Category Archives: technology

Schools and the pandemic a year on

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Health and Social Care, business and education. Along with the vaccine, these are the three big stories from the pandemic. Behind them lie probably close to 150,000 deaths; each one a tragedy for a family and friends. As befits a blog about education, I will concentrate on my thoughts of what has taken place in education since last March.

Cooperation can be better than competition

Not all expertise resides in one place, and fighting a pandemic is best achieved with teamwork.  Sadly, the government didn’t harness the expertise contained in bodies such as the professional associations. The worst example was probably the announcement that schools would open in January only to be rapidly changed a day later. The on-going saga over assessment is another example of unreal assumptions leading to damaging changes.

Technology finally caught up with schooling or teaching discovered technology

It has taken a pandemic to challenge the existing format of teaching and learning. The technology revolution has impacted on many areas of life over the past half century, since email and the internet entered our lives. However, the resistance of the school sector as a whole to embrace new technology in a systematic manner beyond just installing bits of kit, such as whiteboards, led to there being no road map for when schools were forced to close.

The closure and lack of foresight revealed another problem that has always been there, but had disappeared under the carpet in the past two decades

The deprivation gap

The National Funding Formula marked the low point in recognising that not all children have access to equal opportunities in life. In the 1970s this issue was a hot topic. Books such as, ‘Depriving the Deprived’’ ‘The poverty of education’ and ‘Planning and Educational Inequality’ are worth revisiting as is the section of the Plowden Report that deals with the issue. Despite Labour’s Education Action Zones and the Conservatives’ Opportunity Areas, little real attention has been paid to the lack of education progress linked to deprivation except by a few individuals, such as the work of Professor Dorling, until the pandemic exposed the gaps in society.

The fact that it took a footballer to motivate a government over the issue of free school meals was an indictment of a school system where responsibility for the system was concentrated at Westminster.

The importance of place in local decision-making

It has taken the pandemic to make clear that local decision-making can deal with local issues far better than long chains of command. The current dual system of academies and maintained schools doesn’t work. Either nationalise schools and create the education equivalent of the NHS, with little democratic accountability or return to a system where local democracy has a central role to play in the local school system.

Schooling is still a people-driven activity

Schools never closed, and most school leaders found themselves running two systems for learners: on-line and face to face. Early in the pandemic a headteacher in Cumbria died with covid.  Without committed staff, backed by parents, schooling an unhappily fail to meet educational goals. There is a task to be done in areas where parents are not engaged with schooling to encourage a change of attitude.

And above all

Schools Matter

Children are eager to return to school. In these days of small families – by historical standards – and less community involvement than in the past, schools undoubtedly play a significant social role in the lives of children and young people. I am sure that looking at families where siblings of one parent have attended school as children of key workers and those of another have not been in school for most of the past year will show up the differences in outcomes both intellectual and socially.

Finally, all schools rely upon dedicated and hard-working staff. This blog wants to thank each and every one of you for what you do for children and young people.

Covid and the Teacher Labour Market in England

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We now have data from twelve months that have suffered from the effects of the covd-19 pandemic. First thing this morning, I asked my analysts at TeachVac what had been the consequences for the teacher labour market in England. They came up with the following table for all vacancies.

2018201920202021
March715990299302
April813187356080
May10170114686357
June386248283286
July93312941043
August547565543
September295538843382
October418654383721
November366242583074
December201528931811
January5492638682162622
February5056579184215167
Monthly recorded vacancies for teachers in England

Source: TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk

Secondary teachers have suffered from a greater decline in their job opportunities than their primary colleagues. However, with the modern equivalent of ‘pool’ recruitment still in operation in parts of the primary sector, the figures are less reliable for that sector the for the secondary school sector where most schools manage their own recruitment.

Details data for local authority vacancy patterns and even those for a specific postcode are available on request, for a small fee. Data are also available for specific secondary subjects on a month by month basis, again for a small fee.

The next two months will be key ones for teachers looking for jobs. Will the market return to 2019 levels or continue to remain depressed. Much may depend upon the behaviour of the wider labour market for graduates. However, how many teachers decide to leave their jobs will also be important. It is also worth remembering that he supply of teachers leaving teacher preparation courses will not be sufficient in all subjects to meet the DfE’s estimate of need. How far ‘returners’ can make up the deficit only time will tell, but fewer advertised vacancies will also help close the gap.

I, for one, had wondered whether the pandemic and resulting effects on head teacher’s workload, might have resulted in a wave of departures. So far, in 2021, there is little evidence of any surge in departures of primary head teachers.

Although there have been fewer vacancies in London during the past twelve months, the Home Counties, and especially those parts of the Home Counties in the South East remain the part of the country driving the teacher labour market. This is not surprising as this are also contains the largest concentration of private schools. So far, these schools do not seem, as a sector, to have been badly affected by the pandemic in terms of pupil numbers. No doubt September enrolment will conform whether that is still the case.

Finally, although pupil numbers are still increasing in the secondary sector, will there be any effect from Brexit? Might some EU families return to their home country rather than stay in England? If so, could such departures have an effect on school rolls in some areas where there are large concentrations of EU citizen living in particular neighbourhoods? Comments on this point would be welcome.

Teaching School Hubs: will schools be forced to use them?

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Has anyone noticed the DfE vacancy site padding out the number of jobs on the site by repeating entries? It doesn’t happen with the search facility, but if you scroll through the pages, some jobs appear more than once. Today, it happened to me with the Head of Sixth Form at Burford School and the Principal at Phoenix College: there may be other examples as well.

Why was I scrolling through the DfE site? Two reasons, I wanted to see if the new Teaching School Hubs were advertising posts yet: at least one is, and I am always interested to know how TeachVac fares compared with the DfE in offering a free site to schools for their teaching posts.

After stripping out non-teaching posts from the DfE site – these include a maternity leave replacement for a cleaner and a school matron – that TeachVac doesn’t handle, the DfE comes in around 40% of TeachVac’s vacancies still within closing date. Both sites offer school a way to save cash for many ‘easy to fill’ vacancies.

The news on Teaching School Hubs https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-teaching-school-hubs-to-be-rolled-out-across-the-country was announced on Wednesday and reminds me of the Teachers’ Professional Development Centre where I worked for two years in the 1970s. Those centres had the advantage of being neutral spaces not associated with particular schools, but the disadvantage of not having pupils on site for demonstration lessons.

The DfE said in the announcement that “Each hub, all of which will be operational and helping schools from this September, will have its own defined geographical patch and will be expected to be accessible to all schools within that area, serving on average around 250 schools each.”

Now this takes me even further back to McNair and his Report, and the development of what were known as Area Training Organisations. This approach, so contrary to the Conservative’s market model approach, suggests a more controlling approach. Will schools be able to buy professional development either where they want or will they be forced to support their local Teaching School Hub? 

Will the pupils in the schools benefit from the employment of the best teachers by the Hubs or will the staff of the Hub be fully employed on professional development and initial teacher preparation?

To whom will the Hubs be responsible and will they be inspected by Ofsted or some other body set up especially for that purpose?

What is clear is that the government has so emasculated professional development in the past that some sort of national programme, backed by research, is badly needed to help support the teachers working in our schools. I hope the Hubs will also offer support to those taking a career break that want to return in the future.

The Hubs must also address the conflict between the needs around the professional development of an individual teacher and those of the schools where they work. They may not be the same.

Finally, the government must be sensitive to the fact that next year many teachers will want to recover from the effects of the pandemic and Ministers must not be surprised if teachers want a quiet year to rest and recuperate even if that means avoiding after-school professional development activities.

Pick a teacher by computer

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There’s a story on the BBC news site today about AI being used by some companies in their staff recruitment process. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55932977 Well, that’s nothing new. Maybe that it is just that the technology has become jazzier and snazzier that it used to be.

Way back in the 1980s, I recall a US company telling me it could select who would be a good primary school teacher on the basis of a few questions answered over the telephone. They told me it worked for selecting ice-hockey players, so would work for primary school teachers.

In the mid-1990s, during my brief period as a government adviser, I headed off another challenge to abolish interviews for all aspiring teachers, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Success was due to being joined in support by a prominent HMI of the day. Together we made the case for interviews, even though it was both time-consuming and costly.

I would not want the DfE to suggest the automated route for teacher selection be used by the new Institute of Teaching its role in both initial teacher training preparation and professional development. Imagine being judged as to whether you could be funded for a professional development course on the basis of playing a computer game.

Well, I suppose, if you think about the concept, it not all that different to how some schools and local authorities still select pupils for secondary schools at age eleven. Interestingly, we haven’t heard much about deprivation and the pandemic on the selection of pupils at age eleven, especially in the Home Counties that still cling in some areas to the Victorian notion that pupils’ life chances can be determined at age eleven.

Of course, when there are a lot of job applications, as during a recession, there is a tendency to use tactics to save time in the recruitment process. In the early days of postcodes, I recall two headteachers behaving differently. One rejected every application with a postcode as being pedantic: the other rejected everyone without such a code as not being thorough. Candidates had no idea which approach was going to see them through the next stage.

Still, the increase in applications for teaching posts, reported recently by NfER, is something this blog predicted at the start of the pandemic. Interestingly, vacancies for teachers so far in February are higher than they were in January, but the total for the year is still down on last year.

Judging by the vacancies on the DfE site, support staff vacancies are down even more than those for teachers. I suppose there is less need for classroom assistants and cover supervisors while pupils largely remain at home. Senior posts, such as those for finance officers and business managers are still cluttering up what is badged as a teacher vacancy site.

Despite persuading a few morel local authorities to link their job boars to the DfE site, it still carries far fewer vacancies than TeachVac www.teachac.co.uk and is of no use to teachers that want a post in an independent school.

My guest blog for Oriel Square Publishing

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By John Howson, chair of TeachVac and County Councillor in Oxfordshire. *This blog was written before the DfE’s announcement on 2nd January 2021 of a new Institute of Teaching.

2020 didn’t prove to be a happy 150th anniversary for state education in England. Hopefully, we will be able to look back on 2021 with better memories. One clear outcome from 2020 was the need to review methods of teaching and learning as pupils were forced to interact with their teachers remotely.

Teacher preparation

The oversight of the school system might have been better managed had there been a strong middle-tier between schools and policymakers.

For many years, too much of the preparation and professional development of teachers has been focused on looking backwards at the past rather than at understanding the possibilities offered by a very different future. The Covid-19 pandemic changed that approach overnight. Parents discovered the reality of teaching and school leaders had to invent new patterns of dialogue between their staff and pupils; often with little help from the government.

Indeed, the planning and oversight of the school system, fractured as it is between local authorities, stand-alone academies and Multi Academy Trusts, might have been better managed had there been a strong middle-tier in operation between schools and policymakers at Westminster.

The role of schools in teaching training

In the course of the past fifty years, the labour market for teachers has oscillated between periods of shortage and times of oversupply.

For many years, I have been an observer of the workings of the labour market for teachers. In the course of the past 50 years that I have been involved with schools in England, the labour market for teachers has oscillated between periods of shortage – occasionally of severe shortages of teachers – and other times where there has been an oversupply.

Under the coalition government, and especially under the stewardship of Michael Gove as Secretary of State for Education, schools were encouraged to be at the forefront of teacher supply. Traditional higher education routes of teacher preparation were out of favour, and narrowly missed disappearing altogether when faced with recruitment controls.

At its zenith, the ambitious School Direct salaried route into teaching accounted for 12% of postgraduate entrants into teacher training.

The ambitious School Direct salaried route into teaching reached its zenith in 2016/17 when such trainees accounted for 12% of postgraduate entrants into teacher training. By the government’s 202/21 training year census the same route only accounted for five per cent of trainees, despite a larger number of trainee places being available. …

To read the rest of the blog go to https://www.orielsquare.co.uk/blog/index.php/2021/01/05/teacher-training-putting-the-past-behind-us/

More Dunkirk than D-Day

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Last March it was probably acceptable that schools had to invent their immediate responses to lockdown. After all, we were all facing situations we hadn’t expected. Much like the sudden collapse of the Allied armies in France in 1940, when faced with the Panzer Divisions assault, we muddled through and achieved more than might have been expected.

As I wrote on the 29th February in a blog post. ‘We are better equipped to deal with unforeseen events these days, whether fire, floods or pestilence; but only if we plan for them.’ I also pointed out that ‘In 1939 the country managed a mass evacuation of children from our cities under a Conservative Government.’ And I asked, ‘Does the civil service have the mentality to handle arrangements on such a scale today? After decades of a philosophy of private choice rather than public good, it may need a rethink, and quickly.’

In April, I mused that ‘Strategic thinking is still in short supply. There are group of Year 13 students, now to be assessed on their work before the outbreak that could form a useful coordinated volunteer force organised by their Sixth Form Tutor and reporting to the local hubs.

Apart from the obvious use of their talents to produce PPE on the schools’ 3D printers; sowing machines and other D&T resources they could be reducing the traffic jam of delivery vehicles clogging up suburban streets by trialling last mile cycle delivery from trans-shipment points to see how this would work. If petrol pumps are a transfer risk for the virus, we could use some as pump attendants, at least for vulnerable customers so that they could avoid touching the pumps and know that only the person serving them had handled the filling mechanism.’

Fast forward to January and we have the same level of chaos and muddle that professionals in education were faced with in March. The only change seems to be that the DfE guidance is clearer than it was in the spring.

Why did the government not use the time between March and December to plan for another lockdown. To move from the ‘make it up as you go along’ evacuation of Dunkirk to the meticulously planned D-Day assault on the Normandy beaches, backed by the deception exercise around Operation Fortitude.

Take provision of laptops and tablets. This system hasn’t worked. But nobody seems to have thought of all the reconditioned tablets sitting in small shops around the country. Even if they only lasted for a year, they might see some schools through the pandemic. Yes, I would like top of the line new equipment for those that haven’t access to any IT, but something now to start with is better than nothing until some uncertain date in the future.

Remote learning has been mostly un-coordinated and largely left to schools. This is an area where schools should have pooled knowledge and effort. It is as if no Minister has ever read Adam Smith and understood the principles of mass production over cottage-based industries. Expecting each school to reinvent the wheel is silly.

To continue the military analogy, it is as if infantry destined for the D-Day beaches were told, design your own training, and just get off the beach. The lack of a coherent middle tier that could pull MATs, diocese and local authority schools together to provide effective remote learning has frustrated both parents and young people with an outcome that hasn’t been as good as it could have been, and through no fault of teachers and school leaders.

Re-reading the ONS Report of May about risk to teachers from Covid, it was obvious, as I pointed out at the time in my blog that staff in schools, and especially in secondary schools, were classified as

‘… a group with a high possible exposure to any disease, presumably as they work close to large groups of children. In that respect, secondary school teachers interacting with many different pupils in the course of a day might been thought to have a higher potential risk factor than primary school teachers who are largely interacting with a smaller group of children each day. Of course, this is too simplistic, as it ignores the many other settings in schools from playgrounds, assemblies and meal times where all teachers can interact with large numbers of children. Primary teachers, and especially school leaders may have the added factor of interaction with parents that bring children to school and cluster at the school gate at the end of the day.’

https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/covid19relateddeathsbyoccupationenglandandwalesdeathsregistereduptoandincluding20thapril2020

This risk should have been monitored through the autumn and especially since the new variant was detected, as it was a vital piece of information in the analysis of whether schools could continue to open on site or switch to remote learning. That it has taken FOI requests and other tactics for the professional associations to secure the data is not acceptable.

The lack of either strategic planning or operational excellence in terms of the school system is a disappointment, and will no doubt eventually have political repercussions. After all, schools impact widely on all families.

update 1230 6th January. According to The Guardian the government has designated all pupils without laptops as vulnerable pupils and thus able to access schools. Well, that’s one way of solving the problem.

Teacher Education and Professional Development

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Teacher Education and Professional Development

By John Howson

This first appeared in 2014 as a chapter in 21st century Education: A Social Liberal Approach

Edited by Helen Flynn and published by the social Liberal Forum

In view of the DfE’s announcement yesterday about an Institute of Teaching I thought it was worth dusting it down and reminding myself what I wrote all those years ago.

Summary

Qualified Teacher Status should be restricted in the subjects and phases where teachers are allowed to practice.

Teacher Training, and especially training for primary teachers, needs a radical overhaul. All teachers should be expected to study to a Masters level.

A College of Teachers should be established to allow a professional voice for teachers.

All teachers should have access to funds for professional development, and the College of Teachers should help devise suitable programmes to meet the needs of all teachers.

Keep in touch and re-training opportunities for those taking time out of the classroom should be established to help those wishing to return after a career break to do so without any loss of expertise or seniority.

Teacher should be a reserved occupational title only allowed to be used by those with current Qualified Teacher Status.

Introduction

Liberal Democrats won’t achieve anything in education without the help of those who work in our schools. There are two key challenges facing schools during the next parliament that no government can duck: coping with the largest increase in the primary school population since the 1970s, and ensuring that the first increase in the learning leaving age for more than 40 years brings positive benefits to students, communities and the wider economy.

How we deal with these demands whilst ensuring a more representative and less divisive schooling system will reflect our ability as a Party to translate our values into actions. Nowhere will this be clearer than in the fields of teacher education and professional development. In this section I propose new arrangements for initial teacher preparation programmes; a discussion about arrangements for the transfer from trainee to employment; and a programme of staff development that recognises the need for self-renewal and development throughout the working life of a teacher.

Teacher Education

It is worth recalling that schooling alone, even without the further and higher education sectors, is a large-scale enterprise in England. Currently about 40,000 people are on different types of courses to become a teacher: about 6,000 are undergraduates, and the remainder graduates. Overall, these trainees represent more than a third of the current size of the British land army before its recent downsizing. Overall, there are probably around half a million teachers working in state and private schools across England in any one year. Most make teaching their career for life, if they last beyond their first five years in the profession, and, despite the frequent talk of ‘many careers in a lifetime’, most start teaching as their first career.

Government policy for the teaching profession was set by the coalition in the 2010 White Paper, ‘The Importance of Teaching’. It is not clear what, if any input Liberal Democrats played in this White Paper that followed hard on the heels of the 2010 Academies Act, but it marked a determination to shift training away from higher education and into schools. A detailed analysis suggests that the model proposed was very secondary school centred, with little thought for the needs of teachers seeking to train for the primary school sector. The House of Commons Select Committee on Education in reviewing teacher education said that Partnership between schools and universities is likely to provide the highest-quality initial teacher education, the content of which will involve significant school experience but include theoretical and research elements as well as in the best systems internationally and in much provision here. That view seems to have cut little ice with the coalition government.

Too often ignored in this debate are the training needs of those seeking to enter the teaching profession. Teacher preparation programmes will only be fit for purpose if they successfully turn those who start such courses into successful teachers. Starting with the needs of trainees rather than schools or higher education should be the key to a successful training programme.

To be a successful teacher requires a range of different qualities but, at least in the secondary sector, there ought to be a minimum level of subject knowledge equivalent to two years of an honours degree. Anyone without this basic level of knowledge should be offered Subject knowledge Enhancement courses to allow them to acquire sufficient knowledge. Even those with the requite degree may still lack expertise in areas of the school curriculum in their subject and ways should be found to allow them to continue to acquire such additional knowledge. This programme would allow for Qualified Teacher Status to be restricted to specific subjects and phases rather than continue to be generic as at present where a teacher with QTS can teach anything to anyone at any level of schooling. The fact that more than 20% of those teaching some Mathematics in our schools do not have a qualification above ‘A’ level in the subject may explain why many children neither enjoy the subject nor do well in it.

Qualified Teacher Status should be restricted in the subjects and phases where teachers are allowed to practice.

However, it is in preparing teachers for the primary sector that most attention needs to be paid. The present post-graduate course attempts to cram the equivalent of a quart into a pint pot. Many curriculum areas receive scant attention, and there is no guarantee that the time in school will effectively dovetail in developing the time spent on the programmes outside the classroom. It is time for a thorough overhaul of how primary teachers are prepared. In the first instance, the undergraduate training route should be replaced by a wider first degree programme that would prepare graduates to work in a wider range of services including youth and social work as well as teaching. The specific training to be a teacher would be entirely postgraduate. Such a new degree would prevent undue early specialisation among those entering university straight from school.  It would also avoid the bizarre situation created by the coalition whereby graduates wanting to become a teacher are subject to a minimum degree standard, but no such standard is imposed on undergraduates. As with the secondary sector, where there are already virtually no undergraduate teacher preparation courses, graduates of the new courses would not be licensed to teach at any level in the primary school, but would be certified to teach at a particular Key Stage.

Overall, graduate training would be on a two year model leading to a Masters degree with the possibility of appropriate credit against the subject components of secondary subject training for those with appropriate honours degrees.

Teacher Training, and especially training for primary teachers, needs a radical overhaul. All teachers should be expected to study to a Masters level.

The partnership model for teacher preparation that developed during the 1990s has generally served the profession well, with Ofsted recognising that teachers are better prepared than in the past. However, if we are going to maintain national standards for teaching, it is imperative that there is a body that can offer support and guidance in this area and oversee standards independent of government. The unfortunate abolition of the General Teaching Council in England was a short-sighted and politically inspired move. The creation of a new College of Teachers with oversight of the profession and responsibility for determining standards of entry to the profession is an urgent requirement. Such a body should be independent of, but accountable to, government. It should have a strong research ethos and assist in bringing together the best practice in teacher preparation from around the world as well as working to develop such practice in this country. Not only could the College provide professional status for teachers but it would also provide a centre for determining effective career development in a manner that the present National College has seemed unable to do effectively outside of its original remit of leadership development.

Professional Development

A College of Teachers should be established to allow a professional voice for teachers.

A lack of coherent professional development has been one of the key shortcomings of the present management of the teaching profession. Although the pressures created by the addition of extra pupils will make it difficult to fund a comprehensive programme of professional development during the next decade there should be funding for a number of hours of personal development each year. The present five days allocated for school-funded training should be used for development related to the needs of the school, and should be linked to the use of accredited trainers. Teachers in their first year of employment should be mentored and provided with a reduced timetable, as at present. In addition, provision should be made for the professional development of those either not currently employed but seeking work as a teacher or employed on temporary contracts. These groups should be offered five days paid training a year including travelling expenses.

In addition to the five in-school training days, teachers as professionals should be expected to undertake other forms of professional development. The College of Teachers should be responsible for research and development of the best practice in on-line learning building upon the experience gained with the TeachersTV experiment and current developments within both the higher education and the private sector. For teachers with more than five years’ experience, the State should be prepared to fund part-time Masters’ degrees in pedagogy. In addition, funding should be available for middle leadership training to meet the needs of schools.

All teachers should recognise the changes that technology has wrought on society over the past four decades and that methods of learning for all are not immune to such developments. Whether it is the infant with the ‘tablet’ they already think they know how to use when they arrive at school or the sixth former studying an open access course at Harvard alongside their ‘A’ levels, the notion of the role of the teacher is already being challenged. Elsewhere in this book the view of teachers as ‘facilitators’ of learning, partially, but not entirely, a secondary inspired notion, must cause everyone to reflect about how teachers are prepared for the learning environment, and the need for those teachers already in the profession to constantly challenge their thinking about teaching and learning.  We need a profession that is supported to be open and questioning about how to educate the next generation as well as constantly reflecting upon their practice in the classroom.

All teachers should have access to funds for professional development, and the College of Teachers should help devise suitable programmes to meet the needs of all teachers.

Children with special educational needs should have access to the very best learning that the teaching profession can offer. All too often at present that is not the case, and such schools often have higher vacancy rates and less well-qualified staff than schools in general. A funded programme of training for teachers that want to work with such pupils should be widely available, and managed on a regional basis. This programme would include provision of SENCO training and oversight of the provision of Educational Psychologists. It would also cover training for support for those working in Virtual Schools and learning centres.

After a number of years of teaching some classroom teachers wish to specialise in other areas such as guidance, both pastoral and career orientated, or in the wider role of a counsellor. Others teachers may wish to pass their knowledge on to the next generation of teachers as advisory teachers, advisers, or helping with the preparation of the next generation of teachers. Career opportunities are haphazard, and training for such positions unclear. The government should work with the College of Teachers to develop a career route for this important group of future leaders of the profession. Teachers can certainly play a more important part in the assessment of their pupils. The College of Teachers could work to create chartered assessors with the responsibility for more internal assessment and less dependence of the marking of outside markers whose judgements are constantly being challenged. If a new lecturer at a university can mark the critical paper in a the degree examinations of a final year student we ought to be able to trust a competent and trained teacher to achieve the same degree of integrity and objectiveness with their pupil’s work. Moderation would remain necessary, but the qualification of a chartered teacher assessor should be one that every classroom teacher should aspire to achieve. As a by-product it might reduce the cost of external examinations or even do away with the need for such an expensive system at sixteen now that the education participation age has been raised to Eighteen.

In a profession where two thirds of the teachers are female and half the profession is below the age of thirty-five, it is likely that a significant number of teachers will, at any point in time, either be on maternity leave or taking a career break. This group represent a valuable resource for our schools. However, their professional development is often neglected during their time away from teaching. It would seem a sensible investment to offer both ‘keep in touch’ arrangements, and the opportunity for formal professional development during any sustained period away from the classroom. One result of this might be that QTS, which is currently held for life once granted except in very limited circumstances, would only be retained on participation in approved professional development. Once relinquished QTS would only be regained following a period of certified re-training offered by a training provider.

Keep in touch and re-training opportunities for those taking time out of the classroom should be established to help those wishing to return after a career break to do so without any loss of expertise or seniority.

One major problem with the present system of training and employment is that apart from those training through School Direct Salaried scheme, and on Teach First, teachers are not guaranteed a job after qualification. This lack of a guarantee of work might not have been of concern when the State funded teacher preparation courses, but now that those not guaranteed jobs are required to fund their training through the payment of tuition fees of up to £9,000, and in some cases receive no bursary support, this may prove to be a disincentive to train as a teacher, especially in a buoyant economy. It is time to look at alternative arrangements that allow either a salary for all during training, as in many other graduate training programmes, or the repayment of fees for those who remain in teaching for more than a set period of time. While the latter option might seem the more appealing to the Treasury, it could well fall foul of equal opportunities legislation. The saving from not needing to train more teachers than required might well make the funding of a salaried scheme affordable, especially if the undergraduate route was abolished at the same time. Any shortfall in training numbers can be filled through returners and those entering teaching with overseas qualifications or from another sector such as further education.

There are many other workers employed in schools these days. Their need for training and professional development should not be overlooked. Indeed, although many possess professional and administrative skills in their own right, it is important for them to understand the context within which they work. Whether as ‘learning assistants’; clerical or administrative staff; or in other roles; they should be offered the opportunity for regular professional development. Indeed, some, especially learning assistants, may wish to eventually progress to become qualified teachers. The opportunity to progress in this manner should be an essential part of a professional development framework.

The challenge for any government is to provide a coherent framework for those seeking to enter the profession as well as for serving teachers within a rapidly changing environment of the governance of education. I reject the view that teachers can be recruited with the need for no training at all. Indeed, the term ‘teacher’ should become a protected professional term, and only be allowed for those with Qualified Teacher Status. There are plenty of other terms such as instructor, tutor, lecturer, mentor and even preceptor that can be used to help parents and pupils distinguish the status of those responsible for the education process. The choice for schools and their promoters would then be whether to remain independent or to accept the standards of teacher preparation required for funding set down by the State. It may well be that some of the present ‘free schools’ funded by the State might not accept the need for training. Particular issues arise where the schools, such as those following the Montessori methods wish to receive state funding. With QTS more narrowly defined than at present, it should be possible to create certification that allows for such possibilities.

In a society where schooling by the State is not mandatory but the default option a significant private sector has continued to flourish for a variety of reasons: indeed, it now represent a significant generator of foreign income for the country as well as often being a socially divisive factor in society, although the ability of parents of children at state funded schools to but private tuition shows that it is as much a matter of the gap between the richest and poorest in society as it is the structure of the school system. Nevertheless, private schools often recruit teachers trained at the public expense, just as consultants in the Health Service undertaking private work use knowledge gained from training and experience funded by the State. The move to schools working with trainees and then employing them at the end of their training as exemplified by Teach First and School Direct might help to reduce the direct cost to Society of training teachers for the private sector, but is unlikely ever to eradicate the practice. What is critical is to ensure that there are sufficient teachers to satisfy the overall demand as, when there has been a shortage, the private sector has the ability to buy the teachers it needs in a manner that publicly funded schools do not.   

Teacher should be a reserved occupational title only allowed to be used by those with current Qualified Teacher Status.

It is acknowledged that an educated society brings social, cultural, and economic benefits to a country. As a result, the development of the workforce in schools, and especially of the teachers, is something that cannot be ignored by a government. Like any good employer of a business with multiple worksites, standards of training need to be created across the system both to ensure good practice and to allow for the interchange of staff between different locations, not least when, for whatever reason, a workplace unexpectedly experiences difficulties. This does not require the government to conduct the training. At present, a partnership between schools and higher education offers the most effective solution for national coverage, especially while the framework for the governance of schooling is so disjoined, particularly in the vital primary sector of schooling. However, the SCITT model has shown that leadership of the partnership can work with either partner in control. What is important is awareness that training programmes should be tailored to the needs of those undertaking them with a view to a qualification that meets the needs of the schools and promotes the desire for continued professional development.

Not all those who seek to become teachers may be suitable. But, for those who do, we need to offer high quality training, effective transfer into employment, and the opportunity for professional development that will help create and sustain a world-class education system.

DfE announcement on a Saturday!

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The decision to announce both a new Institute of Teaching and the recommencement of the review of the ITT market, following a pause due to the Covid-19 pandemic, wasn’t something I expected to read this afternoon.

DfE announcements on a Saturday afternoon are rarer than hen’s teeth. So rushed seems the announcement on the recommencement of the ITT Review that it is unclear whether the statement that ‘The review is expected to report in summer 2020.’ Should have read summer 2021?

Anyway the announcement of,

‘A new Institute of Teaching is set to be established in England to provide teachers and school leaders with prestigious training and development throughout their career.

… with the Institute being the first of its kind in the world.’

DfE https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-institute-of-teaching-set-to-be-established

May raise some eyebrows and questions about hyperbole in places as far apart as Singapore and Ontario.

This idea for this new Institute doesn’t seem yet to have the structure of the Area Training Organisations that existed across the country in the post-war period or even of the short-lived regional structure for leadership training in the days before GRIST and its derivatives.

Indeed, what of the wonderful National College created under the Blair government only to be axed by the Conservatives?  Admittedly that started with senior leadership and then expanded into other areas? Has it been air-brushed out of history?

To claim that the new Institute ‘will revolutionise teacher training and make England the best place in the world to train and become a great teacher’ will raise the question in many minds of what have the Tories been doing for the past ten years of trying to create a school-led training system. Is this an acknowledgement of failure?

There is no way that I believe the present system of ITT, or ITE depending on your point of view, is anything but high quality, but there is room for innovation, not least around technology and learning, as I have written in a recent blog.

The numbers quoted in the announcement also seem suspect. There are around 40,000 trainees teachers each year, so 1,000 represents about three per cent of the total. A higher percentage, of course, if targets for recruitment are not met. 2,000 early career teachers is an even smaller percentage and no figures are provided for the essential development of middle leaders where a national programme has been sadly lacking.

Where will the existing Teaching Schools fit into this new order, and how will geographical gaps be filled? Who will have oversight, and will there be a National Director of Training and Development with the ear of the Secretary of State?

A cynic might say this was an attempt to end a run of bad news for the DfE and its Ministers, and an attempt to regain the initiative. If so, I hope what emerges really does help develop the teaching profession.

Perhaps the Secretary of State can start by changing the rules about employing unqualified people as teachers. There is, after all, no point in an Institute focusing on initial teacher programmes if academies are free to employ anyone as a teacher.

A better announcement would have been that the term ‘teacher’ had become a reserved occupation term only allowed to be used by those with QTS.

Should schools re-open next week?

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There is probably no ‘certain’ answer at this moment in time to that question, but there is a political decision to be made. By the time the answer is certain, the time for decision will have passed and whether by default or decision there will have been an outcome.

Learning versus transmission seems to be at the heart of the debate. If the new variant of covid hadn’t appeared, then the answer would have been simple: open primary schools and secondary schools for Years 11 and 13, although I think classroom subjects for Year 13 could be taught on-line rather than face to face.

However, with the more transmissible strain now dominant in many areas, the issue is possibly more complex for some. Closing schools will affect learning and create issues for parents in terms of childcare, especially where they cannot work from home. Can we overcome the loss of learning time as a Society, if we put our minds to it? After all, we have created new forms of learning, so ought we not to be able to identify ways of recovering essential learning? Much may depend upon making the learning attractive to the learners. Boring rote learning won’t work. Will we need a National Reading Recovery campaign and a similar one for numeracy once the pandemic is over?

The NHS is always under strain at this time of year and the weather forecasters are suggesting a few weeks of cold weather. The consequences of that sort of weather pattern for hospitals needs to be taken into account, since other ailments haven’t taken a holiday just because of covid. Then there is the backlog of other treatments, especially in-patient treatments that need ICU beds. Do politicians need to take these factors into account when weighing up the issue of schools re-opening?

Now it is clear that mass testing for all pupils won’t be in place next week, whatever was said before Christmas, is it sensible to bring back pupils into setting where transmission is likely to be high either person to person or via surfaces? I would like to know whether the latest variant of covid lingers longer on surfaces. If so, that might be a powerful argument for not re-opening schools, because however often surfaces are cleaned, there as potentially just too many of them, not to mention those encountered on the way to and from schools and colleges.

Personally, based upon the public knowledge available to me, I would not re-open secondary schools and further education colleges for the first two weeks of term while patterns of transmission after Christmas become clear. I would re-open primary schools, but allow pupils living in high risk households not to attend until we know more about transmission rates among different groups. This is where the focus on ‘recovery’ learning will be most important going forward.

Finally, there are the issues of the mental health of young people to be added into the equation along with the physical and mental welfare of all the staff and their families. In the end, any decision is better than none.

Update: 1800 on 30th December. Seems like I was mostly correct, although I didn’t foresee the closure of so many primary schools. Next question: can exams survive?

DfE announces a bit of history

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Last week, the DfE published the annual results of revenue related exports and transactional education activity in 2018. That now seems like a different world. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-revenue-from-education-related-exports-and-transnational-education-activity-2018

Still, 2018 was a good year for education experts, with even the Further Education sector reversing the downturn of previous years and experiencing upturns in both fee income and income from living costs: albeit only by small amounts. Still, this was the first upturn in FE exports since 2010, the year when I think the data for the time series was first established.

Overall, across all areas, there was a 10% increase in export activity and a slight fall of 0.8% in transactional education activity in 2018

Higher Education once again earned the lion’s share of the income, accounting for 69% of all exports and transactional education activity in2018.  This was higher education’s largest percentage share, and some 9% more than their share in2010.

Further Education and English Language Training have been the main losers of market share since 2010, although both recorded upturns is 2018. ELT increased its market share by one percent to eight per cent. However, FE still saw its market share remain at one percent in 2018.

Independent schools market share reduced from five to four per cent at the end of 2018, back to their share in 2010. However, this was largely due to the strong showing from the higher education sector during 2018.

Transactional education activity, where the exports are delivered overseas through ventures such as satellite campuses and overseas consultancy lost ground in 2018, falling back to only 9% of total activity.

Among sub-sectors, equipment sales were strong in 2018, but educational publishing failed to maintain the growth witnessed in 2017. