A grade or a pass?

Posted on August 24, 2017 by John Howson

There has been much discussion, not least on the BBC’s Today programme this morning, about gaining a pass at GCSE with only 17% correct answers. Now is it a pass or a grade? The concept of a pass implies a minimum standard, whereas the grade shows what candidates know. If you make the exam harder, candidates may well do less well, unless the top end wasn’t stretching the most able sufficiently.

Now it appears that a clean grade system linked to what pupils have demonstrated they know in the form of examination administered this year in English and maths might have produced significant changes to outcomes if early murmurings are correct. How you allow for comparisons over time then becomes a challenge for the authorities.

I wonder whether Ministers originally thought of a simple solution; Grade 9 = 90%, down to Grade 1 =10% in 10% groupings allied to the number grade? Such a system would have been a radical change and meant comparisons with previous years were no longer possible. But, that has happened in the past, and as I made clear in the previous post, grades are a relatively recent invention, introduced only after examinations at sixteen became commonplace for all.

I was also interested in the quote from the secondary school heads association, ASCL that ‘GCSE exams are putting pupils’ mental health at risk, Young people taking a typical set of the reformed GCSEs will sit about eight hours more of exams than under the old system’. Such a comment doesn’t surprise me. However, if we are going to return to the degree of difficulty in examinations set for previous generations, do we also need to look at the number of public examinations those pupils sat and how the school timetable was arranged.

One of the trends ever since Matriculation and School Certificate disappeared in 1951 to become first GCEs and then GCSEs has been for students to take more subjects. This is allied to the debate about whether we want our young people to know more about less or less about more? A wider curriculum inevitably means many will struggle to obtain good grades across the board on the timings allowed within the school week if exams are made harder and comparable with when fewer subjects were studied; hence the possible growth in private tutoring to supplement the work of schools and the social disparity in achievement this creates. All this without any discussion on the competence of teachers in teaching their subject, a key discussion point in mathematics where there has been a teacher shortage.

Should we have say five hard GCSEs or nine relatively easier ones allowing time for physical activities and other non-examined subjects? This is a societal decision, but we may well be damaging our young people if we try to achieve both by making content harder and keeping the number of subjects the same. After all, there are still the same number of hours in a week.

What is the correct approach for twenty first century England. I suspect that secondary schools will eventually follow the primary sector in narrowing the curriculum to allow more time for the basics, especially English and mathematics. As a result, standards will rise in these subjects, but the curriculum will narrow. Will a narrower curriculum be welcome for many pupils or will they react in a manner that sees them become more disaffected? We shall see.

TeachVac continues to grow

Posted on August 22, 2017 by John Howson

As many readers of this blog know, I am chair of the company that operates TeachVac – the National Vacancy Service for Schools and Teachers. Once seen by some as a concept that wouldn’t survive, TeachVac is now starting its fourth cycle of free, unpaid, recruitment advertising for teaching posts. Covering teaching vacancies across the whole of England, with plans to expand further in the autumn, TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk offers a free service to both schools and applicants looking for a teaching post and has doubled in size yet again over the last twelve months.

In addition to handling vacancies for individual schools, TeachVac also handles organisations placing multiple vacancies at the same time and has special arrangements for both dioceses and MATs that help those with decentralised recruitment policies track what is happening in their schools.

With coverage of all 151 local authority areas in England, TeachVac includes vacancies in both state-funded schools of all descriptions as well as private schools and from the start of 2017, state funded-primary schools throughout the whole of England. TeachVac is now the largest site for teaching vacancies in England and, of course is free to both schools posting vacancies as well as those seeking a teaching post.

Vacancies are shown to registered job seekers at one of three different levels, classroom teacher; promoted post and leadership positions. Job seekers may specify either a geographical area based a radius of a postcode or a specific local authority area for the larger rural counties. New matches are sent to candidates every day and allow the potential applicant to decide whether to apply for the vacancy. TeachVac makes it possible to track how many applicants are interested in each vacancy.

