Middle Leaders: harder to find?

Posted on November 4, 2022 by John Howson

What is the job market for middle years like? Has the cumulative effect of several years of under-recruitment into initial training finally started to take a toll on the ability of schools to appoint middle leaders?

To answer this question for all subjects and across the whole country would be a mammoth undertaking worthy of a substantial research grant. However, using data from TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk, I was able to undertake a small-scale analysis of the situation regarding promoted post in geography across England.

These are the initial findings dealing with two issues: length of service as a middle leader and frequency of a promoted post reappearing more than once in any recruitment round for September of that year.

I selected geography because it seems likely many schools will not have more than a couple of TLRs in the subject, and the chance of more than one being advertised in any one recruitment round is unlikely to be high. The data were analysed by date, school, Unique Reference Number (URN) and its geographical location to ensure schools with the same name weren’t miscounted.

A sample of 139 schools where there were at least two advertisements for a post in geography with a TLR revealed the following:

Years between adverts	Number of Schools
2	49
3	51
4	21
5	16
6	2

It looks as if a high proportion of schools in the sample saw some considerable degree of turnover in their geography departments.

The second question is whether turnover has increased in recent years?

	Promoted posts – Geography – Schools with probable Re-advertisements
Year	1	2	3	4	5+
2107	7	0	0	0	1
2018	7	2	2	2	0
2019	13	3	4	4	0
2020	5	2	1	0	2
2021	6	6	3	1	2
2022	46	18	6	3	1

The data in the table would seem to suggest that 2022 has seen a large number of schools with re-advertisements for geography posts with a TLR when compared with previous years both during and before the pandemic but that before the pandemic affected the recruitment policies of many schools there was a trend towards the need to re-advertisement more of these posts.

It may be too soon to determine how far 2022 marks a catching up exercise to deal with the consequences of the covid pandemic on staffing in schools rather than a sign of greater pressure on middle leadership posts. Perhaps, these is an element of both outcomes present in the data? Should the high level of re-advertisements continue into 2023 it would be fair to conclude that hiring middle leaders was becoming more of a challenge.

Future work will centre around whether there is a geographical difference in the schools re-advertising and also whether schools with either higher Free School Meals pupil percentages or lower output scores are more likely to re-advertise?

As pointed out previously in this blog, the presence of a unique job reference number for all advertised posts would make this type of analysis much easier to perform.

The time of year that the first advertisement appears may also be relevant since the unique nature of teacher recruitment that is dominated by resignation dates and the rhythm of the school year may also influence patterns of re-advertisements.

Catch Up a good idea, but where to find the staff?

Posted on October 27, 2022 by John Howson

The DfE has released a research report into Year 2 of the National Tutoring Programme. National Tutoring Programme year 2: implementation and process evaluation – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) What struck me about the report by NfER was the issue of where tutors came from and the impact of the programme on the overall workforce available to teach our children.

The Report comments that:

“The availability and quality of external tutors and mentors is fundamental – not all schools have the capacity to use internal staff as tutors Evidently, some schools want and need to rely on external tutors. It is encouraging that two-thirds of senior leaders were confident that their school could access high-quality tutoring when needed. However, a fifth were uncertain and a notable minority were unconfident. Only two-fifths were more confident than before the pandemic, which is disappointing given the Government’s focus on tutoring as a response to Covid-19 recovery.”

The Report also concludes that:

“The clear message from the research summarised earlier in the report is that tutors should be knowledgeable in their subject area and trained in pedagogy for tutoring to be effective. The findings emphasise the importance of the roles of the NTP contractors in 2022-23, who will be responsible for recruitment of tutors and mentors, providing them with training, and quality assurance.”

Both of these factors will no doubt contribute to the finding that the programme added to the workload of senior staff in schools, as would any new programme, and that those extra burdens need to be financed to prevent staff having to cope with extra pressures. The Report comments that “It will be important to monitor and review whether this increase in workload continues as the NTP becomes more embedded and as schools are given more autonomy over the delivery of tutoring.”

