Category Archives: leadership

Teacher Education and Professional Development

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Teacher Education and Professional Development

By John Howson

This first appeared in 2014 as a chapter in 21st century Education: A Social Liberal Approach

Edited by Helen Flynn and published by the social Liberal Forum

In view of the DfE’s announcement yesterday about an Institute of Teaching I thought it was worth dusting it down and reminding myself what I wrote all those years ago.

Summary

Qualified Teacher Status should be restricted in the subjects and phases where teachers are allowed to practice.

Teacher Training, and especially training for primary teachers, needs a radical overhaul. All teachers should be expected to study to a Masters level.

A College of Teachers should be established to allow a professional voice for teachers.

All teachers should have access to funds for professional development, and the College of Teachers should help devise suitable programmes to meet the needs of all teachers.

Keep in touch and re-training opportunities for those taking time out of the classroom should be established to help those wishing to return after a career break to do so without any loss of expertise or seniority.

Teacher should be a reserved occupational title only allowed to be used by those with current Qualified Teacher Status.

Introduction

Liberal Democrats won’t achieve anything in education without the help of those who work in our schools. There are two key challenges facing schools during the next parliament that no government can duck: coping with the largest increase in the primary school population since the 1970s, and ensuring that the first increase in the learning leaving age for more than 40 years brings positive benefits to students, communities and the wider economy.

How we deal with these demands whilst ensuring a more representative and less divisive schooling system will reflect our ability as a Party to translate our values into actions. Nowhere will this be clearer than in the fields of teacher education and professional development. In this section I propose new arrangements for initial teacher preparation programmes; a discussion about arrangements for the transfer from trainee to employment; and a programme of staff development that recognises the need for self-renewal and development throughout the working life of a teacher.

Teacher Education

It is worth recalling that schooling alone, even without the further and higher education sectors, is a large-scale enterprise in England. Currently about 40,000 people are on different types of courses to become a teacher: about 6,000 are undergraduates, and the remainder graduates. Overall, these trainees represent more than a third of the current size of the British land army before its recent downsizing. Overall, there are probably around half a million teachers working in state and private schools across England in any one year. Most make teaching their career for life, if they last beyond their first five years in the profession, and, despite the frequent talk of ‘many careers in a lifetime’, most start teaching as their first career.

Government policy for the teaching profession was set by the coalition in the 2010 White Paper, ‘The Importance of Teaching’. It is not clear what, if any input Liberal Democrats played in this White Paper that followed hard on the heels of the 2010 Academies Act, but it marked a determination to shift training away from higher education and into schools. A detailed analysis suggests that the model proposed was very secondary school centred, with little thought for the needs of teachers seeking to train for the primary school sector. The House of Commons Select Committee on Education in reviewing teacher education said that Partnership between schools and universities is likely to provide the highest-quality initial teacher education, the content of which will involve significant school experience but include theoretical and research elements as well as in the best systems internationally and in much provision here. That view seems to have cut little ice with the coalition government.

Too often ignored in this debate are the training needs of those seeking to enter the teaching profession. Teacher preparation programmes will only be fit for purpose if they successfully turn those who start such courses into successful teachers. Starting with the needs of trainees rather than schools or higher education should be the key to a successful training programme.

To be a successful teacher requires a range of different qualities but, at least in the secondary sector, there ought to be a minimum level of subject knowledge equivalent to two years of an honours degree. Anyone without this basic level of knowledge should be offered Subject knowledge Enhancement courses to allow them to acquire sufficient knowledge. Even those with the requite degree may still lack expertise in areas of the school curriculum in their subject and ways should be found to allow them to continue to acquire such additional knowledge. This programme would allow for Qualified Teacher Status to be restricted to specific subjects and phases rather than continue to be generic as at present where a teacher with QTS can teach anything to anyone at any level of schooling. The fact that more than 20% of those teaching some Mathematics in our schools do not have a qualification above ‘A’ level in the subject may explain why many children neither enjoy the subject nor do well in it.

Qualified Teacher Status should be restricted in the subjects and phases where teachers are allowed to practice.

However, it is in preparing teachers for the primary sector that most attention needs to be paid. The present post-graduate course attempts to cram the equivalent of a quart into a pint pot. Many curriculum areas receive scant attention, and there is no guarantee that the time in school will effectively dovetail in developing the time spent on the programmes outside the classroom. It is time for a thorough overhaul of how primary teachers are prepared. In the first instance, the undergraduate training route should be replaced by a wider first degree programme that would prepare graduates to work in a wider range of services including youth and social work as well as teaching. The specific training to be a teacher would be entirely postgraduate. Such a new degree would prevent undue early specialisation among those entering university straight from school.  It would also avoid the bizarre situation created by the coalition whereby graduates wanting to become a teacher are subject to a minimum degree standard, but no such standard is imposed on undergraduates. As with the secondary sector, where there are already virtually no undergraduate teacher preparation courses, graduates of the new courses would not be licensed to teach at any level in the primary school, but would be certified to teach at a particular Key Stage.

Overall, graduate training would be on a two year model leading to a Masters degree with the possibility of appropriate credit against the subject components of secondary subject training for those with appropriate honours degrees.

Teacher Training, and especially training for primary teachers, needs a radical overhaul. All teachers should be expected to study to a Masters level.

The partnership model for teacher preparation that developed during the 1990s has generally served the profession well, with Ofsted recognising that teachers are better prepared than in the past. However, if we are going to maintain national standards for teaching, it is imperative that there is a body that can offer support and guidance in this area and oversee standards independent of government. The unfortunate abolition of the General Teaching Council in England was a short-sighted and politically inspired move. The creation of a new College of Teachers with oversight of the profession and responsibility for determining standards of entry to the profession is an urgent requirement. Such a body should be independent of, but accountable to, government. It should have a strong research ethos and assist in bringing together the best practice in teacher preparation from around the world as well as working to develop such practice in this country. Not only could the College provide professional status for teachers but it would also provide a centre for determining effective career development in a manner that the present National College has seemed unable to do effectively outside of its original remit of leadership development.

Professional Development

A College of Teachers should be established to allow a professional voice for teachers.

A lack of coherent professional development has been one of the key shortcomings of the present management of the teaching profession. Although the pressures created by the addition of extra pupils will make it difficult to fund a comprehensive programme of professional development during the next decade there should be funding for a number of hours of personal development each year. The present five days allocated for school-funded training should be used for development related to the needs of the school, and should be linked to the use of accredited trainers. Teachers in their first year of employment should be mentored and provided with a reduced timetable, as at present. In addition, provision should be made for the professional development of those either not currently employed but seeking work as a teacher or employed on temporary contracts. These groups should be offered five days paid training a year including travelling expenses.

In addition to the five in-school training days, teachers as professionals should be expected to undertake other forms of professional development. The College of Teachers should be responsible for research and development of the best practice in on-line learning building upon the experience gained with the TeachersTV experiment and current developments within both the higher education and the private sector. For teachers with more than five years’ experience, the State should be prepared to fund part-time Masters’ degrees in pedagogy. In addition, funding should be available for middle leadership training to meet the needs of schools.

All teachers should recognise the changes that technology has wrought on society over the past four decades and that methods of learning for all are not immune to such developments. Whether it is the infant with the ‘tablet’ they already think they know how to use when they arrive at school or the sixth former studying an open access course at Harvard alongside their ‘A’ levels, the notion of the role of the teacher is already being challenged. Elsewhere in this book the view of teachers as ‘facilitators’ of learning, partially, but not entirely, a secondary inspired notion, must cause everyone to reflect about how teachers are prepared for the learning environment, and the need for those teachers already in the profession to constantly challenge their thinking about teaching and learning.  We need a profession that is supported to be open and questioning about how to educate the next generation as well as constantly reflecting upon their practice in the classroom.

All teachers should have access to funds for professional development, and the College of Teachers should help devise suitable programmes to meet the needs of all teachers.

Children with special educational needs should have access to the very best learning that the teaching profession can offer. All too often at present that is not the case, and such schools often have higher vacancy rates and less well-qualified staff than schools in general. A funded programme of training for teachers that want to work with such pupils should be widely available, and managed on a regional basis. This programme would include provision of SENCO training and oversight of the provision of Educational Psychologists. It would also cover training for support for those working in Virtual Schools and learning centres.

After a number of years of teaching some classroom teachers wish to specialise in other areas such as guidance, both pastoral and career orientated, or in the wider role of a counsellor. Others teachers may wish to pass their knowledge on to the next generation of teachers as advisory teachers, advisers, or helping with the preparation of the next generation of teachers. Career opportunities are haphazard, and training for such positions unclear. The government should work with the College of Teachers to develop a career route for this important group of future leaders of the profession. Teachers can certainly play a more important part in the assessment of their pupils. The College of Teachers could work to create chartered assessors with the responsibility for more internal assessment and less dependence of the marking of outside markers whose judgements are constantly being challenged. If a new lecturer at a university can mark the critical paper in a the degree examinations of a final year student we ought to be able to trust a competent and trained teacher to achieve the same degree of integrity and objectiveness with their pupil’s work. Moderation would remain necessary, but the qualification of a chartered teacher assessor should be one that every classroom teacher should aspire to achieve. As a by-product it might reduce the cost of external examinations or even do away with the need for such an expensive system at sixteen now that the education participation age has been raised to Eighteen.

