Category Archives: politics

Charity Walk

Posted on by
Reply

Just a reminder as to why there are fewer posts than in the past on this blog

Chair dons his walking boots to trek from Oxford to Banbury for charity on Thursday and Friday

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 DCI

Sort Code: 30-80-12

Account Number: 20391068

Reference: Charity Walk

Walking in midsummer is a pastime many enjoy and the Chair of Oxfordshire County Council will be putting his walking boots on for the charities he supports in mid-July.

Councillor John Howson will walk the 26 miles from Oxford to Banbury along the canal towpath during Thursday, July 15 and Friday, July 16.

He said: “This seemed like something I could do regardless of present COVID restrictions provided I did it myself. Getting out for a walk became people’s big event of the day during the lockdown periods we had and there is little doubt that walking and being outdoors helps people’s physical and mental health.“I am looking forward to doing the walk between Oxfordshire’s largest and second-largest settlements. I hope to be enjoying the scenery of the rolling north Oxfordshire countryside and the tranquility of the villages alongside the canal.“

I have had a special Ordnance Survey map printed for the walk that will be unique and this will certainly be a memorable part of my time as Chair of Oxfordshire County Council.”

Councillor Howson became Chair in May having been Vice-Chair in the two previous years. The Chair is the ceremonial head of the county council and the politically impartial civic leader of Oxfordshire.

The charities he is supporting during 2021/22 are:

• Abingdon Riding for Disabled

• Children Heard and Seen

• Maggie’s (cancer support charity)

• Oxfordshire County Music Service

• Yellow Submarine (learning disability charity)

QTS for life?

Posted on by
Reply

Re-reading my submission to the Carter Review https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/a-submission-to-the-carter-review/ from way back in 2014, made me think that the recent Market Review of ITT discussed in the previous two posts on this blog missed another important point. Because it was focused on the delivery mechanism and content of ITT and not the candidates undergoing the training in deciding how to create world class teachers it missed discussing some important issues, such as should QTS last for life and can a world-class profession continue with a QTS award that allows any teacher to teach anything to any pupil with no check. What is the point of a subject knowledge requirement if at the end of a course a PE teacher can be employed to teach science on the basis that they have a sports science degree?

Changing the rules on preparation courses without looking at the ‘downstream’ consequences is a bit like closing the stable door before you have even put the horse inside. What’s the appropriate preparation to teach humanities if it contains elements of history; geography and even religious education? Do you need post ‘A’ level qualifications in each subject area to be able to teach it? As far as I can tell, the Market Review is silent on this type of discussion. Then there are the subjects taught at Key Stages 4 & 5 that are barely recognised in the Teacher Supply Model but where schools actively recruit each year. These subjects include, economics, psychology, sociology and law. Most of these subjects have more posts advertised each year by schools than does Latin, a subject recognised by the DfE in the Teacher Supply Model.

As already alluded to, the issue of moving from training to employment is a discussion that merits more attention that was paid to it in the Review. It is appropriate to assume that the best quality trainees are the first to secure teaching posts: a sensible assumption if the market works properly. Such an outcome would leave the weakest students sometimes without a teaching post for September, but available to fill the vacancies that arise for the following January, often due to maternity leave arrangements. How should the system deal with these teachers-in-waiting? Ignore them as at present? Hope that they will pick up supply work? Ensure every teacher passing the training component is offered a teaching post for September of at least one year in duration?

A Review that talks about world class teachers and deals with initial training and professional development, but ignores the realities of life, won’t easily achieve its aims for the system as a whole. The issue of the length of time a teacher could spend working as a supply teachers was tackled some time ago, but the issue of a gap between completing training and starting teaching in the subject and phase of your training has not really been addressed. I think such an omission is a mistake.

I am sure that the All Party Parliamentary Group on the Teaching Profession and its associated Special Interest Group or SIG will be taking a look at the Review before the summer.

