ITT: hiccup not a change in direction?

Posted on May 27, 2021 by John Howson

Secondary schools across England might want to start thinking about their staffing needs for 2022 and 2023. Evidence from the data released earlier today by UCAS about application levels for postgraduate ITT courses reveals some disturbing trends.

This time last year, the pandemic caused something of a flurry of applications to train as a teacher. Applications have continued to increase this year and are currently about 24% higher for primary sector courses- where supply is generally adequate – but only 10% higher for the secondary sector overall. Within that sector there are some significant increases, but also some worrying numbers in terms of applications.

Looking at the key curriculum subject,s there must be concerns that in IT, design & technology, geography, languages, business studies and physics there will not be enough applicants of suitable quality to meet the number of places on offer. In business studies and physics there are more applicants than last year, but current trends suggest that unless there is a wave of new graduates seeking to enter teacher preparation courses over the summer the targets won’t be universally met.

In languages, the total number of applications this years is down in most languages on the May 202 number. The same is true for design and technology, where applications are down from 1,190 in May 2020 to 980 this May. So, far only 260 applications have been offered places, with just 30 fully placed.

A significant proportion of the increase in applications are in subjects such as history (+1,100) PE (+1,000) and mathematics (+1,830), whereas geography has 650 fewer applications than last year and biology around 2,000 fewer. History and PE are not subjects where more applicants are needed to meet targets, although more should equate to more choice and better teachers.

These numbers don’t suggest a golden age for secondary school teaching as a career, and should do more than cause a pause for thought at the School Teachers’ Review Body.

In the North East region the number of applicants, at 1,450 this May, is actually around 50 below the figure for May 2020. Fortunately, in London there are some 1,300 more applicants than last year and around 700 more in the South East. Applicants are also still remaining in the process, withdrawals are holding at 23% of applications, and are only up from two to three per cent of applicants.

Another interesting straw in the wind is that there are has been virtually no increase in applicants over the age of 40 when compared with May 2020 total for this age group. Younger career switchers are still looking at teaching as a career, but the increase in new graduates still remains sluggish. This is an area where better data would help flesh out the real picture in the secondary sector. How many of the applications for PE have come from personal trainers that have seen their business disappear? And why are applications for design and technology so low. At current levels, it is difficult to see a future for the subject in our schools, a point made in the past by this blog.

Finally, the Postgraduate Apprentice route seems to be heading towards a situation where it will take over from the School Direct Salaried route. How much longer can that route survive with less than 200 offers in the secondary sector, and fewer than 400 in the primary sector?

If there is not an influx of applicants in some subjects between now and the start of courses, then schools will find recruitment in 2022 challenging. If these numbers are a portent of a decline in interest in teaching, then the levelling up agenda may well be wishful thinking, unless a new strategy for teacher supply is introduced.

New Role: different blog

Posted on May 19, 2021 by John Howson

As regular readers of this blog know, I have been a county councillor in Oxfordshire for the past eight years and was re-elected for another term of office earlier this month.

Yesterday, my colleagues across the political parties elected me as their Chair of the County Council for the next year. In this role, I am the public face of the Council in non-political matters. As a result, this blog will mostly confine itself for the next twelve months to matters relating to teacher supply and the labour market for teachers that are part of my professional interest as chair at TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk and my travel book Twin Tracks.

I would like to thank readers for their support and comments over the years that I have been writing this blog. As Chair of the County Council, I support a number of Charities including Children Heard and Seen that works with children where a parent is in prison.

If any reader would like to make a donation to this Charity in appreciation of the posts on this blog over the years, then their web site is at https://childrenheardandseen.co.uk/?fbclid=IwAR3AmbJ97d6NOkq4r9sWoTwsbvsDYODJq8vfbRxPtlit_H8wQbFLdbeJCYM or their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/childrenheardandseen Please mark any donations ‘Oxfordshire Chair’s appeal’.

Bounce back

Posted on May 16, 2021 by John Howson

Data from TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk suggests that vacancies for teachers in schools in England are up by 47% between 1^st April and 14^th May this year when compared with the same period in 2020. Of course, that was the period at the height of the first lockdown. The increase for primary sector vacancies is even more dramatic: up by 95% from 2,770 in April and early May last year to 5,413 this year.

In the secondary sector, demand is up, but in subjects such as art, but only around two per cent. In the key curriculum subjects of the English Baccalaureate the increase is in the range of 20-30%, although IT vacancies are up by 34%, and those for languages by 38%. Interestingly, the increase for mathematics is only 17%. This may be down to the need for fewer re-advertisements than in past years as existing teacher stay put and more of those training to be teachers actually opt to enter the classroom.

However, it is not all good news. TeachVac has ‘red’ warning out for business studies and design and technology. This means schools anywhere in England, but especially in the South East and London areas, could experience challenges if trying to recruit teachers in these subjects. The same challenge will apply for physics but, as most science posts are advertised as general science vacancies, it is not possible to quantify exactly the extent of the problem. Teachers may apply for either specific physics posts or those for a ‘science’ teacher.

Although demand in the London area is weaker than in recent years it is still higher than in many parts of England. At present, the South East Region is the region with the greatest demand for teachers. Yorkshire and The Humber Region is the area north of London where vacancy rates are at their highest in the secondary sector.

Part of the reason for the level of demand in the South East is the high number if private schools. Demand for teachers from those schools appears to be holding up well.

On the basis of the evidence from the 34,000 vacancies for teachers identified so far in 2021, the demand for teachers is once again going to become an issue in parts of England by 2023. It will be important to track the level of interest in teaching as a career over the next few months and compare it with the same period last year. If a decline in those likely to be career changers is not matched by increased interest from new graduates, then that will be an early warning sign for policymakers.

The other ‘unknown’ is workings of the international school market for teachers, and its impact on the market in England. Will there be a flood or returning teachers from say China, Hong Kong and the Middle East or will demand hold up and fresh demand take more teachers out of the home market? Only time will tell.

Leveling Up will need a new Funding Formula

Posted on May 9, 2021 by John Howson

The current National Funding Formula is fine as far as it goes. However, as I have written before on this blog, it is based upon a notion of equality that resembles the ‘equal slices of the cake’ model of funding distribution. That’s fine if that’s what you want out of the Formula, and the f40 Group of Local authorities have tirelessly campaigned for fair – more- funding for their areas. Again, they are right to do so.

However, if the new agenda has levelling up at its heart, then it is necessary to ask whether the present method of distributing cash to schools and other education establishments will achieve that aim?

As the debate about the High Needs Block of funding for SEND has made very clear, some children cost more to educate than others. If you want all children to achieve a minimum standard of education then some will always cost more to achieve that goal than others. The Pupil Premium recognised this fact. Changing the date of calculation and thus excluding some children from the Premium seems an odd way to start the ‘levelling up’ campaign.

There is a key decision for government to make if they really mean to introduce a ‘levelling up’ campaign in the school sector. Do you hypothecate, as with the Pupil Premium, creating funds only to be used for levelling up purposes or do you distribute more funds generally and leave it to the schools and Trusts to manage the distribution of the cash? This approach leaves maintained schools that are not academies in a bit of a limbo as they don’t have a mechanism to ‘pool’ funds for the common good, as MATs are able to do.

When it works well, the second approach is better, as it is less of a blunt tool than the first method as anyone that has read the history of school funding over the last century will know.

There is a further issue with a Formula tied to geographical areas, as this blog has noted before. Oxfordshire is largely an affluent county, but there are pockets of deprivation in Banbury and parts of Oxford; not to mention the issue of rural poverty as well. Any ‘levelling up’ agenda must tackle these issues in addition to the more obvious areas of underperformance in education achievements.

Overlaying this issue of ‘levelling up’ is the effect on the present Formula of the downturn in the birth rate and its consequences for small primary schools. Do we want them to compete by drawing in parents willing to drive their children to such schools? An alternative is to close them and let council Taxpayers pay the cost of transporting children to other schools. Might work in urban areas, but the Tories would quickly find that save our Schools campaigns can impact more on election chances for Councillors than almost anything else except perhaps closure of a local hospital. There are also implications for the climate change agenda. I would be interested to know where the Green Party stands on this matter.

Doing nothing won’t help the ‘levelling up’ agenda, so if the government is really serious in what it is saying, then action will be needed. Making all schools academies, however repugnant the loss of local democratic control is to people like me, does offer some levers hat MATs can use, but local authorities cannot under the present rules.

It will be interesting to see what plays out over the next few months in a debate where doing nothing will have as many consequences as doing something.

Election Day

Posted on May 6, 2021 by John Howson

Today is a busy day for me as I am defending my county council seat and standing for Police and Crime Commissioner in Thames Valley.

This extract from a 2018 post on the blog tells you why I am standing in both these elections

Crime and a lack of learning

Posted on August 28, 2018

During the summer, the Ministry of Justice published a report called ‘A Sporting Chance: An Independent Review of Sport in Youth and Adult Prisons’ by Professor Rosie Meek. You can access the report at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/733184/a-sporting-chance-an-independent-review-sport-in-justice.pdf

I have only just caught up with reading the report, but what struck me forcibly was the following paragraph:

Those in custody are likely to have disrupted and negative experiences of learning prior to incarceration, and to lack confidence in their learning abilities.

A recent data-matching exercise between the Ministry of Justice and Department for Education* showed that of the young people sentenced to custody in 2014, 90% have a previous record of persistent absence from school and almost a quarter of those sentenced to less than 12 months in custody have been permanently excluded from school.

In terms of achievement, only 1% of those sentenced to less than 12 months achieved 5 or more GCSES (or equivalents) graded A* – C including English and Maths.

Furthermore, illustrating the over-representation of people who have been in both the care system and the criminal justice system, 31% of those sentenced to custody for 12 months or longer, and 27% of those sentenced to custody for less than 12 months had been in the care of a local authority.

* MoJ/DfE (2016). Understanding the Educational Background of Young Offenders: Joint Experimental Statistical Report from the Ministry of Justice and Department for Education.

There is a powerful message here to schools that don’t have a credible policy for dealing with their challenging pupils, other than excluding them from school. We need to work together for the good of society. The DfE needs to ensure there is a coherent curriculum, including English and mathematics, but not necessarily the rest of the English Baccalaureate for pupils that can use these subjects to retain their place as learners. There is a space for sport and other non-classroom based subjects in the curriculum.

Thanks for reading

Are schools wasting £30 million pounds of public money?

Posted on May 2, 2021 by John Howson

TES Global, the largest supplier of paid-for teacher recruitment advertising in the field of education has just published their accounts for the year ending 31^st August 2020. Those so far published are for TES Global Limited. Those for TES topco are yet to appear. The published accounts can be found on the Companies House page, by searching under TES Global.

The accounts for the year to 31^st August 2020 included almost six months of the pandemic, so it is not surprising that turnover from continuing operations fell by around £2 million to £59.2 million. Thanks to interest receivable and other income of £25.3 million, the Group made an overall profit of £22.3 million. Without that income there would have been a loss of around £3 million; this despite cutting the wages and salary bill from just under £14 million to around £9.5 million, and slashing headcount from 235 to 191.

The sale of the TES owned Teacher Supply Business in December 2020, for a total consideration of £27 million including upfront cash of £12.5 million, will no doubt further help to strengthen the balance sheet. However, the income from those businesses were, presumably, included in these accounts.

Of interest to me, as Chair of TeachVac, and no doubt civil servants at the DfE running the DfE teacher vacancy site, was how the TES was doing serving the teacher recruitment market, and how much cash was it securing from state-funded schools for recruitment advertising, all of which is now on-line, like both TeachVac and the DfE sites.