In a profession where two thirds of the teachers are female and half the profession is below the age of thirty-five, it is likely that a significant number of teachers will, at any point in time, either be on maternity leave or taking a career break. This group represent a valuable resource for our schools. However, their professional development is often neglected during their time away from teaching. It would seem a sensible investment to offer both ‘keep in touch’ arrangements, and the opportunity for formal professional development during any sustained period away from the classroom. One result of this might be that QTS, which is currently held for life once granted except in very limited circumstances, would only be retained on participation in approved professional development. Once relinquished QTS would only be regained following a period of certified re-training offered by a training provider.

Keep in touch and re-training opportunities for those taking time out of the classroom should be established to help those wishing to return after a career break to do so without any loss of expertise or seniority.

One major problem with the present system of training and employment is that apart from those training through School Direct Salaried scheme, and on Teach First, teachers are not guaranteed a job after qualification. This lack of a guarantee of work might not have been of concern when the State funded teacher preparation courses, but now that those not guaranteed jobs are required to fund their training through the payment of tuition fees of up to £9,000, and in some cases receive no bursary support, this may prove to be a disincentive to train as a teacher, especially in a buoyant economy. It is time to look at alternative arrangements that allow either a salary for all during training, as in many other graduate training programmes, or the repayment of fees for those who remain in teaching for more than a set period of time. While the latter option might seem the more appealing to the Treasury, it could well fall foul of equal opportunities legislation. The saving from not needing to train more teachers than required might well make the funding of a salaried scheme affordable, especially if the undergraduate route was abolished at the same time. Any shortfall in training numbers can be filled through returners and those entering teaching with overseas qualifications or from another sector such as further education.

There are many other workers employed in schools these days. Their need for training and professional development should not be overlooked. Indeed, although many possess professional and administrative skills in their own right, it is important for them to understand the context within which they work. Whether as ‘learning assistants’; clerical or administrative staff; or in other roles; they should be offered the opportunity for regular professional development. Indeed, some, especially learning assistants, may wish to eventually progress to become qualified teachers. The opportunity to progress in this manner should be an essential part of a professional development framework.

The challenge for any government is to provide a coherent framework for those seeking to enter the profession as well as for serving teachers within a rapidly changing environment of the governance of education. I reject the view that teachers can be recruited with the need for no training at all. Indeed, the term ‘teacher’ should become a protected professional term, and only be allowed for those with Qualified Teacher Status. There are plenty of other terms such as instructor, tutor, lecturer, mentor and even preceptor that can be used to help parents and pupils distinguish the status of those responsible for the education process. The choice for schools and their promoters would then be whether to remain independent or to accept the standards of teacher preparation required for funding set down by the State. It may well be that some of the present ‘free schools’ funded by the State might not accept the need for training. Particular issues arise where the schools, such as those following the Montessori methods wish to receive state funding. With QTS more narrowly defined than at present, it should be possible to create certification that allows for such possibilities.

In a society where schooling by the State is not mandatory but the default option a significant private sector has continued to flourish for a variety of reasons: indeed, it now represent a significant generator of foreign income for the country as well as often being a socially divisive factor in society, although the ability of parents of children at state funded schools to but private tuition shows that it is as much a matter of the gap between the richest and poorest in society as it is the structure of the school system. Nevertheless, private schools often recruit teachers trained at the public expense, just as consultants in the Health Service undertaking private work use knowledge gained from training and experience funded by the State. The move to schools working with trainees and then employing them at the end of their training as exemplified by Teach First and School Direct might help to reduce the direct cost to Society of training teachers for the private sector, but is unlikely ever to eradicate the practice. What is critical is to ensure that there are sufficient teachers to satisfy the overall demand as, when there has been a shortage, the private sector has the ability to buy the teachers it needs in a manner that publicly funded schools do not.   

Teacher should be a reserved occupational title only allowed to be used by those with current Qualified Teacher Status.

