Category Archives: employment

Recruitment round enters final stage

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The end of May marks the traditional climax of the recruitment round for September appointments in schools. From this point onwards most existing teachers cannot change jobs for September. As a result schools must rely on the remaining trainees, returners and overseas teachers to fill any vacancies still remaining.

At TeachVac, the free recruitment site that is used by an increasing number of schools, teachers and trainees, we have been busy computing the results of the recruitment round so far in 2016 compared with last year.

Secondary schools that post vacancies receive the latest information about the market in that subject every time they post a main scale vacancy. They also receive monthly updates of the overall position in the newsletter posted on the TeachVac website. There is a similar newsletter for teachers.

The more detailed summer review is now being written and will appear by the end of June. It will summarise both our view of the recruitment round to date; prospects for the autumn term and the latest analysis of recruitment into training that will allow early predictions to be made about the recruitment round for September 2018 and January 2018.

TeachVac has always recognised that many primary schools don’t recruit often enough to make it worthwhile having a vacancy page on their website. For that reason TeachVac are launching a vacancy portal that will allow primary schools to use a school specific page within the TeachVac site on which to place their vacancies when they do arise. Simple to use, it will like the other key TeachVac services be free to schools and will provide interested teachers with a link to the school for more information.

At TeachVac we don’t see why anyone should pay for recruitment unless it is absolutely necessary. The basic service should be free. The DfE accepted this view in the recent White Paper, but we still have to see whether they will accept what is already provided in the market or spend public money creating a new system of their own?

Despite the stories of budget cuts and redundancies, TeachVac has recorded more adverts for main scale teachers so far in 2016 than in the first five months of 2015. Some of the vacancies reported early in the year may have been as a result of schools being unable to fill vacancies for January with appropriately qualified teachers. However, it is noticeable that vacancies advertised during May were little changed to the numbers advertised last year, especially the case in subjects where schools might struggle to find a teacher.

Location undoubtedly matters. There are large differences between parts of the north of England and London and the Home Counties in the average number of vacancies advertised per school. These regional differences really do mean that not taking location into account when allocating teacher preparation places can affect some schools’ chances of recruiting appropriately qualified staff with high quality subject knowledge.

 

 

 

26th STRB Report awaited

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You would think that the School Teachers Review Body (STRB) had a relatively easy task this year; set a 1% pay rise and go home. After all, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he of the ‘all schools will become an academy’ budget, has set 1% as the upper limit on public sector pay deals all the way through to the end of this parliament.

The Secretary of State issued her remit letter to the STRB on the 7th October 2015 with a request in the final paragraph that,’ I should be grateful if the STRB could aim to provide a report on this matter before the end of April 2016. I look forward to receiving your recommendations on the 2016 pay award.’

Clearly that aim was met. I apologise to the STRB for previously suggesting otherwise. According to  an email that their secretariat has sent me,  the 26th Report was sent to government on the 28th April.

The Office of Manpower Economics that services other government pay and conditions bodies produced the armed forces, NHS, doctors and dentists and senior civil servants reviews before the end of April and they were also published by government. It is true that it was only on the 12th May that the National Crime Agency Report appeared. That now leaves the STRB somewhat out on a limb, with a report submitted to government, but not seemingly published yet.

For academies, apart from the absence of useful national guidelines, the absence of an updated national pay and conditions document for September may be little more than an inconvenience as they can set their own terms and conditions and pay levels. For community and voluntary schools in England and almost all schools in Wales, the STRB report sets in chain a sequence of events that lead to the publication of the Pay & Conditions document.

Although former requirements, such as an annual increment, have been abolished, pay rates normally change from September and historically that meant advising on pay for the forthcoming years before schools set their budgets. That hasn’t been possible this year for schools funded via the local authority route with an April to March financial year, although it is still possible for academies where there is a budget cycle that matches the school-year. Nevertheless, even here, time is running out if the STRB were to produce anything innovative in their Report, such as addressing the recruitment and retention crisis in London by upping the pay rates by more than 1% and compensating elsewhere.