ITT Market Review: more thoughts

Posted on by
1

Following on from yesterday’s post on this blog. I have been sent NASBTT’s press release about the Market Review. A key paragraph in their response states that:

‘However, we simply cannot support the recommendation that a reaccreditation process is necessary to achieve the recommended adaptations to curriculum design and provision. The report presents no evidence to suggest that existing providers of ITT would be unable to deliver the new curriculum requirements in full. A wide-scale, expensive and disruptive reaccreditation process poses a huge risk to teacher supply. Introducing an unnecessary administrative burden to the sector, which, in turn, presents such clear risks to our teacher supply chain, with no clear rationale for the benefits it will bring, is simply indefensible.’ National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers

I have some sympathy with their view, but I wonder whether academies could just ignore the whole process suggested in the Review document. After all, Michael Gove, when Secretary of State for Education, allowed academies to employ anyone as a teacher regardless of their training.

Of course, for them to do so would relieve the DfE of the cost of any training, because such people employed by schools would not count against the DfE Teacher Supply Model Allocations. However, a wholesale move to school employed trainees would, as NASBTT suggest, bring risks to the supply chain. It might also soak up a lot of the Apprenticeship cash currently being recycled back to HMTreasury by schools that cannot spend the present levy. Such a move would also allow schools to ignore the new 20 days intensive period in schools that seems likely to be very expensive to implement. This is another area where the Review is long on ideas but short on implementation and especially costing.

When the TTA was established in the 1990s, Coopers and Lybrand, as they then were, produced a document about the Funding of Teacher Education. Some years later, I undertook a research project for the Higher Education Funding Council in Wales on the funding of Teacher Education.

Both studies recognised that teaching salaries are often higher than those for university lecturers and thus the use of higher education funding models doesn’t fully deal with the real cost of preparing a teacher. My study in Wales showed that postgraduate courses could rarely cover their costs, but that undergraduate courses might be able to do so with sufficient numbers and with lower transfer payments to primary schools than was expected by secondary schools that tended to be more savvy at that time about the costs of mentors and working with trainees than their primary colleagues.

The Review also seems to pay little attention to the fact that some trainees need more help than others. I provided some case studies in the piece on this blog that I wrote for the Carter Review: another look at teacher education, some seven years ago. https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/a-submission-to-the-carter-review/ is worth a re-read.

I hope someone is undertaking a costing exercise on the Review’s proposals as it will help identify the extent to which they might to use NASBTT’s words about the Review

Be ‘A potentially catastrophic risk to de-stabilising the market.’

ITT Review: prelude to a cull?

Posted on by
Reply

The DfE today published the long awaited ITT Market Review Final Report on Initial Teacher Training. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-itt-market-review-report and the associated consultation. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/initial-teacher-training-itt-market-review

This type of exercise comes along about once in every generation. Thirty years ago it was the establishment of the Teacher Training Agency and fifteen years ago, the desire to move towards a Masters Degree profession by the Labour government.

This Review that is unsigned and totally anonymous, is strong in certain areas, but lamentably weak in others. The outstanding changes that may cause issues in my view are not the content of training per se, as governments have taken an active interest in that before, although the section on synthetic phonics only being permitted as the way to teach reading does read a tad dictatorial. To me the fun will be around the Intensive Teaching 20 days, and the lengthening of courses to 38 weeks, especially f this is expected to take place within a funding envelope designed for higher education classroom courses of 30 weeks. Reaction to these changes will be worth watching closely.

Change there has to be. The primary teacher market is facing a period of over-supply resulting from the fall in the birth rate and possible loss of young families back to other EU countries as well as the age profile of the teaching force. A rationale for keeping the good providers allows for reductions in provision on a basis less open to challenge than one with no rationale behind the cuts when they come.

Such a reduction in places is still a couple of years away for secondary teacher providers, but this Review won’t have much effect before the 2024 labour market, by which time secondary schools in some areas will be seeing reductions in their intakes with a knock-on effect on the demand for teachers.

Who will be the winners form this review? It is difficult to assess at this stage, as the age-old question of rewarding good providers versus a sensible national distribution of training places didn’t really receive an airing in the Review except around Teaching School hubs.

Will schools want to take on the burden of longer courses with more intensive mentoring and an associated bureaucracy that will inevitable accompany the required control of content and progress.  If not, will MATs see it as their function. Clearly local authorities and diocese aren’t in the running for lead providers as they don’t rate a mention. Curiously, since it has operated a model possibly not a million miles away from what is being advocated, Teach First as a programme is seemingly ignored in the section on employment-based entry routes into teaching.

Overall, the approach seems to me to be a blend of a more centralised curriculum around a delivery structure reminiscent of the Area Training Organisations set up after World War Two.

The good news is that with a rethink about professional development that has withered on the vine for much of this century, other than for government led priorities, there might be a revival of the concept of  professional development centres where teacher can come together to learn. Alongside this there ought to be an evaluation of a career structure of the type once provided by local advisory and support services.

In the end, deciding what to do and how to do it that is the meat of this Review is the easy part. Solving the crisis of teacher supply so that every child has a great teacher is a much greater challenge, and one that this Review largely ducked despite its title.

Covid bounce ending for ITT?

Posted on by
Reply

The June data from UCAS for ITT applications and outcomes were released earlier today. Applications are still on the increase, but there are definite signs that the bounce in applications teaching courses received after covid first hit in the spring of 2020 may be tailing off.

Primary applications are almost back to the level last seen in 2016/17, and might have exceeded that number had more courses still been looking for the final few applicants to fill their places. In the secondary sector, as this blog has hinted over recent months, the picture is more nuanced. There are plenty of applications for history and physical education and sufficient offers of all types in these subjects to ensure the training places will be easily filled again this year. At the other end of the scale, design and technology has made fewer offers than at any time in the past decade for June. How much longer can this subject survive without an influx of new staff able to teach the range of topics within this portmanteau subject?

Art and design numbers will undoubtedly help out in providing design and technology teachers, and it is hoped that some applicants can be diverted between the two subjects. English, mathematics, religious education and music should provide sufficient trainees to fill the available places unless there is any surge of late dropouts. Chemistry and biology should also be in a satisfactory position for trainees. However, computing, geography and modern foreign languages continue to experience issues with the number of offers they seem to be able to make this year. Finally, business studies, although experiencing a better than average year, may not attract enough trainees to provide the teachers schools will be seeking in the subject next year.

As reported last month, applications for teaching are weak in the North East and relatively buoyant tin London and the South East, where demand for teachers is strongest. Applications from men have just topped the 12,000 mark, but are only about 1,300 more than in 2019 across both the primary and secondary sectors.  School Direct salaried numbers continue to be low. No doubt some of these possible places have been replaced by the slowly growing apprenticeship numbers.

Some 80% of applicants from the youngest age group of 21 and under have been offer a place of one type or another. Although the percentage is slightly down on this point last year, it is still a significant figure. This year, there are still fewer applicants in the 40+ age category than in June last year, down by just fewer than 200 applicants, but worthy of note if this is a trend.

With courses starting to announce closure dates for the summer, it seems likely that there will be little change in the outcomes between now and when courses commence in September. On the evidence of these figures, and those of last month, I am concerned about the possible picture for 2022 applications and thus the problems schools will face recruiting for 2023. We may well again experience a teacher shortage in some secondary subjects, if not across the board in the secondary sector. I have few concerns for the primary sector.

Job market still patchy

Posted on by
Reply

How easy have teachers looking for jobs this year found the labour market? The following table, taken from TeachVac data www.teachvac.co.uk for vacancies recorded between 1st January and yesterday in the secondary sector for schools across England suggests demand is still below that witnessed in 2019 in many key subjects.

Subject20192021Percentage +/- (The nearest whole %)
Art978795-19%
Business840842+0%
Classics97108+11%
Computer Science12631237-2%
Dance9261-34%
Drama496435-12%
DT18121870+3%
Economics370355-4%
Engineering5774+30%
English41593028-27%
Geography13421149-14%
Health and Social Care167190+14%
History1054914-13%
Humanities417337-19%
Law4257+36%
Mathematics47123669-22%
Media Studies176109-38%
MFL21251990-6%
Music886796-10%
Pastoral259214-17%
PE13831178-15%
Philosophy6860-12%
Psychology307441+44%
RE809909+12%
Science56424245-25%
–Biology401368-8%
–Chemistry515427-17%
–Physics647552-15%
SEN324513+58%
Sociology124169+36%
Total3000125745-14%
TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk analysis of teacher vacancies in 2021

Now, in some cases this may be because a better supply position, with more new teachers exiting preparation courses this year, resulting in fewer re-advertisements by schools. Without a dedicated job reference code – something I have been advocating for years – it is difficult to distinguish unfilled vacancies re-advertised from new vacancies except in specific categories such as a head of department or headteacher posts, where there is only one such post.

Nevertheless, the reduction in vacancies for mathematics teachers of 22%, and for science teachers of 25% does suggest a better balanced labour market than in 2019, when schools were suffering from the recruitment into training problems experienced in 2018. Interestingly, despite the fall in the birth rate, demand for teachers for the primary sector is buoyant this year.

One unknown, going forward, is how the global school market will respond to the pandemic over the next twelve months and whether or not teachers from England will once again be attracted to teach overseas in any significant numbers. Will there also be fewer EEA citizens willing and able to teach in England? Time will tell.

Still, at this point in time, schools can feel reasonably confident of filling late vacancies for September 2021 and vacancies for January 2022 in mot subjects in many parts of the country. There will be local shortages, but apart from some vocationally orientated subjects such as business studies and design ad technology, nationwide issues are unlikely to surface.

Pupil Teacher Ratios (PTRs): An update

Posted on by
Reply

The publication last week by the DfE of the school census discussed in the previous post on this blog means that a time series analysis of changes in PTRs can be undertaken using the DfE’s new ‘construct your own table’ tool.

PTRs are useful as a guide because they can provide evidence of changes in the trends of school funding, especially when most of that funding comes from pupil numbers. The measure is not perfect. Older teachers cost more than younger one, so schools where staff stay put after being employed at NQTs cost schools more each year until they reach the top of their scale. This extra cost isn’t recognised in the funding formula.

When schools are gaining pupils, you might expect PTRs to improve, and when rolls start falling then PTRs might worsen, although there is likely to be a time lag to that effect as schools come to terms with lower numbers of pupils going forward. After all, no school likes to make staff redundant.

Incidentally, the fall in the birth rate and the exodus of overseas citizens will mean some tough decisions on ITT numbers may need to be made, possibly as early as this autumn for 2022 entry.

An analysis of changes in PTRs between 2016/17 and 2020/21 for the secondary sector shows only seven authorities, including the Isles of Scilly, where PTRs improved. In 13 local authorities the secondary PTR for schools across the Authority worsened by at least two pupils per teacher, with Slough unitary authority and the City of Nottingham having the largest changes in PTRS for the worse in the secondary sector. Most local authorities witnessed overall secondary PTRS deteriorate by between one and two teachers per pupil during this five year period. Historically that is quite a significant level of change for so many authorities. Now, some of that deterioration might have been due to keeping option groups going in the sixth form as pupil numbers in that age-group continued to fall but some could well be down to funding pressures across the sector.

In the primary sector, the position is more complex. Schools tend to be smaller and areas with new housing may be gaining pupils, even as other areas are being affected by the fall in the birth rate. Changes in PTRS have generally been in the range of plus one to minus one across most authorities, although during the five year period there are some outliers, notably, the City of Derby, where it is possible that the 2016/17 data point in the DfE database is a mistake. Such mistakes do happen from time to time.

It may also be a coincidence that both North Yorkshire and York unitary authority have recorded significant improvements during the five year period. A number of London boroughs south of the Thames also appear to have done relatively well during this five year period.

The longer that the National Funding Formula is in existence, it will be interesting to see what, if any effect it has on PTRs across the different authorities. Of course, if boundaries continue to be redrawn it will be impossible to tell. Happily, Outer London boroughs have had the same boundaries for more than half a century now.

