Category Archives: media

Will 12% interest rates deter would-be teachers?

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Easter is a good time for a spot of spring cleaning. When I was reorganising my collection of paraphernalia about the teacher supply market that I have collected over the past  few decades I came across a copy of ‘Teacher Training places in England: September 2013’ , a book that I wrote with Chris Waterman.

This loose-left book was primarily a collection of maps showing the location of the different providers in the brave new world of School Direct then coming on stream. There was also a short history of teacher supply by way of an introduction that drew heavily on my 2008 work for Policy Exchange. (I’m pretty sure that they wouldn’t ask me to write for them now, but then they were more open-minded).

2013 was the start of the period of challenge for teacher supply in England that continues to this day, with just the relief from the first year of the covid pandemic when teaching looked like a safe haven in an uncertain job market. Sadly, the attractiveness of teaching as a career didn’t last long, as this blog has documented with the data from the DfE admissions process.

Interestingly, 2013 saw the DfE’s foray into admissions, with their handling of the new School Direct programme. Their process displayed how many places were on offer and how many remained and I spent that Easter going through the whole list to determine the situation. My findings were rehearsed in this early post on the blog Is School Direct working? | John Howson (wordpress.com)

But, back to the book. There was a table on page six of the different routes into teaching at that time, and their relative cost to students, as well as another column explaining the extent of higher education involvement.

Despite several decades of attack from governments, higher education is still heavily involved with teacher preparation. This continued involvement of higher education has allowed the DfE to avoid the question of how to fund training. By passing the problem to the Treasury through the imposition of fees it doesn’t have to face up to the reality of being responsible for all the costs. After all, students make the choice of accepting loans.

However, the recent announcement that the interest rate on student loans will increase to around 12% from September does raise the question as to whether or not this is a tipping point where graduates will not be prepared to choose routes into teaching with more debt and no salary, especially when other routes into teaching offer both a salary and no extra debt burden.

The Labour government stunned the education world when it introduced the £6,000 training grant in March 2000. Civil servants might like to dust of the minutes produced in the lead up to that decision to see whether they might once again be of use in making the case for a universal grant to all graduates training to be a teacher.

The irony of a history teacher paying full fees starting teaching humanities alongside a geography teacher in the next classroom that benefitted from a bursary when they were both on the same training course won’t be lost on the profession, even if the professional associations seem incapable of doing anything for those of their members faced with fees and extra debt.

New Service for schools

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TeachVac

The National Vacancy Service for Schools

Advanced matching service

Schools pay for matches with interested teachers to be highlighted

No match made; no charge

£1,000 per annum maximum for all matches

on all vacancies by a secondary school in 2022

£100 sign-on fee, with 100 free matches, then £1 per match

TeachVac has already made 800,000 matches in 2022:

1.2 million matches in 2021

A cheap, but cost-effective service for schools

from the free job board covering state and private schools across England

email enquiries@oxteachserv.com for full details

What is the role of a school in its community?

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For everyone interested in either the role of a middle tier in our school system in England or in how pupil place planning and support for vulnerable children is handled in the current shambles around the arrangements for schools in England, this is an important report to read. Local authority provision for school places and support for vulnerable children – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) The recent White Paper on Education was the second one to pledge to change in-year Admissions and this Report indicates why Ministers should act swiftly to make the necessary changes to the current system.

At the heart of the debate about the middle tier is the role of local authorities and the role of academies and the Trusts that run them. The following two quotes from the report sum up current situation nicely in relation to these important issues for the management of our schooling system:

‘Nevertheless, our research also suggested that there are two ways in which academisation can affect local education systems. First, because there are different processes for making decisions and resolving disputes about place-planning and placements of vulnerable pupils for academies and maintained schools, where an “isolationist” school is an academy, it can be more difficult, complex, and time-consuming to resolve issues. Second, while not generalising, school, trust and LA leaders and parents/carers reported that, among the minority of schools that took an “isolationist” approach, these were more likely to be schools that were part of larger regional or national academy trusts.’

‘Furthermore, there was broad agreement among school, trust and LA leaders and parents/carers that LAs were uniquely placed to play this role [place planning]. (In relation to place-planning, a minority of trust leaders and national stakeholders argued that the RSC should be wholly or partially responsible for delivering place-planning.) Whichever way roles and responsibilities are configured, there was consensus about the need for clarity, alignment of responsibilities and decision-making authority, for reciprocal expectations of schools, trusts and LAs around participating in local partnership-based approaches to place-planning and support for vulnerable pupils, and a renewed, more collaborative relationship between local and central government.’