Over the course of a year, new entrants to the profession can see something of the frequency of vacancies in the subject they are preparing to teach and the location where they wish to teach. This also applies to teachers overseas wishing to return to England to teach and, indeed, any teacher considering either a change of school or a promotion. TeachVac regularly receives visits from those located in over 100 countries around the world each year.

With its wealth of real-time data, TeachVac monitors the recruitment round as it is taking place. This, along with saving money for schools was the reason for creating TeachVac in the first place.

TeachVac is also uniquely placed to match numbers in training with vacancies across the recruitment cycle providing early warnings of shortages both in specific subjects or geographical areas so that schools can make the necessary adjustments to their recruitment campaigns. As hinted in previous posts, although 2017 was not the worst recruitment round of recent years, 2018 is shaping up to be a real challenge for many schools.

If you want to recruit a teacher, find a new teaching post or understand what is actually happening the teacher recruitment marketplace then visit www.teachvac.co.uk – the National Vacancy Service for Schools and Teachers.

All change

Posted on August 21, 2017 by John Howson

One of the problems of living beyond a certain age is an awareness that certain things happen more than once. This Thursday is another example of such an event. GCSE grade change from letters to numbers and there are more grades available. Well, I recall when the London University Board went the other way in 1963. Numbers in 1962; letter grades in 1963. Actually, a universal grading system across all Examination Boards didn’t materialise until well into the 1970s as candidate numbers taking the exams mushroomed, after comprehensive re-organisation did away with most of the selective systems of the 1944 Education Act. Part of the universal grading need may also have been to ensure comparability between GCE and CSE, the other examination that had sprung up.

Changing the grades from letters into numbers this week will undoubtedly upset Human Resource departments across the country as they will have to explain to those hiring youngsters from this year onwards that the old norms they are familiar with have changed. But, to an educated population that should be manageable. There is a useful table on Wkipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCE_Ordinary_Level_(United_Kingdom) identify the changed and relative standards between grades.

A far bigger change took place in 1984 when norm referencing was replaced by criterion referencing. Previously, the percentage of top grades was limited and did not identify the ability of specific candidates. It was as if, of the 100 candidates taking their driving test today, only 10% could pass regardless of how well all candidates had been prepared. There may well be situations where that sort of ranking is appropriate, but the Secondary Examinations Council clearly recognised that public examinations were not one of them. One of the results of the change to the system was a more ruthless attitude to entry policies in some subjects, and wide differences between the percentage of A* and A grades between subjects, as this blog has pointed out in the past. Where schools only enter candidates that are expected to do well and need the subject for their next course of study, grades are likely to be higher on average. Where there is open access, there is likely to be less of a bunching at the top grades.

None of this is to denigrate in any way the work of students, teachers and their families in the preparation for the examination season. As ever, I pay tribute to those that have undergone the experience. Regular readers of this blog will also know that in the 1960s, I had to take English Language GCE some six times before achieving a pass. At that point I fully understood the purpose behind the motivational tale of Robert the Bruce watching a spider trying to spin its web.

So, as ever, my thanks to the education community for their work and to parents for their support, but above all my best wishes and thanks to the candidates that either already have or will receive their results this week. I hope you go on to a recognition that learning should a lifelong activity and not just a stage to be endured at school, even if how we measure it can be a movable feast.

Buy British education

Posted on August 4, 2017 by John Howson

At the end of July the DfE published a research report into ‘the UK revenue from education related exports and transnational education activity 2010-2014’ https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/education-related-exports-and-transnational-education-activity The higher education sector is by far and away the largest contributor to revenue in this sector, increasing from 60% to 66% of the total income during this period.

Non-EU student income across the higher education sector increased by around 30% in current prices from £6.56 billion to £8.55 billion between 2010 and 2014. Income from research and other contracts rose by around 56% in current prices from £0.77 billion to £1.19 billion over the same period. Interestingly, income from both the further education sector and from English Language training fell during this period. The latter, it is said, because courses were shorter in length, thus providing lower fee income. The FE sector now accounts for just two per cent of overseas income. Some of the reduction may have as a result of the crackdown on private colleges and potential visa applications from those that after entry didn’t actually become students.