Hopefully, the report will appear before there is any chance of it being caught by the purdah rules ahead of the referendum next month, but time seems to be running out. It would be good to at least have an expected date so we can know what the STRB’s view is on the current state of recruitment and the suggested solutions to the problem that they have devised.

 

Recruitment a key issue for school leaders

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Earlier this week I attended the launch of The Key’s ‘State of the Nation’ Report. The Key’s Report http://www.joomag.com/magazine/state-of-education-survey-report-2016/0604114001462451154?short looks at what is of interest and concern to school leaders. Perhaps not surprisingly, recruitment and retention off staff figure highly, although not in top spot. The analysis by The Key backs up TeachVac’s analysis in relation to the regional picture of where the greatest recruitment challenges are to be found: London and the Home Counties.

At the launch, Fergal Roche was kind enough to mention the expertise that the writer of this blog has built up in understanding the workings of the labour market for teachers. I am grateful for the public endorsement.

Anyway, we are now approaching the endgame for the normal recruitment round for vacancies to be filled at the start of the school-year in September. As we report regularly to schools that are signed up to TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk there are going to be problems again in September, this despite the government taking cash out of schools through increased pension and National Insurance contributions. As an aside, governments really cannot claim schools are fully funded if they do not recompense them for adverse changes in taxation since they are just paying money with one hand and taking it away with another. Unless that is this is an attempt to either force schools to employ less well paid staff or to substitute technology for people in the learning process.

But, back to the recruitment situation. Vacancies continue to run at a higher rate in London and the Home Counties than further north and west in England. For the second year in succession, Business Studies is the first subject to effectively run out of trainees across much of the country and school looking to appoint teachers in this subject may well need recourse to returners or the use of expensive agencies. Later this month we expect to warn that in both Geography and English there will be unlikely to be sufficient trainees to meet demand across the whole recruitment round. Design & Technology, or at least some aspects of the subject, will likely follow soon afterwards. These issues are, of course, on top of the perennial problems in subjects such as Physics, problems that are masked by schools advertising for teachers of ‘science’ rather than a specific scientific discipline.

Even though most schools will make it to September fully staffed, vacancies in January 2017 will be much more of a challenge to fill and schools may face the full effects of market forces and the inevitable rising price of acquiring teachers in shortage subjects. Schools that use TeachVac will, at least, know how bad the situation is when they post their vacancies. And, just a reminder, TeachVac is free to schools and operates a daily matching service.

 

 

 

Fast-track to headship

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Recently there has been some publicity in the Daily Telegraph and the TES about a scheme whereby new entrants into education will be prepared for headship after just two years of experience. Now, I am not clear whether this is a scheme to be aimed at either new graduates or career changers with significant amounts of management experience or a mixture of both.

However, after more than 30 years of studying leadership appointments in all types of schools, I wonder if this is an interesting new attempt to solve a problem governments often don’t fully understand. The Blair government attempted to tackle a shortage of leadership candidates by introducing a civil service style fast-track scheme for entry into the teaching profession: it lasted a few years and was then quietly dropped. One of the intentions behind Teach First was to attract potentially high flyers in the hope that some would stay in teaching and progress to headships. In recent years there has also been the ‘future leaders’ scheme. So, why another new initiative?

It may be that in looking ahead to an all academy world the government or at least its friends at the University of Buckingham have realised that if there are to be between 500-1,000 multi-academy trusts in the future then there won’t be enough leaders available within the present system capable of running these trusts effectively without seriously affecting the numbers of school leaders available to run individual schools, whether as heads or deputies. Filling such positions might argue for a scheme aimed at career changers rather than new young graduates. However, such a scheme might face recruitment issues, since only the highest paid positions in schools and MATs are in any way comparable with the sort of salary and benefits a successful graduate can earn in many other sectors. This will, possibly, be less of an issue outside London and the Home Counties where graduate salaries are often less different to those in the public sector, but there are often fewer graduates working in some of these areas to attract into teaching.

There are other issues that will face a scheme of this sort if it is to attempt to become a national scheme. How will vacancies be offered to candidates on the scheme? Will it be an extension of the National Teaching Service with, perhaps, certain types of school being required to place a request for a leader with the scheme based upon a school’s location, achievements and perhaps other factors? Will the two main faith groups the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, buy into such a scheme or will it only be for schools and MATs with no religious character and background? How will existing teachers view any narrowing of their possible promotion opportunities; will more decide to go and seek promotion abroad?

