Category Archives: employment

Enough primary leaders?

Posted on by
Reply

The DfE has now published the answers to their spring 2016 survey of teachers and school leaders. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-voice-omnibus-may-to-july-2016-survey-dfe-questions among the interesting questions asked was one about aspirations to leadership. Since the abolition of a mandatory qualification for headship, this sort of survey is the only real way of knowing whether there will be sufficient candidates for senior posts that fall vacant in future years.

Personally, I doubt there will ever be a serious problem in the secondary sector since the ratio of deputies to head teachers should allow for sufficient aspiring senior leaders, especially as headship is no longer the end point of a career for many in the secondary sector.

If there is going to be an issue with leadership numbers it will be in the primary and special school sectors. Sadly, we don’t have information about the special school sector. That is an oversight needing correction in future surveys, as it is too often overlooked and the issue of leadership is critical for the schools education our young people with special needs.

As far as the primary sector is concerned, the DfE’s 2015 School Workforce Census identified 23,800 deputy and assistant heads in post in the primary sector in England in November 2015. We can assume most were still there when the 2016 survey was conducted by NfER for the DfE. Thus, the 26% of senior leaders not already a head teacher likely to look for a headship within the next three years equates to just under 6,000 teachers. What the survey didn’t ask, was how many were likely to be looking in the next year?

Assuming equal numbers over each of the three years would mean some 2,000 aspiring head teachers across England each year. Now, the next question is, how many vacancies are there likely to be? TeachVac is now collecting that data, so in time we will have up to date information. However, looking back over past trends, head teacher vacancies fluctuated around 1,800 to 2,000 during the first decade of this century. Now, if we assume the lower number, since amalgamations have reduced the number of schools over time, we could still need to conclude that virtually all the 2,000 aspirant deputies and assistant heads would all have to be suitable to be appointed as a head teacher for supply to be sufficient. However, some vacancies will be filled by existing head teachers changing schools; perhaps 20-25% of vacancies are filled in this way. This would reduce demand for non-head teachers to be appointed as ahead teacher to around 1,500 per year.

We also must assume that the applicants are either in the right places for the jobs or prepared to be mobile to move to where the vacancies arise. As the primary sector contains a significant number of faith schools, especially Church of England and Roman Catholic schools, we must also assume that there are sufficient numbers within the total to meet the needs of these schools for specific types of applicants, including adherents to the particular faith.

Without answers to these questions, it is difficult to know whether the 1,500 will be sufficient, but it won’t be if the role of being a head teacher looks unattractive for whatever reason. No doubt the NCTL understand this issue and are planning for the consequences of what the survey tells us about the future supply of school leaders.

 

BREXIT and education

Posted on by
4

Apart from the issues regarding students in higher education recruited from the EU and the matter of research funding for our universities, there are also the matter of recruiting teachers and of whether our exit should affect the school curriculum to consider after today’s speech by the Prime Minister.

If we are to become a world-class trading nation, do we need to up our game over the teaching of languages? If so, does the balance between European languages and say Mandarin need to alter? Despite the former administration’s apparent love for the Chinese language, progress has been patchy, with some schools embracing the teaching of Mandarin and others not being so interested.

With most of South America, apart from Brazil, speaking a form of Spanish, should we increase the teaching of that language and reduce say, German. Should Russian return to the group of languages more widely taught in schools? Then there are the languages of the Indian Sub-continent and of anglophile Africa. Do we need to increase speakers of those tongues or rely upon them learning English to allow us to export to them?

Perhaps more importantly do we need to take another look at the EBacc? The creative arts, design and technology and even business studies have seemingly ranked way down the DfE’s list of concerns ever since Mr Gove entered Sanctuary Buildings. Do we need to reassess the importance of certain subjects? Music, in all its forms, has been a key export industry. Do we need to give it a boost in schools or just rely on television talent shows to increase interest in the subject and a desire to practice it in public? If manufacturing is going to be important, should the government pay more attention to design and technology and assess how the subject can be staffed in our schools. In TeachVac we have seen few advertisements for vacancies in either music or design and technology compared with many other subjects both at the end of 2016 and in the first fortnight of 2017. This may suggest schools are not investing in the teaching of these subjects at present.

