Category Archives: politics

Coasting schools

Posted on by
1

The Education and Adoption Act 2016 created a situation where a school could be considered a ‘coasting’ school. After a certain amount of huffing and puffing the DfE came up with criteria to decide what constituted a coasting school and those schools that were not covered by the definition. The definition excludes many of the smallest primary schools with fewer than 11 eligible pupils at age eleven. The rules are currently being approved by parliament through delegated legislation.

Based upon the results for 2014 and 2015 and the provisional results for 2016 at Key Stages 2 and 4 the DfE has identified 804 such schools, of which 479 met the definition in relation to Key Stage2 and 327 at Key Stage 4; there were two all-through schools that met the definitions at both key stages.

Of the 479 schools that have provisionally met the definition in relation to Key Stage 2, 106 were already academies and 373 were not. Of the latter, 269 were community schools; 26 foundation schools and 78 voluntary aided or controlled schools. In total 3.4% of non-academy schools and 4.3% of academies met the definition.

Of the 327 schools that provisionally met the definition at Key Stage 4, 176 were academies and 151 were not. Some nine per cent of academies were, by definition, coasting as were 13.5 of local authority schools, with 71 community schools and 58 foundation schools in the list along with 22 voluntary aided or controlled schools. Interestingly, of the 176 academies of various descriptions, 108 were sponsor led schools, making 19.5% or nearly one in five of these schools. Also in the list were one free school and four Studio Schools, but no UTC.

Among the Key Stage 2 schools, the Regional School Commissioner region with the highest percentage was the West Midlands, at 4.7%, whereas Lancashire and West Yorkshire had the lowest percentage at 2.7%. The national average was 3.5% of eligible schools.

There was a more marked difference in percentages in the key stage 4 list, with both the East Midlands and Humber and Lancashire and West Yorkshire regions having more than 16% of schools regarded as coasting, whereas only 5.0% of schools in the North East London and East of England region met the definition.

What happens to a coasting school is up to the local Regional School Commissioner, using guidance published in the spring at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/510080/schools-causing-concern-guidance.pdf

There is no automatic requirement for these schools to be converted into an academy if they are not already one or to move to a new trust if they are. The RSC will decide using the guidance if that is the approach to take. The DfE document issued today suggests that ‘only in a small minority of cases will RSCs direct a coasting maintained school to become a sponsored academy or move a coasting academy to a new trust.’ We shall see how RSC act once the list has been finally confirmed after the publication of the final 2016 results.

This is the first time this approach has been taken in public and no doubt the names of the schools will appear in the press over the next few weeks. Hopefully, the list will be much smaller next year.

 

Are small schools doomed?

Posted on by
1

The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) clearly worries that they will be. They have raised their concerns and the story was picked up by the BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37860682 although I couldn’t find any press release on the ASCL web site that prompted the BBC story. Perhaps it is part of a campaign by teacher associations about the funding of schools?

As regular readers of this blog know, I have expressed concerns before about the future of small schools, especially if the block grant that underpins their finances is removed, possibly as part of a funding formula based on an amount per pupil. Such a funding system, perhaps topped up by sum for deprivation in a similar manner to the present Pupil Premium, has a beguiling simplicity about it; easy to understand and easy to administer: job well done.

However, such a top-down approach does have other ramifications. The most obvious is that for as long as anyone living has been in teaching higher salaries have been paid to teachers in London and the surrounding area. This is a policy decision that could be ratified in a new formula through an area cost adjustment as Mr Gibb said during his recent visit to the Select Committee when he appeared to talk about teacher supply. So, if a policy to support London, but not other high cost areas is acceptable, what about rural schools? As I mentioned in a recent post, on the 3rd October, some shire counties have a large number of small schools in their villages. Northumberland has some of the most expensive. Oxfordshire has a third of its primary schools with fewer than 150 pupils and the removal of any block grant would undoubtedly mean their closure, as ASCL pointed out.