Independent schools witnessed a 28% growth in income from their UK based operations. They will also have benefitted from the return to the UK of any profits from their overseas campuses established in recent years. The transnational income for the schools sector increased by some 47%, based upon an estimate of the trend data. The local spending associated with this type of activity is excluded from the figures when calculating the transnational revenue figure.

Education publishing, the most mature of the product sectors selling education overseas, saw only an eight per cent growth during the period 2010 to 2014, whereas education related equipment sales increased in revenue terms by 20%, based on the estimate of trend data and education-related broadcasting by nearly a third at 31%. Publishing may find it hard to grown in the future, especially if students continue to switch from paper to on-line sources for information and learning materials. Books generally carry a much high profit margin than resources in new technologies in the same way that print advertising is more profitable than on-line for many publishers.

After BREXIT, the value of EU sales will be added to those generated in the rest of the world. This should pride a one-off change even if registrations from EU students and sales to schools and students in EU countries actually fall post 2019.

Education exporting is an area where both the Business Department and the DfE need to work closely together to encourage exports of educational goods and services and to support both education trade bodies and individual exporters. Fortunately, there is plenty of demand, as is shown on the government’s exporting web site. However, the range of countries is quite narrow and excludes large sections of the world, especially in the Americas.

There are new potential sources of income such as those from on-line courses increasingly provided by both universities and private sector trainers. This could provide some companies with a lucrative new form of income that allows them to export without ever leaving the comfort of their home base.

Celebrating Diversity

Posted on August 3, 2017 by John Howson

Twenty years ago this autumn, the then Teacher Training Agency (TTA) launched an advertising campaign to attract new recruits to train as a teacher. There were two adverts. The talking heads one with the strap line, ‘no one forgets a good teacher’ remains memorable, but the other, although more innovative as an advertisement, doesn’t register in the collective memory to the same degree. In a sign of how far society has changed since 1997, when published, neither advert contained either a web site or email contact address; unthinkable these days.

At the same time the TTA was launching its advertising campaign it was also starting its first drive to recruit minority groups into teaching, starting with a focus on ethnic minority groups. There were a series of conferences to launch the policy, including one in East London addressed by the new Minister, Estelle Morris, newly launched on her career in government.

A decade later I conducted a detailed study for the then TDA into progress in recruitment of minorities into teaching and some years later I replicated the work just on the progress of recruiting ethnic minority candidates both into training and into teaching. As a result, it is interesting to see the data in the recently published ITT provider profiles about the change in percentages of minority groups recruited into training. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/initial-teacher-training-performance-profiles-2015-to-2016

n many respects, 2015/16 as a good year for minority groups seeking to enter teaching. The percentage of male recruits broke through the 30% barrier for the first time since 2010/11; the percentage of students with a declared disability increased to its highest in the past decade, to reach nine per cent of postgraduate students; similarly, students from a minority ethnic background reached a new high for the decade of 14% of postgraduate entrants. There was even an increase among older trainees over the age of 25, although, at 54%, is still well below the record 62% of trainees over 25 that was reached 2010/11.

How far these percentages reflect either a genuine change in policy or just the outcome of falling overall application levels isn’t clear from the data. An analysis of the provider data for trainees from an ethnic minority background, where numbers are large enough to be reported, shows that London providers dominate the scene, with half the top twenty providers with the best ratio of ethnic minority trainees to overall numbers of postgraduates recruited being located in London. Of the other ten providers, five are located in the West Midlands; two in Yorkshire and The Humber and one in each of the South East, East Midlands and East of England. There were no providers north of the West Midlands or in the South West in the top 20 providers for graduate trainees where data is reported. Indeed, six of the next ten are also in London and the first identified provider in the South West is only in the 39^th highest position.