STEM subjects as a whole are also important, especially where they help develop new technologies. However, developing a spirit of entrepreneurship in our schools may be equally important. In a post some time ago, I noted that more innovators came from independent schools than from state schools. Clearly, post BREXIT, we need a generation of exporters educated in all our schools and this might mean re-evaluating the staffing of business studies. At present, this a subject the DfE largely ignores, despite the past two years of TeachVac data showing how under-staffed it is becoming.

Finally, what happens if we cannot maintain a common travel area with the Irish republic? Although not as great a source of teachers as some would imagine, teachers from Ireland do help swell the ranks of the teaching profession in times of shortage. Will they need visas, along with their Spanish and other EU compatriots, in a few years’ time? On that front, schools must be wondering when the Migration Advisory Committee will report on the tier 2 visa rules for 2017-18.

 

 

 

 

Apprenticeship Levy

Posted on by
Reply

In the bizarre world that is education under the present Tory government, stand-alone academies with a payroll of less than £3 million are exempt from paying the new Apprenticeship Levy; all schools in any MAT with a payroll of over £3 million across the MAT will pay the levy, even if they are a small primary school; voluntary aided schools are probably exempt as the local authority is the de facto but not de jure employer so long as the school payroll is below £3 million, but all maintained schools will pay the levy regardless of the size of their payroll because the local authority is the employer, even though in these days of delegated budgets it has no control over spending by the schools.

This is a shambles that does a great discredit to the governance of education. If this is currently the position, it should be rectified forthwith. Either it is a tax on all schools or it isn’t. My position is that the government already takes out of education a sum needed to fund the training of new teachers and it should pray that cash in aid to the Treasury in order to have all state-funded schools exempt from the Levy. I don’t mind if the larger private fee-paying schools contribute since they often employ teachers whose training has been paid for initially by the State, but paid back by individuals through the tuition fee repayment schemes in operation since the late 1990s.

If schools are not exempted from the Levy, then they should make full use of benefits. Sadly, these are by employer, so a large county council with many maintained schools will pay a large sum in levy, but receive little back through the pay-out arrangements.

School budgets face enough other pressures at the present time, including for many small primary schools the loss of part of their block grant under the new funding formula arrangements. In Oxfordshire, the loss per schools equates to several thousands of pounds and may make the difference between survival or closure for village schools with less than 150 pupils.

I don’t know whether it is this government’s intention to redraw the map of primary schooling in England, but it could be well on the way to doing so if the combined effect of budget cuts and cost pressures make such schools unable to breakeven financially.

As I have hinted before, one solution is to downgrade the leading professional in small schools from a head teacher to a head of site paid on a lower salary. The risk is that any savings are then spent on a salary for an executive head teacher paid more than value of the savings. Whether deputy head teachers and other experienced teachers would be willing to take on the role of site leader for less money than the current head teacher will, I suspect, depend upon the terms and conditions offered, especially in the smallest of schools. However, unless some savings can be made, I fear for the future of many primary schools. Hopefully, I am being alarmist, but removing the Apprenticeship Levy from all school budgets would be a start.

 

English: early warning

Posted on by
Reply

This is a message for schools not involved in either the School Direct Scheme or Teach First. The number of candidates likely to be available for appointment this September to teach English is already showing signs of being insufficient in number, if vacancies continue at their present rate.

Schools directly entering vacancies into TeachVac receive this information for free every time they enter their vacancy. They can also monitor the wider situation through the TeachVac monthly briefing, sent to all schools that have registered.

Registration and posting of all vacancies are free www.teachvac.co.uk for all schools all the time and it is a free job service to teachers and trainees as well.

The situation in English is largely caused by the large number of the total trainees either on the School Direct Salaried program or on Teach First. A significant proportion of both these groups of trainees are likely to continue working in the schools where they train. This reduces what I call the ‘free pool’, training on the higher education, SCITT and School Direct fee routes that may be available to all schools seeking to fill a vacancy. As is acknowledged by the DfE, at least half of classroom teacher vacancies go to new entrants, these numbers matter.

After taking out Teach First, School Direct salaried and recorded vacancies gathered by TeachVac since 1st January, the number of trainees left in the free pool was just over 1,200 on the 6th January. That probably not enough to fill a vacancy in every secondary school, epsecially if you include the independent sector and Sixth Form Colleges, even applying the 50% rule.

