Category Archives: leadership

STRB and teacher recruitment

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Before 2015, the STRB (School Teachers’ Pay Review Body) used to report no later than March in most years, School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) reports – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) However, since the Conservative Party took over the sole management of the country in 2015, the publication of the STRB’s annual report, along with other pay body reports, has moved to July each year.

Such a date, so late in the annual government business cycle, at a point where departments should already be gearing up the next round of economic arguments within government, is unhelpful in many ways.

Obviously, it leaves The Treasury unsure about government expenditure, assuming the suggestions of the STRB are both accepted and fully funded. If one or other of those assumptions isn’t correct, but pay scales are increased from the September, then it places a burden on schools to find the cash to pay any increases, as I discussed in an earlier post. Sunak’s blunt axe | John Howson (wordpress.com)

The lack of clarity around starting salaries also makes recruitment into the profession potentially more challenging. A significant proportion of those entering the profession are still required to make a financial sacrifice to train as a teacher. To do so not knowing what either the possible salary they will receive during training – if paid on the unqualified scale – or their potential starting salary, if on a fee-paying course, is not an incentive to enter teaching. This may be specially the case for the important group of career switchers that are needed during the present dip in the number of new home-based graduates in their early 20s.

Once the new generation of graduates from the last baby boomer generation exits university, in a few years’ time, this may be less of an issue, assuming higher education entry rates hold up, and those most likely to become teachers don’t opt for apprenticeships or direct entry into the labour market and a salary immediately after leaving school.

Governments have always faced economic crises, lucky the Chancellor with benign economic headwinds, and must take difficult decisions. 101 years ago, the Liberal Government faced with the massive increase in government expenditure sanctioned by a government to fight the first world war, and seeking to restrain sky-high rates of taxation, looked for areas where public expenditure could be reduced – or cut – an exercise known after the chairman of the committee, Lord Geddes.

Perhaps, The Labour Party’s Leader’s speech on the ‘class ceiling’ was no accident, because it is those trying to crash through the ceiling that experience the worse outcomes of any pay restraint that leaders to teacher shortages. As I pointed in an earlier post, out, identifying the issue is one thing; solving it needs policies, and they were in short-supply in the speech from Sir Kier Starmer last week.

Perhaps, as suggested in the 1920s, rather than just telling schools to save money, the government might be more draconian in enforcing savings to pay for increased pay. But then, this, sadly, isn’t an area where the present government has had a good track record in recent times.  

Missions still need funding

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In February, Sir Keir Starmer outlined his five missions for the Labour Party – one wonders, will they appear on a pledge card, as once before – and the fifth one was ‘raising education standards’ according to a BBC report at the time Keir Starmer unveils Labour’s five missions for the country – BBC News

After a recent announcement about teachers, dealt with in my blog at Labour’s style over substance | John Howson (wordpress.com) came a Leader’s speech today on the subject of what the Labour Party would do about policy for education.

In reality, education seemed to mean schooling, skills and early years, if the press reports are to be believed. Interestingly, the BBC has now substituted the word ‘pledge’ for the term ‘mission’. An example of ‘word creep’, perhaps? Actually, it seems more like sloppy journalism if the text of the speech is to be believed, as it starts by referring to ‘mission’ not pledge. Read: Full Keir Starmer mission speech on opportunity, education and childcare – LabourList

At the heart of the speech seems to be these two questions

‘So these are the two fundamental questions we must now ask of our education system: are we keeping pace with the future, preparing all our children to face it?

And – are we prepared to confront the toxic divides that maintain the class ceiling?’

The speech was about class and opportunity as a means of raising standards. Sir Keir has clearly moved on form the famous ‘rule of three’ and now favour a five-point approach, so we had

Apart from the already announced increase in teacher numbers and the retention bonus, there was little about either how the new education age would be delivered or how it would be paid for. No pledge to level up post 16 funding, so badly hit under the present government.

Plans for Early Years

Oracy to build confidence

A review of the National Curriculum for the new digital age

The importance of vocational and work-related studies

Tackling low expectations

There was little for any progressive politician to take issue with in the speech, but little to demonstrate the drive to accomplish the fine words. Re-opening Children’s Centres will come at a price, as will changing the curriculum.

There was nothing to show how resources will be channelled into areas of deprivation and under-performance. Will Labour continue the Conservative idea of Opportunity Areas that do nothing for pockets of underperformance in affluent areas or will it revive the Pupil Premium introduced by the Lib Dems, when part of the coalition, ascheme that identified individual need, wherever it was to be found.

I think I still prefer the 2015 approach from the Liberal Democrats to end illiteracy within 10 years: something that can be measured, rather than the more nebulous ‘raising of standards’ offered by Sir Kier.

Finally, from the Labour Party that introduced tuition fees, not a word on higher education and the consequence of raising standards on the demand for places. Perhaps Labour has still to reconcile the brave new world of skills and the place of universities in the new education landscape. With higher standards will come another class ceiling at eighteen?

Labour’s style over substance

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I woke up this morning to news that the Labour Party had some new proposals to end the teacher supply crisis. Strangely, the press release section of their national website hasn’t posted anything, so I am reliant on what the BBC has said for the following thoughts. Labour plan to give teachers £2,400 to stop them quitting – BBC News

In passing, the Labour Party website generally doesn’t seem to be up with events, something that surprised me for a national Party aiming for government. But there are some issues, such their relationship with other political parties, and stories of suspensions and expulsions of members that I am sure they would want to bury. Still, that is all for another day and another place.

What are Labour suggesting and why do I say that it is style over substance? Firstly, there is nothing to ease the pain of training. No fee payments, as agreed when Tuition Fees were introduced by Tony Blair’s government. This would have been an excellent opportunity for a headline along the lines -well it’s not up to me to do Labour’s work for them.

Instead of targeting trainees and entrants, we get a survivor bonus according to the BBC story

The plans to improve retention rates, announced by Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson on Sunday, would see new incentive payments awarded once teachers had completed a training programme known as the Early Career Framework, which covers their first two years in the classroom.

Apparently, the payment would be £2,400 or only between a gross one-off five to ten per cent payment of what a teacher would be earning at that point in time, before tax, national insurance and pension deductions. Less, with a £30,000 starting salary. Paying this to all survivors, regardless of the help or salary they received during training would according to Labour cost £50 million. I wonder what paying fees and a training salary to make all trainees equal, and it easier for career changers to become a teacher, would cost?

Labour’s other key promise is welcome, but even more hollow when you burrow down into what it means in reality.

The [Labour} party says it would also make it compulsory for new teachers to have a formal teaching qualification or be working towards one – a requirement scrapped by the coalition in 2012.

Sure, Gove made a headline announcement that academies did not need to employ qualified teachers: and most academies ignored this freedom, as they often did with the freedom to pay classroom teachers different salaries. However, it hasn’t stopped all schools employing unqualified teachers when they cannot find a qualified one to fill a post. After all, it was the Labour government that changed the name of these staff from ‘instructors’ that clearly demonstrated that they were not qualified teachers, to the more positive term ‘unqualified teachers’, and also created a pay scale for them.

Curiously, there were fewer unqualified teachers by headcount working in schools last Novermber (2022) than in November 2010, the first census after the end of the last Labour government – 14,389 in 2022 compared with 15,892 in November 2010 according to the DfE’s Workforce Census.

Ensuring all teachers are qualified, and qualified in teaching their subject or phase, something the Labour announcement doesn’t offer, must be a requirement. However, Labour doesn’t say what schools, faced with a vacancy, should do if a qualified teacher isn’t available: send children home? The lack of a credible answer to this question makes the policy no more than idle rhetoric about trainee teachers not about solving the teacher supply crisis.

I would offer emergency certification with a required training programme from day one for unqualified teachers, including those not qualified in the subject that they are teaching.

Labour final policy on staff development is again good in principle; this area has been neglected by the present government, despite the limited experience of much of the teaching force. However, the policy lacks detail, and detailing who will be responsible for implementing and paying for it?

Taking tax breaks away from private schools would probably affect the special school sector, where local authorities mostly pay the fees, more than schools where parents are responsible for the fees. Such saving would also probably be stretched thinly to pay for all the mooted changes.

Retention can be cheaper than recruitment, but by making training more attractive for all, there is more chance that schools currently unable to recruit teachers would fill their vacancies. All too often these schools are situated in the more deprived areas. These are the schools any policy should be tested against: does it improve the education of children in these schools?

For those that don’t know, I am a Liberal Democrat County Councillor in Oxfordshire

All agreed then: there is a teacher recruitment and retention crisis

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The House of Commons Education Select Committee held its first oral evidence session this morning as part of its inquiry into recruitment and retention. The Committee discussed with representatives of the teacher and further education professional associations their views on the present state of affairs with regard to recruitment and retention.  

It was not a surprise to hear all the witnesses explain that the present situation in both schools and colleges represented a crisis, and that there was no solution in sight. Interestingly, nobody mentioned the effects of any downturn in the economy on teacher recruitment – not even evidencing what happened at the start of the covid pandemic when interest in ITE increased sharply. There was also no mention of teaching as a global career and the growth of UK private schools overseas as a source of jobs for teachers.

Pay, working conditions and morale all came up, and were cited as areas where the DfE needed to take action. The fact that all four professional associations are in dispute with the DfE was mentioned, but the lack of the STRB Report received relatively little consideration.

Two issues discussed in detail were the question of school leadership and how attractive it is. There was the usual discussion about how to keep good teachers in the classroom and some statements about teachers not wanting to become head teachers. There was also a discussion about how teaching behaves in relation to ‘protected’ groups in society.

Talking the first issue on leadership, it is interesting to look at the recent data from the School Workforce Survey on deputy and assistant heads working in the primary school sector in the under 49 age groups and specifically, for assistant heads, the under 39 age groups.

 AHDH
FEMALE25-2938899
30-3943522571
40-4939544123
86946793
MALE25-2911143
30-391108962
40-49674888
18931893
NON-G25-2910
30-3902
40-4900
ALL25-29500142
30-3954603535
40-4946285011
105888688

There were around 6,000 assistant heads in the primary sector under the age of 40 in November 2022. That ought to be sufficient to provide candidates for deputy headships, at least at the national level.

There are somewhere around 1,500 primary headships advertised each year. With less than 4,000 deputy heads under the age of 40 that means schools will need to draw heavily on the 5,000 primary headteachers in their 40s for many vacancies. This does leave the ratio of candidates to vacancies worryingly low, especially as the recruitment round progresses, and good candidates are appointed to vacancies. I think that there is a matter for concern here that the NAHT were wise to draw the Committee’s attention to in oral evidence.

As to minority groups, there is work to be done here to encourage men, ethnic minorities and those with disabilities to take up teaching as a career. Here are a couple of links to my blogs on the topic written in past years

Are new graduate entrants to teaching still predominantly young, white and female? | John Howson (wordpress.com)

‘We need more black headteachers in our schools’ | John Howson (wordpress.com)

This is an area where clearly the DfE seems to be paying less attention than in the past. Perhaps, it shows a consequence of the lack of a dedicated unit on teacher supply, training and professional development.

Such a unit might have helped the DfE create a coherent policy to solve the current staffing crisis in our schools and colleges that should have caught nobody unawares.

Worst Secondary PTRs for a decade

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Yesterday the DfE published the results of the School Workforce Survey, undertaken in November 2022. School workforce in England, Reporting year 2022 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk)

The good news is that there are more teachers; the bad news is that in both the primary and secondary sectors the Pupil Teacher Ratio has worsened. Falling pupil numbers had meant that the PTR in the primary sector had been improving over the past few years from a low of 20.9 in 2018/19 to 20.9 in the 2021 census. However, in 2022 it worsened, to 20.7. Not a big change, but a change in direction nevertheless.

In the secondary sector, the PTR has been worsening for some years now. The PTR peaked at 14.8 pupils per teacher in 2013/14 and has now worsened to 16.8 at the 2022 census; a whole two pupils per teacher worse in a decade, with all the implications for teacher workload that implies. No doubt the worsening PTR and its association with class sizes will be one reason why teaching is less popular as a career.