In this context, the reduction in offers to new applicants for 2017 by London providers, reported in previous blogs, will be watched with interest to see what effect it has on recruitment profiles. However, it won’t be until the summer of 2019 that we will know the outcomes.

PE trainees find jobs: but what are they teaching?

Posted on July 31, 2017 by John Howson

Last week the DfE published the ITT provider profiles for 2015/16. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/initial-teacher-training-performance-profiles-2015-to-2016 The data provides the final look at the cohort that were seeking work for September 2016 and January this year. One of the most interesting tables is the completion rate by subject.

	Percentage awarded QTS	Percentage in a teaching post
All Primary and Secondary	91%	95%
Primary	91%	96%
Secondary	92%	94%
of which:
Computing	84%	92%
Physics	85%	91%
Chemistry	87%	93%
Total Science	88%	93%
Mathematics	89%	92%
Biology	90%	95%
Religious Education	91%	96%
Design & Technology	92%	95%
Geography	92%	97%
Modern & Ancient Languages	93%	92%
English	93%	97%
Other	93%	92%
History	94%	95%
Music	95%	93%
Art & Design	95%	93%
Physical Education	96%	94%
Drama	96%	96%
Business Studies	x	91%
Classics	x	97%

There seems to be something of a link between subjects where recruitment was challenging and the percentage of entrants awarded QTS at the normal point of completion of the programme. For instance, only 85% of physics trainees were awarded QTS compared with 96% of Physical Education trainees. Now, physics is a subject with perennial recruitment problems, whereas Physical Education faces the opposite situation with many more applicants than places. Indeed, this was the first year where recruitment controls were in place, so that makes the data even more interesting.

The percentages of those in a teaching post must be treated with a degree of caution since a footnote records that: “When calculating the proportion “in a teaching post”, we exclude those with an unknown employment status from those awarded QTS.” SFR page 10. There is also the issue of what “in a teaching post” actually means? It does not mean only fully employed teaching the subject against which you are shown as having trained. Neither does it mean teaching in a maintained school nor even in a school. Once the DfE can link the identification number for a trainee with the School Workforce Census it should be possible to be much more specific in the presentation of the data. In the meantime, it appears as if 94% of Physical Education trainees are in a teaching post compared with only 91% of Business Studies trainees. This is the opposite of the situation shown in the TeachVac data www.teachvac.co.uk based upon an analysis of vacancies advertised by schools. So, either many of the Physical Education trainees aren’t teaching PE in state funded schools or there is a mis-match between vacancies and trainee numbers that needs exploring further if public money isn’t to be wasted on training teachers for non-state funded schools.

The other interesting subject is English. Here trainee numbers were much high than the previous year, but 97% are shown as in a teaching post. This suggests that the complaints of the previous year that the ITT allocations had been too low were fully justified. Looking ahead, the profiles for next year are likely to show similar percentages in employment, but lower numbers having obtained QTS in a range of different subjects.

The DfE are proposing to make changes to the profiles and the Statistical Bulleting invites comments about the new proposals. The proposals seem eminently sensible to me, but still don’t answer the question about where and what trainees are teaching. There also is nothing about Ofsted and their findings of the link between training and employment mooted some years ago as of great importance in measuring quality.

New Evidence on recruitment crisis

Posted on July 28, 2017 by John Howson

An analysis of TeachVac’s www.teachvac.co.uk data on recorded vacancies announced by secondary schools in the first seven months of 2017 sreveals how much schools in London and the Home Counties dominate the list of the top 100 schools regularly advertising vacancies.

Government Region	PERCENTAGE OF TOP 100 SCHOOLS BY RECORDED VACANCIES
LONDON	37%
SOUTH EAST	29%
EAST of ENGLAND	12%
WEST MIDLANDS	6%
EAST MIDLANDS	5%
NORTH WEST	3%
SOUTH WEST	3%
YORKSHIRE & THE HUMBER	3%
NORTH EAST	2%

TeachVac records the vacancies from the vast majority of secondary schools, both state funded and independent and links those vacancies with teachers and trainees seeking employment. This free service to schools and trainees, teachers and returners to the profession also provides an interesting amount of data for analysis. TeachVac’s Summer Review for 2017, looking at some data around the labour market for teachers, is published today and copies can be obtained by contacting enquiries@teachvac.com The price is £15 plus postage and packing.

Returning to the percentages in the table above, even allowing for schools that regularly advertise to create a talent pool; for schools where TeachVac may have picked up advertisements for School Direct teacher preparation courses; for re-advertisements and other advertisements that have could have been double counted, the data is so stark as to make clear the likely regional extent of recruitment issues in the labour market for main scale classroom teachers in secondary schools.

Some 80% of the 100 recorded schools with the most advertised vacancies are in or around the London area, compared with just eight per cent for schools across the north of England and 11% across the Midlands. Of course, this also doesn’t take into account the different sizes of schools; their differential funding patterns and turnover rates. However, the difference between the top three regions and the rest of England is so stark as to suggest that even when these factors are taken into account there will still be a significant difference between London and most of the rest of England.

In my previous post, helpfully given extra publicity by the TES, I recorded the fact that for many subjects 2018 is already shaping up to be a challenging labour market. But, for many schools that is also going to be the case for unexpected vacancies that arise for January 2018. The Review identifies the TeachVac analysis of vacancies compared to the size of the ITT supply side as recorded by the November 2017 ITT census.

The Review also looks at head teacher turnover in the primary sector. Recording data on the labour market for teachers is important in helping shape the future needs of the profession. The fall in acceptances for 2017 training provision the London area, reported in this blog yesterday, is also of concern for 2018. Should there be some help for trainees living in London above the normal bursary arrangements, as there is with teachers’ salaries for those working in the Capital?

Where is school-based teacher training going?

Posted on July 27, 2017 by John Howson

Is there going to be a late bounce in acceptances into teacher preparation programmes for September 2017. The UCAS data for numbers accepted onto graduate progammes by mid July 2017, published today, shows a fall of 900 in placed applicants but an increase over last year of 890 in conditionally placed applications and 340 more applications holding offers than at mid-July last year. Assuming these are not applicants holding multiple offers and that conditional and firm offers being held translate eventually into applicants that turn up at the start of the course, then overall numbers might not look very different to last year. That’s good news for the DfE as it generally likes to talk in overall terms, but delve below the surface a bit and the picture is a somewhat murkier.

In the secondary sector, history and geography provide, between them, 510 of the 1,200 growth in offers to set against the 900 few placed applicants. Mathematics and English are also holding up well compared with last year, as is computing/IT. But, elsewhere the news is grimmer. Music is facing a decline, with the lowest July offers total since 2013/14. Business Studies, already a subject where schools face recruitment challenges, has only 160 offer in total, of which just 30 are shown as ‘placed’. Most other subjects have profiles below last year in terms of offers and similar profiles to the previous recruitment round. All this does not bode well for providing teachers for a growing secondary school population in September 2018.

Previous blog posts have commented on the situation in London and it now looks to be of great concern. There are only 4,750 applications with offers in London compared with more than 5,000 at this point last year. Assuming most primary courses are full, this means the majority of the shortfall will be in secondary subjects. Considering London receives by far and away the most applications, at over 23,000 this year (down from 25,000+ last year) it is important to know more about the distribution of the many unsuccessful applications as the offer ratio seems to have remained the same at around 20%: in the north West there is a closer to 25% offer to applications ratio.

As remarked in previous months, it is the younger applicants that are deserting teaching. There are 800 fewer applicants from those age 22 or under this year compared with 2016 and nearly 1,000 fewer than two years ago at this point in the cycle. Some 300 of the reduction compared with two years ago are due to a reduction in the number of young male graduates applying for teaching.

