Category Archives: schools

Do means matter?

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The DfE has published some performance data for academies and multi academy trusts Multi-academy trust performance measures (key stages 2, 4 and 5) – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) The outcomes are quite rightly heavily hedged about with qualifications about how schools have become academies, and also that schools differ in size, character and parental choice. Indeed, I wonder whether the original reason for why a school became an academy, perhaps more than a decade ago is still relevant?

What struck me at first glance was that as the secondary sector becomes dominated by academies there is a reduction to the mean (average). Various Secretaries of State have wanted all schools to be above average, as this exchange with Michael Gove when in front of the Education Select Committee revealed. Michael Gove’s Kafkaesque logic – Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK’s progressive debate However, I don’t think he was the only Secretary of State to fall foul of this aspiration. Academies in the group forced to change their status because of under-performance not surprisingly do less well than those that chose to become an academy.

The key question for the current Secretary of State must be what do you take from this data in terms of the ‘levelling up’ agenda? I don’t think the present incumbent of the post of Secretary of State for Education has been asked the question about averages, but that shouldn’t stop her asking the question about what policy changes are needed based upon these outcomes?

As an additional discussion point, the secretary of State might like to ask her officials two further questions. What is the relationship between the schools in these tables and the percentages of NEETs produced by different types of schools, and how can schooling work to help ensure as many as possible of our young people eventually enter the labour market at the end of their initial education and training journey? After all, we should all be life-long learners.

After last year’s aborted attempt to make all schools academies, and the mauling of the Bill in the House of Lords there is still a need to ensure the middle tier works to the best advantage for all children. Whether there is a role for local democracy in schooling is still a live issue, but not one that will feature highly at the next election.

But, regardless of who runs schools, there is still work to be done to achieve excellence for all and that no child is left behind, to quote just two aspirational messages from past attempts at improving the outcomes for our schooling system.

Of course, without sufficient teachers, the risk is of deterioration not improvement in outcomes; not what the Chancellor wants to see if the economy is to continue to grow.

Teacher Recruitment Crisis: is the end in sight?

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Yesterday, Silicon Valley Bank hit a bump in the road. Most readers won’t have heard of this American bank that has created a niche for itself by lending to technology start-ups, including in the famous Silicon Valley, south of San Francisco.

However, might yesterday’s event prove as significant as Northern Rock’s fall from grace was in the first decade of the century at marking a turning point in the business cycle. If it does, then whatever the outcome of the current teachers’ pay dispute, teaching will look like a safe haven in a disturbed economic order. And, as in past bouts of turmoil, more people will seek to become teachers in any uncertain times, and those that quit for pastures new will seek to return in greater number.

Three years ago there was a spike in interest in teaching as a career when lockdown and the covid pandemic looked as if it would create disruption in the labour market. The furlough scheme and other government initiatives meant that spike in interest in teaching as a career was short-lived. 

The banking crisis of 2008 led to record numbers of graduates seeking to train as a teacher, reaching 67,000 applicants in the course of the 2009/10 cycle. By contrast, in 2021/22 cycle the total number of applicants only reached 39,288 according to DfE data: less than two per place.

Of course, by tomorrow, Silicon Valley Bank will no doubt have calmed investors and the risks will have been reassessed. However, the fundamental point about the relationship between the health of the economy and teaching as a career, at least in England where there is a well-developed labour market for graduates, will still hold good. Booming economies are bad for teaching as a career: recessions encourage more to consider teaching as a career, and current teachers not to take the risk of leaving.

Government statisticians are still predicting the possibility of a mild recession in the United Kingdom at some point this year, so perhaps we can predict the end of the current recruitment crisis in teaching?

Sadly, I think it will take more than mild recession to bail out the teacher labour market, at least in the secondary school sector. Falling rolls helps, as the divergence between the labour markets in the primary and secondary school sectors is now starting to make clear. Ironically, a high pay settlement, not fully funded for schools, would also reduce demand, but push up class sizes and affect the quality of learning in other ways.

However, if a recession doesn’t bail out the teacher labour market, might the very type of companies that the Silicon Valley Bank supports help out? Teaching as an occupation has made remarkably little use of technology to support the teacher pupil interface. The government might well set up a research institute to identify how to improve the capital/labour relationship in teaching so as to widen the range of qualifications acceptable to become a teacher. They might focus less on subject knowledge and more on human interactions and motivation as a means of promoting learning. They might also reduce teacher’s workload by taking away as many administrative chores as possible.

