Category Archives: politics

School Funding: looking for savings

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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?

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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.

A look back at history

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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!

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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?

More doctors: fewer teachers?

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The news that the government may be raising the cap on places at medical schools for trainee doctors is surely a good outcome for society, but may be a concern for those that are involved with teacher preparation courses.

Both are areas of funding where the government keeps close control over the supply of places. As has been discussed in previous posts on this blog, the recent market review into ITT by the DfE plus a falling birth rate and a reducing school population due to outward migration and an increase in home schooling, has raised the spectre of reductions in the number of primary teacher training places likely to be sanctioned in the short-term by the DfE, and a likely reduction in the number of secondary places once the decade reaches its midway point.

If the DfE has to find more funds for training more doctors, might it be tempted to bring any reduction in teacher preparation numbers forward to start in this autumn’s announcements for 2022 entry? Higher Education might like the reduction to be in postgraduate provision, but the DfE could make more top line savings by reducing undergraduate primary numbers. However, it seems likely that students not offered places on undergraduate course might still decide to attend university and enter teaching through the postgraduate route.

One consideration should be determining which route provides the applicants that best meet the needs of the sector? For instance, how do the ‘A’ level points scores of undergraduates starting primary teacher preparation courses match the scores of their postgraduate colleagues starting such courses.

The regular annual performance profiles might also offer some indications of the type of courses the DfE would possibly favour if there are reductions in places on offer. However, that will also be determined by the DfE’s priorities in terms of quality and other factors, such as employment outcomes and no doubt the contribution to the ‘levelling up’ agenda.

The takeover by the DfE of the postgraduate recruitment process from UCAS adds another uncertainty into the mix. Will the data be available from the DfE, as it has been from UCAS, and before that the GTTR (Graduate Teacher Training Registry), weekly and then monthly data that allowed seasoned ITT watchers to predict the outcome of the recruitment round as early as February or March of each year?

If it isn’t forthcoming, the answer might be regular monthly FOI requests until civil servants understood the message about the need for transparency in data that is best described to the Office for National Statistics as management information rather than statistics.

Teach First trainees have already started their courses, and many other providers will be gearing up for a start early in September. As ever, I wish the staff and the trainees well, and hope that those embarking on a career as a teacher will enjoy the experience of what can be a wonderful, but at times challenging career. Every bit as good as being a doctor, even if not as well paid.

Fewer jobs or just fewer re-advertisement?

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Without unique job reference numbers, keeping track of changes in the labour market for teachers requires some careful detective work. While most vacancies are probably filled from the first advertisement, some are not, causing the post to be re-advertised. Some posts are also advertised in several different locations, usually without a school considering whether such a practice is cost effective.

There are also some schools that advertise ‘talent banking’ vacancies where there is probably not a job behind the advertisement, but the school can access details of potential applicants when a vacancy does arise. This is a common practice in the recruitment world, and can mislead those seeking to understand how many teaching vacancies there really are in a year.

TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk now has the data from the first seven months of 2021 for the teacher labour market in England. Overall, vacancies recorded are up from 42,700 to 45,400 for the first seven months of this year compared with the same period in 2020. However, there are marked differences between the sectors. Primary vacancies are up by 40% from 10,000 to 14,000 whereas secondary headline vacancy numbers are down by some 7%.

But, are secondary vacancies really down, or is it just that more vacancies are being filled at first advertisement? Business Studies, one of the subjects largely ignored by governments that normally struggles to find sufficient applicants registered a 2% increase in 2021, against the overall downward trend. Most subjects with increases this year are minority subjects such as economic; health and Social Care; Law; psychology and sociology. However Design and Technology has experienced a similar 2% increase to that of business studies and biology has recorded a 3% increase. Interestingly, physical education has also seen a 2% increase.

More spectacular are the 18% decrease in vacancies in mathematics and the 15% in general science posts. (Specific physics vacancies fell by 7%).  English vacancies were down by 11%.

In order to gauge how much of the deduction might be down to less need to re-advertise, vacancies for teachers of mathematics posted by school in the London Region were reviewed for the January to July period in each year between 2018 and 2021

Total schoolsSchools 2+ vacanciesSchools 4+ vacancies
202118551%10%
202018152%15%
201918461%23%
201815557%17%
Source: TeachVac

There are certainly fewer schools with more than one vacancy both this year and in 2020. The reduction in the percentage of schools with 4+ vacancies is even more marked. This might suggest that in the London Region there might be some credence to the theory that schools have found posts easier to fill since the pandemic struck. This despite the fact that the total number of schools posting at least one vacancy for a teacher of mathematics has remained consistent over the past three years at between 181 and 185 schools in both the state and independent sectors recorded as placing  a vacancy for a teacher of mathematics.

Within London there are regional differences with South East London schools seemingly finding recruitment more of a challenge than schools north of the River Thames.

Latin before physics

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The government’s announcement about a boost to the teaching of Latin in state schools doesn’t seem to have been met with universal approval.

The DfE notice said that:

The Government is also announcing the next phase of the £16.4m Mandarin Excellence Programme, and the fourth year of the £4.8 million modern foreign languages pilot, which supports schools to teach French, German and Spanish up to GCSE.

