Category Archives: leadership

More thoughts on school funding

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Earlier this week I listened to the head of a leading group representing private schools tell us how much they saved the State, Their assessment of the amount was based upon the fees they received from parents.

Now, of course, the figure quoted was probably an exaggeration as even if it didn’t include income from overseas students, and the sector is a significant export earner in normal times, then the fees received for pupils resident in this country are higher than the State would be prepared to pay to educate these young people, except in the case of SEND places in specialist schools.

Even allowing for these caveats, if the unemployment associated with the pandemic really does slow down the economy, then, inevitably, some parents may decide that private schooling is something they can no longer afford. There will be bursaries and scholarship and grandparents will offer help, but every child that switches from the private sector to the State sector creates winners and losers and is an additional cost to the State.

Schools that gain pupils will receive extra funding in the fullness of time. However, unless the overall pot of cash increases, there will be less for everyone. With school rolls overall still increasing, especially in the more expensive to fund secondary sector, this possible demand for extra cash could not come at a worse point in the demographic cycles. Any switch to funding for vocational skills, and especially for the Further Education sector, will also make finding additional funding for schools more of a challenge for the Secretary of State in his talks with The Treasury. With pressure to pay the least well-off in society more, increasing teachers’ pay rather than that of support staff may well be a real challenge unless class sizes increase and teacher numbers are reduced.

So, how might schools react? Finding saving won’t be easy, but here are a couple of suggestions. Firstly, and not surprisingly, cut back on recruitment costs. The DfE vacancy site isn’t doing the job it was set up to do. As a result, the profession should create a working party to attack the recruitment costs with the aim of saving schools perhaps £20 million a year. A really effective scheme could save even more.

Secondly, take the profit element out of supply teacher costs. Thirty years ago, local authorities were inefficient and uncoordinated in carrying out this function for schools. Costs have been driven down, but market economics has created a business with a profit element. Removing this element by either taking it back in house or creating a fixed price model could again help save cash for schools.

The third, and most radical suggestion, is around the funding of teachers’ salaries. In the education governance revolution of thirty years ago, decisions about salary bills were delegated to individual schools, with each schools funding being based upon a notional average salary bill. Previously, schools had their salary bill paid for by local authorities based around a framework of school Group Sizes that generated numbers of promoted and leadership posts for each school.

These days. MATs can set salary policies for all their schools, but local authorities cannot for maintained schools. Such policies can affect wage bills, and especially the cost of promoted posts and leadership positions. Young teachers are cheap; older more experienced teachers cost more. Do we want our more experienced teachers leading our more challenging schools? Could a more logical system that took the wage bill for teachers away from schools save money? I don’t know the answer. But, the wage bill is the largest cost in education and it is worth asking the question: how can we protect the income of teachers and other school staff in a time when pressure on the public purse is immense and are their efficiencies that can be made? A notional staffing model that school could test themselves against might be a start. Now is surely time for some radical thinking around the goals we want education to achieve for Society. Depriving the deprived is not one of them.

The author is Chair of TeachVac, the job board for teachers http://www.teachvac.co.uk

Men and teaching: only a career in a recession?

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EPI, the Education Policy Institute, has today published a short report entitled ‘Trends in the Diversity of Teachers in England’ that is largely about gender diversity in teaching. The report brings up to date some of the data that can be found in my post on this blog from April this year https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2020/04/09/are-new-graduate-entrants-to-teaching-still-predominantly-young-white-and-female/

Interestingly, although the report does put the issue into the wider context of the attractiveness of teaching as a career, and the lack of women taking degrees in some subjects such as physics, it doesn’t really consider the fact that some of the change may be down to teaching also becoming relatively less attractive to women, especially primary school teaching.

The EPI paper, while revealing the genuine concern about the issue, doesn’t point out that at the end of the 1990s when the economy was also doing well, the percentage of male graduates accepted into teaching through the UCAS graduate entry system (then administered by the GTTR) was as low as it is now, and possibly even lower in the primary sector.

Percentage of men accepted onto graduate teacher preparation courses

1998       31%

1999       30%

2000       29%

Source GTTR annual Report for 2000

The EPI paper is also correct to draw attention to the fact that men generally decide to apply later in the recruitment round than women, suggesting possibly that the attraction of teaching as a career is less strong for some male applicants. This is possibly also borne out by the higher departure rates from teaching for men, although some may remain in teaching, just outside of state-funded schools.

