Category Archives: media

School Funding: looking for savings

Posted on by
Reply

Either schools are under-funded or they are not. They certainly say that they are. The IFS Briefing Note  https://ifs.org.uk/publications/15588 lends credence to that view.

But what do they do about it? As a business owner, I need to use my resources in the most effective manner. Schools it seems to me can afford to complain about their funding while still spending in a manner that doesn’t bring a sensible return on the outlay.

Let’s take recruitment spending. And let’s narrow that to spending on teacher recruitment by secondary schools – the most lucrative part of the market for the private sector. This is also an area where I know quite a bit about how the market works having established TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk some seven years ago as a job board for teaching vacancies and where I am still the current Chair.

Now, using TeachVac’s extensive database, we can calculate that the average secondary school recruits around eleven teachers a year. Some recruit fewer, and new schools may recruit more in their first few years.

Some teachers are easy to recruit, such as history teachers or teachers of physical education. Other teachers, such as teachers of business studies or physics, are difficult to recruit at any time, and virtually impossible to recruit for a January vacancy unless a school is exceptionally fortunate.

So, let’s assume over a five year period, a third of vacancies a school may advertise are easy to fill; a third a bit of a challenge and a third very difficult. How do you spend your cash wisely as a school to meet your staffing needs?

Many schools and MATs take out a subscription to an on-line platform that can run into a six figure sum each year. That’s a lot of cash to spend on an easy to fill job and even more cash for a job you cannot fill. So, maybe the cash pays for the third of vacancies in the middle group, possibly an average of 4 vacancies a year. Is that value for money?

TeachVac can fill those vacancies at much less cost to schools, and so can the DfE vacancy site. With TeachVac a school doesn’t have to do anything other than put a job on its website. TeachVac matches candidates looking for the type of vacancy and can report on the size of the market.

With the DfE site, a school must enter the job and hope it can be seen among the plethora of non-teaching posts cluttering up the DfE site.

The DfE site also has the disadvantage of only offering state school posts, so teachers that want a teaching post regardless of whether it is in the state or private sectors probably won’t bother to use the DfE site. TeachVac doesn’t suffer from this constraint.

TeachVac is reviewing its services to ensure better value for money for schools. After all, out technology costs a fraction of historical costs of advertising and at TeachVac we have always thought these saving should be passed on to schools. Do tell us what you think.

Shortage of lorry drivers: what about the shortage of physics teachers?

Posted on by
Reply

As schools across England prepare to return for the start of a new school year, are complaints about shortages of teachers with specific subject knowledge hitting the headlines? Sadly, no. A shortage of lorry drivers may make the national headlines, as this is an area where there haven’t been shortages in the past and the public can see the results in terms of empty supermarket shelves. But nothing has been said about a teacher supply crisis in certain subjects.

The failure of governments over many years to train enough teachers in some curriculum subjects no longer hits the headlines, but remain a genuine problem for schools. Today’s figures, from UCAS that relate to applications for course that start in September this year, and will provide the new teachers for September 2022 vacancies, make disturbing reading.

Those that follow the regular monthly reporting of this data on this blog will not be surprised at the numbers revealed in these figures, almost the last to be provided by UCAS before the DfE takes over the application process for the 2022 recruitment round.

The short-lived Covid boom in seeking to train as a teacher is well and truly over. Applications between July and August this year for secondary subjects were the lowest since 2016.

July Aug increase
20153110
20162990
20174080
20185320
20195450
20206270
20213180
  

This decline is not due to places being filled. Across the board, in the subjects this blog has covered over the years, only Chemistry is reporting a larger number of those applications with offers and that’s probably due to a change in the bursary arrangements. However, the increase in chemistry trainees in no way offsets the reduction in applications with offers in biology. Across the three key sciences, applications with offers are down by nearly 1,000 on this point last year. This blog can confidently predict that there will be a shortage of physics teachers again in 2022.