The situation is summed up by a quote from a local authority officer:

‘Nobody wants to roll back the clock. But if we have MATs not working for the best interests of young people in the community, we don’t have any direct levers. We would have to go through the RSC, and not sure they have many levers. A lot of accountability sits with the LA, but the responsibility of delivery sits with schools. Doesn’t feel appropriate. We need some accountabilities placed on academy trusts and schools to deliver expectations [for vulnerable children].’ (LA officer page 106)

We need a system that works for the children seeking an education, and not primarily for those that provide that schooling. This is especially true for our most vulnerable young people and I hope that Ministers will spend time over easter reading this report and then acting upon its findings. State schooling is a public service and must be managed as such.

Opportunity for All?

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The government published it Education White Paper today. They didn’t make it easy to find the whole document, but it can be accessed at Opportunity for all – Strong schools with great teachers for your child (publishing.service.gov.uk) For younger readers, it is called a White Paper because when such documents first appeared they had white covers. Later when documents with suggestions and not proposals appeared they were called Green Papers as they had a green cover.

Enough of the history, although it is worth looking back to the last education White Paper. It promised to look at returning in-year admissions to local authorities, but nothing happened. This time on page 53 there is a graphic that just says LAs will ‘manage’ in-year admissions. It is not clear where the management role will have sanctions to back it up. I hope so.  If local authorities are provided with ‘backstop’ powers to direct in-year admissions that will be a step forward and should be put into place as soon as possible. The intention is summarised in paragraph 163. As a final safety net to cover rare circumstances where collaborative working breaks down, we will consult on a new backstop power for local authorities to direct trusts to admit children. Trusts would have the right to appeal this to the Schools Adjudicator. Please start the consultation as soon as possible – Time for Jacob’s Law | John Howson (wordpress.com)

The news in the White Paper that local authorities can run academy trusts is to be welcomed as correcting one of the wrongs of Mr Gove’s original 2010 Academies Act. However, in the spirit of strong schools, will schools in existing academy chains be able to make a transfer either to another chain or to a local authority trust, and will local authorities be able to include schools outside their boundaries in a Trust, such as Swindon schools in a Wiltshire trust or Blackpool schools in a Lancashire Trust? Will there need to be Chinese walls between an LA Trust officers and other officers with powers to direct Trust, as over admissions?

The White Paper downgrades Regional School Commissioners to Regional Directors, a less threatening title to local democracy. However, the amount of power local authorities can wield will depend upon funding. At least local trusts should have the same financial powers as the present trusts to manage central costs.

Perhaps the biggest change in policy terms in the White Paper is the ending of the freedom of parents to control the education of their children as paragraph 77 make clear, the government will also introduce legislation to establish a register for children not in school, exploring how this data should be used by local authorities and multi-agency teams to undertake their duties and support children’s education. The 1870 Act required parents to educate their children. The 2022 White Paper now also requires them to tell the authorities how they are doing that education. Will the next step be to ensure that all children receive high quality education of id the white Paper’s real time ‘Opportunity for all in state funded schools?

Overall, the White Paper is not as dramatic as it was thought it might be.

Labour Market for Teachers

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Tomorrow the NfER will publish their report on the Labour Market for Teachers. I assume it will say very similar things to the TeachVac Report published in January. A copy of which is available on request

Of more concern at present is not the 2022 labour market – lots of vacancies; not enough applicants in many subjects – but the outlook for 2023.  For more on 2022 see Recruitment 2022: a rough ride to come | John Howson (wordpress.com)

A quick analysis of the DfE’s ‘Get into Teaching’ site reveals that there are still high percentages of courses with the ‘vacancies here’ flag waving. Top of the list is the small number of ‘science’ courses, with 96% of those courses showing vacancies earlier today. Not far behind is Physics, with 93% of the 783 courses showing vacancies.

Interestingly, on 6th March, there were only 777 courses listed. Even though the DfE provides a range of filters, how do you select the best course from 783 varieties? One interesting factor is that a search on Physics ‘QTS only’ courses willing to consider those with a Third-Class degree, such a search brings up 47 courses. Most of the providers of these courses are located in or around the London area or are located in the wider South East region.

When is the government going to provide a strategy that allows all training places in Physics to have a realistic chance of being filled? It isn’t possible to level up, especially in areas with selective schools and many private schools, if there are insufficient teachers in a particular subject or phase. That’s been obvious for many years, but, apart from bursaries, little has been achieved, especially with the failure of the salary scheme option within School Direct.