As the TES has been pursuing a policy of persuading schools to pay an annual subscription for several years now, rather than point of sale advertising, the TES Group income has been less affected by the downturn in vacancies during the pandemic than it would have been if each advert had been paid for individually. A quick calculation from the published accounts suggests that while overall revenue fell by 4%, advertising revenue continued to benefit from the switch to subscriptions. Such income rose from £37.6 million the previous year to £42.4 million in 2019-2020. Traditional advertising income fell from £17.7 million to £10.9 million during the same period.

The TES has some 1,000 international schools and presumably schools elsewhere in the United Kingdom, as well as non- state-funded schools that contributed to the £42.4 million of revenue. A generous estimate might suggest perhaps £35 million was paid by state-funded schools in England in subscription income in 2019-2020 to the TES.

It is interesting to compare this with the DfE evidence to the STRB earlier this year, where at paragraph 45 they stated that:

With schools spending in the region of £75m on recruitment advertising and not always filling vacancies, there are very significant gains to be made in this area. Over 75% of schools in England 14 are now signed up to use the service and over half a million jobseekers visited Teaching Vacancies in 2020. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/967761/STRB_Written_Evidence_2021.pdf

According to the latest DfE announcement, some 78% of schools have now signed up to the service https://www.publicsectorexecutive.com/articles/councils-encouraged-sign-dfes-free-teaching-vacancies-service?utm_source=Public%20Sector%20Executive&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=12340062_Newsletter%2027%20Apr&dm_i=IJU,7CHNI,AUR327,TT9F6,1

I wonder where the other £30 million of so is going – surely not to the local press or eteach and The Guardian?

Either way, that is still a lot of cash schools are spending because they don’t have enough confidence in either TeachVac or the DfE sites to allow them to take the risk of not signing up to the TES. Or is it just inertia?

If the government is serious about helping schools save this money spent on recruitment advertising for other purposes, and the cash will surely be needed in the post-pandemic world, however speedy the recovery, given the amount of public cash spent in the past twelve months. There must be a campaign to encourage teachers to use the free sites, and for schools to always ask where applicants either received notice of the vacancy or saw the vacancy that they applied for. This will allow schools to evaluate the effect of paid-for advertising and the TES subscription compared with the use of the free sites instead.

Interestingly, TeachVac reached a new high of 6,000,000 hits in twelve months at the end of April. This was despite the fall in vacancies on the site during the past twelve months as schools cut the number of teaching post advertised.

May 2021 should be the first 1,000,000 hit month for TeachVac, with corresponding highs in visitors and vacancies matched as schools return to a more normal recruitment pattern, as explained in a previous post on this blog.

Teacher Shortages in 2022?

Posted on April 29, 2021 by John Howson

The present satisfactory state of recruitment into teacher training looks likely to be short-lived if the messages from this month’s UCAS data are interpreted in a particular way. After almost 30 years of looking at either weekly or monthly data on applications and acceptances, one can start to discern trends and patterns. Covid threw a spanner in the works of what was an emerging teacher supply crisis. Has that spanner now been retrieved?

One the one hand, applicant numbers are still up on last year. The increase is just over 5,000 for those with a domicile in England, from 26,280 in April 2020 to 31,460 this April. Interestingly, there has been virtually no increase in applicants from the North East, but a large increase in applicants domiciled in the London region. This should be good news, as it is in London that there is a strong demand for teachers.

More worrying is the relative lack of interest from new graduates in teaching as a career. There are only around 700 more new young graduates 21 or under this year compared with the same time in 2020, whereas there are 1,300 more in the 25-29 age group. Career changers, perhaps furloughed or made redundant by the pandemic, seem more interested in teaching than young new graduates. Indeed, there are only 60 more male applicants in the youngest new graduate age group than this time last year. A trickle rather than a flood.

The most worrying number is the drop in applications for design and technology, from 970 in April last year to 880 this April. In April 2019 it was 950, so the decline must be of concern. Applications to train as a languages teachers are also weak when compared with previous years. However, the increase in applications to train as a mathematics teachers from 5,390 last April to 7,450 this year is good news, as ARK noted in their recent ITT bulletin.