Another bellwether indicator is the change in the number of male applicants. At 12,470, this is approaching 2,000 fewer than in August last year.  Fortunately, the fall in the number of women applicants is smaller in percentage terms.

If there is a spark of good news in these figures it is that more applicants in London have been offered places than last year. The percentage of applicants in London either ‘placed’, ‘conditional placed’ or ‘holding an offer’ increased from 61% last August to 66% this August. That means two thirds of applicants across both primary and secondary courses have effectively been accepted onto a course. It would be interesting to see the data by subject for courses in the capital. Even this good news comes with a possible caveat. Will Teach First find it harder to place students in London schools if it is competing with other providers for classroom space?

The government may solve the crisis lorry drivers by arranging more driving tests and even releasing army HGV drivers to work for selected companies, but the staffing crisis in our schools is going to continue into 2022 and beyond. Without a change in policy, there won’t be much levelling up in physics teaching and design and technology is in danger of disappearing from the curriculum in any meaningful way unless more teachers can be trained.

Next month we will report on the last monthly figures from UCAS and reflect upon nearly 30 years of following the trends in applications for teacher preparation courses by graduates. Thank you for reading.

August lull in teaching jobs

Posted on by
Reply

The announcement that vacancies across the economy have picked up will be good news for those teachers unable to find a teaching post. As is normal, August is a quiet month for teaching vacancies, although there are some new vacancies still being posted every working day, as those registered with TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk can testify.

Of course, with many of their administrative staff working term time only contracts, schools in some cases will be saving jobs for the return of those staff who can then post them on the school website and elsewhere.

The return of jobs in the wider economy is likely to affect recruitment into teaching as a career, especially if the bounce in wage growth were to continue while wages in public sector positions were affected by a government imposed wage freeze. The first real evidence on how the wider economy is impacting upon teaching as a career will come with the new recruitment into ITT season, although that will be further complicated by the new arrangements controlled by the DfE. Data should be available by late autumn.

Evidence from TeachVac shows that it is growing in use as a platform for teachers looking for teaching jobs and still has many more teaching jobs on offer than the government site run by the DfE. Registrations at https://www.teachvac.co.uk/ continue to grow

Mutterings about the changes to the ITT curriculum and the degree of DfE control over the sector may have an impact, especially if some universities decide to offer ITT outside the government envelope and continue with research and professional development activities as their main focus.

Although the country will need to train fewer teachers in the years to come as the fall in the birth rate impacts on schools, the system cannot withstand too high a degree of uncertainty and reorganisation with there being some effects on the labour market for teachers. No doubt the private sector will be watching carefully what happens as it still draws on the government funded university sector for many of its new teachers.

A look back at history

Posted on by
Reply

Eight years ago this month I wrote a post on this blog pointing out my concerns that not all places on ITT courses were likely to be filled that year. My views made it into some national newspapers and resulted in me writing the blog post that I reproduce below. We still have issues with teacher supply in key subjects, but we do possibly have a review of how we train teachers. Whether the outcome will be more trainees filling gaps in schools where they are needed is still an open question.

Scaremongering!

Posted on 1

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 one time colony.

More serious is the charge of using ‘incomplete evidence’ in reaching my conclusions. If the DfE has figures to show that more places will be filled this September on teacher training courses than I am predicting, then please will they share them with the wider community, if not, will they please justify what they mean.

It could be that they take issue with my colleague Chris Waterman’s assessment of the number of those likely to be taught Mathematics by unqualified teachers. However, it is worth noting that earlier this year the DfE produced its own evidence to show that 17.9% of the Mathematics hours taught to years 7-13 were led by those with ‘no relevant post A Level qualification’. That was some 85,000 hours of instruction. Assuming each class of pupils has six hours of contact per week that makes more than 14,000 classes already being taught by unqualified staff, and with no programme in place to improve their qualifications if they are intending to teach the subject for a period of time. If each class has only 20 pupils, the total number of pupils already being taught by teachers with no measurable post A Level qualification in Mathematics can easily be worked out. It is also worth pointing out that the DfE showed that in November 2012 less than half of those teaching Mathematics had a degree that could be classified as a Mathematics degree, with 23% having a PGCE as their highest Mathematics qualification and a degree in another subject, hopefully with lots of applied mathematics as a apart of the degree.