The good news, well comparatively good news, is that only 42% of the 104 psychology, as opposed to physics, courses currently have vacancies. In PE, two thirds of courses still have vacancies, higher than might be expected for mid-March.

Even 1,412 out of the staggering 1,677 course options for those wanting to train to teach in the primary sector still have vacancies.

Of course, applicants don’t know whether a course has one vacancy or many from the DfE website. These days adding such a feature should be relatively easy to do, even if only in the form of a set of traffic lights: green for lots of space; amber ably quickly; red few spaces left and course might be full by the time your application is received.

I hope the DfE is conducting some evaluation of how the users find the DfE’s site listing courses. Perhaps a map of locations for the course’s teaching base and schools used for practical elements might be another useful addition?

Of course, if the DfE makes any changes to places available all the current evidence might be of little more than historical value. Postgraduate initial teacher training targets: 2022 to 2023 – Official statistics announcement – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) There will apparently be an announcement in April.

Not the ITT data for any predictions

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This isn’t the place to discuss a knighthood for a former Secretary of State for Education, except to say I haven’t been more surprised since the time when a Prime Minister knighted his raincoat maker.

I was almost as surprised to find the DfE publishing the February ITT applications data today. Well done for producing the data much faster than UCAS used to achieve. However, it is less helpful not to have a pre-announced timetable for these publications. If there is one, I haven’t seen it.

February marks the mid-point in the annual recruitment cycle, and is the month when it is normally possible to ‘read the runes’ and speculate on the final outcome of the recruitment round, and hence, the labour market for the following year.

At present, 2022 looks a lot like 2020 was at this point, but any predictions made that February turned out to be wide of the mark. I fear that with the war in Ukraine, any predictions this March based on the February data would only be on the basis of a ‘normal’ recruitment round. The remained of 2022 is not going to be anything like normal.

As a result, I am confining myself to saying that the indications to date are less interest from home students and that 10%+ of applications have come from applicants domiciled outside of England. This includes 482 applicants from Northern Ireland and 1,427 for the ‘rest of the world’ category. There have also been 318 applications from people in Wales to train in England.

An interesting piece of analysis made possible by the DfE dataset is the percentage of applicants offered a place, awaiting a decision and unsuccessful with their current application.

The offer category includes those shown as recruited; conditions pending; deferrals and received an offer.

Subject% offers% unsuccessful% awaiting offer
Classics26%49%26%
Music26%49%25%
Business studies15%59%25%
Design and technology26%53%21%
Religious education24%55%21%
Computing18%62%19%
Drama27%51%22%
Physics20%54%26%
Art and design25%52%24%
Geography26%52%22%
Other25%57%18%
Biology21%58%21%
Chemistry20%56%25%
Modern foreign languages20%52%28%
History25%56%18%
English24%58%18%
Mathematics20%58%22%
Physical education24%64%12%
Source: DfE dataset

The table is ranked by the number of applications received, with the subject with the lowest applications at the top and physical education with 4,589 applicants at the bottom of the table. Interestingly, lots of applicants doesn’t always mean a high percentage of offers. Similarly, small numbers of applicants may also mean high percentage of unsuccessful applicants, as in physics (54%) and computing ((62%). Does this mean that quality is not being compromised, perhaps because of concerns over ofsted judgements?  Perhaps, it means more and better applicants might come along later, so it is worth keeping places for them. Unsuccessful applicant percentages will increase as courses fill. Thus, physical education already has the highest percentage of unsuccessful applicants.  

There are still lots of interesting data needed, such as ethnicity of applicants and their outcomes and outcomes by type of course. Perhaps providers could lobby for these changes?

Private schools: important sector of job market for teachers

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Nearly one in five vacancies for teachers of mathematics that were advertised during the first two months of 2022 placed by schools in England came from private schools responsible for educating children of secondary school age. This included both senior and preparatory schools across England. However, the vast majority of posts from private schools were advertised by located by schools in London and the South East of England. There were relatively few vacancies from schools across the north of England.

The data produced by TeachVac, the national vacancy service for teachers, shows that the private sectors share of the job market for teachers so far in 2022 has increased from, around 12% of vacancies in the first two months of 2021, to 14% across the first two months of 2022.

Other subjects, apart from mathematics, where the private sector dominate the job market for teachers include, perhaps not surprisingly, classics, but also some posts for teachers of specific languages, including Russian, where there have been three recorded vacancies so far in 2022.

Schools in the state sector usually advertise for teachers of modern languages rather than for teachers of specific languages. The same balance between advertising for teachers of specific subjects and a generic vacancy is often also seen in vacancies for science teachers. Private schools favour vacancies for teachers of specific subjects, whereas state schools advertise for teachers of science, at least at the classroom teacher grade.

As with the state sector, there has been less demand for teachers of arts and humanities so far in 2022 by private schools. At least in England, this is not a part of the curriculum likely to absorb the over-supply of such teachers being trained at the public expense.

The next three months will cover the period between March and May when the majority of vacancies for teachers will appear. Nationally, across both state and private schools, and the primary and secondary sectors, nearly 20,000 vacancies for teachers have already been advertised in 2022 according to TeachVac’s records. 2022 might well see a total for the year of close to 70,000 unless demand falls away later in the year.

Should some universities decide to withdraw form government funded teacher preparation courses then they may well still be able to maintain initial teacher education by providing recruits for the private school sector. As academies don’t need to employ qualified teachers, any universities outside the government scheme can also provide new recruits for that sector, providing that a funding route can be found for trainees, perhaps based upon a greater use of a salaried scheme funded by schools. It would be interesting to speculate what such a divergence of public and private training might do for the levelling up agenda?

White flag or shifting the blame

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There is a saying that one should beware of unexpected guests. For reasons obvious to those that know the saying, it is clear why I prefer to compare it with the other saying of ‘not looking a gift horse in the mouth’ – should that be looking an electric car in the battery these days – but without using the actual expression. No matter, what does matter is whether or not local authorities will be able to form and run Multi Academy Trusts/Committees?

Ever since Mr Gove raced the 2010 Academies Act through parliament in the period before the summer break that year, and less than three months after the 2010 General Election, the Conservatives have wanted all schools to become academies. At that time, local authorities were beyond the pale, and a model with no local democratic involvement, similar to that of the NHS, seemed on the cards for education. Peter Downes a former Cambridgeshire Lib Dem councillor and long time secondary head led the Lib Dem charge at their 2010 September Conference, an event where delegates made their support for local democratic involvement in education very clear to Nick Clegg and David Laws.

Over the ensuing decade, most secondary schools have either opted or been forced to become an academy. All new schools are required to become an academy. However, except in a few parts of the country, academisation of the primary sector schools has been slow and patchy. Many primary schools only became academies are a visit from ofsted resulted in compulsory academisation.

The picture that has emerged around the county is of an expensive mess that could make the reputation of a Secretary of State if change is handled properly with a view to the longer-term effectiveness of the school sector.

There are now noises in the press suggesting that the next White Paper from the DfE might allow local authorities to establish and run Multi Academy Trusts or Committees or some new structure such as a Multi Academy Board might be created. Such a suggestion would effectively be a change of direction on the part of central government. Is it either a white flag or preparing the ground to shift the blame for a period of challenge that will face the primary sector where most maintained schools are still to be found?

There is a third possibility. This is that civil servants have been so impressed by how some local authorities have handled the covid crisis that they now recognise their value as part of the middle tier, especially in handling the large number of small primary schools spread across rural England. Certainly, the work by the local authority team in Oxfordshire, where I am a county councillor, has resulted in an email from a headteacher of a private school expressing thanks for the work of local authority staff. Not something you receive every day.

Allowing or even forcing local authorities to take all schools not already academies into a LAB or Local Academy Board would allow the government to tell the public that all schools were now academies. It would allow local authorities to feel that they might be back in the game of education politics and it would allow for more coherent planning for the primary sector less hampered by the legislation on closing rural schools. This may be important should the National Funding Formula create the need to rationalise the school estate.

Happy Birthday

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Today is the ninth birthday of this blog! A birthday is a good time to look back at what was written in the past on the blog. One of the interesting posts came early in the life of the blog, in July 2013, when I called for action by the government and suggested that “ministers must take urgent action if we are not to see a re-run of the crisis in teacher recruitment that occurred in the early days of the Blair government.” The full quote is reproduced below and can be seen on the blog by searching the July 2013 posts.

“Coming, as this outcome does, after several years when recruitment to teacher training has largely not been an issue, the present situation is a wake-up call for all concerned, and ministers must take urgent action if we are not to see a re-run of the crisis in teacher recruitment that occurred in the early days of the Blair government.  There are two months left before the training courses start, so all is not yet lost. However, if my predictions prove accurate, some schools are going to struggle to recruit teachers next summer: good news for recruitment agencies, but probably not for some pupils. And, as I have said before, this is no way to create a world-class education system.”