However, for those that do enter teaching, although fewer are remaining, with the number remaining after one year of service having fallen from its high of 8.3% in 2019, just before the pandemic to 87.2% in 2021, this is still above the 84.9% of 2016. Of even more concern must be the loss of teachers with 4-7 years of service that should be starting to fill key middle leadership positions. That just 64% remain from the 2015 cohort is disturbing. Equally disturbing is the loss of teachers from earlier cohorts. This is an area where research is needed to understand the causes. Is the global nature of teaching attracting mid-career teachers to move overseas.

The other straw in the wind from the census that cannot be ignored is the sharp increase in vacancies recorded from 1,564 in 2021 to 2,334 in 2022. On the DfE’s own measure, this means that the vacancy rate for classroom teachers has increased from 0.2% in 2020/21 – no doubt influenced by the covid pandemic to 0.5% in November 2022.  By comparison in the teacher shortages at the turn of the century, the vacancy rate in January 2001 (data was collected in January and not November at that time) reached 1.2%, so even allowing for the change in reporting date, the position may not be as bad yet as it was then. But there is little evidence to suggest that it will be better in November 2023, and much to suggest it might well be higher than 0.5%.

The rate of temporary filled posts has also increased sharply from 0.5% to 0.8%, although it remains below the 0.9% recorded as recently as 2016/17.

So, although overall teacher numbers have increased from 465.527 in 2022 to 468,371 in 2022: a new record high in terms of teacher FTEs in recent times, the increase has not been enough to offset increased pupil numbers in the secondary sector and other changes in demand.

Bad news for January vacancies

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The May 31st date for teacher resignations has come and gone. This year it has excited some interest in the press, as they have finally caught on to the thread this blog has been running ever since the DfE’s ITT census was published last September: namely, this this was going to be brutal recruitment round, and that there would not be enough teachers to meet the demands from schools seeking to fill vacancies for September 2023.

So far this week TeachVac has provided data for both tes and schoolsweek, and had calls on the subject from national newspapers as well. One group that has been conspicuously silent has been the House of Commons Select committee on Education that instituted an inquiry into teacher recruitment and retention on the 20th March, and required evidence by the 21st April: since when silence. I know that the Committee normally meets on a Monday, and that there have been a lot of Monday bank holidays, but not to even have considered whether any of the evidence was worth publishing for more than a month does seem a little strange.

Anyway, this blog isn’t about the Select Committee, but about schools faced with unexpected January vacancies. Last year, between the 1st November 2022 and the end of December, secondary schools posted 7,857 vacancies according to TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk That was a 53% increase in the number of vacancies recorded during this period when compared with the same period in 2021. Geography teachers were particularly in demand.

Whether in the autumn of 2023 it is the 7,857 vacancies of 2022 or just the 5,136 of 2021, schools will struggle to fill these vacancies, regardless of the subject. Some schools will struggle more than others. Indeed, previous analysis by TeachVac of the data, as reported on this blog, has shown that secondary schools with high percentages of pupils on free school meals tend to place more adverts for teachers than either private schools or state schools with low numbers of pupils claiming free school meals.

What can be done to help? If, as seems likely to be the case, there are more primary school teachers looking for jobs this year than there are posts available, could there be a one-term conversion course established for the autumn term, along the lines of the subject conversion courses for those lacking the full qualifications to enter ITT in a particular subject.

The primary to secondary course would be different in that the teachers would be qualified.  For such a course to work the teachers would probably need to be paid a salary that made it worth their while taking part in the course. If the DfE wanted to recoup their costs they could offer schools a teacher that completed the course for the price of a recruitment advert or the amount a school would spend with an agency to find a teacher.

Such teachers could teach Key Stage 3 based upon their A level subjects and release existing teachers to cover Key Stages 4 & 5, and examination groups left without a teacher by the vacancy created or indeed left unfilled from September.

There is little time to organise such a programme, but the alternative is to saddle schools with the need to spend lots of cash chasing teachers that aren’t there in vain attempts to fill their vacancies.

Note: As a director of TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk I am an interested party in the operation of the recruitment market. However, TeachVac’s £500 offer for listings of all vacancies for 15 months until August 2024 is substantially cheaper than other sites, especially for non-state schools that cannot access the DfE’s job board.

Special Offer from TeachVac: £400 for all teaching jobs

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TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk has launched its early bird rate card for 2023/24. Subscribing schools pay one fee for all their vacancies to be listed on TeachVac from June 2023 to the end of August 2024. Sign up your school today.

TeachVac is offering 15 months of matching all vacancies for one fee of just £500 for a secondary phase school, discounted to just £400 for early payment.

Primary schools pay £75, or just £50 for the one yearly payment if made now.

Nine years of experience and extensive use of AI allows TeachVac to offer all schools; both independent and state schools this offer which is substantially cheaper than other recruitment routes.

For groups of schools and agencies there are special rates.

Schools using agencies can benefit from the agency rate if their agency is registered with TeachVac.

Why use TeachVac?

As the leading monitor of the labour market for teachers – NfER used TeachVac data in their 2023 annual survey of the labour market for teachers and both tes and SchoolsWeek also consult TeachVac when they want information about the labour market for teachers – TeachVac has unrivaled data on the job market.

Schools that use TeachVac’s vacancy matching service can access information that enables them to assess the state of the market for new entrants including monthly updates on this blog.

Recruitment for both the January and September 2024 rounds are going to be challenging, parlty because of a shortage of new entrants into the profession in a wide range of secondary sector subjects.

If you need more information or would just like to chat about the offer from TeachVac then email the team at enquiries@teachvac.co.uk or telephone 01983 550408

£10,000 to attract overseas teachers

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There has been a lot of chatter across social media about the government’s offer of a £10,000 tax free relocation scheme for overseas students starting ITT in certain subjects, and teachers in these subjects being offered a similar package if they will come and work in England. These incentives are to help to overcome the dire shortage of teachers in many subjects that has been well documented in the posts on this blog. There is now even a letter in The Times newspaper on the subject.

Concerns about the incentive schemes range from the issue of stripping out teachers from countries that need them even more than we do. This theme rarely, if ever, looks at whether those countries are training sufficient, not enough or even too many graduates for the local labour market. Then, there is the argument, as in The Times, that teaching is now a global occupation, as it is, but that schools in England make it difficult for those that have worked overseas to return to teach in England. That is a problem the government could fix immediately, and not by offering cash payments.

The DfE could establish a recruitment agency alongside its job board and hire well respected headteachers to interview would-be returning teachers, and certify them as suitable for employment in England. These applicants could then be matched with vacancies on the DfE job board placed by state school and TeachVac for independent school vacancies, and their details forwarded to the school.

If the schools did not take the application forward, they could be asked to explain why these teachers were not short-listed for interview or, if interviewed, not appointed. The feedback could be used to help develop the scheme, if necessary, by offering appropriate one-term conversion courses. An autumn term course, offering say £10,000 to participants that complete the course, would mean these teachers would be available to fill January vacancies. These are vacancies where schools are really struggling each year to fill unexpected departures.

Such a scheme would also stop the return of headteachers flying off to Canada and Australia in search of candidates to fill their posts, as has happened in past periods of teacher shortage.

Expanding on the re-training scheme, the government might also look at the increasing pool of teachers trained for the primary sector that are unable to find teaching posts. Could a one-term conversion course to teach Key Stage 3 in a particular subject allow them to be employed by secondary schools, and release teachers with more subject knowledge to teach Key Stages 4 & 5?

The DfE has been happy to interfere in the recruitment market with its job board, but could be much more involved than just designing the current hands-off incentive schemes and other actions such as writing to ITT providers asking them to consider applicants from around the world. This letter was at the point in the ITT cycle where providers are mostly looking to keep places for home students in case they appear. After all, who knows when the next downturn in the economy will emerge and teaching will once again be a career of interest, a sit briefly was in the early days of the covid pandemic.

Some marks to the DfE for doing something, but there are more marks to be obtained for being even more creative in solving our teaching crisis.

Four-day week for teachers?

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A Labour MP has called for a four-day working week to be introduced across the public sector.

Lib Dem-run South Cambridgeshire District Council’s cabinet will meet today to approve the continuation of the trial for all desk-based staff as well as extending it to cover caretakers and binmen. 

These are just two of the headlines from an article that I read this morning. What would be the implications for teachers of the introduction of a four-day week? The answer depends upon whether the same amount of face-to-face contact with pupils was maintained as at present and whether that was contact time spread over four or five days? What effect would four longer school days have on pupils, especially younger pupils? After all, some early years settings already offer wrap around care that is much longer than the traditional school-day.

What would the psychologists and those that study brain development in children have to say about putting five days of work into four? Perhaps a model would develop of four days of taught time and the fifth for ‘homework’ or supplementary activities.

On the plus side, parents also working a four-day week would have an extra day with their children: on the downside, parents whose working week did not coincide with the school four-day week would have to deal with the need for extra childcare.

Any change would come with a cost both to individuals and to the State. If there wasn’t sufficient funding, schools might be tempted to cram the teaching into four days and use the fifth day to generate income from their school sites and playing fields.

In a sector struggling to recruit enough teachers at present, would a four-day week make the profession more or less attractive to potential teachers. Certainly, if the bulk of graduate careers moved to a four-day week, teaching, already operating an employer-driven form of flexi-time, might be unattractive without some other boost to conditions of work.

A four-day working week might be a real challenge to the private school sector, where the additional costs would most likely have to be passed on to parents through increased fees. An increase of this magnitude might drive more parents back into the state sector, upping the cost of state education to the government. Add VAT on to the costs, and such numbers switching might increase still further.

During the Corbyn era, Labour proposed four additional bank holidays for workers; all during school holidays, so teachers would have seen no benefit from them. The implications for the teaching profession and others working in schools of the widespread introduction of a four-day working week do need to be considered.

However, I don’t think that the present model of schooling will continue as it has for the past 150 years. The AI revolution may well turn out to be as profound for society as the microchip revolution that started in the 1970s and transformed the world of work beyond recognition in many areas, but only to a limited degree in schools.

 Technology and its interaction with the process of schooling has further to go in the future. Perhaps the pressure for a four-day working week for humans might be the catalyst for major changes in schooling?

Is the job boom for teachers ending?

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After three months of record numbers of vacancies for teachers being recorded by TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk April saw something of a slowdown in the pace of advertised vacancies. No, there wasn’t an overall decline compared with the record set for April in 2022, but the rate of increase, as the table makes clear, was less then during the first three months of 2023. Nevertheless, the monthly total of 8,557 was a new record for the period since 2018, the year when TeachVac first started analysing monthly trends in vacancies.

201820192020202120222023
January358248186497207962697807
February301041746318389646289056
March42156185681160391051612289
April477760224432511084618557
May632778454375674114211
June22233296188627955968
July6129085807051812
August377390287315794
September17722718195629604711
October25693745223231315106
November23052897197733925063
December13822090121421773112
Source: TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk

There may have been special factors restricting the number of vacancies in April this year. The holiday period always has an effect on the April vacancy numbers and this year there may have been an effect due to the industrial action affecting many schools.

The interesting question is what will vacancies be like during May in 2023? Traditionally, May is the peak month for classroom teacher vacancies in the secondary sector. It is too early to predict what will happen in 2023, and the effect of the coronation and the extra bank holidays in addition to the hardening of the industrial unrest in the profession might affect the profile of vacancies this month.

Nevertheless, schools do need to be fully staffed for September, and there are fewer new entrants than in recent years, as this blog has pointed out in recent posts. Should serving teachers decide to quit, in greater numbers than last year, for whatever reason, then vacancies will remain buoyant. But, should the effect of the cost-of-living crisis and increased rents and mortgages in particular deter teachers from leaving, especially if they think that in doing so, they might miss any one-off payment for back pay, then perhaps the 14,000 recorded vacancies of May 2023 might not be bettered this year.

Within the overall national picture there are examples to be found of both significant increases such as for IT teachers in London, although that was balanced by a decrease in demand for such teachers from schools across the South East. Maths teachers were in demand in the North Wet, but not in the North East during April, and Science teachers were wanted in the Yorkshire and The Humber region, but less so in the West midlands than in April 2022.

Demand for primary classroom teachers was weak in April. Leaving aside the special circumstances of April 2020, the recorded vacancies were the lowest seen since before 2018 across England as a whole, with demand across the South East being especially weak this April.

Anyone interested in more granular data by local authority or other filter is welcome to ask for a special report from TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk Prices are reasonable and include a breakdown by state and private schools as well as by academies and maintained schools.