But, as we have seen in the recruitment of teachers, driving down costs by new technology doesn’t always change spending habits. Pay teachers more: use technology more effectively and create a 21st century schooling system. Now there’s a thought for the ASCL Conference this weekend.

Golden Helloes for overseas nationals

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Yet another scheme has emerged from the portals of Sanctuary Buildings to help stem this years’ teacher supply crisis. The International Relocation Payment Scheme  International relocation payments – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) is designed to attract non-UK nationals to either teach or train to teach languages or physics. Up to £10,000 will be available for successful applicants and the scheme has different rules for non-salaried trainees; salaried trainees, and teachers.

Both fee-paying trainees and salaried trainees should receive the IRP around the end of their first term and teachers will also receive their payment at the same stage of employment subject to them teaching the appropriate subjects.

For teachers the rules include the following:

To be eligible, teachers must meet all 3 of the following requirements.

Firstly, you must have accepted a languages or physics teaching job in a state secondary school in England on a contract lasting at least one academic year.

Teachers of all languages (except English) offered in English state secondary schools are eligible to apply for the IRP. The language or languages can be combined with another subject, but must make up at least 50% of teaching time.

Physics can be combined with another subject, but must make up at least 50% of teaching time. Teachers of general science are also eligible to apply for the IRP if they are teaching the physics elements of general science. It can be combined with another subject, but general science must make up at least 50% of teaching time.

Secondly, any teacher must come to England on one of the following visas:

  • Skilled worker visa
  • Youth Mobility Scheme
  • Family visa
  • UK Ancestry visa
  • British National (Overseas) visa
  • High Potential Individual visa
  • Afghan citizens resettlement scheme
  • Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy
  • Ukraine Family Scheme visa
  • Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme

Thirdly, and teacher must move to England no more than 3 months before the start of the teaching job in September.

How to apply for the IRP

Any teacher applying will need to have started their teaching job in a state secondary school to make your application. Teach in England if you trained outside the UK | Get Into Teaching GOV.UK (education.gov.uk)

Applications will be open from 1 September to 31 October 2023. This is a short window for applications.

The obvious question is what happens if a recipient of the cash quits as soon as the funds have cleared their bank accounts, and returns home? I am sure that vetting will do everything to prevent such an occurrence, but the question is at least worth asking.

It is interesting that the DfE only cite their own job board as a source of vacancies despite the fact that the tes and TeachVac often have a wider  range of job opportunities than the DfE site.

As usual, this new scheme ignores the really serious shortage subjects such as design and technology; business studies and computing.

The DfE will need to ensure schools understand the scheme as they will be receiving applications for these posts almost immediately. They will need to be able to ensure timetables that meet the requirements, especially in the sciences where most vacancies are advertised as for a ‘teacher of science’ and not a teacher of physics.

Will the scheme succeed? It is only for 2023-24 at present, so might be regarded as a trial. Previous schemes, have disappeared. I don’t recall the evaluation of this one from 2016 mentioned in a previous blog post. More on BREXIT | John Howson (wordpress.com)

On a similar topic of recruiting teachers from overseas, in December the DfE issued tender RFX159 – Supply of teachers qualified outside of England. This specified within the terms:

‘The Contractor must work in consultation with the Client Organisation to prepare a Business Brief, which may include, but not be exclusive to, the following: a. scoping of the work required by the business area in respect of; i) single or multiple recruitment campaigns targeting qualified maths and physics teachers primarily from Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and USA. Further high performing countries subject to agreement. Ii) Any other recruitment and supply of teachers to English schools.’

Schemes such as this one will not solve the teacher supply crisis that secondary schools have been experiencing for far too long. After all, the Select Committee was concerned enough in 2015 to mount an inquiry and the situation now is far worse than it was then. We must not fail a generation of young people.

Mixed news on ITT applications

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At a first glance, the data on postgraduate ITT applications and acceptances for February 2023, released this morning by the DfE, looks like good news. Overall applications are up from 51,745 in February 2022 to 56,704 this February, and applicant numbers are up from 19,933 to 21,208 for the same dates in 2022 and 2023.

However, it is important to look behind these headline numbers at two other facts. Firstly, there is a sharp difference in the behaviour of candidates by age groups. There are fewer candidates under the age of 29 this year when compared with last February. The key undergraduate group of age ‘21 and under’ are shown as 3,601 this February, whereas it was 3,778 in February 2022. However, the number of candidates in the 30 to 35 age grouping is up from 2,044 last February to 2,565 in February 2023.