Does a Tory government that has already upset some of its supporters in the shires over re-introducing selection to secondary education now want to risk their wrath over shutting the bulk of the 5,000 or so rural primary schools, not to mention small schools in urban areas? As many of the latter are faith schools this might also upset both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic churches, especially if pupils were transferred to non-faith based schools.

Councils might also be upset if the cost of transporting pupils to the new larger and financially viable primary schools fell on their council tax payers. After all, as I have pointed out in the past, children in London receive free transport to schools anywhere in the capital within the TfL area; this despite London being classified as a high cost area in which to live.

There is a possible solution, return to local funding models where communities can decide whether to keep small school open. Of course, it won’t be decided democratically through the ballot box, since local authorities still are regarded as not being capable of this sort of decision, even when run by Tory councillors. But, a grouping of academies in a Multi-Academy Trust could take such a decision or they could assume government policy on school size was reflected in the funding formula and close schools that cannot pay their way.

If you believe in the need for small schools linked to their community, now is the time to say so. To await any consultation on a funding formula may be to wait too long.

 

 

Teacher Supply in the news again

Posted on by
Reply

Last week Nick Gibb as Minister for Schools appeared in front of the Education Select Committee. At the weekend the media picked up on a parliamentary question from a Lib Dem MP about teacher retention. The facts in the answer to the PQ probably didn’t reveal anything new, but the figures did create quite a stir, with your truly being quoted yesterday on the BBC new site education page. The key point is the rise in departures of teachers with 3-5 years’ experience of teaching. This seems like a new trend.

However, the data is a ‘lagging’ indicator, as it arrives several years after the event. Nick Gibb talked about another and new ‘lagging’ indicator the DfE has inserted into the School Workforce Census. This is the question about whether a school has advertised a vacancy in the past year. Since the census is taken in November, I assume a school will reply this year with data from the 2015/16 academic year. The data from the census appears in the spring of the following year. By then the main bulk of the next recruitment round is nearly over and the data can only influence what happens the following year. Indeed, as an aid to teacher supply, it might miss decisions on trainee numbers for that autumn and so this year will influence 2017 entry into training and the 2018 recruitment round. As we are in a period of rising rolls, the data will also be lagging behind the growth in pupil numbers and so probably underestimate demand.

As I said, when establishing TeachVac, we need a real-time tracking system for the recruitment scene in schools across both state and private sectors to detect trends as they happen and in time to affect policy decisions that will allow a response to the identified change.

This issue was well demonstrated in the interchanges between the Committee and the Minister at the Select Committee over the issue of regional provision of places. I was interested to hear the Minister say that those that train in the North East might not work there, but offer no evidence to back up his assertion. Some time ago the DfE used to track and publish the data on where trainees studied to become a teacher and where they obtained their first job. It was not encouraging on the issue of mobility between regions and distance they traveled to obtain a teaching post. With significant numbers of career changers among trainees in some regions this isn’t perhaps surprising, but I am not sure the Committee pushed the Minister on that point.

Still, it was good to know that £16 million will go on advertising for trainees this year, some £10 more than last year and money that might otherwise be spent on teaching and learning. Reducing the unnecessary spend on recruitment of those training and already trained might at least release some extra money back into the system at the school level where it is currently spent with agencies and on advertising. TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk cost nothing to use for schools, teachers and trainees and offers a solution for the sector to adopt.

Recruiting Teachers for September 2018

Posted on by
Reply

Next week UCAS opens the recruitment round for ITT courses starting in the autumn of 2017. So far the government seems to have kept those that watch the annual recruitment round in the dark as to the outcome of the Teacher Supply Model and the total number of places allocated to each route for next year. Perhaps the Select Committee can ask the Minister for the figures when he appears before them next Wednesday to talk about teacher supply. It is a slightly odd time for the Minister to appear before the Select Committee as the ITT census for 2016 has yet been published, so he presumably won’t know the final outcome of the number of places filled this autumn and how much better it was then last year?

He will, however, be able to talk about progress on the National Teacher Service in Yorkshire and Lancashire and how successful it has been. He may also be able to announce the date of the national roll-out and when the tendering process will start. If the Committee is really lucky, the Minister might announce what progress there has been on creating a national vacancy portal that was mentioned in the White Paper last March. In the light of the research by the TES, the Committee might also like to ask whether there is any difference in recruitment and retention of teachers and school leaders between grammar schools and secondary modern schools in those areas that still have fully selective systems of education.

If they haven’t already seen the new TV advert, the committee members can do so at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-recruitment-bulletin/teacher-recruitment-bulletin-5-october-2016 and might wish to compare the level of spending on the campaign with that of other government recruitment initiatives. As we know, teaching is by far one of the largest recruiters in the public sector. There has clearly been a stepping up of effort compared with a few years ago, but until the census appears, it isn’t possible to judge the success of last year’s efforts. It is interesting that the new advert seems to focus once again entirely on the secondary sector and doesn’t seem to feature any male teaching role model, always useful to help attract men into teaching as an under-represented group.

Hopefully, the Select Committee might also provide some indication of when it will conclude its inquiry into teacher supply. After all, it is more than six months since the NAO and the Public Accounts Committee considered the issue of teacher training. The Committee might explore how far the government has moved in the direction of meeting regional needs, rather than just the national demand and whether the government tracks in-year recruitment against training numbers. This is, of course, something TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk does on a daily basis and it has reported its findings to the Committee both in its original evidence and in the supplementary evidence submitted at the end of the summer term.

Finally, the Committee might ask the Minister what the DfE said to the Migration Advisory Committee on the issue of teacher shortages and the need for visas in light of current government policy about immigration and the use of workers already living in England?

 

 

 

 

Don’t tax renewables

Posted on by
Reply

There is a device in the House of Commons called an Early Day Motion whereby  MPs can express a view on a particular topic relating to any subject you can think of and probably a few that wouldn’t ever have occurred to you, such as Carnwath Primary School’s lottery grant and local newspapers in South London. However, some EDMs are important and deserve to garner support from a large number of our elected representatives in order to show the strength of feeling on a topic.

One such that has all-party support is EDM 491 on business rates and solar power. The gist of the EDM is that the supporters of the EDM;

expresses deep concern at the changes to the rateable value of rooftop photovoltaic solar panels being proposed by the Valuation Office Agency, which may result in a six to eight-fold increase in the business rate charges to businesses, community groups and schools for the use of their own rooftop solar across the UK; notes the popularity, importance and affordability of solar power; and calls on the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for Communities and Local Government and HM Treasury to take action to prevent unexpected and extreme business rate rises for solar… 

It does seem odd that schools trying to keep down costs and perhaps generate a small amount of feed-in tariff should have to contemplate turning off their PV panels because it might cost them more to operate them than to either turn them off or even remove them.

According to a video from Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MP, the situation is even more ludicrous as she states in the video that private schools would not pay the additional tax – presumably where they are charities? If this is the case, then why not exempt all non-income generating public buildings such as schools from any change to business rates. However, I would go further and support the ban on any form of tax on renewables anywhere as counterproductive to their essential purpose to help reduce greenhouses gases and the use of Carbon Dioxide.

If you agree, please email you local MP and ask them to either sign the EDM or explain why they think it is a good idea to tax renewable energy sources in schools? You might ask your professional association what stance they take on the EDM.

I am also interested in the use of asphalt covered playgrounds as a source of ground source heat generation. After all, these open spaces are probably left uncovered for 99% of the year. Providing a low cost form of installation can be devised playgrounds should offer a good potential source of low-level heat generation. Perhaps a university School of Education could team up with one of the science departments in the university to devise a viable scheme that could be installed over a summer holiday period?