Linking the evidence to wage rates, where public sector workers have not fared well compared to other graduates in the South East, is interesting but doesn’t explain why Inner London schools have the second highest percentage of male teachers. Perhaps, this is the Teach First effect?

I also wrote about this issue during my period as a TES commentator. There was a Hot Data column in April 1999 entitled ‘Male primary teachers still elusive’ and in one of my final On the Map pieces for the TES, headed ‘Female Teachers, schools remain a woman’s domain’, published in July 2010, I looked at some international evidence. (Incidentally, at the TES, I never wrote the headlines for my pieces).

In September this year, I again headlined the issue of gender in a wider post considering the evidence from the recent OECD Education Indicators at a Glance publication https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2020/09/17/oecd-education-indicators-at-a-glance-2020-edition/

So what might be done? EPI have some good suggestions. In taking over the admissions to teacher preparation courses, the DfE might want to look at how the process across the year might be more neutral in terms of encouraging diversity among both applicants and those placed.

However, one issue has always been that some course providers attract a disproportionately high percentage of applicants from certain groups. Male Black African applicants at one time largely only applied for places on four courses, and some early years courses rarely if ever saw a male applicant.

Finally, the media has a role to play in stereotyping certain careers. The anguish of those that suffered child abuse, mostly at the hands of men, may have deterred some men from choosing careers such as teaching.

But, that’s not something just looking at statistics, as both EPI and my blog does, can tell you.  As the EPI paper concludes, ‘it is important to understand the root cause of why more male graduates don’t choose teaching.’

BA fly last passenger 747

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Why is the news that BA has retired their remaining passenger fleet of Boeing’s iconic 747 ‘Jumbo’ jets worth a post on an education blog? Mainly because I have often used this plane as an example of technological change.

Children born in the era of the first powered flights made by aviation pioneers at the start of the last century retired from work at about the time when the 747 started flying. From canvas and wood planes held together by glue and cords to a passenger plane with two decks and a range unimaginable to those early pioneers, all in less than one lifetime.

Using this example has always prompted me to ask educationalists what changes succeeding generations will experience in their lifetimes. The generation born when the BBC was broadcasting the programme ‘The chips are down’, a TV documentary that brought the concept of semi-conductors to a mass audience and heralded the move of commuters from air-conditioned rooms into homes, and eventually our pockets as well, are now parents whose own children are often well advanced along their own path to adulthood. What changes will they experience in their lifetimes?

Today, there is a news story that the next generation of mobile devices we used to call phones will have inside them chips based upon 5nm technology. Nm refers to nanometres, each of which is one billionth of a metre. According to the BBC a nanometre is roughly the speed a human hair grows every second. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54510363

Education has not been known for the speed of its changes. However, this year, the response to the pandemic has seen more change than perhaps at any time since slates were replaced by paper.

Hopefully, think tanks and politicians are now thinking about the future shape of education and the extent to which change will continue to be driven both by the decisions of individual schools and even teachers to the level of thinking about decision-making that needs to be taken at a national level in order to ensure all children can participate in the same education journey through schooling. Access to technology has become a real issue again for the education sector.

Technology ought also to help everyone work to make a planet that continues to be habitable. If it doesn’t, then the future for those being educated today may be very different.

The 747 was a noisy, dirty and expensive plane to fly. Those issues weren’t a concern when it was designed. Today, they are very much an issue.

Let me finish by asking how much greener is your school than it was a generation ago?

Teaching School Hubs

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If you are involved .din bidding to become a Teaching School Hub and require data about the local teacher labour market over the past three years do make contact.

Teachvac, where I am the Chair of the board, has extensive data covering up to 30 secondary subjects and the primary sector for main scale; posts with TLRs and leadership scale vacancies. Data for 2018-2020 available on request at local authority level.

email enquiries@oxteachserv.com or contact me personally on dataforeducation@gmail.com

Not the party we expected

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Follow this link to an article I have written for the Church Times on schools and the pandemic. It was written in early September.

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2020/25-september/features/features/education-150-years-of-state-schools-not-the-party-we-expected

NfER review ITT landscape

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The recent review of the ITT landscape in terms of changes in applicant numbers and challenges facing the sector post the start of the pandemic is a welcome addition to the literature on this important area of policy. https://www.nfer.ac.uk/media/4143/the_impact_of_covid_19_on_initial_teacher_training.pdf

Regular readers will be reassured that, for the most part, the NfER report validates and expands upon the information already provided by this blog each month when the UCAS data are published. The additional information on placements and possible retention scenarios is to be welcomed. It is always welcoming to have my work backed up, if not endorsed, by such an important research body as the NfER.