The second point to note is the geographic distribution of candidates. Those from the London region are down from 3,231 to 2,885, whereas those shown as from the ‘rest of the world’ have increased from 1,427 in February 2022 to 3,524 this February. The overall increase in candidates is 1,275 (from 19,933 to 21,208) but the increase from the ‘Rest of the World’ is 2,097 (from 1,427 to 3,524).  

The effect of this change in the location of candidates can be seen in the total applications by phase and subject. Applications for primary phase courses have remained constant at 23,355 compared with 23,967 in February 2022. For the secondary phase, applications have increased from 27,134 to 32,014. However, not all subjects have benefitted from more applications. Art and design; Classics; drama; history; music; physical education and religious education are all showing fewer applications this February than in February 2022.

The good news is that design and technology and physics have recorded more offers than last year. In the case of design and technology, offer levels are the best for February since February 2017. Modern Languages; geography; English; chemistry, biology and business studies have also recorded better ‘offer’ levels than last February. However, numbers are not yet sufficient to be confident to be assured that overall targets will be reached by the end of the recruitment round and the high level of applicants from overseas must be a matter for consideration. A breakdown of overseas versus home applicants by subject would be helpful.

 Overall, fewer candidates have been recruited, (458 against 572) and fewer have offers with conditions pending, (9,827 compared to 10,503). Both the number of candidates rejected and withdrawn are above the February 2022 numbers.

The has been an increase in applicants recorded as ‘male’ from 5,559 to 6,704, whereas applications from ‘females’ have reduced from 14,402 to 14,289.

The question is whether we are seeing a loss of young UK- based female applicants to teaching and their being replaced by older males domiciled outside the United Kingdom. Teaching is increasingly a global profession, and QTS from the DfE may be seen as a valuable qualification. However, the question must be asked whether this trend will solve the teacher supply crisis in England?

Snippets from the STRB Evidence

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The DfE has released their evidence to the Teachers’ Pay Review Body, the STRB. The government doesn’t shy away the problems with recruitment into teaching and departures from the profession, but, as might be expected, it does put the best possible face on the data. For instance, it noted that primary pupil numbers were now falling, and that secondary pupil numbers were likely to peak soon. However, it also noted challenges with the number of new graduates likely to be entering the labour market.

Higher education institutions. long the butt of government attacks over their role in ITT might take heart from table C3 that shows them outperforming schools in the percentage of men recruited onto both primary and secondary postgraduate ITT courses. SCITTs seem to have had a poor year in 2022/23 in that respect. High Potential ITT (Teach First to the rest of us) had a good year in 2022/23, after three poor years of recruiting men to their programme. However, their overall recruitment fell from 1,661 in 2019/2020 to 1,393 in 2022/23, although that was not as dramatic a fall as for the School Direct Salaried programme; down from 2,492 to 661 during the same period.

Salaried schemes accounted for 10% of entrants in 2019/2020, but only 6% in 2022/23. This is despite the growth in apprenticeships for graduate entrants.

Despite the anxiety about the departure of heads, leaver rates fell between 2016 and 2020 across England, from 10.6% to 8.9%. However, I expect the 2021 figure to show an upturn to reflect the fact that many heads stayed in post in 2020, to see their schools through the worst of the pandemic.

The teaching force in England is one of the youngest in the OECD, with a quarter of classroom teachers, and a third of unqualified teachers under the age of 30 in November 2021. There are still disproportionally more men in senior positions than there are women. However, at the classroom teacher level, three out of four of all teachers were women, across all sectors covered by the STRB.  

The number of newly qualified entrants fell from 26,780 in 2015 to 20,435 in 2020, presumably due to a combination of factors including the pressure on school funding; the start of the decline in primary school rolls and the problems with recruitment onto ITT courses in some secondary subjects, leaving schools having to make other arrangements.

Perhaps the most worrying figure in the DfE evidence is the fact that 8% of teachers in special schools in 2021 were unqualified. This compares with 2% in primary and 3% in secondary schools. Although the actual number is only a little over 2,000 people, compared with the 6,100 working in secondary schools, this is a disappointing situation for a sector where research earlier this week also showed teaching conditions to be poor.

Surprisingly, only 1,753 schools were using recruitment payments in 2021, although they were concentrated, as might be expected, in London and the South East. However, one wonders why the 66 schools in the North East needed to use such payments, and whether it might be a coding error in the Workforce Census? Maybe, they were all trying to recruit physics teacher or design and technology staff?

It will be interesting to see what the STRB makes of this evidence and how the current pay dispute is settled.

Home to School transport

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What level of transport from home to school should the State provide for parents? At present, this is an area of policy that rarely seems to be reviewed. For instance, when the learning leaving age was raised to eighteen, the rules on free transport to school were not changed. As a result, many pupils that receive free transport up to age sixteen, and the end of Year 11, no longer qualify for free transport in Years 12 or 13, even if they remain at the same school.

Yes, some local authorities do pay for SEND transport for post-16 students, but it is not a requirement to do so. TfL still provide generous free transport for young people resident in London, although the Elizabeth Line beyond West Drayton to Reading isn’t included.

The question must be: if young people in London can qualify for free bus and tram travel, why must those living elsewhere in England depend upon local rules set by the upper tier local authority? The answer, of course, is that local authorities must fund the home to school transport budget, and it needs to compete against all other priorities, whereas in London, the transport authority, TfL, foots the bill for transport costs.  

Most authorities now only pay for transport over three miles (2 miles for pupils under eight, but above statutory school age) to the nearest school if selected first at the time of the admissions process. There may be different rules for selective secondary schools, and some authorities won’t pay for travel to these schools if located in the area of another authority despite the fact that most are now academies.

For instance, Essex County Council and Castle Point Unitary Authority state that:

Grammar (selective) school

Children from low income families qualify for school transport if they live 2 or more miles from the selective school.

School transport will also be provided if the selective school is closer than the nearest maintained school or academy and 3 miles or more away. School transport: Who qualifies for home to school transport – Essex County Council

This means that many parents have to pay to send a child to a selective school unless they qualify as a low-income family.

In rural areas there may not be bus services, and local authorities will only pay where a road is deemed unsafe due to traffic. Any alternative route less than three miles, even if an unlit footpath across fields, often doesn’t qualify for free transport unless an appeal panel is willing to go outside the rules.

In their 2023-24 budget, Oxfordshire has a figure of around £30 million for home to school transport, so it isn’t an insignificant issue for rural counties. The bulk of this was for transporting pupils to mainstream schools and not for SEND transport.

So here are some policy suggestions for discussion

  • Raise the current age level for transport to the same school from 16 to 18
  • Ensure SEND transport to both schools and colleges
  • Negotiate student fares with both bus and train operators as similar rates for same journey
  • Merge school transport with active travel policies to encourage car pooling or use of local community transport
  • Pay bike vouchers to encourage cycling to school
  • Review national guidelines on what constitutes ‘safe routes’ to exclude footpaths or bridleways for inclusion and only include roads
  • Create a national policy for travel to selective schools funded by central government as these schools are no longer ’local’ schools
  • Prevent state schools from running their own buses
  • Ensure any child offered a paid for place has the place available for a whole school year.
  • Amend the mileage rule to cover all sites for split site schools

The present distance rules were set many years ago. Is it still acceptable in this modern age to use a three-mile limit or should it be reduced?

Finally, how should any changes be paid for? Should there be a national scheme, as for the bus pass for the elderly, and should the rules be more favourable for London than for rural areas, especially where house prices may be more expensive in the rural areas than in London, and salaries don’t take this into account?

Please sue the comments section to discuss.

Recruit now or never

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How bad is the current recruitment crisis in teaching likely to become, and what effects might it have on the staffing of schools for September 2023? We already know that the recruitment to postgraduate ITT courses for secondary school subjects, whether located in schools or higher education was dire last September. I discussed some of the reasons this week with a researcher. We didn’t discuss the attractiveness of teaching in terms of pay for graduates, as it is well known where on the public/private sector graduate pay scale teaching is currently located.

For this blog, I want to look at the data from TeachVac on the current supply side. Of course, the supply side is influenced by what happens on the demand side of the equation, and we know the increased pupil numbers will increase demand for teachers by secondary schools this year, even if all other factors stay the same; we can also reckon that a worsening of the pay gap will both take more teachers out of state school classrooms and deter more returners while there are other job opportunities available.

TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk has for some years used the data obtained from matching vacancies to jobseekers to also construct an index that measures the health of the supply side in relation to new entrants. A worsening index puts the pressure on certain schools to find other sources of supply or to alter their curriculum.

In my previous post, I discussed the extent to which the current level of vacancies has created a ‘false market’ because of the number of re-advertisements. That factor undoubtedly has had an effect on the supply-side index – hence my continued demand for a job reference number.

TeachVac has been collecting data since 2015, and will continue to do so as long as schools continue to sign up to TeachVac’s £10 per week matching service that provides the data for analysis.

So, what might the current position be, half-way through the two weeks of half-terms across England?

Subject2023 at 17th FebCurrent figure INDEXPrevious worst INDEX  Year
HistoryNW7644282015
PENW10248812017
ArtNW2952732017
MathsW524
EnglishW375
All SciencesW343
MusicW35
REW10
LanguagesW106
ComputingW-71
GeographyW188
Business StudiesW-79
D&TW-125
NW Not worst recorded W Worst level recorded

Source: TeachVac

The data index is based upon matching the potential ‘open market’ trainee number after discounting those already in classrooms and less likely to be seeking a different teaching post in September against vacancies since 1st January.

There is little surprising in the index data, except perhaps for the severity of the current index figure in some subjects so early in the recruitment round for September.

How the index moves from here depends upon factors such as: when the government asks the Pay Review Body to Report, and whether the inevitable pay increase will be fully funded or whether schools, often already hard pushed for cash after the energy price increase, will be expected to fund the salary increase from current resourcing. This latter choice would undoubtedly reduce demand for teachers, unless it also drove more teachers out of the classroom into other jobs or retirement. With the present age profile of the profession, the former should be of more concern that the latter.

The pay of senior staff in academies

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Yesterday was Oxfordshire County Council’s Budget Day. Along with the budget itself two reports were presented; one on gender pay differences, and the other a required report of the Council’s Pay Policy. The latter included the salaries of senior staff as at the 1st January 2023. During the discussion on the Council’s Pay Policy I raised the issue of the pay of senior staff in standalone academies and multi-academy trusts.

I wrote a blog about this issue The Pay of Academy Staff | John Howson (wordpress.com) after I had raised the matter once before in council in the form of a question to the Cabinet member.

In advance of yesterday’s meeting, I checked the accounts at Companies House for all Oxfordshire Secondary Schools that are academies (one school is still not an academy because of a budget deficit). By now, all academies should have filed their 2022 accounts ending in August 2022 at Companies House. However, some have still to do so, but they will be unlikely to affected the discussion about how much senior staff should be paid if the benchmark is set, as in my previous blog, at £150,000.

Interestingly, as in my last study, no MAT or standalone academy with a headquarters in Oxfordshire paid any staff member £150,000 or more according to their accounts. However, with the September annual pay increases it seems likely that inflation will have pushed two Trusts int a position of now paying more than £150,000 in salary to their highest paid employee.

Of more concern was the fact in the accounting year to August 2022, four Trusts, all headquartered outside Oxfordshire, paid their highest paid employee more than £150,000. All were in the list of five Trusts mentioned in my previous blog. I am especially concerned about one Trust with a reported top salary of £280,000 in the year to August 2022, as that is more than twice the salary of Oxfordshire’s director of Children’s Services. As the Trust is located in an area not considered high cost for property prices, and is not as large as some other Trusts, I wonder about the reasons behind such a high salary.

The DfE remained concerned enough about Academy salaries to recently publish a list of Trusts where at least one employee earns more than £150,000. The list runs more than 14 pages in length. Academies consolidated annual report and accounts: 2020 to 2021 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) Annex 6.

This issue of pay of academy employees is relevant to local authorities because managing their remaining education functions will become more challenging because the government has failed to cap MAT employees’ pay. Recruiting staff into local government, already difficult will become even more challenging for our education service.

The present government has talked about the importance of Pay Review bodies in the public sector, but so far has exempted senior staff in MATs from pay controls. Ministers have written lots of letters urging pay restraint, but, seemingly, to no effect.

Paying extreme salaries in MATs also means higher central costs imposed on Oxfordshire schools and, as a result, less cash to spend on Oxfordshire pupils. The increase in pay of senior staff in academies isn’t the sole cause of the deterioration on Pupil Teacher Ratios secondary schools over the past decade, but it certainly hasn’t help prevent them worsening.

 

False Market

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Last year, 2022, saw a large increase in recorded vacancies for teachers. That increase has continued in the first six weeks of 2023. TeachVac has recorded a 31% increase for the period from the start of January up to 10th February 2023. Recorded vacancies for the secondary sector increased from 8,617 to 11,304 with increases in most subjects except; classics, economic, sociology and Engineering. Increases in music were in the order of 50%, and 59% in geography.