 

 

 

Tories & Grammar Schools

Posted on by
Reply

As most followers of education know, Buckinghamshire was one of the counties that refused to fall into line with the 1976 Education Act and produce a programme for the removal of their grammar schools. As a result, it retains a selective system across the county after having seen Milton Keynes and its comprehensives split off in the 1990s to become a unitary council.

One might think that as a result of being a selective county, parents in Buckinghamshire wouldn’t be very interested in the present Tory inspired debate on the topic of more selective schools. Not a bit of it. While Mrs May, as Prime Minister, is talking about increasing the number of pupils from deprived backgrounds attending selective schools, or at least I think that is what she is saying, Bucks County Council has consulted on a proposal that would make it even more difficult for such pupils to attend grammar schools, especially if they lived in the rural parts of the county.

In a consultation on changing the home to school transport policy earlier this year, the county said;

This potential change would mean that free school transport would only be provided to the nearest secondary school to your home address.  The school could be located in Buckinghamshire or in a neighbouring county and could be an Upper, Grammar (for qualified children only) or Comprehensive.

As I read the paragraph above, if the nearest school is a secondary modern, even if the grammar school is next door to it, you won’t be provided in the future  with free transport to the grammar school unless it is the nearest school, even if you pass the entrance test and are offered a place. This is interesting in the town of Buckingham, where the grammar and secondary modern schools are adjacent to each other: those coming from the north could have the secondary modern as their nearest schools and those from the south, the grammar school. That is frankly madness if it is the case as a result of the consultation being accepted.

If this view is also accepted by government, it would seem to fly in the face of helping more children from deprived backgrounds to attend selective schools, if on top of uniform and other costs their parents also had to pay the transport cost of attending a grammar school, but not a secondary modern.

Personally, as regular reads know, I would do away with selective schools and make all schools achieve the very best for all pupils in an inclusive social setting. How schools are organised internally to achieve that aim is a different matter.

Perhaps, because transport to school is free for all in London, Mrs May, an MP whose constituency abuts Buckinghamshire to the south, hasn’t picked up on how her party is behaving with regard to grammar schools and widening participation. The solution of free transport to school of choice for all, as in London.

The price of recruitment

Posted on by
Reply

At first glance the stand-off between Unilever and Tesco about the price of yeast extracts, deodorants and ice-cream would seem to have little immediate relevance for education, except perhaps for the increasingly scarce resource of business studies teachers: a subject where the government’s Teacher Supply Model seems unable to generate enough places to satisfy demand from schools.

As we know, when there is a shortage of supply price goes up if there is unmet demand. Tesco seems to be calling Unilever’s bluff by assuming customers will opt for similar products either from the Tesco brand or from other labels. We shall see. I must confess to the fact that I was once what would today be called an intern at Unilever in the late 1960s working their Rotterdam HQ looking at the grocery market in Europe as hypermarkets and giant supermarkets were first emerging and the family store was coming under pressure.

So how does all this relate to the teacher supply market? We know there is a shortage of teachers. After all, there have been innumerable conferences, seminars and workshops on the topic over the past few years. The price of advertising a vacancy remains high. Indeed, it was one reason, along with better data collection, that TeachVac www.teachvac.couk was launched as a free job site for schools, teachers and trainees more than two years ago by a group of individuals including myself.

We are firmly of the belief that too much money is being spent on recruitment advertising and that the cash should be spent instead on teaching and learning. An increasing number of schools, especially secondary schools, are using TeachVac alongside other recruitment channels and as the momentum has built over the past two years so those with leverage on the price of recruitment in education should be working like Tesco to reduce the cost of recruitment to schools. Is that happening?

The White Paper in March talked of a government initiative in the recruitment field with a portal, but in TeachVac there is one up and running already at no cost to schools, teachers and trainees. It is interesting that no teacher association, nor the governors or business managers have ever asked TeachVac to participate in a discussion over the cost of recruitment advertising and how it can be reduced. Despite it being part of the traded services of many local authorities, they have shown more interest, even though in some cases they would lose income with a switch by their schools to TeachVac. Nevertheless, they still recognise their duty to the ‘common good’.