Missing for the NfER paper appears to be any discussion about how the DfE ought now to handle the question of recruitment incentives in the current market? Should these be scaled back either to just those subjects where 2020 numbers miss the Teacher Supply Model projection of need or should they be abolished completely, especially if the NfER’s projections on retention are realistic? Indeed, should the DfE go further and impose recruitment controls on some subjects, at least for the first part of the 2021 recruitment round? It would have been interesting to have seen these policy issues aired in the paper.

At the APPG conference call yesterday, Lord Jim Knight of the TES suggested that the international school market might be more buoyant than the home market for teachers. Will demand from schools overseas attract those teachers currently without teaching posts, and thus absorb some of the over-supply in the market at present or will the risk be seen by young teachers are unacceptable in the present climate?

The DfE will have more data once it has let the contract for the survey of teachers. But, action may be necessary sooner rather than later if there is an early surge in applications for places on the 2021 teacher preparation courses through both UCAs and Teach First. I think we can assume that School Direct salaried as a training route has withered on the vine to a point where the very future of the route must be in doubt.

It is worth remembering that middle and senior leadership positions will be filled from the current stock of teachers. With several years of under-recruitment of new teachers in many subjects, and an increase in departure rates from the teaching profession, some middle leadership positions may remain a challenge to fill even when there are plenty of applicants for classroom teacher positions.

In the past, this situation has resulted in some teachers being required to take on middle leadership roles, often in challenging schools, too early in their careers. The DfE must be alert for this possible scenario to reappear, and work to prevent it. Making sure middle leadership preparation CPD is available is a prerequisite.

Managing primary head teacher vacancies is also an issue that should be on the DfE’s agenda. There are signs of pressure here resulting from the pandemic and pressures on workload of senior staff.

OECD Education Indicators at a Glance: 2020 Edition

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Each year the OECD brings together the most recent data about education systems. Originally it was just data from the OECD countries, but now the scope has widened to include some other countries. This allows for both a EU23 country average and in some cases a G20 average number to be calculated in many of the tables.

In this blog post, I look at three sets of data; age of teachers in primary and lower secondary sectors; the percentage of female teachers in these sectors and some data about class sizes.

The data for the home nations is aggregated into a United Kingdom statistics. This is despite, as pointed out in a previous post, education is a devolved activity and each constituent part of the United Kingdom takes its own decisions on education policy. However, they are not separate countries, and are viewed no differently than either German Land or French Departments by the OECD.

On the ratio of students to teaching staff in 2018, the United Kingdom still has one of the largest ratios in the table for the primary sector, at 20 pupils per teacher. Only The Russian Federation, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, of the nations included in the table, have larger class sizes. By comparison, the OECD average is 15 pupils per teacher, and the EU23 average is even smaller at just 13 pupils per teacher.  The United Kingdom figure comes after including the smaller class sizes often found in swathes of rural Scotland and Wales.

In the lower secondary table, the United Kingdom performs better. The average falls to 16 pupils per teacher, compared with an OECD average of 13 and the EU23 average of 11 pupils per teacher. Although the imbalance between staffing is of long-standing, it is smaller than a generation ago. It is to be hoped that as policymakers fully understand the importance of early education the gap will continue to close between the staffing ratios funded for younger and older pupils.

On the age distribution of teachers, the United Kingdom had the system with the highest percentage of teachers below the age of 30 working in the primary sector at 29% of the teaching force, and one of the lowest percentage of teachers older than 50 in the sector.  Young teachers are more recently prepared for the classroom, but less likely to remain there than older teachers.

The large percentage may partly be down to the rise in the birth rate that required more teachers to be hired as the increased number of pupils reached school age. By contrast, many western European countries, including Finland, had less than ten per cent of their primary teaching force in the under-30 age bracket in 2018.

The position is similar in the lower secondary workforce, with the United Kingdom again leading the way at 22%, with the second highest percentage of teachers in the youngest age grouping: only Turkey had a higher percentage. Indeed, the EU23 average was only nine per cent of lower secondary teachers under the age of thirty in 2018.