As Chris Waterman has rightly pointed out the raising of the participation age to 17 this September and 18 a year later should increase the demand for Mathematics teachers as the Wolf Report endorsed the now widely held view that more youngsters should continue to study Mathematics until the age of18.

The government has taken a bold gamble with teacher education: moving training to schools; introducing pre-entry tests in literacy and numeracy; raising the cost of training in many subjects to £9,000 for fees plus living costs. It is important that there is a credible debate about how these changes are working.

After all, in 2010, Mr Gove promised 200 teachers of Mandarin would be trained each year, and although some providers such as the London Institute offer it as an option I doubt that target was ever reached. It is time for a radical overhaul of teacher preparation to really meet the needs of a 21st century education system.

Eight years on and who really cares about the qualifications and subject knoweldge of those that teach all our children across England?

Sorry to read this

Posted on by
Reply

https://www.tes.com/news/statement-future-fe-coverage-tes So the tes – once The Times Educational Supplement – is now focusing on schools and ending its coverage of the Further Education sector. I imagine that there will be staff in the sector that will still follow the tes because their work is similar to that of their colleagues in schools. But, they will no longer have a dedicated focus on their varied and interesting sector.

I wonder where this leaves the main publication. Looking at the accounts submitted for the year to last August by the American owners – available for all to see on the companies’ house website – recruitment advertising still plays a very large part in the tes’s revenue stream.

At this time of year, schools are reviewing their subscriptions to the tes. Most of the tes income on recruitment comes from subscriptions these days, rather than placed advertisements for specific posts. As TeachVac steadily increases its teacher base, and thus both ‘hits’ and matches. More than 6.7 million of the former in the past twelve months and more than a million matches made so far in 2021, schools might want to evaluate TeachVac more closely. After all, cash is tight for many, if not most, schools and funding won’t become any more generous with a funding formula linked so closely to pupil numbers.

In the past falling pupil numbers had less effect of school incomes. Now there is a direct relationship between funding and pupil numbers it can make sense to take our unnecessary costs. Comparing TeachVac with the hopeless DfE vacancy site is a no-brainer, especially when TeachVac has more than four times the number of teaching posts this week than are listed on the DfE site. To allow users to compare the site, TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk now has a live jobs counter on its front page.

As tes owners finalise their accounts for the 2020-21 financial year that ends at the end of August their first priority must be to ensure sufficient income to pay their bondholders. That’s why recruitment subscriptions for schools in England are so important. We won’t see these accounts until perhaps May of 2022, but those running the company already know what is happening to their income stream.

The ending of a FE offering by tes must tell watchers something. A concentration of effort on the core school sector or a need to further prune peripheral activities that don’t pay their way.

With fewer pupils in schools in England, demand for teachers is likely to fall unless more teachers can either be enticed to work abroad in the international schools or quit teaching for other professions. Either way, jobs in key subjects are down so far in 2021 in the lucrative secondary school market, but up in the primary sector where tes traditionally had more competition, not least from local authority job boards.

The next twelve months are going to be an interesting time in the teacher recruitment market. As its Chair, I look forward to the par that TeachVac will play in shaping future trends.

Does the teacher preparation system work?

Posted on by
Reply

Fewer than 350 of the 2019/20 cohort of physics trainees were teaching in state schools according to the latest DfE ITT Performance data https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/initial-teacher-training-performance-profiles-2019-to-2020 Apparently of the 533 physics trainees in that cohort only 83% were granted QTS and of that 83% or around 450 trainees only some 73%, or less than three-quarters, or some 350 new teachers were teaching physics in a state school. Such a number means that many secondary schools seeking to appoint a new teacher of physics would have been disappointed.