Schools looking for particular types of teachers of English, say with degrees in specific characteristics of English Literature, may well find the numbers available even fewer in total. We also don’t know how evenly spread across England the trainees are, although we do know London and the Home counties are likely to account for more than a third of all nationally advertised vacancies, if 2017 is anything like the last two recruitment rounds.

So far, maths and science are less of an issue in 2017 than English because of better recruitment into training than in recent years, but business studies is already on our radar as likely to also cause problems for schools in 2017. Post BREXIT, we need students of business even more than in the past; Ministers please note.

There is a debate to be had about the balance of training places between different routes and different parts of the country, but the DfE seems reluctant to open that issue up. The Select Committee has an opportunity to do so when it finally writes its report on teacher supply and the Migration Advisory Committee will need to address some aspects when they consider whether maths and science teachers should still qualify for Tier 2 visas?

This year, more information will be channelled through TeachVac, so if you are in a school as a teacher, trainee, leader or are a returner to teaching, do sign up. It is free service and will remain so.

 

 

 

More about Finance

Posted on by
Reply

The well-respected institute for Fiscal Studies has published a document highlighting the effects of the pay freeze on the public sector since the recession hit in 2008. https://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/gb/gb2016/gb2016ch6.pdf

In relation to education, the IFS comments that ‘The Department for Education (DfE) is planned to see a budget cut of 1.9% over the period 2015–16 to 2019–20, a smaller cut than planned for most other departments.’ However, over the whole period since 2010–11, the total DfE budget is expected to be cut by 8.5%. This is still low in comparison to the cuts inflicted on some other government departments where results such as the recent jail riots suggest cutting too far can have serious consequences.

One of the issues for education, with this level of public spending, is around pay. After all, education is still a people intensive activity, with relatively low levels of capital expenditure and technology only recently starting to play a significant role in the delivery of learning.

As the IFS makes clear, part of the real-terms cut to public service spending over the last parliament was achieved by holding down public sector pay. Indeed, as the authors of the IFS document remind readers, pay was frozen in cash terms for all but the lowest-paid public sector workers in 2011–12 and 2012–13, and pay awards were limited to 1% across most of the public sector in 2013–14, 2014–15 and 2015–16.

They note that since private sector wages were also growing slowly over this period, such pay restraint did not have a particularly adverse impact on relative wages. By 2014–15, average pay in the public sector was about the same level relative to the private sector as it had been in 2010–11, and still well above its pre-crisis (2007–08) level.

However, the IFS authors anticipate that going forwards, private sector wages are expected to grow more rapidly. The OBR’s latest forecast is that average earnings across the private sector will grow by around 17% (in cash terms) between 2015–16 and 2019–20. The government’s announced 1% limit on annual pay increases for a further four years from 2016–17 is therefore expected to reduce wages in the public sector to their lowest level relative to private sector wages since at least the 1990s. This could result in difficulties for public sector employers trying to recruit, retain and motivate high quality workers, and the IFS suggests, raises the possibility of industrial relations issues.

This confirms what the view this blog has taken ever since the four year deal on a one per cent per annum rise was announced, that where alternative graduate jobs exist in the private sector, teaching looks less enticing as an area of work than in the past. However, with the cuts in budgets, this may matter less if schools cannot afford to offer the same number of jobs.

As mentioned in earlier posts, what happens to the numbers leaving the profession will be the key to whether the recruitment crisis of recent years either eases or remains a problem in a range of subjects across much of the country? I expect English to be the subject to provide an early steer as the free pool of trainees is relatively smaller as a proportion of overall trainee numbers than in many subjects, so schools not involved in training new teachers may struggle to recruit in 2017.

Thank you

Posted on by
1

My thank you to everyone that has followed this blog in 2016. By the end of this month or in early February, the 500th post is likely to appear. Not bad for a blog started in January 2013 with no such goal in mind. Rather, it was originally designed to replace my various columns that had appeared in the TES between 1999 and early 2011 and then in Education Journal in a more spasmodic form during the remainder of 2011 and 2012. This blog has allowed me both editorial freedom to write what I have wanted and also to avoid the requirement of a fixed schedule of a column a week that had dominated my life for more than a decade.

Anyway, my thanks to the 11,738 visitors from 88 countries that read at least one post during 2016; creating a total of 22,364 views. The viewing figures have been around the 22,000 mark for the past three years, although the visitor numbers in 2016 were the highest since 2014.

