two paragraphs are reproduced below.

48. While the Department for Education (DfE) will have received a real-terms increase in its budget of 2.3 per cent compared to 2009–10, Dr Tetlow told us that the DfE had not done as well in the Spending Review as the sector may have hoped for, given how it had been impacted by the loss of learning during the pandemic, and the need there would be for educational catch-up: Education was clearly one of the relative losers from the Spending Review. Certainly, the £5 billion that has gone into education isn’t large enough to meet our estimate of what might be needed to catch up on lost learning. […] Poorer skills in the cohorts going into the labour market over the next few years does run the risk of having longer-term impacts on productivity.58 […] Even though the Chancellor hailed in his speech that per pupil spending would go back to its 2010 level, it is pretty remarkable to have a decade with no real-terms growth in spending in schools. That is quite unusual and not a strong signal of prioritising improved skills in the UK.

54. While some departments which had been significantly disrupted by the pandemic, such as the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Transport, received large increases, the Department for Education, which was also affected by the pandemic, did not receive such a generous settlement. School funding per head has only now returned to 2010 levels following the latest Budget.

Budget report (parliament.uk) 27^th January 2022

No doubt in their defence The Treasury would point out that more children are being educated because of the increase in the birth rate and the move to all staying in education or training until age 18 than in 2010. They might also point out there are more students in higher education, but most of their costs are probably being taken on the student loan account.

Without a more generous settlement over the next few years, spending per pupil on education is once again going to be tight, and probably will fall in real terms. The DfE needs to look at the costs of running a mixed system of academies and maintained schools. Why are there several hundred Chief Executives of Academy Trusts when previously there were only around 150 Chief Education Officers in local authorities. What is the extra salary bill costing and how many more civil servants are needed to manage the Department to School budget process compared with discussing with just a limited number of local authorities? It really is time to sort out the middle tier of schooling and the extent to which there should be democratic accountability.

Finally, if I can suggest a simple cost saving measure to the DfE. Compare the cost and effectiveness of your job board for teacher vacancies with other products offering similar services and check that you are now spending more than necessary on this service.

Happy Birthday

Posted on January 25, 2022 by John Howson

Today is the ninth birthday of this blog! A birthday is a good time to look back at what was written in the past on the blog. One of the interesting posts came early in the life of the blog, in July 2013, when I called for action by the government and suggested that “ministers must take urgent action if we are not to see a re-run of the crisis in teacher recruitment that occurred in the early days of the Blair government.” The full quote is reproduced below and can be seen on the blog by searching the July 2013 posts.

“Coming, as this outcome does, after several years when recruitment to teacher training has largely not been an issue, the present situation is a wake-up call for all concerned, and ministers must take urgent action if we are not to see a re-run of the crisis in teacher recruitment that occurred in the early days of the Blair government. There are two months left before the training courses start, so all is not yet lost. However, if my predictions prove accurate, some schools are going to struggle to recruit teachers next summer: good news for recruitment agencies, but probably not for some pupils. And, as I have said before, this is no way to create a world-class education system.”

Extract from

Has Michael Gove failed to learn the lessons of history?

Posted on July 2, 2013

There was a fairly swift response from Sanctuary Buildings that sparked something of a spat and the first Statistical Bulletin on the Teacher Supply Model for a while. Regular readers can make their own minds up about the extent to which I was “scaremongering” or a prophet ‘crying in the wilderness’. I wrote in August 2013 the following:

“So now I know I am officially a scaremonger. 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.’

Well, the first thing to note is that I haven’t said that there is a teacher shortage, just that training places are not being filled: not the same thing. Indeed, I have said a teacher shortage is less likely than in the past in the near future because Mr Gove has mandated that qualified teachers from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the whole of the USA can teach here as qualified teachers with no need to retrain. With an oversupply of teachers in parts of both Canada and Australia that should prevent any short-term problem developing even though another part of the government isn’t very keen on importing workers from abroad, presumably including from within the Commonwealth and a onetime colony.”

Extract from

Scaremongering!

Posted on August 14, 2013

I suspect anyone interested in the supply of teachers of physics, design and technology and business studies may have a different view about these quotes from those interested in the supply of PE and history teachers.

The DfE now controls the whole teacher supply pipeline from applications to train as a teacher to offering a job board as somewhere for schools in the state sector to place vacancies. To talk or write of a local education service these days would be as much of a misnomer as the write of a local health service rather than of the NHS.

Understanding and controlling teacher supply is important in the national interest and it is worth speculating what the landscape of teacher supply might look like in another nine years if the DfE became seriously involved in the ‘levelling up’ agenda?

Directing new teachers where to work and directing the management of promotions by specifying how MATs ought to deploy their staff might just be two of the ‘innovations’ to look forward to in the next decade if market forces are abandoned in favour of a more interventionist approach.

I am not sure that this blog will be there to chronicle those changes, but I hope to make it to its tenth birthday next year, if that isn’t tempting fate too much.

Teacher Supply – long term strategy needed

Posted on January 22, 2022 by John Howson

Here is a short piece commissioned by the ‘foundation for education development’ that first appeared on their website as a think piece .

The long-term planning of teacher supply in England is once again in a ‘bit of a mess’. After renewed interest by graduates in teaching as a career at the start of the pandemic, there is now little chance that the government will hit its 2022 target for the number of secondary trainees required to meet the demand from schools in 2023 as modelled by DfE statisticians.

2022 marks nearly a decade of missed training targets in subjects such as physics, business studies and design and technology across the country as a whole and for a wider range of subjects in much of southern England where the state sector is competing in the labour market with private schools and tutorial colleges for the services of teachers. In recent years, the new factor of a growing global market for teachers, fuelled to some extent by schools founded in England opening campuses overseas, has created new competition for the scarce resource that is secondary school teachers in some subjects.

Any shortage of teachers affects the campaign to level up outcomes. Ever since I joined the teaching profession over 50 years ago, schools in challenging circumstances and serving communities with high levels of deprivation have usually suffered the effects of teacher shortages more than schools where teaching is a delight and ofsted awards good grades.

So, if the problem isn’t new, and is well known, what are the solutions? Making teaching an attractive career starts with three basic requirements. These are pay; conditions and reputation. The last is the easiest to deal with: Ministers need to talk up teaching and recognise the work of classroom teachers and not just school leaders. A great deal of work was undertaken on conditions of service in the first decade of this century: now is the time to revisit and review that work. Finally, if new lawyers in London are starting with top firms at £150,000 a year, £35,000 or so to start in a challenging school in London may not look attractive to many graduates in key subjects: pay matters.

The pandemic has also shown the value of technology and the balance between teachers and learning technology needs to be addressed. This may be the simplest way to pay teachers more. Finally, good employers recognise the need for professional development. The government now needs to fund programmes that keep teachers in the profession and nurture them during career breaks. Is it time for a Teaching Czar?