There remains a startling decline in offers for secondary School Direct Salaried places, down from 1,420 last July to just 1,040 this July of which just 220 are confirmed placed applicants. Higher education courses have attracted more applications than last year for both primary and secondary courses. The same is true for SCITTs, whereas only primary School Direct Salaried courses have attracted more applications than last year among the school-based courses not in SCITTs.

Next month should see many of the conditionally placed applicants become fully confirmed as the reasons for their being conditionally placed are removed. By now, it seems as if the secondary numbers are going to be more challenging than last year and that means a more difficult recruitment round for September 2018.

TeachVac, http://www.teachvac.co.uk the free job portal for schools, trainees and teachers will continue to provide a service to all interested in the labour market for schools.

Unqualified ‘teachers’

Posted on July 26, 2017 by John Howson

Let me start by stating my position on this important issue raised today by the opposition. In my view, the term teacher should be a reserved occupation term only allowed to be used by those appropriately qualified. Those on an approved training programme aimed at achieving licensed status could be designated as trainee teachers. Everyone else should use terms such as instructor; tutor; lecturer or any other similar term, but not be able to call themselves a teacher.

The data on unqualified teachers that has fuelled today’s discussions comes from the school level information collected through the School Workforce Census (SWC) by the DfE. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2016 There are two sets of tables in the regional dataset of the SWC for 2016 that are of interest; the percentage of teachers with Qualified Teacher Status and the percentage of unqualified teachers on a route to QTS: presumably either Teach First or School Direct Salaried route, plus a small number of overseas trained teachers or those on other accreditation only routes to QTS.

REGION	*Teachers with Qualified Teacher Status (%)*	*Unqualified Teachers on a QTS Route as a Proportion of the Total Number of Unqualified Teachers (%)*

North East	97.6	15.3
North West	97.4	10.3
South West	96.9	10.3
Yorkshire and the Humber	96.0	9.3
West Midlands	96.0	10.1
East Midlands	95.0	4.4
South East	94.8	14.1
East of England	93.9	9.9
Outer London	92.5	19.0
Inner London	92.4	18.1

ENGLAND	*95.3*	*12.6*

The SWC data show as strong correlation between the percentages of unqualified teachers employed by a schools in a region and the difficulty of recruiting teachers in that region. There is a 5.2% difference between schools in Inner London and schools in the North East in terms of the percentage of unqualified teachers employed. If one buys the argument that such staff are employed because of their special skills, then presumably their distribution would be similar across the country rather than showing this marked difference between regions. In London around 6-7% of teachers, and presumably more in terms of classroom teachers, don’t have QTS.

Part of the difference can be explained by the percentage of trainee teachers employed in schools. The range is between 4.4% of unqualified teachers on a QTS route in the East Midlands and 19% in the Outer London boroughs. This goes some way to explain why, in the SWC, 66 secondary schools in London revealed a measurable percentage of unqualified teachers on routes to QTS compared with just 98 in the rest of England. However, these figures obviously underestimate the number of schools involved in QTS preparation. This is due to the suppression of the data in many schools where such trainees were present, but not in sufficient numbers to be reported publically. There are also a number of secondary schools where the data was not reported.

Clearly, with recruitment being an issue, it is always going to be a challenge to recruit enough qualified teachers to staff schools, especially where the school population is growing fast. I am sure that parents expect pupils to be taught by those who understand the job at hand and have been prepared for it by achieving QTS.

There is, of course, a much larger issue that isn’t being addressed by the discussion about qualified teachers and that relates to the degree of subject knowledge required to teach any particular subject. This blog has raised that issue as matter for concern on several occasions. In some subjects, such as mathematics, steps are now being taken by the DfE to ensure post-entry subject knowledge enhancement for those teaching the subject. This may offer a better way forward than just trying to achieve sufficient subject knowledge from all entrants. However, ensuring all entrants are properly trained in the skills associated with teaching and learning should not be negotiable whatever their role in the process might be.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Category Archives: employment