It is acknowledged that an educated society brings social, cultural, and economic benefits to a country. As a result, the development of the workforce in schools, and especially of the teachers, is something that cannot be ignored by a government. Like any good employer of a business with multiple worksites, standards of training need to be created across the system both to ensure good practice and to allow for the interchange of staff between different locations, not least when, for whatever reason, a workplace unexpectedly experiences difficulties. This does not require the government to conduct the training. At present, a partnership between schools and higher education offers the most effective solution for national coverage, especially while the framework for the governance of schooling is so disjoined, particularly in the vital primary sector of schooling. However, the SCITT model has shown that leadership of the partnership can work with either partner in control. What is important is awareness that training programmes should be tailored to the needs of those undertaking them with a view to a qualification that meets the needs of the schools and promotes the desire for continued professional development.

Not all those who seek to become teachers may be suitable. But, for those who do, we need to offer high quality training, effective transfer into employment, and the opportunity for professional development that will help create and sustain a world-class education system.

DfE announcement on a Saturday!

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The decision to announce both a new Institute of Teaching and the recommencement of the review of the ITT market, following a pause due to the Covid-19 pandemic, wasn’t something I expected to read this afternoon.

DfE announcements on a Saturday afternoon are rarer than hen’s teeth. So rushed seems the announcement on the recommencement of the ITT Review that it is unclear whether the statement that ‘The review is expected to report in summer 2020.’ Should have read summer 2021?

Anyway the announcement of,

‘A new Institute of Teaching is set to be established in England to provide teachers and school leaders with prestigious training and development throughout their career.

… with the Institute being the first of its kind in the world.’

DfE https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-institute-of-teaching-set-to-be-established

May raise some eyebrows and questions about hyperbole in places as far apart as Singapore and Ontario.

This idea for this new Institute doesn’t seem yet to have the structure of the Area Training Organisations that existed across the country in the post-war period or even of the short-lived regional structure for leadership training in the days before GRIST and its derivatives.

Indeed, what of the wonderful National College created under the Blair government only to be axed by the Conservatives?  Admittedly that started with senior leadership and then expanded into other areas? Has it been air-brushed out of history?

To claim that the new Institute ‘will revolutionise teacher training and make England the best place in the world to train and become a great teacher’ will raise the question in many minds of what have the Tories been doing for the past ten years of trying to create a school-led training system. Is this an acknowledgement of failure?

There is no way that I believe the present system of ITT, or ITE depending on your point of view, is anything but high quality, but there is room for innovation, not least around technology and learning, as I have written in a recent blog.

The numbers quoted in the announcement also seem suspect. There are around 40,000 trainees teachers each year, so 1,000 represents about three per cent of the total. A higher percentage, of course, if targets for recruitment are not met. 2,000 early career teachers is an even smaller percentage and no figures are provided for the essential development of middle leaders where a national programme has been sadly lacking.

Where will the existing Teaching Schools fit into this new order, and how will geographical gaps be filled? Who will have oversight, and will there be a National Director of Training and Development with the ear of the Secretary of State?

A cynic might say this was an attempt to end a run of bad news for the DfE and its Ministers, and an attempt to regain the initiative. If so, I hope what emerges really does help develop the teaching profession.

Perhaps the Secretary of State can start by changing the rules about employing unqualified people as teachers. There is, after all, no point in an Institute focusing on initial teacher programmes if academies are free to employ anyone as a teacher.

A better announcement would have been that the term ‘teacher’ had become a reserved occupation term only allowed to be used by those with QTS.

Should schools re-open next week?

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There is probably no ‘certain’ answer at this moment in time to that question, but there is a political decision to be made. By the time the answer is certain, the time for decision will have passed and whether by default or decision there will have been an outcome.

Learning versus transmission seems to be at the heart of the debate. If the new variant of covid hadn’t appeared, then the answer would have been simple: open primary schools and secondary schools for Years 11 and 13, although I think classroom subjects for Year 13 could be taught on-line rather than face to face.

However, with the more transmissible strain now dominant in many areas, the issue is possibly more complex for some. Closing schools will affect learning and create issues for parents in terms of childcare, especially where they cannot work from home. Can we overcome the loss of learning time as a Society, if we put our minds to it? After all, we have created new forms of learning, so ought we not to be able to identify ways of recovering essential learning? Much may depend upon making the learning attractive to the learners. Boring rote learning won’t work. Will we need a National Reading Recovery campaign and a similar one for numeracy once the pandemic is over?

The NHS is always under strain at this time of year and the weather forecasters are suggesting a few weeks of cold weather. The consequences of that sort of weather pattern for hospitals needs to be taken into account, since other ailments haven’t taken a holiday just because of covid. Then there is the backlog of other treatments, especially in-patient treatments that need ICU beds. Do politicians need to take these factors into account when weighing up the issue of schools re-opening?

Now it is clear that mass testing for all pupils won’t be in place next week, whatever was said before Christmas, is it sensible to bring back pupils into setting where transmission is likely to be high either person to person or via surfaces? I would like to know whether the latest variant of covid lingers longer on surfaces. If so, that might be a powerful argument for not re-opening schools, because however often surfaces are cleaned, there as potentially just too many of them, not to mention those encountered on the way to and from schools and colleges.

Personally, based upon the public knowledge available to me, I would not re-open secondary schools and further education colleges for the first two weeks of term while patterns of transmission after Christmas become clear. I would re-open primary schools, but allow pupils living in high risk households not to attend until we know more about transmission rates among different groups. This is where the focus on ‘recovery’ learning will be most important going forward.

Finally, there are the issues of the mental health of young people to be added into the equation along with the physical and mental welfare of all the staff and their families. In the end, any decision is better than none.

Update: 1800 on 30th December. Seems like I was mostly correct, although I didn’t foresee the closure of so many primary schools. Next question: can exams survive?

Pay Freeze: more churn?

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As expected, the main teacher associations acted with condemnation when faced with the Secretary of State’s remit letter to the STRB, the Pay and conditions of Service Review Body for the teaching profession.  In a joint statement from ACSL NAHT and NEU they said that;

The narrow remit issued to the STRB excludes the crucial and central issue of teacher and school leader pay, reflecting the Government’s unacceptable pay freeze policy.  Teachers and school leaders are key workers who have already seen their pay cut significantly since 2010.  With inflation expected to increase in 2021, they know that they face another significant real terms pay cut. 

How might their members react in 2021? We can expect a range of reactions. Some will say, there is no point in staying with no pay rise in sight – after all will the freeze really be just for one year? Head teachers at the top of their pay band, and having endured the prospect of two disrupted school years might well throw in the towel and take their pension as that presumably won’t be frozen in the same way; at least at present. We will look at that prospect and its consequences in more detail in a later blog.

Some teachers will seek promotion to secure a pay rise, and others a more appealing post either in a different school or in the private sector where there are no requirements for a pay freeze for teachers. Yet others may look overseas or to the tutoring market that will grow to support the increase in home schooling, especially if the government looks to regulation to ensure a minimum standard of education for all children regardless of how parents arrange to provide it. All these factors could increase ‘churn’.

With a profession dominated by women, at least at the level of the classroom teacher, how they and often also their partners view job security and new opportunities will also affect the rate of ‘churn’ if there is job movement around the country.

I actually think, at least in the first few months of 2021, there will be caution, and a desire to stay put and see what happens. With a labour market in teaching heavily skewed towards the first five months of the year, we could see fewer vacancies than normal in the early months of 2021. This will impact especially severely on two group of teachers: new entrants and would-be returners to the profession.

I well recall a Radio 5 Live interview in 2011, when callers were blaming each groups for taking jobs from the other. In reality, both groups were finding it more of a challenge to secure a teaching post, especially in some parts of England.

So, how hard will it be? We don’t know yet, so this is speculation based upon past trends, but I think some teachers will really struggle to secure a post in 2021.

Now might well be the time to revive ideas of a single application form for teaching, at least for personal details. This would leave just the free text statement to be written specifically for each vacancy being sought. The DfE should consider whether sponsoring that idea from those examples currently in development and on offer might be a better use of funds than continuing with their vacancy site that one person described to me in unflattering terms earlier this week.

In the next post, I will describe a new service from TeachVac to help teachers and schools assess the market and where vacancies might be found in 2021.  

Another Greenwich Judgement avoided

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Greenwich in South East London already features in education law history for the ‘Greenwich Judgement’ on school choice. Today, it seemingly avoided the possibly of creating a second precedent by accepting that it would not be in the interest of local people to spend money defending any legal action by the DfE on closing schools.

As usual, there are pros and cons to both the Council’s position and that of the government at Westminster. What is lacking is a clear understanding of guidelines that fit a changing set of circumstances. The BBC’s World at One programme interviewed the Leader of Basildon Council – a Tory – where several schools are closed because of very high rates of infection. He defended that situation.

Generally, opinion is that education is a ‘good thing’ and leaving parents to arrange childcare at short notice can cause problems that should be avoided if at all possible. All the current issues were foreseeable, and the present situation demonstrates the lack of cooperative planning that is the hallmark of the present administration, and might yet be its downfall.

The issues are the same, where infection leads to transmission to higher risks groups from lower risks groups there is a danger, but within lower risks groups it is less of an issue. This appears to be the case with university students that remain in a group and don’t interact with the wider community. Schools are different, by their very community nature.

Low income, multi-generational households, especially in the non-White community, remain at very high risk from the pandemic and it is understandable that schools can play a part in the chain of transmission. But low income families have less space for on-line learning even if they have access to the technology.

So, no easy answer. But a set of criteria

Local public health officials can assess the trends and liaise with schools and education officers. Where more than a certain level of infections are present, local officials should notify the DfE of intending closure of a group of schools and provide the evidence in the same as a single school would use and there shouldn’t be an issue.

Where it becomes complicated is the notion of a ‘preventative closure’ to try to stop a spike happening. Surely, by now, we have enough evidence to set some criteria for where it is appropriate to close schools, and where it is better to keep them open?

Even with the vaccination programme, it seems likely that next term is going to be a challenging one for schools, their pupils and for parents. The clearer the agreed guidelines the better.

Thank a Teacher or perhaps not?

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When is a holiday for teachers not a holiday? Perhaps when announced by a government Minister. In my book, an in-service day is not a holiday. The Schools Minister’s announcement of an extra day before Christmas to allow teachers to have a “proper break” from working with test and trace to identify Covid cases doesn’t seem like a real holiday to me. More of a political announcement where a Minister hopes that nobody will read beyond the headline.

Apparently Mr Gibb told the Education Select Committee earlier this week that: “We are about to announce that ‘inset days’ can be used on Friday December 18, even if an inset day had not been originally scheduled for that day.

“We want there to be a clear six days so that, by the time we reach Christmas Eve, staff can have a proper break without having to engage in the track and trace issues.”

How seriously will school leaders take the additional opportunity for in-service training? Hopefully, they will suggest training at home rather than requiring attendance at the school site. Of course, some supply teachers stand to lose a possible day’s pay as a result of this announcement.  

With the looming pay freeze for next year facing teachers, I wonder how teachers will receive this badly wrapped present. A pay freeze may send some teachers overseas next year and others looking for promotion, so ‘churn’ may increase next year. At TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk we also expect more leadership vacancies than in recent years, especially in the primary sector, as leaders decide they have had enough of muddle and mixed messages about the handling of the pandemic.

The National Education Union has published a useful set of maps showing how covid-19 cases have ebbed and flowed for primary age pupils and the 10-14 age-group during the course of the autumn term between September to the first week in December. It is not clear what moves the government has taken to ensure vulnerable staff are properly protected. Looking back over this blog, I notice I made a suggestion about identifying possible staff ‘at risk’ and ensuring that they weren’t in contact with pupils. Figures for the cost of supply staff suggests that this wasn’t taken up as an idea.

Certainly my idea of employing NQTs without a teaching post as supernumerary staff wasn’t acted upon. I wonder whether this would have been a cheaper option than boosting the profits of the supply agencies.

Finally, I was struck by this paragraph from the report of an Ofsted virtual visit to a secondary school in early November

Teachers have checked what pupils remember and used this knowledge to help them plan lessons. Overall, they have found that the areas pupils needed help with before lockdown are even more of a priority now. For example, pupils who previously found reading tricky now need extra help. You are using some of the COVID-19 catch-up premium to address this by employing extra staff and purchasing additional resources.

Recovering the damage done by covid-19 to children’s education is going to be a key task for 2021 and beyond.

Teacher Vacancy Platforms: Pros and Cons

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In this post, I look at the three key sites for teacher vacancies in England. TeachVac; the DfE Vacancy site and The TES. Now this is not an unbiased look, because I am Chair of the company that owns TeachVac. Indeed, it might be regarded as an advertisement, so treat it in that way if you read on.

TeachVac is in the process of filing its accounts for the year to June 2020 with Companies House. The DfE doesn’t file accounts, and the TES has filed accounts up to the end of August 2019, with a forward comment about the possible effects of the covid pandemic in the year to August 2020.

All three sites cost teachers nothing to use during the last year. However, the DfE site only offers vacancies in state schools, and only a proportion of those schools. TeachVac estimates that in 2020 the DfE proportion of vacancies for teaching posts never rose above 40% of the vacancies open to teachers across both state and private schools. So, the DfE is worthwhile if you only want a job in a state-funded school. Both TeachVac and the TES offer vacancies in state and private schools, although TeachVac doesn’t cover all private schools with pupils below the age of eleven. The TES coverage depends upon those prepared to pay to advertise vacancies on their platform.

Both TeachVac and the DfE site have no direct financial cost to schools. However, the DfE site does require schools to input vacancies into the site. This is optional for TeachVac, and most schools are happy to rely upon the automatic vacancy collection process operated by TeachVac. The TES has a number of options, all require schools to pay for their vacancies to appear on the TES job site and be matched with teachers.

TeachVac also offers users a monthly newsletter on the state of the market for teachers.

The operating cost for TeachVac in 2019/20 was just £1.10 per vacancy processed. Neither the DfE nor The TES publishes a similar figure, but the TES accounts would suggest their cost per vacancy is much higher than that of TeachVac. To find out the cost of the DfE site would need a parliamentary question.

So, are teacher associations, governors and school business managers and those responsible for local authorities, diocese and MATs recommending TeachVac as the most cost effective means of displaying and matching vacancies? Of course not.

Are they recommending teachers to use Teachvac, some are, others aren’t. Course leaders preparing teachers are now recommending TeachVac as a place for trainees to look for their first vacancy. Those trainees are sticking with TeachVac to find subsequent jobs and promotion opportunities.

I am proud of the achievements of the TeachVac team in driving down costs of vacancy advertising. Next the team will start to look at other parts of the recruitment journey to see if there are saving to be made in other areas as well.

Incidentally, if anyone wants to sponsor the TeachVac site, my investors are always open to discussions.

Head Teacher Vacancies increase this autumn

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More head teachers are quitting this autumn. TeachVac, the national free vacancy service for the education market in England reported a 20% increase in advertised vacancies for primary head teachers in the three month from September to end of November 2020 compared with the same period in 2019.

The figures recorded by TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk were:

2019       276

2020       329

There was no such corresponding increase in secondary school headship vacancies. However, that might be down to the greater number of academies in the secondary sector, and a different attitude to filling in-year vacancies by such Trusts..

This increase comes during what is normally a quiet period for recruitment at the start of a school-year.’

The concern must be that this is an early warning sign of a large outflow of head teachers at the end of the summer term next year. Are there deputies willing to step up to the top job? The pressure of head teachers during the past year has been immense, with some having had little or no time away from school since the start of the pandemic.

Over the year to the end of November TeachVac recorded 1,383 vacancies for primary head teachers compared with 1,315 during the same period in 2019. So far, in2020, there have been 355 recorded vacancies secondary school head teachers, compared with 342 in the period between January and the end of November 2019.

Recorded vacancies for assistant head teachers and deputy head teachers have fallen so far in 2020 when compared with 2019. In the secondary sector, there has been a small increase in vacancies at both grades during 2020.

The three months between January and the end of March normally constitutes the main recruiting season for new leadership appointments. Approximately half of all such vacancies are advertised during these three months.

Reflections from a round table presentation

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Foundation for Education Development Round Table

Part of 150th Anniversary of the 1870 Elementary Education Act

A synopsis of my presentation

Education workforce

Teacher supply over the past 150 years, and certainly since World War Two, has been a perpetual cycle or more accurately a sine wave, moving from shortage to surplus to shortage, mostly governed by the coincidence of the economic and demographic cycles.

 All schools are often only fully staffed when pupil numbers are low and the economy is in recession. A buoyant economy; rising birth rates and increases in length of education have created shortages that have most affected schools serving our more deprived communities.

The current situation

What are some possible issues within the workforce? Here are three dichotomies to consider:

Career Development

Personal Goals v System Needs

At every stage there can be tensions between the career goals of teachers and the needs of the system to fill vacancies at every point in the system from classroom teachers to head teachers in schools and the many roles beyond schools that need expertise in teaching. For example, the tension over seen in supporting candidates for headship when a school may lose a highly able deputy.

However, schools with a good track record of staff development attract staff that want to work in such environments and the turnover is more than compensated for by the staff attracted.

Teachers need support at every stage of their careers and currently CPD is not treated with the attention it deserves.

Where to work

Market v Direction

England has a very market-based approach to teaching jobs. A teacher is in charge of their own career and there is still little advice available. When should you seek more responsibility? Is it ever too late to look for a new post? Is there hidden discrimination in appointments?

In some countries, teachers are civil servants, and are directed where to teach. New teachers may serve early stages of their careers in challenging locations that contain posts that are otherwise hard to fill.  Governments in England have dabbled with the idea of ‘direction’ from Fast Track to the coalition government’s desire to parachute heads and middle leaders into certain schools and the discussion of ‘super-heads’, but the market system has so far triumphed. That triumph has been at a significant financial cost to schools and teachers. 

Both approaches have advantages and challenges. As noted, one approach is expensive, with schools spending millions of pounds on recruitment advertising for a process that should cost less than £3 per vacancy. (TeachVac data) The other takes away freedom from individuals – that freedom was a reason I became a teacher not a civil servant. But, as teaching is becoming a global career, can we afford to lose large numbers of teachers overseas?

Making teaching an Attractive Career

Intrinsic v Extrinsic Factors

Teachers don’t usually join just for the pay, but there are few other ‘perks’. Teachers work an ‘employer-directed form of flexitime and on balance have seen other workers catch up on the holiday front, This year has revealed how important teachers are as key workers and how well regarded they are by sections of society. Their workload needs to be constantly monitored and the implications of the changes in technology on re-training are not insignificant.

Finally, the importance of both

Morale and Accountability

These are not alternatives, but essential considerations for an effective teaching profession. Overload accountability and create low morale and there is a problem. At present we need to ensure teachers and leaders feeling drained by their efforts don’t leave the profession because they feel under-valued, especially by government.

To end with a personal plea: To celebrate the 150th anniversary of State Funded Schooling

Make ‘TEACHER’ a reserved occupation term

And as a bonus, create some Regis Professorship of Education as well, to demonstrate the status of the profession.

No Tsunami of Applications

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Earlier today UCAS released the first data on the 2021 recruitment round for postgraduate teacher preparation courses. The data are for applications up to the 16th November. Last year the data were for Monday 18th November 2019. In addition, there are applications through the DfE’s new service for which no data are yet available.

Now, it is always dangerous to read too much into the first month’s figures, but thirty years of looking at the numbers does allow me to make some observations.

Firstly, the increase in applicants domiciled in England, from 6,290 in 2019 to 7,420 in 2020, does not include large increases in applicants from the younger age groups, and  is skewed towards applicants domiciled in the London Areas.

Change in applicant numbers by age of applicant

Age        2020 round         2021 round         change

21 and

Under   1510                       1550                           40

22             970                       1040                           70

23             630                         730                         100

24             420                         570                         150

25-29     1200                       1490                         290

30-39       940                       1160                         220

40+           620                         890                         270

All           6290                       7420                       1130

Source UCAS Reports A 2019 and 2020 November data

For example, in the North East, applicants in November 2019 totalled 380. This November, the number is 390. In London the total was 890 in 2019, and is 1,300 this November. Similarly, in the South East Region, the increase is from 910 to 1,150. So, over half of the increase in applicants is accounted for by just two regions in England.

Although early days, should we be concerned that the number of male applicants aged 21 or under, final year undergraduates, has dropped from 360 last November to 300 this year? One to watch as the number of men over 40 applying has increased from 160 to 250. Overall, there are just fewer than 200 more male applicants this year compared to last year at this point in time.

More applicants means more applications, and the total increased from 17,840 in November 2019 to 21,710 this November. Again, as expected, London has done well, with an increase from 2,740 applications by last November to 4,120 this November. In the North East applications only rose from 1,090 to 1,110.

Both primary and secondary sectors have benefitted from the increase in applicants. Applications for primary sector courses are up from 7,980 to 9,890, and for secondary courses, from 9,860 to 11,790.

All types of provider have seen increases, but one of the smallest increases is in secondary SCITT applications, up from 1,320 to 1,360.

Almost all subjects have seen an increase in applications – data on applicants by subject isn’t published in the main reports.

Arts and humanities subjects has seen some of the largest increases in applications.  Even Physics has 240 applications this year, compared with 180 at this point in 2019. Art has seen applications double from 240 to 540, and even Design and Technology has 190 applications this year compared with 140 in November 2019. But, this might mean an increase an applicants from 50 last year to no more than 70 this year. Still, an increase is to be welcomed.

How long will this increase in interest in teaching last? There has been an article in SchoolsWeek recently suggesting it might be short-lived. After the start of the financial crisis it took just three years before teaching was starting to struggle to attract applicants to the profession. This time, with the pay freeze, who knows? More thought when the next set of data are published.