Extract from

Has Michael Gove failed to learn the lessons of history?

Posted on July 2, 2013

There was a fairly swift response from Sanctuary Buildings that sparked something of a spat and the first Statistical Bulletin on the Teacher Supply Model for a while. Regular readers can make their own minds up about the extent to which I was “scaremongering” or a prophet ‘crying in the wilderness’. I wrote in August 2013 the following:

“So now I know I am officially a scaremonger. 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.’

Well, the first thing to note is that I haven’t said that there is a teacher shortage, just that training places are not being filled: not the same thing. Indeed, I have said a teacher shortage is less likely than in the past in the near future because Mr Gove has mandated that qualified teachers from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the whole of the USA can teach here as qualified teachers with no need to retrain. With an oversupply of teachers in parts of both Canada and Australia that should prevent any short-term problem developing even though another part of the government isn’t very keen on importing workers from abroad, presumably including from within the Commonwealth and a onetime colony.”

Extract from

Scaremongering!

Posted on August 14, 2013

I suspect anyone interested in the supply of teachers of physics, design and technology and business studies may have a different view about these quotes from those interested in the supply of PE and history teachers.

The DfE now controls the whole teacher supply pipeline from applications to train as a teacher to offering a job board as somewhere for schools in the state sector to place vacancies. To talk or write of a local education service these days would be as much of a misnomer as the write of a local health service rather than of the NHS.

Understanding and controlling teacher supply is important in the national interest and it is worth speculating what the landscape of teacher supply might look like in another nine years if the DfE became seriously involved in the ‘levelling up’ agenda?

Directing new teachers where to work and directing the management of promotions by specifying how MATs ought to deploy their staff might just be two of the ‘innovations’ to look forward to in the next decade if market forces are abandoned in favour of a more interventionist approach.

I am not sure that this blog will be there to chronicle those changes, but I hope to make it to its tenth birthday next year, if that isn’t tempting fate too much.

TeachVac welcomes new tes owners

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This is an interesting way to start 2022. Just three years since the tes last changed hands, its ownership looks to be on the move again. This would make the third set of owners of the tes since TeachVac was set up in 2013 to challenge the high cost of teacher recruitment in a changing world, where technology should have been driving down costs and thus reducing prices to schools. www.teachvac.co.uk According to the press release 86c854e3-7a1d-4402-9f20-32868488d2c6 (gcs-web.com) dated the 7th December the new owners should be the current management team at the tes and ONEX, a Canadian Venture Capital Group. My best wishes to them.

When the Providence Group bought the tes in 2018, I expressed surprise at the purchase, so I am not now surprised that after slimming down the business by: exiting the supply teacher market; ending coverage of the further education sector; shifting its office functions out of London and axing the print edition among other changes, Providence finally put the business up for sale.

Based on the cost structure of TeachVac, there is a profitable company lurking inside the tes, but not while it is saddled with a large slug of overhanging debt that needs to be serviced. The terms of the expected change of ownership are not revealed in the press release, but too much debt will cripple the success of the new venture. Still, it is good to see the management team taking a share of the risk, and bringing at least a part of the ownership back into the UK from North America.

Today’s Sunday Telegraph business section has an article by Matt Oliver discussing the problems the tes faces when government tries to do the same job through its own free web site for vacancies. This blog discussed such an issue in relation to both TeachVac and the TES in April 2019 DfE backs free vacancy sites | John Howson (wordpress.com) I am sorry that Matt Oliver didn’t either mention TeachVac or try to speak with me about the way the market operates, as other journalists have done on a regular basis.

Perhaps either the Education Select Committee or the Public Accounts Committee at Westminster will use Matt Oliver’s article as a reason to mount an inquiry into the teacher recruitment market. After all, the later, using National Audit Office data, called for the DfE to reduce the cost of teacher recruitment: the very reason that TeachVac was established and has flourished. Does Nationalisation always work? | John Howson (wordpress.com)

This blog has always asserted that schools have been paying too much for recruitment advertising and has been prepared to back that judgement with the development of the successful TeachVac job board. The apparent lack of interest on the part of professional associations and others connected with education to address the means of removing unnecessary expenditure from schools by slashing recruitment advertising costs has been an enduring disappointment to me. Perhaps 2022 with be the year that all this changes?