Although the increase in computing vacancies was only 41%, such was the lack of recruitment into training for courses that started last September that there will shortly have been sufficient advertised vacancies to provide a post for every trainee likely to be available for September. Design and technology, as a subject, is in a similar situation, even though a few more trainees were recruited in 2022 than in the previous year.

Business studies has already recorded enough vacancies for every trainee to have been able to find a job. Schools now recruiting for that subject will find the task ever more of a challenge as the year progresses.

For those of us that regularly watch the labour market for teachers, the question must now be; how accurate a reflection of reality is the current market data? Indeed, is measuring vacancies any longer a worthwhile exercise? Are schools just re-advertising vacancies that they cannot fill or advertising posts they expect to have to fill to try and capture the small number of candidates actually looking for vacancies?

Normally, I would not expect new entrants to the profession to have started job hunting this early in the year, except in subjects such as history and physical education where the supply of candidates regularly exceeds the number of vacancies on offer and it makes sense to start job hunting early.

In a ‘normal’ year there might be around 60,000 vacancies across both the primary and secondary sectors in England and including both state and private schools. The 100,000+ of 2022, and the increase early in 2023, suggests that there must be a considerable amount of either repeat advertising or re-advertising, depending upon how those terms are defined.

This blog has long championed the need for a unique vacancy number to follow a post from creation to its being filled. The current market makes that concept even more pressing. Schools do not need to wait for the DfE to create an elaborate structure, but could start using their URN followed by 2301 so the first vacancy would be xxxxxx/2301 and their tenth xxxxxx/2310. If included somewhere on the advertisement such reference number would be easy for followers of the labour market to handle and would provide a much clear picture of the actual labour market rather than having to wait until the June following the start of the school year and the publication of the data from the School Workforce Census.

Maybe, the government doesn’t want real-time information on the labour market, but without out it schools are at risk of having to rely upon signals from a false market that does not accurately show the real level of demand for teachers.

UTCs: will they survive?

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Recently, the DfE published the accounting details for academies and free schools and their Trusts and Committees for the year September 2020 to August 2021. Academies consolidated annual report and accounts: 2020 to 2021 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

There are several interesting annexes. One contains 15 pages of Trusts where at least one member of staff was paid more than £150,000 as recorded in the accounts for that year! However, more relevant for the purpose of this post is the list of schools with deficit balances. The list contains 12 identified University Technical Colleges (UTCs) plus a Trust with 4 UTCs in its portfolio of schools three of which appear to have negative balances in the Trust’s 2022 accounts).

This means that possibly 16 out of the 47 UTC could possibly have been in deficit in this accounting year. Home | University Technical Colleges (utcolleges.org) cites 47 colleges.

This means that at least a third of the UTC sector might have been in deficit in the 2020-21 accounting year. I cannot say that I am surprised. Way back in 2017, this blog contained my post Can UTCs survive? | John Howson (wordpress.com) asking whether UTCs could survive.

I am not opposed to the idea of a UTC, but here is part of what I wrote in a 2106 post on the topic.

‘So, might UTCs be set to become the ‘De Lorean’ of the education world; a good idea, but not financially viable? Having visited the Didcot UTC recently, I can see the attraction of the concept as supported by Lord Baker. But, they do run into a number of challenges. Firstly, changing school at 14 isn’t a normal part of the school scene, so the UTCs have to persuade young people and their parents that the change is worthwhile. Secondly, the schools that they are departing from will lose cash for every pupil that transfers. After four years a school losing ten pupils a year could be £200,000 down on income, but still be trying to offer the same curriculum to its remaining pupils. Lose twenty pupils a year and the cash burn become even more concerning. Some schools might fight to keep their pupils or only be interested in losing those that cost more to educate than they generate in revenue.’ W(h)ither UTCs? | John Howson (wordpress.com)

Since then we have had the National Funding Formula covering two years of most UTC’s rolls, with the other two years being funded by the post-16 funding that has never been seen as generous.

Even with increasing pupil numbers in the secondary sector, the fact that most UTCs recruit at age 14 and don’t have free travel probably restricts their ability to grow unless they are in an area of significant housebuilding, as is the Didcot UTC mentioned above. Even there, the issue of loss at 16 to other institutions or apprenticeships can significantly affect the UTC’s income. For many, being science and technology biased in their curriculum, also affects their outgoings, both in resources and in attracting STEM subject teachers.

So, where will the UTC programme go, even with the support of Lord Baker?