From my perspective, it is also important to know more about where the staff involved in the programme came from, and if tutoring is going to become a long-term feature of the school scene what will be the effects on the ability of schools to staff their core offering of teaching and learning. How will the programme interface with any actions on the levelling up agenda the new Ministerial Team at the DfE might pursue.

Does the return of Mr Gibb to a ministerial role in the DfE mean more phonics and the EBacc and less concern with vocational subjects? Faced with the prospect of cuts to departmental spending, will the programme be judged sufficiently successful to survive or just allowed to be something schools might wish to pay for from their own budgets?

The National Tutoring Programme should fill an important gap in the provision by providing schools with the ability to help pupils that miss elements of schools catch-up with their peers and help put their own learning back on track. However, the relationship between the programme, and particularly the secondary school sector, where staffing issues are more critical, may need further investigation and may perceived regional issues in supply. In the primary sector, the impact on senior staff workload may be an important consideration for the future.

Why do children in London want to go to school?

Posted on October 23, 2022 by John Howson

Last week, the DfE published some interesting data on attendance during the autumn and spring terms s of the past few years. The figures, as the DfE acknowledges, are affected by the progress of the covid pandemic. Nevertheless, it is interesting to look at the 2021/22 autumn and spring term data for overall absence as measured by local authority. The data are for upper-tier authorities, so in the remaining ‘shire counties’ it isn’t possible to drill down to district council level. Such data would be especially interesting as it would allow better comparisons between district and unitary councils and the urban borough of London and the Metropolitan areas. Pupil absence in schools in England: autumn and spring terms, Autumn and Spring Term 2021/22 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk)

Even with out this data, the dominance of the London boroughs in the table as ranked by lowest levels of absence is very plain to see. Only Trafford and Bracknell Forest break in to the list of the top 25 local authorities with the lowest overall absence rates for autumn 2021 and spring 2022 terms, a fact demonstrated by the regional data in the table below. Camden seems to be something of an outlier in the London data with rates for overall absence well about the average for its companion boroughs.

Absence rates by region, autumn and spring terms 2021/22
	Overall absence rate	Rate of sessions recorded as not attending due to COVID circumstances	Percentage of persistent absentees – 10% or more sessions missed
North East	7.90%	1.10%	24.30%
North West	7.30%	1.20%	22.30%
Yorkshire and The Humber	7.60%	1.20%	23.00%
East Midlands	7.40%	1.30%	22.10%
West Midlands	7.60%	1.40%	23.30%
East of England	7.50%	1.50%	23.00%
South East	7.40%	1.60%	22.20%
South West	8.00%	1.40%	24.70%
Inner London	6.30%	1.30%	18.70%
Outer London	6.40%	1.20%	18.80%

Source: DfE

Inner London, has the lowest overall absence rate for the period, followed by the Outer London boroughs. The South West, a region with no real urban outside of the Bristol Region, had the worst overall absence rate, ahead of even the North East that featured in my recent post about unauthorised absences this September. Absent without leave | John Howson (wordpress.com)

The DfE’s data on overall absence covers primary, secondary and special schools and it would be interesting to see the data by sector for each local authority. Are the areas where the DfE has pupped in extra funds performing better than those with just the National Funding Formula and high Needs block to rely upon? Although above the regional average, the percentage figure for Blackpool is by no means the worst in the North West, so hopefully, the funding is making a difference.

As might be expected, the overall absence rate for the secondary sector at 9.2% in Spring Term 2021/22 was higher than in the primary sector, where it was 6.7%. Both included a 1% figure for covid related absences. In 2018/19, before the pandemic, the secondary sector recorded an overall absence rate of 5.6% and the primary sector a rate of 4.1%. Not surprisingly, it seemed easier to encourage primary school pupils back into school after the pandemic.

Ensuring pupils are back in school must be the first step on the recovery in learning, and there must be thoughts about the missing adolescents and how they can be encouraged to start learning again. Might that affect judgements about future funding, or will the government write off these young people and their learning?

Can state services save money for schools?

Posted on October 22, 2022 by John Howson

When I first started writing this blog, back in early 2013, now nearly a decade ago, one of my mistakes was not to create an index. With more than 1,300 posts later, to do so now would be a labour of love that at present I don’t have the time for. The lack of an index means I am largely dependent upon visitors throwing up links to former posts to supplement my own memory of issues such as Jacob’s Law – discussed in the previous post.

Today, I have been reminded of a post from January 2018 about costs and savings in the education system that is relevant to the present economic situation. You can read the full post at Not Full Circle? | John Howson (wordpress.com) but one key paragraph was this:

“…. I wonder whether another stage in the cycle of government contracting is starting to emerge. In the immediate post-war period of central planning, public bodies often ran most services. There was no profit element to consider, but cost controls were of variable quality. The Thatcher era saw a mass transfer of services to private companies, with an expectation that costs would fall. Maybe some did, but others didn’t and some benefitted from the proceeds of technological change that drove down costs, but didn’t create competition and didn’t always drive down prices.”

This 2018 post had built upon an even earlier one from July 2014 Private or public | John Howson (wordpress.com) that dealt with the issue, concerning even then, of the cost of outsourcing children’s services to the private sector with no control over rising costs.

At that time, I was establishing TeachVac www.teachvac. To demonstrate how costs of recruitment advertising could be reduced. I concluded the post with the comment that;

“In a time of cutbacks on government expenditure, as we have witnessed during the past six years, it is inevitable that staffing costs will come under pressure, and the debate between cutting wages or cutting services will rage. Sometimes there is a third way, and a new technology or a different approach, can achieve the same service level for lower costs. Is that what we ought to be striving for in education? The only other alternative to preserve service levels is higher taxes.”

This debate about the profit element, and where the most cost-effective system can be found, is once again a live one as the country faces a new round of coping with living beyond its means and the consequences of a foolish attempt to ‘dash for growth’ when other global factors were pointing towards the need for sound government.

How to make savings in a devolved system such as schooling in England is an interesting question. Perhaps we should start with the role of the DfE. Is it there to provide services on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis, such as their vacancy site or is it there to bring together the different players to work out the best value approach for schools. If the latter, how does it enforce such a best value approach? Perhaps the annual audit report should make a comment to governors about where a school spending exceeds a benchmark?

TeachVac is currently in the process of creating an index on recruitment showing the position that a school sits both locally and nationally. Such an index would provide evidence to show the degree high spending on recruitment was necessary and justified.

Marking time between PMs

Posted on October 21, 2022 by John Howson

The current political turmoil at Westminster has led commentators and journalists to suggest that the Schools Bill is now effectively dead in the water. The Bill had been struggling ever since it was introduced into the House of Lords and then received a right mauling, such as Upper House can sometimes deliver. Even Tory members of the ‘revising chamber’ seemed unimpressed by their own government’s attempts at reform. The strongest support at that point in time seemed to come from the bench of the Lords Spiritual in the form of the Church of England Bishop with the speaking rights for their schools.

So, while the DfE also waits to see whether kit Malthouse joins the ranks of those passing through Sanctuary buildings or will be allowed to stay on in post as Secretary of State by the next prime minster, what might civil servants do with their time if the Bill has effectively been dropped?

Personally, I would like to see the regulations for in-year admissions updated to provide more power provided for local authorities, especially with regard to children in care and those with an EHCP that move into a new area. These are some of our most vulnerable children, and the present system of opt-out by academies for in-year admissions sometimes doesn’t help their education.

I have called this a need for a Jacob’s Law to change this situation, but in reality, it doesn’t need a law, just a change in regulations and secondary legislation.

For those that want to read the history behind the need for a Jacob’s Law, see Time for Jacob’s Law | John Howson (wordpress.com) It is now 5 years since Jacob returned to Oxfordshire and started his period of 22 months without a school accepting him on roll. We must not let this happen again.

The last two White Papers have both contained references to returning control of in-year admissions to local authorities and the government has confirmed that to do so doesn’t need primary legislation.

The loss of the Schools Bill also puts at risk the idea of a register of young people of school age. Such a list would allow movement of young people to be tracked and make it harder for children to disappear off the radar. Not impossible, because parents can take drastic action such as disappearing overseas, but at least it might help policymaker understand the extent of home schooling and encourage debate about the rights of children and their parents to education and what that term actually means in the modern age?