My thanks also go to the many journalists that have picked up on stories that have been run on the blog during 2016. Many of these have been associated with TeachVac, the free to use recruitment site I co-founded in 2014. The recognition of the brand has grown, especially over the past year, so much so that its disruptive technology poses a real threat to more traditional recruitment methods. With funding for Teachvac throughout 2017 secured, plus a growing appetite for the data the site can produce, it will be interesting to see how the market reacts in 2017.

TeachVac can easily meet the needs of a government portal for vacancies suggested in the White Paper last March, with the resultant data helping provide useful management information for policymakers. TeachVac already provides individual schools with data about the state of the trainee pool in the main secondary subjects every time they input a vacancy. With regional data from the census, it is possible to create local figures for individual schools and profile the current recruitment round against data from the past two years taking into account both the total pool and the size of the free pool not already committed to a particular school or MAT.

2017 is going to be an interesting year for recruitment as school budgets come under pressure and it is likely that teachers and trainees in some subjects in some parts of England may find jobs harder to secure than at any time since 2013. However, London and the Home Counties will still account for a significant proportion of the vacancies.

What is unknown is how teachers will react if the government presses ahead with its plans for more selective schools. Will new entrants to teaching be willing to work in schools where a proportion of the possible intake has been diverted to a selective school; will the current workforce continue to work in such schools or seek vacancies in the remaining non-selective parts of the country? No doubt someone has some polling data on this issue.

 

 

Banning teachers from work

Posted on by
1

In the light of the NCTL still seemingly not having published the overall targets for ITT numbers to be recruited for the 2017 entry into the profession, I thought would look at what was on their web site. The ITT data will, I assume, eventually have to come from a parliamentary question at some point in 2017.

Another aspect of the NCTL’s work is to conduct the hearings into misconduct by teachers and report the findings on their web site. If you like, the potential for ending a teacher’s professional life, at least in the United Kingdom. I estimate that there were just over 130 hearings reported so far for 2016; not bad for a profession with 500,000+ active members and a lot more with the right to teach in state funded schools. As a percentage of the profession, the figure is so small as to not be worth calculating.

However, one aspect worth recording is a large discrepancy in the gender of those facing misconduct hearings. Although the teaching profession is now predominantly female, in terms of the active population, misconduct hearings in 2016 related to close to three men for every women summonded in front of a panel. Many hearings are in absentia as the teacher doesn’t bother to attend to learn their fate. In these cases, they often seem to have left the profession, at least in this country. There have been some worryingly ill-prepared statements of facts in a small number of cases. In one case, even a court record didn’t really make sense, although whether that was the fault of the Magistrates’ Court or the case officer wasn’t clear from the judgement.

In two cases, both relating to male teachers, no finding was made as the facts were not proved. In the case of 14 male teachers and 5 women teachers where cases were taken out, the facts were proved, but no Prohibition order was made. In all other case Prohibition Orders were made. Sexual conduct or the viewing of pornography amounted to over a third of the reasons for issuing a Prohibition Order, although in a small number of cases, some historical in nature, no Order was made. The second most frequent reason for issuing a Prohibition Order was as a result of a successful conviction in a criminal case of a teacher. In some instances, this related to matters taking place at a school, in other not. There were a small number of cases resulting from actions to do with tests or examinations, that breached the standards required of teachers. The remaining cases were accounted for as a result of a variety of matters, including misuse of school funds.

Teachers from across the country were issued with Prohibition Orders, although relatively few from the midlands. All the cases relating to alcohol concerned teachers from the same region. Although most cases were of teachers that had worked in state-funded schools, some cases involved teachers that had worked in the private sector.

Clearly, head teachers under pressure and in charge of challenging schools need to be mindful of the extra risks associated with their role, as it is too easy to let the paperwork and attention to detail slip.

Young teachers, need to be aware of the need for appropriate professional boundaries with any pupil, of any age, especially in high risk situations. Beware the School Prom.

No doubt, these cases heard in public are the most extreme in nature and there may be others where a teacher has been warned of their conduct and it has stopped. By publishing the cases, the NCTL allows a body of case law to emerge and also a debate about issues such as where boundaries should be drawn. In all cases the Secretary of State, through a civil servant, has the final say in the outcome.