Of course, it could be a scheme that comes to the aid of MATs and schools that have tried to recruit a leader and failed to do so. Over more than half a century of detailed analysis of leadership recruitment, I have seen trends showing such schools facing recruitment challenges to have been overwhelmingly in the primary and special school sectors and frequently to have been schools that have had a religious background. There are schools in coastal and the more remote inland areas where small primary schools can face recruitment challenges, but in the secondary sector there is usually a further factor such as poor performance of a school behind recruitment difficulties. So, will the scheme be aimed at filling these types of vacancies where I would have thought more experience of teaching than a mere two years in a school might have been required?  Even the late Sir Rhodes Boyson was thirty before he achieved his first headship, and he is often held out to conservatives as an earlier achiever of leadership. Like many early achievers, he didn’t stay in headship but eventually entered parliament: here lies another challenge for such a scheme, not only selecting those that will be successful candidates, but also finding those that will stay in education leadership.

I am sure that the government has consulted its friends and advisers about how any such fast-track systems work in other people-focused sectors and how much support those on fast-track schemes need after appointment to a leadership post.

Perhaps talking to the churches and other faith groups about such a scheme might not be a bad idea for the DfE since many clergy acquire significant management responsibilities for churches and congregations very early in their careers. Might we learn from their experience? Of course, the whole scheme could be a mere speculative venture by a private university and a small number of individuals. Time will tell and no doubt the DfE will make it clear whether such a scheme has their backing.

 

Is there a teacher recruitment crisis?

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I have been asked a lot recently whether there is a teacher recruitment crisis. The answer is, it all depends upon what you mean by a crisis. In the TeachVac evidence to the Select Committee, published on the Committee’s website before Christmas, I attempted to put some numbers to the terms ‘challenge’ and ‘crisis’. So far as I am aware, nobody has offered an alternative scenario. Certainly, nobody has suggested one to me.

Ministers, however, have relied on the November Workforce census vacancies to suggest schools are fully staffed. More recently, during her speech to the NASUWT Conference, the Secretary of State quoted from a TES study that suggested 70% of vacancies were filled within four weeks of being advertised. No bad, but it means that 30% were not filled. As a head teacher I would be worried of around one in three of my vacancies weren’t filled quickly. That figure was presumably the average, so some will have done better, but others worse. Perhaps the DfE can tell schools at what point they should worry? 50% not filled within four weeks; 75%, or should they wait until they reach the position of the Oxford head teacher speaking on the BBC web site whose school attracted no applicants for a number of vacancies advertised?

At TeachVac, the free vacancy web site for schools and teachers, www.teachvac.co.uk we are gearing up for the April vacancy rush. The job market has definitely become more complex and can be divided into a number of different segments. There are probably now three groups of trainees; those on programmes such as Teach First and the School Direct Salaried route that have posts assigned to them and don’t enter the open competition for vacancies; the trainees that sign up with recruitment agencies in the hope of reducing paperwork and securing a better salary. As this group increases, and the government is doing nothing to deter agencies from signing up trainees, or indeed other teachers, and asking schools for a finder’s fee, so the free pool of applicants diminishes. The government’s offer of the DfE’s free website won’t alleviate the drain on school resources by having to pay these fees. However, it might encourage some academy chains and diocese to become more involved in School Direct or SCITTs as part of a ‘grow your own teacher’ scheme.

The third group of trainees form the traditional ‘free pool’ of new entrants competing for the vacancies offered by schools. It is difficult to see how, if the DfE’s Teacher supply model is anywhere near accurate, any substantial under-recruitment into training will not affect the size of this pool to some extent. For that reason, Ministers generalised references to the overall position aren’t helpful. The recent National Audit Office report highlighted the lack of government knowledge of the real position in the teacher labour market nationally, let alone at a sub-national level.

Later this week TeachVac will publish its April newsletters for schools and teachers containing our analysis of the vacancy trends during the first three months of 2016. These are free to subscribers to the TeachVac site.

 

Regional recruitment patterns are still largely an unknown quantity

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Easter is early this year, so, although the teacher conference season will undoubtedly discuss the issue of teacher recruitment and retention, the full implications for September 2016 won’t be known. This is because the main recruitment period for September vacancies is during April, and that is the period immediately after Easter this year.

No doubt, when the government has its free recruitment site up and running, as foreshadowed in the White Paper, they will be able to tell schools what the current position is regarding the state of play in the recruitment cycle.

Until then, schools and journalists may have to rely upon the data from TeachVac. One of the drawbacks with the current version of TeachVac is that the government has continually refused to provide data on a sub-national basis for the ITT census. As a result, TeachVac has only been able to provide a national figure for the rate of decline in the trainee pool. This lack of regional data in all but a few subjects has continued in the recently DfE’s published methodology document that accompanied the White Paper.

However, there was some ITT data at a regional level for mathematics in the methodology document. However, the data was only in the form of overall regional totals, so it hasn’t been possible to remove either Teach First numbers or School Direct Salaried trainees as TeachVac does in its other modelling processes. As a result, the data is less than helpful in respect of some regions, especially London, where the bulk of Teach First trainees are still located. Nevertheless, the rankings are interesting

MATHEMATICS  % LEFT
Yorkshire & The Humber 82
London 77
North West 75
West Midlands 72
ALL ENGLAND 69
South West 67
South East 63
East Midlands 59
North East 59
East of England 22

The 77% remaining in the pool figure in London is obviously an over-estimate, it might be closer to a percentage in the high 50% range once Teach First and School Direct Salaried trainees have been removed.

However the dramatic figure in the table is the fact that the trainee pool in the East of England might be down as low as 22%. This is even before a figure for School Direct Salaried and non-completers has been factored in to the dataset. The 22% might be an over-estimate because, in a few cases, a school uses the terms mathematics and maths in the same vacancy advert and where the school hasn’t directly entered the vacancy there is a small risk of double counting these vacancies. This just illustrates how complicated the government will find it to create their own version of TeachVac.

Since the publication of the White Paper, TeachVac has seen an increase in registrations from both schools, trainees and teachers. The more directly entered vacancies there are, the more accurate TeachVac becomes.

If you read this and know anyone that is either responsible for teacher recruitment or interested in the topic please do draw their attention to TeachVac. www.teachvac.co.uk There are helpful videos of how to register and, yes, it really is as simple as it sounds.

 

 

Try TeachVac: don’t waste money reinventing the wheel

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For me, the most interesting paragraph in the White Paper issued today by the Secretary of State at

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/508501/430653_WL_GOVT_Educational_Excellence_Everywhere_-_print_ready.PDF

is paragraph 1.36 that I have reproduced below

Recruitment: we will reform the National College for Teaching and Leadership, ensuring that in addition to delivering our leadership remit, we are better able to design and deliver well-targeted incentives, teacher recruitment campaigns and opportunities that attract sufficient, high quality new entrants to the profession, including those who are looking to return to the classroom. To reduce the costs of recruitment for schools in a more challenging labour market, we will create simple web tools that enable schools to advertise vacancies for free and a new national teacher vacancy website so that aspiring and current teachers can find posts quickly and easily

The text in bold has been highlighted by me. This is because, as many readers know, I helped establish TeachVac last year to do this very thing.

Indeed, on the 7th March, during a visit to the DfE, I handed a civil servant a letter for the Secretary of State drawing her attention to TeachVac and asking that it be passed to Mrs Morgan’s via her Private Office. I have heard nothing since, presumably because to have replied might have compromised the White Paper. However, the fact that previous letters on this subject also went unanswered suggests the DfE wants to develop its own scheme. It is worth remembering that the last time they tried, it didn’t last very long.

As Chairman of TeachVac, I am happy to discuss saving the government money by demonstrating TeachVac to the DfE, NCTL, College of Teachers or indeed any other body that is to be charged with meeting the DfE’s aim in the White Paper. There really is no need to re-invent the wheel or waste money on something that already exists.

TeachVac has been growing rapidly this year and secondary schools using the system already receive information on the state of the market; this can be expanded to cover all schools very easily.

Our latest assessment of the trainee pool depletion rates for 2016 are reproduced below.

ITT pool numbers as of 17/03/16

Group ITT Number left % left
Art 503 404 80.32
Science 2604 1158 44.49
English 1940 913 47.09
Mathematics 2197 1205 54.87
Languages 1226 826 67.41
IT 498 316 63.45
Design & Technology 518 273 52.80
Business 174 61 35.34
RE 386 217 56.35
PE 1230 1004 81.63
Music 358 224 62.71
Geography 580 309 53.36
History 847 580 68.48

Now is the time for the remaining schools to sign up to TeachVac for nothing and show the government that this isn’t something that they need to re-invent from scratch.

As I have been monitoring trends in vacancies in schools at all levels since I started counting headships in 1983, I would be delighted to see schools able to save substantial sums of money on recruitment. After all, that was the aim of TeachVac and why is was free to use from Day 1.

 

 

What is a CEO worth?

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Are salaries paid to the heads of some multi-academy trusts too high, as Sir Michael Wilshaw might seem to think  from the tone of his letter to the Secretary of State or perhaps actually too low for the level of responsibility that they have to undertake. What is clear is that executive heads and chief executives of MATS do seem to think they deserve to earn more than those they manage. This seems like a sound business principle, but is it really?

There is another principle that relates pay to the nature of the work. Is taking the strategic lead in an organisation more important than running an operating unit such as a school? This is a moot point. Perhaps, the justification is that you need good talent and such individuals won’t be prepared to step up from headship without a pay rise. I would have some sympathy if the job had been offered at a lower salary first, but all too often it isn’t: in some cases it isn’t even put out to open competition just decided internally within the MAT. Can that ever be the right thing to do with public money?

With head teachers often subject to dismissal if a school fails an Ofsted inspection, does the same happen to executive heads and CEOs of MATs? If not, why not? We shall no doubt see what happens in response to this Ofsted Report.

Now the alternative view is that in London, at least, middle managers in businesses not much larger than the average primary school in staffing terms can earn six figure salaries and their CEOs even higher amounts and both groups can have bonus payments and share options on top that will pay out handsomely if the company does well. Should schools be competing with these salary levels?

I note that in response to Sir Michaels’ letter to the Secretary of State he pulls no punches. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/506718/HMCI__advice__note_MAT_inspections____10_March_2016.pdf The letter to Mrs Morgan says:

“This poor use of public money is compounded by some trusts holding very large cash reserves that are not being spent on raising standards.

“For example, at the end of August 2015, these seven trusts had total cash in the bank of £111m.

“Furthermore, some of these trusts are spending money on expensive consultants or advisers to compensate for deficits in leadership. Put together, these seven trusts spent at least £8.5m on education consultancy in 2014-15 alone.”

Now, this blog has complained in the past about schools holding large cash reserves that should be spent on teaching and learning. One might also ask, what the Regional School Commissioners have been doing in holding academies to account.

Finally, there are currently 151 local authorities in England with a Director responsible for education. In most cases they have other responsibilities as well. If each were paid £200,000 – more than they actually are – the bill would be just over £30 million before overheads. If 18,000 schools were formed into MATs of 20 schools that would be 900 CEOs. If they were paid only £100,000 each the bill would be £90 million. You can do the maths if there are more MATs and higher salaries.

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.

 

Talk up teaching

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According to the Mail on Sunday, not a newspaper I usually read, but whose reporting of the Secretary of State’s remarks to the ASCL Conference have been brought to my attention, we need to be positive about what a great career teaching is. Apparently, according to the Mail on Sunday, Mrs Morgan told ASCL delegates:

That a number of schools are struggling to recruit good teachers but that talk of a “crisis” in recruitment may deter people from the sector. She said that, “While the headline data shows a sustained low, national vacancy rate, the reality on the ground for many heads is that they are struggling to attract the brightest and the best.” She acknowledged the cost of recruiting can be a burden when schools have “other, better things to be spending money on,” On fears that highlighting recruitment issues may put people off of becoming a teacher, the Education Secretary said: “Let’s focus on commenting to the outside world on what a great profession teaching is, how rewarding it can be and what good teachers have the power to do.”