The 25-49 age group that contains most parents of school-age children was one of the groups least supportive of the Conservatives in the latest polling of the public, even putting the Party behind the Lib Dems nationally among this age-group! PeoplePolling / GB News Survey Results

Celebrating the success of young people

Posted on October 19, 2022 by John Howson

On Monday evening, I watched an audience give a standing ovation to a young man in a wheelchair. The event was the Oxfordshire Youth Awards, and this was the first time that they had been held in public for several years.

The awards celebrated the great range of activities undertaken by young people across the county, many from those you don’t always associate with success in conventional academic terms.

The awards are a celebration of young people and the hard-working and talented children and young people living in the county. Even more impressive is that the decisions about who receives an award is made by a committee of young people aged between 13-25. This in itself provide a great work experience. I was proud to have been invited to attend the event.

In between the presentation of the awards, introduced by two young people, there was music and dancing from a variety of different groups and solo performers, all held on the big stage of the New Theatre in Oxford, more often the home to big budget musicals and other similar events.

There were seven different categories of awards including;

Community Champion that attracted 38 nominations including both a whole year group at one secondary school and many for individuals.

The Inspiration Entrepreneur award attracted six nominations and included those creating social businesses as well as for-profit enterprises.

The other awards included; Youth Project of the Year; Sports Personality; Arts Superstar; STEM Innovator; Youth Activist and the Pride of Oxfordshire Award that the citation said was for the young person that had shown courage and inspirational resilience in the face of challenging circumstances. There were 18 nominations.

The evening was a noisy and celebratory event; perhaps too noisy for an old-foggy such as myself, but I am sure that it inspired the audience to think of how they can become involved next year.

All too often we hear the horror stories of the day, so it is good to be able to write a positive story of the celebration of our young people. My thanks goes out to both the young people themselves and also to everyone that has mentored, motivate and supported their achievements. Long may these awards continue.

Here is what the awards team said of the evening:

“he Youth Awards is over for another two years, but it proves that every single hour of every single day, the young people of Oxfordshire are training, learning, reaching out, making, inspiring and creating ever better versions of themselves and the world around them. On Monday night, Oxfordshire seized its chance to show its appreciation and share the love in style.

The audience whooped, cheered and got to its feet for a standing ovation during an emotional evening celebrating our county’s talented 8-21-year-olds in every possible field. In between the award presentations: rappers rapped, actors performed, songbirds sang, dancers wowed and acrobats back flipped their way across the stage. We would like to thank every single one of our nominees and winners for being the stars they are.”

To find details of the winners visit You are all stars! – Oxfordshire Youth

Dear Prime Minister

Posted on October 4, 2022 by John Howson

Would you like some good news? On your return from Birmingham, you will no doubt be asking Ministers how their departments can save money. Here is one suggestion. I am not unbiased in making this suggestion, as it could benefit TeachVac, the job board that I chair. However, TeachVac was in existence before the DfE started its own version and has consistently shown how to achieve a low-cost approach to vacancy listing as our accounts at Companies House will confirm. Reviewing the DfE site could also save the government money.

We suggested originally that the DfE need only provide a page pointing those seeking teaching posts to available sites in the private sector, and another for schools showing the relative costs of using different sites. However, in response to the Public Accounts Committee, the DfE decided on a more costly intervention and created its own job board.

TeachVac is currently offering secondary schools a deal of 12 months of unlimited matches for just £250 and a mere £50 for primary schools. How much per vacancy does the DfE cost to provide?

Reproduced below is a post from 2020 that further makes the case for saving money on the DfE’s job board. Our monitoring since then suggests that the DfE site has gained little traction in the market and may be losing ground in terms of teaching vacancies uploaded.

DfE and Teacher Vacancies: Part Two

Posted on April 3, 2021

The DfE is spending more money supporting their latest venture into the teacher recruitment market. SchoolsWeek has uncovered the latest moves by the government to challenge existing players in this market https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-leans-on-mats-to-boost-teacher-job-vacancies-website-take-up/ in an exclusive report.

