Category Archives: leadership

STEM subjects ‘late recruiters’?

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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.

SubjectTotal DecemberPercentage DecemberTotal SeptemberPercentage September% Difference
Art and design3786%24107%1
Biology5529%345710%1
Business studies2835%16014%1
Chemistry5098%405511%3
Classics621%2611%na
Computing3095%22486%1
Design and technology2434%16385%1
Drama3526%14264%-2
Geography3856%24987%1
History105718%453113%-5
Modern foreign languages5689%388011%2
Music1913%11603%0
Other5649%23216%-3
Physics3075%28308%3
Religious education2314%15414%0
5991100%35857100%
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

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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 Group20212022
21 and under39203833
2238103110
2330002347
2423401698
Total placed1307010988
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.

Demise of Forum: the journal for educationalists

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The demise of Forum as a journal read by those in education came as a complete surprise to many. However, that is often the way in business. If you admit to failing then you just go under even faster, with no hope of survival. I am sad to hear of those that have lost money. As the largest shareholder in TeachVac, I know how precarious being in business can be. TeachVac has now launched its new website www.teachvac.co.uk with a special offer for schools.

However, this post is to offer a chance for John Viner, an Education Consultant and ITT professional, to air his views on teacher education in two pieces he had written for Forum, but that will never appear in that journal. As published by me in my blog, these articles that follow come with the usual caveats that they are John Viner’s work not mine, and I don’t endorse the views just by publishing them.

Smoke and Mirrors by John Viner

There is a bombshell of a crisis that is about to burst in our schools and across our education system. From the recent government White Paper, Whitehall clearly thinks either that it’s been fixed, or that, if they blow enough smoke at it, the reality will be hidden. The problem is that we have been here before. Many times.

Any guesses about the focus of this bombshell? Yes, it’s the pending crisis in school leadership and right behind it are the twin horsemen of teacher recruitment and retention. This is the first of two articles in which we will consider the nature of the pending problem, how we might, at least, minimise it and how we can possibly prepare for the longer term.

Hands up if you remember the “Troops to Teachers” initiative. Based on a US model, this was an initiative launched in 2012 with the aim – as the name suggests – of recruiting ex-servicemen and women into the classroom. David Laws, then education minister, said that “pupils would benefit from the experience, background and skills that ex-military personnel had gained in our inspiring armed forces”. Despite the offer of a two-year employment-based degree and a funded PGCE for graduates, the scheme attracted just 363 trainees up to 2018, with a quarter walking away without qualifying.

Jump then to 2018 when Ed Sec Damien Hinds relaunched the scheme with the lure of a £40,000 bursary. The following year, Hinds’ incoming replacement, Gavin Williamson promised the scheme would “motivate and inspire a generation of children in classrooms across the country”. It attracted just 22 trainees that year. Amazingly, the scheme is still running.  To be fair, it is just one of a number of pipelines that the government hope will top up a diminishing pool. More successful initiatives such as Teach First, Now Teach, School Direct and the very successful Teacher Apprenticeship programme are maintaining a steady(ish) supply of trainees.

One of the most reliable sources of information about teacher supply is the annual Commons Briefing Paper.  The most recent version notes:

Since 2011 the overall number of teachers has in general not kept pace with increasing pupil numbers. This means the ratio of qualified teachers to pupils has increased from 17.8 in 2011 to 18.5 in 2020. In addition, the number of teacher vacancies have risen over this period. (Commons Library Research Briefing, 24 November 2021)

The heart of the problem, however, is not so much teacher supply as teacher retention. The incoming pipeline is no match for the size of the drain. In 2018, the DfE published a detailed research report on why teachers left the profession. It recommended: improving in-school support for teachers, increasing progression opportunities, reducing workload, and flexible working. Pay was not a significant driver, although regarded as lower than comparable professionals.   By the end of 2019 the Conservative manifesto made a commitment to raise teachers’ pay while the DfE was running an early-career bursary for teachers of shortage subjects. Conveniently, the workload issue was sidelined. Then came the Pandemic, lockdown, schools as hotbeds of Covid-19 and everything changed.

One of the most interesting outcomes of the pandemic, for all its in-school stress and changes to working practices, was a surge in ITT applications, particularly for employment-based routes. Suddenly schools which had struggled to put teachers in classrooms found themselves hosting enthusiastic trainees. It was a pity that a few saw the Teacher Apprenticeship Programme as a cheap staffing solution but failed to support their trainees adequately, especially in respect of the 20% off-the-job release time to which they were entitled. These trainees quickly came to understand the great under-addressed problem of overwhelming teacher workload. However overall, it was a bonus year for applicants. 

Meanwhile, the pointy heads looking at improving retention, still missing the point about workload and working conditions, came up with the two-year induction framework for Early Career Teachers. It came with all sorts of funded release time and so could have gone some way to making up for the workload during the training year. Meanwhile Nadhim Zahawi has announced pay rises for all teachers, including 8.9% for new joiners. While welcome of course, why was nobody reading the 2018 report on why teachers left the profession?   At the other career end, let’s review why this is crisis waiting to happen.

Nobody minded those Ofsted visits about how schools were doing in the pandemic but, as I have noted before, whatever Ofsted might claim, a full return to a robust inspection regime is simply adding to the anxiety of senior leaders.  The NEU conference in Bournemouth heard that over two-thirds believed inspections undermine school leaders’ ability to focus on pupil outcomes while a staggering 86% claimed they added to both stress and workload.

Similarly, we all want the best for our new teachers, but it is the impact on mentors that is increasing their workload. Teach First has optimistically reported that less than 20% of ECTs are unhappy with their experience but also that ‘Mentor capacity and workload is the biggest concern raised right across the sector in relation to ECF changes.’ (Faye Craster April 2022). This has the potential to impact on ECT appointments, with Schools Week (22 April) reporting that “more than one-third of school leaders now say they may take in fewer early career teachers in the future, which rises to 46 per cent among primary heads”.

With the world energy crisis driving up costs, we may well see this also limit new staff appointments, though quite how much is not yet clear.

Add to this what is being called, ‘the great resignation’ as headteachers, crushed by the workload and the accountability are lining up at the exit. Against this background, the White Paper’s promise of ‘strong schools with great teachers for your child’ rings pretty hollow. Indeed, many of its proposed strategies to find these ‘great teachers’ are as solid as a smoke ring.

So, what to do now?  At the very least, you could be analysing your school’s situation to work out how vulnerable you might be to the bombshell’s fallout. That’s the focus of the toolkit with this article. In Part 2 we will explore Zahawi’s bold claims to work out whether they are more than smoke and mirrors.

Things fall apart (W B Yeats) by John Viner

In the last article we looked at the very strange circumstances in which teacher recruitment and retention finds itself. Whatever new initiatives arrive, the fact remains that drain is bigger than the inlet. The plan was to review the problems through the lens of the long-awaited White Paper. That was before the Conservative Party went into freefall and we now have little clarity on what the future will actually hold. At the time of writing, the selection of Liz Truss as Prime Minister throws everything in the air. Some may remember Truss as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Childcare and Education during Michael Gove’s tenure as Secretary of State.  We have yet to see what her government means for education.

Perhaps the simplest way to review all this is to assume that some version of the White Paper will be implemented and to think about any messages we are hearing from Ofsted.

What is certain, in the world of Teacher Training, is that Ofsted have ITT providers under close scrutiny and that is likely to have an impact on recruitment and retention.

White papers are not legislation. They are Government policy documents setting out their proposals for future legislation. They are sometimes published as Command Papers and may include a draft version of a Bill that is being planned.

The Education White Paper has four key themes. It promises that, by 2030:

  • every child will be taught by an excellent teacher trained in the best-evidenced approaches.
  • every child will be taught a broad and ambitious curriculum in a school with high expectations and strong standards of behaviour.
  • every child who falls behind in English or maths will get the right support to get back on track.
  • all children will benefit from being taught in a family of schools, with their school in a strong multi academy trust or with plans to join or form one.

There are some old friends reappearing here and, if you have been in the profession for a few years, you will recognise that we may have been here before. Several times. It would take a deeper exploration of these four key areas to identify the pluses and minuses but, for the purpose of this article, we will focus only on the promise of an excellent teacher for every child. The DfE promises it will deliver half-a-million new professional development opportunities for teachers in training, early in their career, or through new National Professional Qualifications.  Note that, despite what seems an eye-catching headline, it’s 500,000 opportunities, not 500,000 teachers.

So, where will these excellent teachers come from? Last November’s school workforce survey reported that almost an eighth of teachers left the profession last year with, for the first time, greater attrition rates for primary than secondary. Just under 90% of these were early departures, not retirements. This was a jump of 12.4% on 2020-21. Around the same proportion of newly qualified teachers left the profession within a year. Classroom teacher vacancies are at their highest level since records began. The plan to attract former teachers back to the classroom post-covid saw ministers boast that over 500 former teachers had been recruited but the reality was that only around 20% eventually returned to the classroom. Also, it is worth noting that around 8% of teachers are currently deserting the state sector for independent schools.

Prior to her election by the Conservative Party, Liz Truss echoed the White Paper commitment to strengthen and widen Trusts, with an apparent recommitment to Grammar Schools. The promise to provide catch-up support is an old chestnut and usually comes with a pledge to crack down on behaviour, as it does here. Pause to reflect on the Chief Inspector’s 2022 Education Festival speech, where she noted,

And the glue holding school structures and routines together are rules and discipline. The word ‘discipline’ – like exams for some – comes with connotations. For some, it conjures images of over-strict headteachers, punishments and coercion. But for me discipline is rooted in respect. Respect for the school, for staff, for fellow pupils and for learning itself. It’s the discipline of being on time, of treating people well and of making an effort. In successful schools, these things are taught and reinforced, humanely and effectively. Discipline is not a dirty word.

In the background lies the promise to ensure that tuition contracts go only to approved contractors (but schools remain free to employ individual tutors). However, all the signs were that the DfE, would continue to scapegoat headteachers for the poor take-up of the National Tuition Programme. And that brings us to the looming crisis in school leadership, with the NAHT warning that ‘high-stakes accountability, crushing workload, long hours and inadequate funding’ was driving an accelerating exit rate of headteachers.  And we have not yet been able to consider energy costs. New Ed Sec Kit Malthouse – unsurprisingly a product of the independent sector – has had little to do with education so we wait and see how it falls out.

So, is this a perfect storm brewing, or will the DfE be able to resolve teacher supply?  Let us see what Ofsted may be suggesting.  There have been some minor changes to the school’s inspection handbook. The DfE have clarified that

Section 5 inspections now referred to as ‘graded inspections’ and Section 8 inspections of good and outstanding schools called ‘ungraded inspections’. The purpose of each inspection type and how they are carried out remains unchanged. l

For new teachers, the Early Careers Framework continues to increase workload and stress, despite its opposite claims. We continue to wait for the research that evaluates the impact of the two-year induction period and how far it addresses the issues of retention. Meanwhile, for those in training, there remain several routes: School Direct, Teacher Apprentices, Teach First and Now Teach, to name a few. However, it is evident from recent Ofsted inspections of ITT providers that there is a separate agenda running and many hitherto successful providers find themselves downgraded.

There seems to be a determination to reduce the number of ITT providers. How this sits with recruiting excellent teachers remains to be seen. A very few select bodies have been handed £75,000 contracts to “support the anticipated closure” of initial teacher training providers. How this improves recruitment and retention is unclear.

The important challenge for all school leaders is to try to stay ahead of the game. At the moment it is hard to work out what the game is.

NB the interesting Vulnerability Calculator and recruitment planner are not included in this blog due to the nature of the format.

John Viner may be contacted via LinkedIn or at jeviner@gmail.com

As regular reads of this blog will know, I believe that the downturn in pupil numbers will necessitate some realignment of ITT places, but I subscribe to the need to keep higher education at the centre of the preparation and development of our teaching profession. John Howson

Thank you, Ma’am.

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Although state education may not have featured highly in the life of the late Queen, the occasional school openings and honours ceremonies apart, we can all recognise and give thanks for her life of service to the nation. Perhaps the new King might like to create some Regis Professorships in Education in memory of his mother?

As one of those born during the reign of King George VI, I am old enough to recall the transition of power from one monarch to another. Indeed, an early memory is of learning the word ‘catafalque’ in connection with the ceremonial lying-in state in Westminster Hall, itself a building of great historic significance.

The Coronation was the first time that I saw a television programme, clustered around a small black and white screen belonging to someone my parents knew. Not much about the actual day remains in my memory, although the official programme for the day shows both the order of service and the arrangement of the carriage procession around the streets of London to allow as many people as possible to witness the spectacle and pageantry.

It was while at primary school that I first saw The Queen in person, when she attended the annual Horse of the Year Show, then held in the now long demolished Haringay Stadium in North London.  I suppose we what might these days be called groupies attending outside the stadium to watch the horses prepare for the events inside after the end of the school day and until well into the early evening. Each year, The Queen would arrive by car and drive into the arena while we watched from the side-lines. In those days there was no security cordon or questions about what primary school age children were doing out by themselves. Such is progress.

Tomorrow, Sunday, I will attend the local reading of the proclamation in Oxford. This takes place at the historic centre of the city at Carfax crossing, and the statement will be read by the High Sheriff of Oxfordshire. It will take a bit of time to adjust to the new reign and to substitute King for Queen in many formal parts of life. But it will soon become second nature.

I hope that our new King will show some interest in the state school system. He, reputedly, didn’t enjoy some of his secondary schooling and that may show that parents need to think about would be best for their children.

When it comes to planning the Coronation, I hope that young people will be invited to play a part, to represent the Britain of today and tomorrow alongside the traditional military and other ceremonial. A modern nation must be able to do modern ceremonial as well as recreating the past. After all that was splendidly demonstrated when the Olympics came to London. A 21st century Coronation for a modern forward-thinking nation putting its history in its place but not overwhelmed by it would be a great tribute to the new King.  

Minister’s business experience useful?

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Will schools in financial difficulties receive the Flybe treatment from Kelly Tolhurst MP, the new Minister of State for Education? In her career the Minister has served as a PUS – or first rank of the ministerial ladder – across three departments, plus a couple of months over this summer in the Whip’s Office, where she had previously served in a junior role in 2018. Kelly Tolhurst, MP for Rochester and Strood in Kent is possibly best remembered for being the Minister sent out explain the refusal to bail out the airline Flybe when it ran into turbulent financial conditions at the start of the covid pandemic.

“Unfortunately, in a competitive market, companies do fail, and it is not the role of Government to prop them up.

Given the time of year, the nature of Flybe’s business and fleet, and the routes that it flies, sufficient alternative transport arrangements should be available, either with other airlines or by road and rail.”

Hansard 5th March 2020

Hopefully, the new minister will be more understanding about the financial position of schools as they wrestle with the present financial crisis. As her role at the in the Business Department involved responsibility for small businesses, the MP should be well aware of the challenges that schools will face. As a supporter of the free market, she may well want to see whether the Department is spending its cash wisely on issues such as teacher recruitment and SEND.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the constraints of a national Funding Formula that can be ignored when times are good may also need to be something to be considered, especially the differences between maintained schools and academies when it comes to shifting cash around.

As an MP for Rochester, Kelly Tohurst will know of the stark differences between the town’s schools, where some are comprehensives that are operating alongside selective schools, and will as a businesswomen understand both the costs of re-organising the system nationally to benefit the few rather than the many, and the links between the school system and the need for a modern skilled workforce, something some of her predecessors may have seemed less concerned about.

As in other areas with selective schools, private secondary schools are thin on the ground in the Rochester area of Medway Council and that should be a warning to any government thinking of expanding selective education. The cost to the state of parents switching from private education to state selective schooling should be enough to dissuade any government from taking our school system back to the nineteenth Century as means of creating a twenty first century growth economy.

The Secretary of State should be familiar with issues such as youth offending and the variations between different groups and their schooling. I would hope that this will be a serious consideration for the new residents of Sanctuary Buildings, perhaps more so than under recent inhabitants.

Finally, I would again make my please for Jacob’s Law, whereby children in care are guaranteed a school pace within 14 days of the State taking over parental responsibility. This needs the promised change in the administration of in-year admissions and would befit the education of these children often taken from their families with no say in the matter and dumped in a different part of the country.

Memo to incoming PM

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Despite the record levels of tax receipts, the present economic situation does suggest that genuine economies should be looked for in the public sector. So, here are a few from the school sector that might be worth investigating.

First, sort out the cost of the failed middle tier experiment. Overall, the national leadership costs from academy chains are way too high. This has been recognised in the dreadful Bill working its way through parliament. Maybe there is a need for more than 150 Directors of Children’s Services, but do we need all these additional Chief Officers with their associated costs? Much of the inflated costs stretch back to failure to get grip on Executive Headships by the Labour government under Tony Blair. Sort out the shape of the school system and save money.

Recruiting teachers: axe the DfE jobsite in its present form and put the cost out to tender. As this blog has consistently pointed out, the present DfE site fails on several fronts, and probably isn’t even as cost effective as local authority jobsites.

Encourage central procurement. Delegated budget to schools is a great idea, but so is central purchasing. Do more to facilitate such outcomes across Trusts and local authorities.

Axe the Apprenticeship Levy for small primary schools, or at least reform it so that there can be a benefit. At present it is just a tax on schools.

Dump the tax on Insurance. This would help more than schools, and, at present, taxes the virtuous while encouraging others to avoid protecting themselves and their possessions.

Introduce a fund for investment in renewable energy that schools can use to spread the cost of introducing new energy sources over several years. Target the fund first at small schools in rural areas where the school can act as a community energy hub if the grid fails in a storm or for other reasons.

Regular readers will know my feelings about making use of playgrounds in supporting energy procurement. Where is the research programme

Longer-term, evaluate how teacher preparation programmes can meet the needs of the school sector in the most cost-effective manner, especially as school rolls start to reduce and fewer new teachers may be needed.

Review the National Funding Formula, and whether it meets its aims? In its present form, will it lead to wholesale closure of small schools as unviable financially, and what will be the costs of such closures and who will bear them?

The National Funding formula doesn’t take any account of whether schools can top-up income by lettings; from wealthy parents or by selling resources. As such, it is a crude instrument for school funding and needs a rethink.  Schools in pockets of disadvantage in otherwise wealthy areas are especially vulnerable unless in a MAT that is prepared to switch funds between schools. Much depends upon what the school system is trying to achieve and how the financing can be used to help. Equality based on superficial equal shares of the funds available has its consequences.

So, Prime minister, we need a world-beating school system for all. Over to you.  

Leadership turnover and Free School Meals

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Earlier this summer I published a post about vacancies and the Free School Meal percentages of schools. I promised that I would look at headteacher turnover by the percentage of Fee School Meals at those schools advertising for a new headteacher this year.

The data by regions for the period of adverts from 1st January 2022 until last Friday is in the table below

1st JAN TO 19th AUGUST 20220-9.9% on FSM10-19.9% on FSM20%+ on FSM
East Midlands29%32%39%100%
East of England28%40%32%100%
London21%30%50%100%
North East21%25%54%100%
North West30%27%43%100%
South East40%32%28%100%
South West24%43%34%100%
West Midlands24%30%46%100%
Yorkshire & Humber24%27%49%100%
AVERAGE27%32%42%100%
Source: TeachVac

Now this is a crude piece of analysis, as it just takes the school and places it in one of three bands for Free School Meals percentage at the school, as recorded by the DfE. The table also incudes both primary and secondary schools, and also does not distinguish between schools that have only advertised one and those that have advertised more than once. There has been a discussion about trends in re-advertising amongst primary schools using data from one authority in another recent post on this blog.

Anyway, urban areas, not surprisingly, have the highest percentages of schools in the 20% plus grouping, with London having 50% of advertised headships from such schools, compared with 28% of headships in the South East and 32% in the East of England falling in this grouping; both areas with high employment and significant areas of affluence. The South East had the largest percentage of schools in the lowest groups of less than 10% of pupils in the school eligible for Free School Meals. This compared with just 21% in London and the North East regions schools that have advertised for a new headteacher.

If I have time, I will look at both re-advertisements and create a standard number based upon the size of the school roll to consider whether this has any effect. Separating out primary and secondary schools, and perhaps schools of a religious character and other schools might also be interesting.

We can expect the current average of 22.5% of pupils eligible for Free School Meals to increase as any recession bites. How much may depend upon how government help with energy bills is counted in a family income total.

A very small but important minority

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The DfE have recently updated their study on ‘Education, children’s social care and offending, descriptive statistics’ with some 10 case studies of different local authorities. One of the case studies is of Haringey, the north London borough. Education, children’s social care and offending – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Regular readers of this blog will know why I have focused on this report. For new readers, I started my teaching career in a school in Tottenham that is part of the Borough of Haringey. For personal reasons this study also brings back memories of a particular incident in January 1977 that found me on the front page of The Daily Mirror.

Much of what is in the analysis will not surprise readers, and the authors go out of their way to remind everyone reading the report that a causal relationship cannot be inferred from any characteristic.

I do have a slight issue with the choice of offences listed. There are no driving offences, such as ‘death by dangerous or careless driving’ in the list, although in my view they involve violence. Perhaps, there weren’t any recorded offences in these categories. Maybe, the same reason will apply to ‘aggravated burglary’ that can include violence.

I would recommend this report or one of the others in the selection of the ten authorities to any new teacher. Indeed, much more focus should probably be placed on the teaching of challenging pupils during teacher preparation courses. Interestingly, the report doesn’t allocate points to characteristics and score the profile of a young person ‘at risk’. He is likely to be male; few females even these days commit offences in the categories included. He is likely to do better at maths than English: an interesting observation. For the rest, you can read the report and look at the graphs, although some data are so small as to be suppressed, as they might allow individuals to be identified.  

For policymakers, and I include our next Prime Minister in that group, there has to be a consideration as to whether the focus on the subjects in the English Baccalaureate and a lack of resources for practical and vocational might have had cost implications for society. Those that successfully complete their education may well be less likely to commit acts of violence.

This blog has been championing a Jacob’s Law and has also supported the need for inter-agency working. I am not clear whether this report also considered children not yet in school because they had just moved into Haringey, and their offending behaviour.

What seems certain is that spending on those at the late stage of primary education and early secondary schooling may well be worthwhile. Indeed, ensuring every child, regardless of SEND needs, can read and write is something we ought to strive to achieve, so that no child starts secondary school regarded by the school as a failure.

The depressing fact is that such a statement could have been made at any time in the history of education. We know the problem, but have not been willing to create the solution.

Muck up or conspiracy?

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In August 2013, when this blog was in its infancy, I incurred the wrath of the DfE by suggesting that there was going to be a teacher supply crisis.

As reported by this blog on 14th August 2013 “A DfE spokesperson, helpfully anonymous, is quoted by the Daily Mail today as saying of my delving into the current teacher training position that there was no teacher shortage, adding: ‘This is scaremongering and based on incomplete evidence.’”

Regular readers know whose view of the situation was correct.

Why am I reprising this quote from nine years ago? Well, normally around the middle of the month the DfE, following the time-honoured tradition set by first the GTTR and then UCAS, publishes the monthly update on applications and offer to postgraduate ITT.

The DfE duly created the data on the 25th of July this year, but at least as far as my browser is concerned, the data didn’t appear on their web site. June’s data remained the latest in the public domain as I write this blog.  Monthly statistics on initial teacher training (ITT) recruitment – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) hopefully, by the time you read this the July data will be fully in the public domain. (The DfE updated their website with the July data sometime the same day that this post was published – thank you DfE.)

Now comes the key question: is this lack of transparency due to a processing fault within the DfE or is it due to not wanting the data widely known? Truly, the data on ‘offers’ so far this year is shocking.