The bizarre over-recruitment of both history and PE teachers continues, with 1,500 offers in PE and 1,230 in history. This compares with 380 offers in physics, 230 in design and technology and 330 in computing.

School Direct Salaried as a route continues to decline, whereas School Direct non-salaried continues to grow, if not to thrive. Higher Education has done well in attracting applications for primary courses, up from less than 14,000 to over 18,000 this year. The increase is slightly less for secondary phase courses. Apprenticeships have taken up some of the slack from the School Direct Salaried route, but offers in the secondary sector remain derisory at this point in the cycle.

So, there will be problems in 2022 recruiting design and technology teachers, physics teachers and probably business studies teachers as well, but a glut of history and PE teachers in most parts of England. This blog will look at the likely outcomes in other subjects once the trends of the next couple of months become apparent. We don’t expect a big rush into teaching unless new graduates suddenly discover there are no jobs elsewhere and turn to teaching once their courses have finished and they finally have a degree.

New readers start here

Posted on April 20, 2021 by John Howson

There are a bumper set of local elections across England on 6^th May. Some people are finding their way to this site as a result of the fact that I am defending my county council seat in Oxfordshire and also standing as the Lib Dem candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner in Thames Valley – as I did in the previous two elections for this post.

To help those reaching the site as a result of wanting to know more about my published views on this blog, I have brought together some links to posts over the years. Some are more personal than others.

Over time views may also alter as circumstances alter. Thus schools becoming academies is now a different matter to the situation when this blog first started.

Any way here are links to some posts you might want to read first:

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2019/03/07/knife-crime-must-be-tackled/

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2014/05/09/knife-crime-do-we-need-mandatory-sentences/

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2019/08/11/rods-poles-and-perches/

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2019/03/11/support-youth-justice/

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2018/11/14/isolation-poor-use-of-funding/

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2018/05/03/upturn-in-average-number-of-young-people-in-custody/

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2014/06/22/supreme-court-one-parliament-a-half/

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2021/01/23/time-for-jacobs-law/

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2018/11/23/memories/

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2019/04/05/a-parent-in-prison-is-not-a-crime/

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2018/08/28/crime-and-a-lack-of-learning/

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2018/04/14/the-responsibility-of-us-all/

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/thank-you-mr-taylor/

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2015/01/29/can-we-halve-the-number-of-women-in-prison/

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/youth-numbers-in-custody-halve-in-a-decade/

There are rather more than I remembered writing, but with more than 1,100p posts I guess that isn’t really a surprise.

What about Middle leaders? Is there a concern about recruitment?

Posted on April 13, 2021 by John Howson

When there is a mis-match between the numbers of teachers required in certain subjects to meet the identified need by schools to staff a curriculum area various strategies are used to ensure that schools can deliver their timetables. One such strategy is using teachers with less than ideal subject knowledge until a better qualified teacher can be recruited.

However, if there is a shortfall in training, what are the consequences some years later for the recruitment of middle leaders in the subject? Design and Technology makes an interesting case study that I have used before. As a subject, it regularly fails to recruit sufficient trainees to meet the government’s target, especially since the demise of most of the undergraduate routes some years ago.

The UCAS data for the end of the 2020 cycle (discussed in an earlier post) provides data on the number of trainees recruited. (I could use the DfE’s ITT Census, but as this is not a subject that features much in Teach First numbers, the UCAS data covers most trainees).

Design & Technology	Recruited into training*	After 5% wastage
2014	470	447
2015	530	504
2016	405	385
2017	300	285
2018	295	280
2019	400	380
2020	615	584

*Source: UCAS end of cycle for trainee numbers

The table shows the changes in recruitment over the past seven years with the figure for an assumed 5% non-completion of the course.