The current DfE foray into the recruitment market follows the failure of the Fast Track Scheme of two decades ago and the Schools Recruitment Service that fizzled out a decade ago. The present attempt also came on the heels of the fiasco around a scheme to offer jobs in challenging schools in the north of England that never progressed beyond the trial phase.

The present DfE site rolled out nationally two years ago this month. How successful it has been was the subject of a SchoolsWeek article earlier this year. https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfes-teacher-job-website-carries-only-half-of-available-positions/ This blog reviewed the market for vacancy sites for teachers last December, in a post entitled Teacher Vacancy Platforms: Pros and Cons that was posted on December 7, 2020.

In that December post, I looked at the three key sites for teacher vacancies in England. TeachVac; the DfE Vacancy site and the TES. As I pointed out, this was not an unbiased look, because I am Chair of the company that owns TeachVac. Indeed, I said, it might be regarded as an advertisement, and warned readers to treat it in that way.

There is an issue with how much schools spend on recruitment of teachers. After all, that was why TeachVac was established eight years ago. The DfE put the figure in their evidence to the STRB this year at around £75 million; a not insubstantial figure.

Will TeachVac be squeezed out in a war between the DfE backed by unlimited government funding and the TES with a big American backer? At the rate TeachVac is currently adding new users, I don’t think so. After all, the DfE site doesn’t cover independent schools, and in the present market I believe that most teachers want a site that allows access to all teaching jobs and not just some. That benefits both TeachVac and the TES as well as other players in the market, such as The Guardian and SchoolsWeek, as well as recruitment agencies.

How much the DfE will need to spend on ensuring they cover the whole of the state-funded job market in terms of acquiring vacancies by the ‘school entering vacancies’ method is another interesting question? As is, how much will it also cost to drive teachers to using the DfE site and not TeachVac or the TES?

A view of TeachVac’s account reveals that TeachVac provides access to more jobs for teachers at less than the DfE is going to spend on promoting their site over the next few months. Such spending only makes good commercial sense if you want to remove a player from the market.

So, here’s a solution. Hire TeachVac to promote the DfE site and use the data TeachVac already generates to monitor the working of the labour market. After all, that was also one of the suggestions from the Public Accounts Committee Report that spurred the DfE into action and the creation of their present attempt at running a vacancy site.

Consequences, and a bit of history

Posted on September 30, 2022 by John Howson

Now that the DfE has published the list of accredited ITT providers, I thought it might be interesting to reprise the post below from 2013 that highlights the start of the journey to where the sector is today.

The list of reaccredited providers, published by the DfE, seems to have radically slimmed down the school-based side of ITT at the cost of a few higher education establishments also having accreditation withdrawn. If the list is correct, when some long-established providers of ITT will no longer be involved in teacher preparation as a top tier provider and will need to partner with another accredited provider.

The geographical implications of the loss of some providers will take time to work out, but South East London may we one area affected by the changes. Some long-established SCITTs seem to be no more, but some of the overtly religious SCITTs seem to have survived.

Clarity ahead of Select Committee – but still not good news

Posted on September 9, 2013

What has become clear this afternoon is that the DfE may have faced a dilemma last autumn. With the national roll-out of School Direct being enthusiastically taken up by schools, it could either have effectively wiped-out the university-based PGCE courses by meeting the demands of schools or it could have denied schools the places they were asking for in School Direct. The DfE targets for secondary subjects did not allow the third option of satisfying both schools applying for School Direct places and keeping the PGCE going and still keeping within the targets. The extent of the problem can be seen by comparing Table 2b in the underlying data of Statistical Bulletin 32/2013 issued by the DfE on the 13^th August and Figure 1 of the School Direct management information published this afternoon by the National College for Teaching and Leadership. In practice, the DfE seems to have chosen a third way by creating inflated ‘allocations’ to try to keep higher education going, but still to satisfy the demands from schools for places. This exercise risked substantial over-recruitment against the real targets.