In questions there was apparently talk of the need for a national database of vacancies: TeachVac your time has surely come.

In case the Secretary of State has been shielded from TeachVac by her officials I am sending her a letter outlining the advantages of the free service we have been providing for more than a year now. I agree with the heads asking why spend millions of pounds on advertising when it can be done for free?

Heads, teachers, local politicians, governors and others responsible for recruitment might ask why they haven’t tried TeachVac if it is free. Wasting money through inertia is not acceptable when everyone is complaining about the effects of austerity.

Let me re-iterate, TeachVac is free for everyone, to schools to post vacancies and to teachers, trainees and returners to post requests to be told when a vacancy meeting requirements is posted.

If you know someone involved in recruiting teachers and leadership staff in schools, do please tell them to visit www.teachvac.co.uk and watch the demonstration videos. Signing up takes no time at all, but a school does need to know its URN – available via Edubase – as a security check.

As to the Secretary of State’s thesis about talking up teaching, I agree it is a great job, but surely she could have offered something on the workload front that would have allowed an even more positive message to have emerged from her speech. I hope by Easter, she will have something more eye catching to say to the other teacher conferences. She could even announce that the DfE is investigating free initiatives on recruitment advertising and job matching such as TeachVac. Such a move wouldn’t cost a penny, but would show the government is keen that the cash she has for schools isn’t being spend on private sector profits.

If anyone wants to know more about TeachVac, please do contact me and I will be happy to answer your queries.

 

 

Time to move on?

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As the ASCL members meet for their annual conference, the topic of teacher supply is likely to be raised frequently by delegates, both in formal sessions and in more informal discussions around the conference bars and restaurants. Indeed, Policy Exchange, the Tory think tank Mr Gove had a hand in establishing and various key players in education have worked for in the past, published a pamphlet today of a conference organised in the autumn by both Policy Exchange and  ASCL on the topic of teachers and their recruitment entitled; “The importance of teachers”. http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/publications/category/item/the-importance-of-teachers-a-collection-of-essays-on-teacher-recruitment-and-retention

Now, I don’t often give Tory Think Tanks much of an airing on this blog, but as I was asked to contribute to the conference and my paper appears in the collection of published essays, I will make an exception this time. Two ideas that have been gaining in credibility, are the possibility of secondary schools offering more part-time jobs in recognition of the changing composition of the teaching workforce in terms of both age and gender. Compared with the primary sector, there is much less part-time working in secondary schools at present. This idea also received a mention yesterday at a seminar organised by the Guardian to promote its research into the views of teachers about their work and work-life balance.

Policy Exchange also mentions a revival of the Keep in Touch schemes run by some local authorities, most notably Buckinghamshire, in the 1980s as a means of not losing touch with those that take career breaks. Once senses that even the idea of sabbaticals would be attractive, but have been ruled out on the grounds of cost. Interestingly, as I pointed out in my blog about Margaret Thatcher, she was the Secretary of State for Education that proposed teacher sabbaticals in a White Paper, only to see the idea scuppered by the oil price hikes after 1972: could the fall in oil prices bring the dead back? It seems unlikely since falling oil prices these days also mean lost government revenue.

Anyway, all this is a long way from the title of this piece. But, in reality, there now seems to be an acceptance that there is an issue with teacher supply whether it is couched in recruitment terms or absolute numbers. The discussion is now moving on to how to either solve or at least alleviate the issue? KIT and more offers of part-time working; forgiveness of loans; a review of QTS to ensure subject knowledge is sufficient and if not to develop SKE post-entry – similar to Chris Waterman’s Teach Next idea – and making sure location specific trainees don’t lose out in the job market are all ideas that have been floated recently, along with Sir Andrew Carter grow your own from TAs to teachers concept of QTS -2 and QTS -1.  Although I don’t think that idea will work well in the secondary sector. Addressing the housing issue and workload also seem to be high on the agenda, so it will be interesting to see what emerges as the recruitment round grinds on towards its grim conclusion in January 2017.