In addition to learning Latin, the new programme announced today will include activities such as visits to Roman heritage sites to give pupils a deeper understanding of Classics, and life in the ancient world. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/thousands-more-students-to-learn-ancient-and-modern-languages

So, good news for the many sites and museums along the length of Hadrian’s Wall, and no doubt the City of Bath, as well as many Roman Villas around the country, where they can expect more school parties descending upon them in the future.

In view of the data about applications to teach modern languages, the government has to do something for the teaching of modern languages lest it start to disappear from some school curriculums. The further push for Mandarin is welcome, but we are nowhere near the target for such teachers set out when Michael Gove was Education Secretary.

The announcement about languages was no doubt supported by Mr Gibb’s recent speech about a ‘knowledge rich’ curriculum that paid scant attention to the relationship between schooling and the real world. Now I have nothing against knowledge, and am all in favour of knowledge as vocabulary. But what about subjects such as design and technology.

Will the government axe design and technology from the curriculum as not knowledge based? And, too difficult to find staff to teach it? In order to teach Latin to more young people you need either to stop teaching something else or to lengthen the amount of schooling young people are exposed to each week. To do the latter would cost more money, and doesn’t seem an option in the present economic state of the nation. So what to drop in favour of Latin?

Teachers in 1870 used knowledge in the absence of textbooks to drill facts into young minds. Do young people need to know the name of a Nineteenth century Prime Minister or, more importantly what a Prime minster is? Knowledge of or knowledge to be able to do something? Which is more important?

Is it more important that young people knows the names of prime ministers or that they know how important in a democracy it is to vote? Which will increase voting patterns among 18-25 year olds once they have the vote?

Similarly, do we need to ensure all young children know how to use a knife and fork at the same time that they have learnt their alphabet? Is leveling up just about teaching everyone the same things or ensuring a common set of knowledge and skills acquired mutually through home and school? Those entering school this September will not retire from work until 2070, and any may well see the next century arrive. The school curriculum is for their needs. So where does the environment and climate change fit into the knowledge agenda of Ministers?

Teacher Supply Model more important than ever

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Those readers that have browsed my recent posts will know that teacher education is facing one of those turning points in its history. Regardless of the policy approaches towards how teachers are prepared there are going to be implications on the sector from the downturn in pupil numbers.

The decline in the birth rate is already being felt in primary schools, with many admitting fewer pupils this September than for some years. Lucky the schools with a new housing estate being built in the catchment area. The DfE has estimated that by 2026 the overall population in the primary sector is projected to be 4,345,000. This is 302,000 lower than the actual figure in 2020 (4,647,000). Such a rapid reduction has serious implications for those that prepare new teachers for the profession.

Taking a teacher to pupil ratio of 1:30 that would mean there would be a need for 10,000 fewer teachers. Now real pupil teacher ratios are much better than that figure, so perhaps the drop might be 4,000 over the period 2020 to 2026. Assuming teacher departure rates don’t alter significantly, and that newly trained teacher are preferred over returners to the classroom, then a drop of 1,000 in training numbers might be an interesting starting point for any discussion.

Of course, the Teacher Supply Model can much more accurately process these changes and identify what the actual requirement for new teachers is likely to be. However, it seems that there will be a reduction in primary training numbers.

The decision must be where and what type of training; school-based or higher education? Course based or salaried? Across all providers or supporting either large or small providers? These are the policy questions that must rapidly be answered. For the longer the delay in reducing training targets, the worse the cut will be if the Teacher Supply Model has really abandoned any idea of smoothing reductions over a number of years and takes any change in the year that they occur.

The latest three year postgraduate numbers for Primary ITT places from the Teacher Supply Model were 12,975 in 2018/19; 13,003 in 2019/2020 and 11,467 in 20201/21. Now, the TSM only covers postgraduate teacher supply. Some providers with both undergraduate and postgraduate provision have, in the past, when there have been reductions in places, kept their undergraduate numbers and reduced postgraduate numbers. The rational for such a move is less based on relative quality of applicants than the fact that undergraduate courses generate more fee revenue than postgraduate courses and are relatively less expensive to deliver. This will be especially true with the latest set of proposals discussed in previous blogs.

Whether the current government will be willing to tolerate any change in quality of applicants due to how providers react to a fall in places available is an interesting policy question that merits some discussion. From the point of view of The Treasury, one-year courses cost the government less in student loans than undergraduate courses, but if those students displaced from undergraduate teacher training courses take other degrees and then a postgraduate teacher qualification, the overall cost can be higher.

By the middle of the decade, the secondary sector will be facing the dilemmas associated with falling pupil numbers, but since recruitment even in regulated subjects such as physical education has been at record levels, enforcing changes there might be even trickier than in the public sector. That is if the present market review hasn’t fundamentally altered the shape of teacher preparation provision in England.

Does the teacher preparation system work?

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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.

Urgent action needed to prevent teacher supply disaster

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Teacher supply is in a mess. This month has produced the government’s consultation on ITT, the STRB Report and associated pay freeze for all teachers unable to negotiate individual salaries and today the latest UCAS data on applications and offers relating to teacher preparation courses starting this autumn.  While applications for primary sector courses remain buoyant, applications for secondary courses have now fallen below the level reached in July 2020.

Secondary
Applications for Secondary CoursesMarchAprilMayJuneJulyAugust
2015429904838053210574806291066020
2016438204857053600592206371066700
2017404404528050040557106068064760
2018339403922046660525305883064150
2019346004056047270532505944064890
2020359404327051030594707106077330
20214391051090559806148065990
Source TeachVac from UCAS data

The month on month addition to applications is well below last year – applicants may make applications to several courses- and more in line with pre-pandemic levels. This is concerning in view of the evidence from recruiters that graduate jobs are not recovering as fast as other parts of the labour market. Even more alarming is the disparity between subjects. Here is my view of what is happening in key secondary subjects in terms of ‘placed’ applicants and those made or considering ‘offers’.

Modern Languages and geography might be described as disaster areas in terms likely trainee numbers this year. Neither subject will meet predicted levels of demand set out by the DfE.

On the other hand, PE and history are matching last year’s record levels and Chemistry is another bright spot, with more than 200 more applicants placed or with offers than last year.

Physic and design and technology won’t recruit enough trainees, and although physics is still doing better than two years ago, design and technology is another disaster area, with trainee numbers possibly heading for their lowest levels since 2013/14.

Art is fine, with numbers double those of two years ago. The same is true for music, although this year’s numbers are down on last year.

Religious Education has seen numbers return to the level of two years ago.

Business studies has lost ground on last year, but is well above two years ago.

Computing has lost much of last year’s increase, although is still above the level of two years ago.

Mathematics has retained the gains of last year, but English has some 600 fewer applicants placed or with offers, taking the subject back to 2017/18 levels.

Finally, biology is a bit of a puzzle. Last year numbers reached record levels, but this year they are less than half those levels and currently below likely DfE predicted need levels. This may be a reaction to the state of the job market for trainees last year.

The DfE has today also published the ITT profiles https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/initial-teacher-training-performance-profiles-2019-to-2020 This reveals a drop in employment in state schools, so maybe course tutors are being more cautious about offering places to trainees that might not fin a teaching post in 2022?

Whatever the reasoning, this will be another bad year for teacher supply, and with a pay freeze it isn’t likely to improve any time soon. Indeed, this year may be the longer period of under-recruitment to target in some subjects since I first started looking at the data on ITT applications in the early 1990s.

Although ITT numbers will need to reduce in the future, as the effects of the falling birth rate work through the system over the coming decade, on these numbers there will still not be enough trainees to meet the needs of all schools in all subjects.

The DfE’s market review of ITT has already affected market sentiment among providers. Now is not the time to totally de-stabilise the market and hope everything will be alright in the future new world. Maybe it is time for the Education Select Committee to take a look at what is happening.  

Fewer pupils creates problems

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The DfE has released its annual update to pupil projections. This is of immediate interest both to ITT providers and those responsible for planning school finances going forward into the medium term. The publication and associated tables can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-pupil-projections-july-2021

Actual (2020) and projected pupil numbers by school type, England
  2020202120222023202420252026
State-funded nursery & primary schools4,6474,6354,5974,5314,4544,3954,345
 year on year change -12-38-66-77-59-50
State-funded secondary schools3,0033,0723,1333,1933,2313,2283,216
 year on year change 69616038-3-12
State-funded special schools113117119120121120119
 year on year change 4211-1-1
Alternative provision settings15161717181818
 year on year change 110100
Total state-funded schools7,7787,8397,8657,8627,8247,7617,699
 year on year change 6126-3-38-63-62
Projections on pupil numbers

The DfE make the following important point about the numbers:

This year only a simple update to the 2020 model has been created with the addition of newly available 2019 national population estimates and births from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The reasons for this are:

  • There are no new ONS national projections giving new estimates of the future overall population
  • The 2021 school census data shows notable decreases in enrolment in nursery and primary schools and alternative provision compared to previous years. These are expected to be temporary, as a result of the pandemic, rather than long-term changes. However, using this data results in decreases across future years which are not considered to be realistic estimates of the pupil population over the next ten years.

The new 2019 ONS data provides additional information on factors such as whether birth figures have continued the drop seen since late 2016. Therefore feeding this data into the existing model provides a useful update on expected future pupil numbers. 

The various views on whether or not the fall is temporary must be of great importance. A loss of 300,000 primary school pupils in six years with the current funding formula for schools in place will have significant implications.

For those preparing primary schools teachers for entry into teaching the implications could come as soon as this autumn if entry targets for 2022 announced by the DfE using the Teacher Supply Model take account of the start of the reduction in pupil numbers.

For the secondary sector, there are probably a couple more years at present levels for teacher preparation courses before reductions in popular and fully subscribed subjects along with recruitment controls come into force once again.

Of course, with the DfE controlling the application process it will be interesting to see how the different parts of the DfE interact with each other, especially in view of the recent ITT Market Review.

The years of relative planet are going to be followed by some years of belt tightening across the education sector. The announcement on pay may not be unrelated to these figures on pupil numbers.