Teachvac is now fully funded for the 2017 recruitment round and also has a product in TeachSted www.teachsted.com for secondary schools facing an Osfted inspection where they will be asked about the local job scene for teachers.

As the grocery trade has shown, prices don’t always need to go up. We need to ensure best value in education and that includes in the recruitment market. Of course, I am not an independent observer, but so what. The aim must be better use of finite public resources.

 

Right issue: wrong solution

Posted on by
4

Mrs May clearly identified some of the key issues facing the school system of this country in her speech to the Tory faithful in Birmingham. Ethnic minorities, white working class boys, house prices near popular schools, the issues are well known. Her solution; more selective schools. Nothing I have read yet about solving the teacher supply crisis and whether more selective schools would make that worse. Nothing either about the curriculum or ensuring enough schools in the right places.

Readers of this blog will know I don’t want a return to a selective school system. Interestingly, the TES has been looking at indicators from schools across Kent and Medway where there are grammar schools, secondary moderns and some comprehensives, including some faith schools. Do secondary moderns as a group have more vacancies per school than grammar schools and, because the census is in November when vacancies are low anyway, do they also have more temporary filled posts than selective schools, indicating a possible greater challenge in recruiting staff with the qualifications the school is seeking?

If the aim is to ensure achievement for all, the government will have to ask whether a National Funding Formula will be crafted in such a way as to assist in helping all those that currently don’t achieve as well as could be expected of them. The risk is that the Tories don’t really want to help everyone, but only to help those with aspirations they cannot currently fulfil. Listening to the Secretary of State on the radio talking about how well the three per cent of pupils in selective schools on free school meals do, when the average school has 14% of such pupils, didn’t fill me with hope. I have yet to hear anything from the Tories about those that don’t go to grammar school and how their aspirations will be met: enough teachers to go around would be a good start.

As I have mentioned in an earlier post, the organisation of our schools is a probably a key issue for many parents in the Witney Constituency where the Woodstock and Chipping Norton localities have the highest Key Stage 2 performance in Oxfordshire.  This means that if some places in a new selective system are reserved for pupils on free school meals and the competition for the other places is heightened by the addition of many pupils currently destined for the independent sector some children would end up not in selective schools, whereas if they lived in another part of the country they might have passed the selection test. Such a system probably won’t be good for the local economy, as it might make Oxfordshire a less attractive place to live and educate your children if the lottery of location was replaced by the gamble around the selection cut-off level each year. It seems likely that even if primary schools improve their results, the same number of children will fail to gain a place at a selective school each year, but just at a higher level of education.

We must improve the school system for those it currently fails, but not at the risk of failing some that currently succeed.

 

Are Bursaries a waste of money?

Posted on by
Reply

About twenty years ago there used to be something called the Shortage Subject Priority Scheme that was the forerunner of today’s ITT Bursary Scheme.  I recall that the then Treasury civil servants were sceptical of the scheme, claiming that it paid money to many who would have entered teaching anyway and that the marginal gains in recruitment came at a significant price that wasn’t worth paying. Fortunately that argument was dispatched with the counter-view that the cost of not recruiting sufficient teachers was greater in the long run than the expenditure on recruitment initiatives.

Today’s bursaries of up to £25,000, and even higher scholarships of £30,000, are far higher in cash terms than was ever contemplated back in the 1990s teacher supply crisis. Judging by the rates announced recently for next year they are still something of a blunt instrument. Clearly they are useful, but there are two obvious issues. Firstly, how do such high rates translate into discussions about starting salaries art the completion of a preparation course, especially outside London where the potential difference for a Physics PhD or 1st class degree holder is not insignificant? The NCTL should be able to answer that question from the School Workforce Census by looking at the salaries of new entrants to the profession. Linking that data to ITT output data would be even more illustrative of how the market is performing.