So how many middle leaders might be required in this subject? Using the TeachVac database, it was possible to identify some 390 promoted posts in the subject advertised by schools across England in 2020. After removing those linked to specific parts of the subject, especially food technology, where the promoted post may be as much a recruitment incentive as a real middle leadership position, there were 300 posts for middle leaders in the subject. After allowing for re-advertisements, of which it can be estimated that there were about 60 during the year, this meant around 240 likely vacancies for middle leaders of design and technology.

How long does a teacher need before being ready for middle leadership? This is not an easy question to answer. For the sake of this exercise, let’s start by assuming 5 years. Thus the training cohort of 2014 might have been in the market for middle leadership positions in 2020. Assuming 450 entered teaching, (447 rounded up), and demand was 240, this would mean nearly two teachers from that cohort for each vacancy for a middle leader.

Now followers of the labour market for teachers will know that retention is an issue. After five years of service, perhaps a third of those entering teaching are no longer teaching in state schools. So, we need to discount the 450 by a third. The new total is 315 for 240 vacancies; a much less healthier pool from which to draw middle leaders.

Fortunately, 2014 was a relatively good year for recruitment into training. What will happen when the 2017 cohort reach five years of service in 2023? Assuming the same level of wastage, there might be only around 200 teachers left from that cohort. Hopefully, demand for middle leaders will be lower, but if it is similar to the estimate of 240-250 vacancies for 2020, then looking down the road a bit, some schools are going to have a real recruitment problem in the middle years of the decade.

Solutions include persuading more from earlier cohorts to take on middle leadership, even if they were previously reluctant to do so; accelerating the newer cohorts into leadership – not possible until the 2019 and 2020 cohorts come through; merging design and technology with say, art and design where supply of middle leaders is better, into larger faculties offering a better career prospect.

Different schools will adopt different tactics, and some may also offer better salaries than in the past through larger TLR payments.

So, should there be concerns about the supply of middle leaders? I think there ought at the very least, to be some discussion about the issue, and which schools might be most affected by any possible shortages?

UCAS end of 2020 cycle ITT data

Posted on April 8, 2021 by John Howson

UCAS has today published the end of cycle data for courses that started last autumn. Regular readers that follow this blog will know that much of what is contained in the data has been commented upon in posts on this blog la the August and October.

However, ‘The End of Cycle’ (EoC) report contains much more information than the regular monthly updates published during the cycle. One area is in that of the ethnicity of applicants and the percentages accepted. Why gender is seen as capable of being revealed each month and ethnicity is not is an interesting question. I assume it is down to the fact that numbers in some categories would be too small to make publication viable or appropriate.

Regardless of the reason, the EoC report contains some interesting data.

Accepted percentages 2020 from UCAS PG ITT data
	Male	Female	All
Black	37%	53%	48%
Other	41%	51%	48%
Asian	50%	61%	58%
Not Stated	55%	57%	56%
Mixed [sic]	58%	62%	61%
Total	63%	70%	68%
White	67%	74%	72%

Source: UCAS

Black male applicants had less than a four in ten chance of being accepted on to a course compared with 74% of white females that were accepted. It would be interesting to drill down into these figures to see whether there are regional and subject/phase differences within the categories.

My assumption would be that London courses perform well in terms of acceptance of ethnic minority candidates and those courses in regions furthest from the capital may attract few applicants from ethnic groups other than the White group. This can pose another issue if a few courses receive the bulk of say Black African Male applicants. The policy should be to take the most suitable applicants.

I don’t know how much effort the DfE puts into monitoring these statistics and how they respond to the outcomes? Are civil servants content with the disparity between the different groups or should more work be undertaken to reduce the differences across gender and ethnicity?

Male applicants domiciled in London had one of the lowest acceptance rates overall for me of just 50% of applicants. It would be interesting to cross-tab the domicile by region with ethnicity. By contrast, 86% of women applicants domiciled in the north east appear to have been accepted That seems like a high figure to me and it would be interesting to see how many of these were accepted before say, Christmas. Providers that fill courses quickly can save time and money but such a practice begs the question about whether there should be a closing date for applications to allow more equal chances not determined by how quickly you decide upon teaching as a career.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Category Archives: employment