QTS levels were generally higher in 2020 in subjects where there were many more applicants than places on offer on preparation courses. Thus, 96% of PE trainees were granted QTS. However, so large was the over-supply of such trainees than only 64% found a teaching post in a state school. This disparity reveals the waste of money that training too many teachers can cause. The situation was little better in history, where only 70% of successful trainees were working in state schools.

Some of the successful trainees not shown as working in state schools will be employed in private schools, in the further education sector, including Sixth Form Colleges, or in international schools around the globe. Others will be undertaking further training or staying in higher education to conduct research. Some may qualify to obtain QTS but decide that teaching really isn’t for them.

However, the labour market for teachers in 2020 was affected by Covid and some may have been caught by the drop in recorded vacancies in the spring of 2020, especially in London, and thus been unable to find a teaching post.

Trainees in the Black ethnic group were least likely to obtain QTS, at 86% compared to 92% of the White group. Women were more likely to be awarded QTS than men. Asian teachers awarded QTS were the least likely to be working in a state school. The highest proportion of trainees working in state schools were to be found in London and the Home Counties, despite the drop in demand in this part of the country in 2020.

Training to be a teacher in the North East or North West meant a greater chance of not finding a teaching post in a state school. This is not a new phenomenon, but wastes public money if such teachers are unable to use the skills learnt on their teacher preparation courses. It seems that trainees from higher education establishments were least likely to be teaching in state schools. This could mean either that they failed to secure a teaching post or that that greater numbers from that route were working in the private sector in the international schools.

It is, perhaps, not surprising that teachers trained in school-based settings are more likely to find a teaching post, sometimes in the same school. Indeed, it is somewhat surprising that only 89% of those on apprenticeships and 87% of School Direct salaried trainees were measured as working in state schools. However, the percentage was substantially higher than for higher education where the bulk of trainees in subjects with the lowest rates of employment in state schools are located,   and where trainees have no prior loyalty to a particular school or indeed to state schools compared to independent schools.

The present system is not effective at placing trainees where needed using the least amount of public funds.

What’s the purpose behind school funding?

Posted on by
Reply

The National Audit Office (NAO) has issued a report into school funding. https://www.nao.org.uk/report/school-funding-in-england/?slide=1

The present, and relatively new, National Funding Formula has exercised this blog on a number of different occasions. As recently as early May, I wrote that

The current National Funding Formula is fine as far as it goes. However, as I have written before on this blog, it is based upon a notion of equality that resembles the ‘equal slices of the cake’ model of funding distribution. That’s fine if that’s what you want out of the Formula, and the f40 Group of Local authorities have tirelessly campaigned for fair – more- funding for their areas. Again, they are right to do so.

However, if the new agenda has leveling up at its heart, then it is necessary to ask whether the present method of distributing cash to schools and other education establishments will achieve that aim? Leveling Up will need a new Funding Formula (posted 9th May 2021)

The NAO’s view as summarised in their conclusions is that:

‘With the introduction of the national funding formula, the Department has met its objective of making its allocations more predictable and transparent. However, it is difficult to conclude definitively on whether the Department has met its objective of allocating funding fairly with resources matched to need. There has been a shift in the balance of funding from more deprived to less deprived local areas. This shift has resulted mainly from changes in relative need and the introduction of minimum per-pupil funding levels. Although more deprived local authorities and schools continue on average to receive more per pupil than those that are less deprived, the difference in funding has narrowed. The Department must evaluate the impact of the national funding formula and minimum funding levels over time and use that information to inform whether further action is needed to meet its objectives.’

They also say of school funding in general that:

‘After real-terms reductions in school funding in the two years to 2018-19, the Department has since increased funding and plans further rises. Because of growing pupil numbers, average per-pupil funding was virtually unchanged in real terms between 2014-15 and 2020-21. The increases in cash funding did not cover estimated cost pressures between 2015-16 and 2019-20 but were projected to exceed them in 2020-21, although the Department has not factored in the potential impact of COVID-19 in this assessment.’

The message on deprivation is not good news, especially for the urban areas where large areas of deprivation are more closely linked to local government boundaries. The NAO make it clear that the DfE has allocated the largest funding increases to previously less well funded areas, which tend to be less deprived. (para 14)

Realistically, in my view, there needs to be a funding formula that is aligned with policy objectives. For instance, there should now be enough data about Opportunity Areas to see whether they have been any more successful that previous attempts at area based schemes to improve outcomes or whether national schemes such as the Pupil Premium offer better value for money?

This is an important report for anyone that needs to understand the niceties of school funding and there, as expected, some useful diagrams and charts to help explain how school funding works.

Oxford Canal Walk

Posted on by
Reply

One of my roles as Chair of Oxfordshire County Council is in supporting charities and their need to fund raise, especially as the Covid pandemic has reduced their opportunities to stage events.

This July, I aim to walk the Oxford Canal from Oxford to Banbury – a distance of 26 miles from Isis Lock to Tramway Road bridge along the towpath.

The charities that I am supporting this year are listed below and if any of my regular readers or even just those coming across this blog for the first time wishes to make a donation, then details of how to do so are included below as well.

This morning I walked 5.4 miles in 1 hour and 40 minutes as a start of my making sure that I am in shape. Pictures are on my Cllr Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/cllrjohnhowson

Sponsorship Any sponsorship of the 26 mile walk would be very much appreciated.

All donations will be split equally between the five charities listed below and can be made via bank transfer to

O C C CHAIRPERSONS EVENTS

DCISort Code: 30-80-12

Account Number: 20391068

Reference: Charity WalkCllr

The walk, scheduled for July 15/16 depending on the weather, will be from Oxford to Banbury along the canal’s tow path.

Charities supported by Cllr John Howson JP Chair of Oxfordshire County Council 2021-22

Oxfordshire County Music Service Oxfordshire has a fine Music Service and following in the tradition of recent Chairs of the County Council, the service is one of my charities.

Children Heard and Seen I was a founding trustee of this charity that works with children that have a parent in prison. The charity started in Oxfordshire, but is now expanding to take in children from a much wider area.

Maggie’s This charity for those with cancer has a centre at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford and I have taken part in several of their previous sponsored walks.

Riding for Disabled – Abingdon branch The horse still plays an important part in the life of Oxfordshire and I am delighted to include this charity that brings horse riding to those that otherwise might miss out on this activity

Yellow Submarine A small charity that offers work to young people and adults with learning challenges and autism. They have a coffee bar in Park End Street less than five minutes from County Hall as well as others across the county.

Policy making is not campaigning

Posted on by
Reply

This blog is mostly about education. However, after three months of campaigning for last week’s elections, including fighting the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Thames Valley (TV) election for the Liberal Democrats, I felt like a final foray into a reflection on the interesting events of last Thursday.

During the whole of my recent campaign as Liberal Democrat candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Thames Valley (TV) I was never once emailed and asked for a manifesto of my policies. Sure, there were a couple of emails along the lines of we haven’t heard anything from you and what do you stand for. There were also several media events, including an appearance on BBC South Politics show were questions were asked about particular policies.

Despite this lack of voter interest in the details beyond what was available at https://www.choosemypcc.org.uk/ and other similar sites, turnout for the PCC election was 35.9% this time compared with25.6% in the last PCC election in May 2016. Not surprisingly turnout was higher where there were other elections being held on the same day as the PCC election. We won’t know the result until sometime on Monday.

There is an essential lesson to be learnt here. However good your policies, and, as in Education, the Liberal Democrats had devised some really good policies, as they  have for tacking crime and handling policing, it is the campaigning that matters. Know your electorate. The Obama Team in the USA were great at that understanding when helping him first win the US Presidency. The Tories have learnt that lesson: others haven’t.