 

Pay differentials matter in the public sector as well

Posted on by
1

The previous posts read by those who visit my blog are always interesting to monitor. On the day when the government is expressing its interest about the pay of bosses in private sector companies, I am not surprised to see a number of visitors to the post from this March when I discussed CEO’s pay in education. That post was written following a letter from The Chief Inspector to the then Secretary of State. At the end of the March post, I wrote:

Personally, I thought we were in an age of austerity and I set up TeachVac to offer a low cost option for recruitment to allow more money to be spent on teaching and learning. Frankly, this Report is disappointing news and I hope that there is an urgent review of salaries in education outside of those set by the STRB for teachers and school leaders. We need some clarity of purpose in the use of public funds.

Since then, the gap between the best paid directors in the private sector, but not employees – think footballers and entertainers – has exercised the mind of the new Prime Minister, but little has been said about the public sector. Mrs May will no doubt recall the attempt to limit the pay of head teachers and other public sector workers to no more than the Prime Minister’s salary, helpfully ignoring his use of a flat in central London and a mansion in the Buckinghamshire countryside for use at weekends as well as an especially generous pension scheme, when deciding pay rates rather than overall remuneration levels.

On the day the latest TIMMS data has appeared, (more of that in a later post), there is certainly a discussion to be had about the effect of salaries on the supply of talent. One outstanding figure from TIMMS for me is that the gap between Year 5 and Year 9 pupil outcomes is wider in England than in many other countries in the Survey (Figure 15). Could this be down to the challenge of recruiting specialist maths teachers to teach at key Stage 3?

If you push up salaries for classroom teachers, should you also increase the salaries for those in leadership roles? That’s the dilemma the government faces in trying to decide whether, in a free market, the government has a social responsibility to limit anyone’s pay and to decide how companies use their resources? Of course, governments could tax high earners more, but there is then the fear of driving them away. But, such a fear doesn’t seem to be there in this discussion over pay differentials being curbed.

On the other hand, the government has to recognise that free movement of labour can mean those that feel underpaid can opt to go elsewhere: hence the concerns over retention rates in teaching for those with 3-5 years of classroom experience.

The issue of compensation is a complex area that exercised parliamentarians in the 1990s when they were trying to benchmark their own salaries. The issue may now be whether the gap between the haves and have nots in society is too wide? Having decided it is, it is interesting to see a Conservative government taking the stance they are.

Is Lucy Kellaway an outlier?

Posted on by
Reply

The good news seems to be that the soaring cost of tuition fees isn’t putting of new graduates from pursuing a career as a teacher: perhaps they recognise they will never repay these fees unless there is a period of rampant inflation at some point in the future.

In the ITT census for 2016, published last Thursday, the percentage of graduates under 25 entering postgraduate training has increased from 44% of the total in 2012/13 to 53% in 2016/17. There has been a corresponding fall in among older graduates, with the 25-29 age group showing the sharpest decline, down from 31% in 2012/13 to 24% in 2016/17.

Interestingly, the 25-29 age group accounts for the largest number of School Direct Salaried trainees in 2016/17, some 1,132 out of the 3,159 on this route; 36% of all such trainees. I am not sure how there can be 629 under 25s on the Salaried route, as many must just qualify for the three year post-degree requirement to be part of the programme. Indeed, there are more under 25s than there are trainees over 40 on the salaried route this year. Those on the salaried route under the age of thirty account for 56% of the trainees on this route into teaching: not, perhaps, what was intended when the scheme was devised.

The fact that only 73% of Teach First trainees are under 25 is also of interest since the scheme was designed to attract new graduates. However, 94% were under the age of thirty, so perhaps the programme is doing a good job with mature new graduates. Overall, the mean age of all Teach First’s new trainees this year was just 24.

The 7,328 under 25s that started a teacher preparation course in a higher education institution this September still account for the largest single group of new post-graduate trainees.

Men remain firmly in the minority among those with a declared gender. Only 20% of postgraduate and 15% of undergraduate entrants to primary courses are men this year. Although the undergraduate percentage has remained stable for some years now, the postgraduate percentage has declined from 23% as recently as 2013/14 to 20% this year and men accounted for only 17% of trainees recruited to the primary Teach First route. Still, there percentages are better than 20 years ago, when men only accounted for 16% of primary PGCE trainees in 1995.