Looking back at the period between the 2012/13 round of application for postgraduate ITT courses, and the 2021/22 round, it is clear that the total of ‘Recruited’ plus ‘Conditions Pending’ plus ‘Deferrals’ plus ‘Received and Offer’ are disastrously low in many secondary subjects this year. Leaving aside, Modern Foreign Languages, where the methodology is different this year, we see

Art, history, geography, chemistry and business studies no longer recording new records or offers and, in most cases, recording insufficient numbers to meet the expected Teacher Supply Model number. Only in history and art will there be sufficient numbers, and even in history the over-recruitment is likely to be less than in the past couple of years.

However, it is in

Religious Education

Physics

Music

English

Computing

Biology

Where the numbers of ‘offers’ look most worrying.

Jack Worth of NfER predicted earlier this year that fewer than 20% of the physics places might be filled this year in a presentation to the APPG on the Teaching Profession. His prediction now looks like it might well come about. All of the subjects in this list are hitting new lows for ‘offers’ since that 2012/13 recruitment round. The implications for recruitment of teachers, assuming the schools have the funds to recruit in 2023, look bleak.

Design and technology remain one of the few relatively better performing subjects, with more offers than last year. But, sadly, not enough to meet the required target.

With less than two months to go before courses start, and some providers closed down for the summer, there is unlikely to be a significant upturn in these numbers.

The DfE might well want to ask about conversion levels between application and offers and whether more risk might be taken with some marginal applications. The DfE will also need to ensure that they don’t de-accredit successful providers, as there is no guarantee potential applicants would choose another provider.

I do wonder whether the two contenders for Prime Minister will have anything to say about this issue, and whether anyone will even ask them?

STRB misses the point?

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There is a lot of good data in the STRB Report published yesterday. School Teachers’ Review Body 32nd report: 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Sadly, most of it, as far as the teacher labour market is concerned, is based upon data collected by the DfE in November 2020 in the School Workforce Census, and thus relates to the labour market cycle of two years ago. Even if, when compiling the Report, the data from the November 2021 Census was used that was still from a previous labour market. As regular readers of this blog will know, the 2021-22 labour market for teachers has been anything other than normal in terms of demand for teachers.

The STRB has at least been able to use the ITT Census of 2021 that provided the data about the supply of new teachers for September 2022. Readers will find little in the STRB Report that hasn’t already been covered in this blog in relation to that data.

However, the Table on pages 49 and 50 of the STRB Report tells the story of this labour market in two simple charts regarding ITT recruitment; with history, PE and Art being the only secondary subjects where the supply of new entrants has been anything like at the level required to meet demand.

Interestingly, TeachVac today added art as a subject with a ‘red’ warning of shortages possible anywhere in England for January 2023 appointments. That just leaves PE and history as the two subjects where supply is still not yet at a level for a ‘red’ warning. PE might reach that level in the autumn: history, even with a contribution to humanities posts, almost certainly won’t. In view of the fact that almost double the number of trainees was recruited compared with the TSM figure that isn’t really a surprise. There is little problem with the primary sector labour market across most of the country.

The STRB Report is an interesting analysis of how the labour market responded to the sudden appearance of the pandemic just at the time when vacancies for September appointments were reaching their peak. Essentially, the market seems to have paused in 2021, and, as we know in 2022, there has been this surge of vacancies. As the end of term approaches, TeachVac has recorded not far short of 80,000 teaching vacancies across England so far in 2022, and more than 95,000 across the school-year as a whole.

The STRB has some interesting observations about leadership vacances, and the problems of recording trends when some posts in MATs are ‘out of scope’ to use the STRB terminology. However, as TeachVac has reported, there does not seem to have been any mass exodus of school leaders. This is despite the massive burdens placed on headteachers and other school leaders as a result of the pandemic, and the need to keep schools open at all times.

On pay, make of the Report what you will. I personally doubt that their recommendations for 2023/24 will last the test of time, especially if inflation continues to remain close to current levels and interest rates increase. With little new cash around for schools, it might be worth looking at the history books for how schools coped with the economic crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s to see what might happen over the next few years. Although, back then, there was no spending on computers and other IT equipment.