Here’s an interesting analysis of the Hartlepool by-election from Mark Pack, President of the Lib Dems:

The by-election has simply seen Hartlepool’s politics catch up with elsewhere.

“… and, there’s the important first opinion poll that Survation carried out in the seat. Their final poll, showing a big Conservative lead attracted a lot of scepticism but was right.. However, it is their first poll for the by-election that is important for understanding what happened.

Combined, Conservatives and Brexit Party got 55% in 2019. Survation’s first poll put the Conservatives on 49%. Their second and final one put the party on 50% and the result saw the Conservatives secure 52%. No great drama there. But for Labour it was 38% in 2019, 42% in the first poll and then… 33% in the second poll followed by 29% in the actual result.

The story here is of Labour failure, not of Conservative surge. That’s a point reinforced by the English local elections. At 36%, the Conservative equivalent national vote share is decent but not stellar. That’s not some new era-defining level of support for Boris Johnson’s party. It’s a fragile result that has brought success this time, but could very plausibly be followed by failure.

It looks like Labour badly messed up its candidate selection and campaign. …I suspect that once more detailed analysis is in, this will turn out to have mattered rather more than the Labour candidate being a previous Remainer who lost his seat in 2019.”

There’s no doubt that a large section of the population of England like an identifiable character; Churchill’s cigar and Wilson’s pipe as well as Boris’s hair are visual signals the electorate can see and easily remember. Even Mrs May’s shoes and Mrs T’s handbag are what people remember. It works in local elections, where independents are rarely shrinking violets.

Of course, cash helps. It is no surprise that Liberal Democrats went from no Councillors on Amersham Town Council in Buckinghamhire on Wednesday to taking control after the votes were counted, with eight new Councillors. The impending by-election and local spending by the national party has made a difference by adding the push that was needed to shift unhappy tory votes into the Lib Dem camp.

Know your electorate is as important as know your class is for a teacher and for candidates and Councillors tailor your material appropriately. But, nothing still works as well as talking to voters on the doorstep and being visible in the high Street.

Governments lose elections more often than oppositions win them. But, sometimes, oppositions lose elections as well producing unexpected outcomes.

Election Day

Posted on by
2

Today is a busy day for me as I am defending my county council seat and standing for Police and Crime Commissioner in Thames Valley.

This extract from a 2018 post on the blog tells you why I am standing in both these elections

Crime and a lack of learning

Posted on August 28, 2018

During the summer, the Ministry of Justice published a report called ‘A Sporting Chance: An Independent Review of Sport in Youth and Adult Prisons’ by Professor Rosie Meek. You can access the report at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/733184/a-sporting-chance-an-independent-review-sport-in-justice.pdf

I have only just caught up with reading the report, but what struck me forcibly was the following paragraph:

Those in custody are likely to have disrupted and negative experiences of learning prior to incarceration, and to lack confidence in their learning abilities.

A recent data-matching exercise between the Ministry of Justice and Department for Education* showed that of the young people sentenced to custody in 2014, 90% have a previous record of persistent absence from school and almost a quarter of those sentenced to less than 12 months in custody have been permanently excluded from school.

In terms of achievement, only 1% of those sentenced to less than 12 months achieved 5 or more GCSES (or equivalents) graded A* – C including English and Maths.

Furthermore, illustrating the over-representation of people who have been in both the care system and the criminal justice system, 31% of those sentenced to custody for 12 months or longer, and 27% of those sentenced to custody for less than 12 months had been in the care of a local authority.

* MoJ/DfE (2016). Understanding the Educational Background of Young Offenders: Joint Experimental Statistical Report from the Ministry of Justice and Department for Education.

There is a powerful message here to schools that don’t have a credible policy for dealing with their challenging pupils, other than excluding them from school. We need to work together for the good of society. The DfE needs to ensure there is a coherent curriculum, including English and mathematics, but not necessarily the rest of the English Baccalaureate for pupils that can use these subjects to retain their place as learners. There is a space for sport and other non-classroom based subjects in the curriculum.

Thanks for reading