Demand for teachers

Posted on by
Reply

How is demand for teachers shaping up so far in 2021 now that schools are returning to what might be described as the new ‘post-modern’ normal?

An examination of weekly vacancies this year compared with the past three years data conducted by TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk has concluded that demand remains weak for teachers of:

Physical Education

History

Geography

Art

Mathematics

English

And Science overall, although demand for some specific subjects remains stronger.

Compared with pre-pandemic levels.

Over the past few weeks, demand has been strengthening for teachers of music (after a weak start to the year) and teachers of languages.

Demand remains strong for teachers of:

Religious Education

Business Studies

IT/Computing

Demand for teachers of Design and Technology is at record levels.

Some of the weakness in demand in Mathematics may be attributable to a better level of supply requiring fewer re-advertisements. Conversely, some of the increased demand for Design and Technology teachers may be due to increased levels of re-advertisements as schools struggle to find suitable candidates.

In terms of the location of vacancies, the South East region has witnessed the greatest demand from schools so far in 2021 whereas the North East region is still the part of England where jobs are hardest to find.

Vacancies are now reducing across all categories, as the summer holidays approach. The likely overall number of vacancies for 2021 is going to be somewhere between 55,000 to 60,000 as recorded vacancies by TeachVac. Up on last year, but unlikely to match the record level seen in 2019, when demand outpaced supply in many subjects across the year as a whole.

With reports that the independent sector has recorded a decline in pupil numbers, presumably due to a reduction in overseas students, any recovery in that sector will likely increase demand for teachers in 2022.

Schools and their teachers

Posted on by
2

Today, the DfE published it annual update of statistics about key features of the school system in England. https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england for the school workforce based upon 2020 census taken last November and https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2021 for school, pupils and their characteristics based upon January returns.

There are a mass of data in the two publications that will take time to work through. One highlight is that the percentage of teachers retained after one year of service continued its downward decline, but retention rates for those with longer service reversed the downward trend of recent years to register improvements. This may, of course, be due to the lack of opportunities for new jobs, both within and outwith schools that was the result of the covid pandemic. The 2021 census will confirm whether this is a reversal of a trend or just a blip.

It would be necessary to see the actual numbers and not percentages and the balance between the primary sector and secondary schools before commenting in detail on the one-year retention rate decline. The start of the reduction in primary rolls might have meant some temporary posts weren’t replaced, but the data in its present form cannot answer that question.

England is increasingly being divided into two nations in terms of the ethnicity of its teaching force. The North East still has 99% of its primary, and 98% of its secondary teachers classified as White, whereas Inner London has 27% of its primary and 35% of its secondary school teachers classified as from minority groupings. These percentages in Inner London have been increasing steadily over the past five years. There are policy implications behind the percentages, especially when the percentages are disaggregated to local authority levels. What are the consequences for Society as a whole if this uneven distribution continues?

One outcome arising from the pandemic has been the increase in pupils claiming Free School Meals – up from 17.3% in 2020 to20.8% in 2021. This represents some 1.74 million pupils. Over 420,000 pupils have become eligible for free school meals since the first lockdown on 23 March 2020. This compares to 292,000 for the same period (March 2019 to Jan 2020) before the pandemic. However, due to the change in Pupil Premium rules schools will not fully benefit from the funding through the Pupil Premium and Catch-up funds that are linked to Free School Meal numbers. As the Jon Andrews of the Education Policy Institute notes:

“Today’s figures are a further indication that the government’s change to how the pupil premium is allocated means that pupils and schools are now missing out on vital funding. These losses are found not only in the pupil premium itself but in other areas such as catch-up funding for disadvantaged pupils, which is closely linked to it.

“The Department for Education should now publish its analysis of the impact of this decision on pupil premium allocations and clarify whether any savings from this have been redistributed.”

The number of unqualified teachers has remained broadly stable across primary, secondary and special schools for both male and female teachers with a slight downward trend in the primary sector for the number of unqualified female teachers.

There is much more to explore in the detail of the time series, and I hope to write a few more blogs over the coming days.

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.