So, what happened? Looking just at the STEM subjects, Chemistry had an allocation of 1,327 in the Statistical Bulletin, but a target of 820 places in Figure 1 of today’s document – a difference of 507. To date, recruitment has been 900 according to Figure 1, so the subject is over-recruited against target, but significantly under-recruited against allocations. School Direct, where bids totalled 422 places last November, and reached around 500 by the time all bids had been collected, apparently recruited just 260 trainees, leaving higher education to recruit the other 640.

Sadly, in Mathematics, Physics, and Biology, despite the target being well below the allocation figure, the target has not been met. In Physics the shortfall is 43% against the target; and in Mathematics, 22%. In Biology it is just 6%. However, these percentages do not reflect the actual numbers who have started courses; that number may be greater or smaller than those released today.

Indeed, in no subject was the allocation met, although in business studies it was missed by just one recruit. However, the target in this subject is apparently higher than the allocation in August, although that may have something to do with classification. Less clear is the Religious Education position where the target is shown as 450, but the allocation in August was 434 for postgraduate courses. Somewhere another 16 places have been added since August when they have been subtracted in most other subjects.

I have suspected for some time that the allocations were above the level required by the DfE’s model, and have hinted as much in earlier posts. More than 40,000 trainees did seem an excessive number to train.

School Direct works in subjects where there are lots of high-quality applicants looking to train as a teacher. At the other end of the scale are subjects where either the schools didn’t bid for many places, as in Art & Design or recruitment is a real challenge, as in Physics.

These are the subjects where School Direct faces its greatest challenges for 2014, and where the DfE/NCSL seemingly still cannot do without higher education.

What is also clear is that the DfE cannot repeat this same exercise this autumn for 2014 recruitment. It will have to make it clear how many trainees are needed according to the model. If it does not do so, students will be paying £9,000 in fees without knowing whether they are a target or an allocation, and totally uncertain about their chance of securing a teaching post. That won’t attract many takers in an improving graduate job market as the risks are too high.

Over the next few weeks, it will be interesting to see how the effects of the reaccreditation pan out both for providers and for those seeking to start to train in 2023. In the 1980s, I worked at a college where ITT had been withdrawn. It was not a happy place to be. I, therefore, send my best wishes to all those involved in the outcome of the reaccreditation process.

STEM subjects ‘late recruiters’?

Posted on September 27, 2022 by John Howson

Yesterday’s post about the grim news on recruitment onto teacher preparation courses for 2022/23 didn’t mine all the possible information provided in the DfE data published in the monthly update.

One interesting statistic are how the proportion of applicants for secondary subjects has changed over the course of the year. Last December, I wrote a blog post pointing out that nearly half of early applicants came from just three subjects: English, mathematics and physical education. Half of secondary ITT applicants in just 3 subjects | John Howson (wordpress.com)

As expected, physical education trended lower as the year progressed, and places on courses filled up. The subject ended the year on 19% of total applications – down 5% on December. English also lost ground, down from 13% in December to 8% by September. However, mathematics seemed to be a ‘late attracting subject’, as by September the subject accounted for 18% of applications, up from 12% in December.

Removing these three subjects from the list and comparing the moves among the remaining subjects shows relatively little difference in many subjects in their position in the ranking.

Subject	Total December	Percentage December	Total September	Percentage September	% Difference
Art and design	378	6%	2410	7%	1
Biology	552	9%	3457	10%	1
Business studies	283	5%	1601	4%	1
Chemistry	509	8%	4055	11%	3
Classics	62	1%	261	1%	na
Computing	309	5%	2248	6%	1
Design and technology	243	4%	1638	5%	1
Drama	352	6%	1426	4%	-2
Geography	385	6%	2498	7%	1
History	1057	18%	4531	13%	-5
Modern foreign languages	568	9%	3880	11%	2
Music	191	3%	1160	3%	0
Other	564	9%	2321	6%	-3
Physics	307	5%	2830	8%	3
Religious education	231	4%	1541	4%	0
	5991	100%	35857	100%

When do different subjects recruit?

As might have been predicted, drama and history lost ground once courses filled up. The sciences were the main winners. This suggests that subjects that may have a higher proportion of men may recruit later in the round – we cannot know for certain as the data on gender isn’t published by subject – but it is a plausible hypothesis to discuss in relation to gender and STEM subjects.

The second hypothesis is that subjects where potential teachers know there may be difficulty in securing a place on a teacher preparation course will recruit earlier in the year. These bellwether subjects, such as history, physical education and also the primary sector can provide early warning on what might be to come in the autumn months.

As a piece of history, it was using this second hypothesis in the early 2000s that prompted me to call a recruitment crisis as early as one November and to be warned off by the then Minister’s Private Office in a phone call I took while a passenger in a car travelling down the M5 in Somerset for creating panic. The following March, the training grant was suddenly announced. Perhaps, I have been at this subject for too long.

Knowing this sort of information about recruitment trends can make the use of expensive TV marketing more precise. Is the present TV campaign a good use of money or would it be better aimed at STEM subjects in the spring?

Grim news on recruitment

Posted on September 26, 2022 by John Howson

The latest monthly statistics on applications and acceptances for graduate teacher preparation courses starting this autumn were published by the DfE this morning. These numbers mark the end of the first year of the DfE management of the application process for all graduate courses except Teach First.

Regular readers will not be surprised by what follows, as the headline outcome around under-recruitment for the year has been expected for several months, and this blog has commented upon the direction of travel each month in its regular updates.

The total number of applications at 39,288 falls well short of the 43,300 recorded for September 2021 as domiciled in England. More alarming is that the recruited number at 20,170 is just short of 7,000 lower than the 27,100 number of September 2021. The conditions pending number at 3,719 is also below the 2021 number of 5,980, and the remining possible applicants either awaiting a decision or from whom a decision is awaited on an offer are also lower than last year.

Compared with September 2021, there are 111,592 applications in September 2022 against 115,300 last year domiciled in England. Especially worrying has been the reduction in applicants from the youngest age groups of graduates. Those new graduates under age 25 form the bedrock of those recruited into teaching as a career and any serious fall is bad news.

Age Group	2021	2022
21 and under	3920	3833
22	3810	3110
23	3000	2347
24	2340	1698
Total placed	13070	10988

young graduates not interested in teaching as a career?

These are the groups from where the future leaders of the teaching profession will be drawn. According to the data released today, there are just fewer than 15,000 females placed onto courses this year compared with just over 19,000 last September. For males the numbers are 5,514 this year and 7,550 in September 2021. Unknown or referred not to say increased from 440 in 2021 to 175 with only three not in the ‘prefer not to say category’. Fewer candidates with domiciles in each region have been recruited in 2022 than in 2021. However, more important is the split between primary and secondary sectors.

There are 9,763 applications recruited in the primary sector in September 2022 compared with 12,690 in September 2021. Unsuccessful applications have fallen from 38,800 in 2021 to 35,962 this September. However, the percentage of unsuccessful applications has increased from 72% to 74$. Of course, this may mean applicants being accepted and their other applications being shown as unsuccessful. We will need the ITT Census to determine the exact recruitment into both primary and secondary training.

For secondary courses the situation is more complicated because of the different subjects and the different sizes of their graduate pools. The good news is that both geography and design and technology are likely to recruit more trainees than in 2021. The bad news is that the increase, if confirmed by the ITT Census won’t be enough to meet targets set by the DfE. In other subjects, there will be sufficient history and physical education trainees and a large surge in applications for IT and computing may make the total in that subject ore respectable, if these trainees turn up and stay the course.

Overall, the assessment for the secondary sector is that for 2023 to be anything other than a grim labour market for schools and a great time for teachers, there needs to be more returners and fewer departure overseas. I am not sure that either of those conditions will be in place by the time schools start recruiting in January 2023 for September.

TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk will be monitoring the job market and is the ideal site to find a teaching post.

With the concerns over the shape of teacher recruitment following the DfE’s actions the next few months will be an interesting time in the labour market for teachers and likely outcomes even as far ahead as 2024. While the primary sector will probably not be too badly affected, the issue of selective schools now looms over the secondary sector to add to the other recruitment concerns.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Category Archives: leadership