The second issue is around the speed of response. To be really responsive the bursary needs to be adjusted in-year when recruitment is slow.  Geography illustrates this point well. Two years ago recruitment into training was sluggish, but it picked up last year and using the UCAS data for 2016 appears to be performing even better this year. We won’t really know whether that is the case until the ITT census in November. Nevertheless, it was a bit of a surprise to see the increase in some bursary levels for the subject. However, it might be associated with the introduction of a scholarship in the subject.

The increase in IT bursary levels in IT and the cut in those for trainees in Biology are less of a surprise in view of their recruitment levels: it will be interesting to see what happens to recruitment in Biology as a result.  It is difficult to assess the upward revision of the bursary for some trainees in English in view of the recruitment controls used this year. This move would suggest that the subject hasn’t fared as well as the imposition of recruitment controls suggested was the case. Again, we shall know more when the ITT census is published. It seems difficult to justify paying some trainees in Classics £25,000 in bursary, but not those in RE. Perhaps the NCTL can offer an explanation?

Of course, the whole bursary package, and the lack of it for some trainees, has to be set against a training landscape where some trainees receive a salary and other benefits, presumably taxable whereas for those on bursaries it can be more tax-efficient from the trainees point of view but doesn’t offer pension contributions. Whether this Smorgasbord of routes and financial incentives for those entering teaching is the means to maximise recruitment or whether a simple salary offer for all trainees, especially with the high conversion rate into the profession, would be a better approach is a subject for debate. Personally, I think it merits some degree of simplification.

 

Witney’s voters can decide the fate of grammar schools

Posted on by
2

The Education Policy Institute, of which David Laws is the Executive director, have lent their expertise to the debate about grammar schools with a new report about grammar schools and social mobility.  http://epi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Grammar-schools-and-social-mobility_.pdf

The EPI Report’s executive summary starts with the following:

International evidence (PISA 2012) shows that academic selection in school systems is associated negatively with equity; and students in highly stratified systems tend to be less motivated than those in less stratified systems. This international evidence suggests that schools which select students on academic performance tend to show better school average performance, even accounting for the socio-economic status and demographic background of students and schools, on average, across OECD countries. However, a school system’s performance overall is not better if it has a greater proportion of academically selective schools. And in systems with more academic selection, the impact of socio-economic status on student performance is greater.

The Report backs up what you have already read on this blog since the government started down the road of turning the education clock back to sometime in the late nineteenth Century. Hopefully, the consultation period between now and December will provide the government with time for reflection.

The good voters of Witney can help that process by trouncing the Conservative candidate in the by-election, making it clear, as the Oxfordshire’s county councillors did when discussing the issue last week that they don’t want a return to a selective secondary school system.

Nick Gibb, the junior DfE Minister, as might be expected, when speaking recently at the Academy Ambassador’s Trust event extolled the growth of selective schools saying; ‘Your trust may consider establishing a new selective free school or you may look to expand using the routes that are already available.’ He didn’t say what happens to the other children educated by the Trust. He also ignored the importance of vocational qualifications whilst lauding the EBacc.

The DfE’s lack of understanding about system-wide planning, for which presumably Mr Gibb has responsibility, is alarming in this time of growing pupil numbers across much of the country. The lack of co-ordination between the Free School programme and the remaining place planning function retained by local authorities is unhelpful, to put it at its mildest. Local authorities will be blamed when there are not enough school places for parents to obtain their first choice of school. In the end this will mean councillors losing their seats as parents express their annoyance through the ballot box. No doubt if this happens to any significant degree in the county council elections next May there will be repercussions for Mrs May and her education team at the DfE.

However, should the voters of Witney decide to send the Conservatives a message next month, they can do worse than wrap it in a bottle marked education and schools. The north of the constituency was especially upset about the changes to free home to school transport and the restrictions on choice of school they imposed, so those parents will have found Mr Gibb’s mention of parental choice ironic. Perhaps the DfE still isn’t aware that parents outside London don’t enjoy the same free home to school travel TfL offers them in London.