On gender, although we tend to think of teaching these days as a profession where women vastly outnumber men, and that is true, the data revealed that in 2018 the United Kingdom was close to the OECD average of 83% female teachers among teachers under thirty in the primary sector. The EU23 average for this group was 85% ,with a UK figure of 84%.  By contrast, in Austria and Italy more than 90% of their teacher under the age of 30 were female. In Denmark, the percentage was only 58%.

In the lower secondary sector, the international averages were a 68% of teachers under thirty being female. The United Kingdom were again similar to the averages with a figure of 66% for female teachers as a proportion of teachers under the age of thirty. Denmark again had one of the lowest percentages, but Italy had a much higher percentage of male teacher in the lower secondary sector.

There is more to be said about the difference in survival rates in teaching for men and women, and the relative lack of women in leadership positions, even after several decades of equal opportunities legislation.

Data on teachers’ ethnic backgrounds would also be useful, not least to know where and how well it is collected across the OECD countries.

The data was collected in a period of calm before the pandemic storm hit the world. What these numbers will look like in a decade if employment opportunities change is in the realm of speculation. Might the patterns be very different or might the journey to equal opportunities really be more firmly embedded in the labour market than ever before?

How many unqualified teachers are there?

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One of the questions that has exercised educationalists during a time of teacher shortages is whether or not there is a growing number of teachers without Qualified Teacher Status working in State School? Mr Gove, when Secretary of State for Education, changed the rules, from allowing all schools to employ unqualified staff only when they were unable to find a Qualified Teacher, to allowing academies and free schools to employ such individuals as core staff members.

Did this change open the flood gates? Data from the School workforce Census for 2019 and previous years suggests probably not, although there is a worrying figures in the data. Overall, some five per cent of teachers, as measured by the Full Time Equivalent number of teachers, did not possess QTS in the 2019 Census. In total, the figure in November 2019, was 25,078 compared with 25,860 in November 2016. Overall, the trend has been downwards. This may be because it is clearer to schools completing the census how to classify ‘teachers’ on either Teach First or School Direct Salaried contracts within schools.

Looking at the different sectors is illuminating. In the primary sector, there were 7,673 non-qualified teachers in November 2016, and 7,528 in November 2019. However, the bulk of unqualified teachers were in the secondary sector. In November 2016 the number was 25,860, but by November 2019 the number had fallen slightly to 25,078.

However, in the special school sector, where many of our most vulnerable learners are educated, the number of teachers without QTS increased from 3,033 in November 2016 to 3,729 in November 2019. By the latter date, such ‘teachers’ accounted for 14% of teachers working in the special school sector.

Now, hopefully, these are experienced teachers that bring special skills to bear to help with the education of these children. Sadly, the data doesn’t allow that to be more than a ‘hope’.  Should this not be the case, and many might lack specialist teaching as well as other qualifications, this must be a matter for concern? It would be interesting to see a regional breakdown of the numbers, to see if certain parts of the country ha percentages even higher than the 15% national figures for England.

Since the term ‘teacher’ isn’t a reserved occupation term, anyone can style themselves as a teacher. Indeed, as I have pointed out in the past, these individuals without QTS when working in schools were once categorised as ‘instructors’. However, the Labour government changed their designation to that of ‘unqualified teacher’.  I still think, in recognition of the preparation teachers have to undergo that the term ‘teacher’ should be reserved solely for use by those with QTS and that a person in training should have a separate designation such as trainee teacher. But, that’s a personal opinion.

Of course, few schools tell parents whether there child is being taught by either a teacher with QTS or one with appropriate subject or other specialist knowledge. Should there be more transparency?

Enough potential school leaders?

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When I wrote a blog recently about the significant level of head teacher vacancies recorded by both TeachVac and the DfE vacancy site during August, I promised to look into the possible size of the pool of school leaders able to step up to fill headships in the primary sector. (Feeling the Strain 31st August 2020)

The new arrangement for viewing the DfE Statistics of the School Workforce in November 2019 made this more of a challenge than in the past. Indeed, I have still not fathomed whether it is possible to add in age groupings as a variable in the composite table searchers are allowed to create from the data? This is an important variable in answering the question about leadership pool of talent since deputy and assistant heads in some age groups may be expected to be lacking in experience in post sufficient to consider promotion to a headship.

Even better would be details about age and length of service in post, something provided way back in the 1990s, but not seemingly available now without a specific data request. Perhaps the teacher associations might like to consider this issue in their next evidence to the Pay Review Body the STRB).