There is relatively better news in the secondary sector, where men accounted for 40% of recruitment this year, up from 37% in 2012/13. This means that an extra 1,000 men started secondary teacher preparation courses this year compared with in 2012/13. However, even here Teach First lagged behind other routes, as men accounted for only 35% of their new secondary trainees this year.

There is more god news for the government in the fact that 2016/17 sees 15% of trainees coming from minority ethnic groups; the best percentage since before 2012/13. Here Teach First does better than the school based routes, but higher education institutions lead the way with nearly one in five of their trainees from minority ethnic groups. The location of schools and their propensity to recruit from their localities may account for the relatively low overall recruitment percentage from minority ethnic groups since the distribution of graduates in these groups is not spread evenly across England.

Lucy kellaway will find that there are 117 trainee teachers aged 55+ this year, with a further 421 between 50-54. Together, those over 50, account for 2% of new trainees.

 

Is Design & Technology dying by default?

Posted on by
Reply

Over the past few years Design & Technology has consistently failed to recruit into training the number of teachers identified as being needed to staff our schools. The DfE uses the Teacher Supply Model to calculate an annual training number. Recent figures showing the following pattern of recruitment are in the Table.

courses starting in Number Recruited TSM Number Shortfall
2016 423 1034 611
2015 526 1279 753
2014 450 1030 580
2013 391 870 479
2012 710 825 115
2011 1970 1880 -90
2010 2940 2560 -380
2009 3100 2700 -400
10510 12178 1668

The over-recruitment (minus number in final column) of the period 2009-2011, a period when the economy was deeply mired in recession, has been replaced by five years of failure to recruit to what have been much lower targets. Indeed, the total number of new trainees recruited between 2012 and 2016 are in total less than were recruited in either 2009 or 2010.

Now it can be assumed that with falling rolls in secondary schools and a reluctance to cut back on training numbers during the period of the Labour government, too many Design & Technology teachers were probably being trained in 2009 and 2010. That cannot be said to be the case today. Demand, as measured by TeachVac, has outstripped the supply of teachers of Design & Technology in both 2015 and 2016, more notably in 2015 when the numbers in training were lower than were looking for teaching posts in 2016. The fact that the number of trainees recruited in 2016, as measured by the ITT census, is the lowest recorded since 2013 doesn’t bode well for schools looking to recruit Design & Technology teachers for September 2017 and January 2018.

Of course, Design & Technology is a portmanteau subject which, as the footnote in the ITT census explains, ’includes food’. By this, I think they mean teachers of food technology, the former home economics that emerged from the historical domestic science term used for those that taught ‘cooking and needlecraft’ in schools. Sadly, it looks as if there is no record of either the demand for teachers of the different aspects of Design & Technology or of the numbers entering training with the different backgrounds and skill sets. Perhaps there are enough trainees in food technology, but not in resistant materials? Perhaps, the position is the other way around.

Since starting this blog post, it has been pointed out to me that the numbers in Table 1a of the ITT census don’t seem to add up. There are 169 trainees shown as in higher education; 66 on courses in SCITTs and 117 on School Direct Fee courses. The numbers on the School Direct salaried route and Teach First are each hidden behind an asterisk. This normally means too few to report, so we can assume not more than 20 across both routes. By my mathematics this makes between 352 and 372 trainees and not the 423 reported in the census. The other 71 might be on undergraduate courses, but that column isn’t shown by subject in the Table, only an overall total of 243 undergraduates across all subjects. Looking back at 2014 undergraduate numbers, an assuming a three year degree course, entrants were 32 to Design & Technology undergraduate courses in 2014. Thus if all remained, an unlikely outcome, the number entering the labour market in 2017 will be 352 postgraduates (minus any that don’t complete the course – let’s say 30), so 322 postgraduates plus 32 undergraduates to a maximum of 354, the lowest number for many years.

Such numbers, and the trend over recent years does leave one to wonder why trainees in Design & Technology with a 2:2 degree don’t receive a bursary whereas those in Biology (a subject that over-recruited this year) will receive £10,000 in 2017, and those that started courses this September with a 2:2 in biology received £15,000.

But, then the distribution of bursaries has always been a mystery to me. Perhaps it has something to do with the value of the EBacc in the curriculum compared with Design & Technology.