Historically, most head teachers are appointed from the ranks of deputy head teachers, although, as some small primary schools don’t have a deputy, a number of assistant heads or even teachers with a TRL have been appointed to headships in the past. More recently, deputy heads in secondary schools have been moved across to primary schools in the same Academy Trust in order to fill vacancies for primary head teacher posts.

Looking at the data for the last four years from the School Workforce Census, the number of full-time deputy heads in the primary sector has declined from 11,563 in 2017/18, to 10,729 in 2019/20. The number of part-time deputy heads during the same period has, however, increased from 1,062 to 1,236. Nevertheless, the size of the pool has not grown. This is despite the number of schools remaining almost constant during the same period, the total altering only from 17,191 to 17,178.

Assuming some 2,000 primary head teacher vacancies each year, with 25% being taken by existing head teacher changing schools, this would create a demand for 1,500 first time head teachers each year. Assuming ten per cent of the 12,000 deputy heads are too new in post to consider promotion and a further 10% are too old to be still interested in headship, the remaining 10,000 or so leaves a generous margin of possible applicants.

However, other considerations then come into play; type of school – infant, junior or primary; organisation – maintained or academy; religious affiliation or none – Church of England, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Jewish, Greek Orthodox; Sikh, Muslim; size of school – one form entry to four form entry or larger?

All these variables can affect the size of the possible pool of interested applicants. A further wrinkle is the time of year a vacancy is advertised. Historically, 50% of vacancies appear in the January to March period and are the easiest to fill as that is when the majority of applicants are job hunting. TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk has detailed information on how schools advertising for a head teacher fare, and how many have to re-advertise. Each year, a report is published in January.

We shall be watching the current trends with interest.

Still not enough trainees

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By Monday 17th August some 45,210 people had applied for postgraduate teacher preparation courses through the UCAS Scheme. This was an increase of 6,000 on the number recorded in August 2019, for these courses in England. This represent a 15% year on year increase. However the number is still well below the record levels of more than 60,000 witnessed during the previous recession caused by the banking crisis. No doubt, this is in part due to the fact that it wasn’t until March that the world was turned upon its head.

The 2020/21 recruitment round may well see much high numbers of applicants right from the start of the cycle later this autumn. There are also Teach First numbers to be taken into account, although they don’t publish regular figures on total applicant numbers.

Every region of England witnessed increases in applicant numbers over 2019, with more than 1,000 additional applicants in the South East, and 1,500 in London: good news for both regions. There were also more applicants from all age-groups, as well as from both women and men.

As many of these new applicants have arrived relatively late in the recruitment round, and while schools and universities have been enduring ‘lockdown’, it is, perhaps, not surprising that ‘conditional placed’ numbers are up on last year, whereas, in some cases, ‘placed’ numbers are down.

For instance, for men in the age 21 and under category, there were 340 placed this August compared with 400 in August 2019. However the conditional placed number this year was 760, compared with 530 in August 2019. The number of applicants in this age group increased from 1,300 in August 2019 to 1,450 this August. While four of the seven age-groupings for men recorded fewer placed numbers than last year, only two age groups, the youngest and oldest groupings, for women recorded placed numbers below last year. This may give credence to the suggestion that male applicants for teaching tend to apply later on average than women.

School Direct seems to have suffered this year, with fewer placed applicants for both primary and secondary courses, and quite markedly fewer for School Direct Salaried places. This year only 610 applicants have been recorded as placed against 890 last year. Conditional placed numbers for School Direct Salaried this year are 1,550, compared with 1,710 in August last year. No doubt funding arrangements and school closures have affected this route more than some others.

Some subjects have seen significant increases in the number of applications. Art and design has increased to 3,570 this August compared with 1,890 in August 2019. Business studies, a shortage subject, now has 1,720 applications compared with 770 in 2019. By contrast, geography only has 3,740 applications this year compared with 4,380 last year at this point in time.

Mathematics has seen an increase from 8,600 to 11,000 applications, but only 770 of these are placed and with just 1,750 holding a conditional place it seems less than likely that the Teacher Supply Model number will be reached. The same is true for physics, where applications are up from 2,220 to 2,450, but only 550 are recorded as either placed or conditionally placed: not sufficient to meet the requirement.

So, 2020 looks like being better than recent years, but not yet a great year. Hopefully, the 2020/21 round will see all places filled. Since secondary pupil numbers will still be on the increase, this will be important to ensure adequate staffing for our schools.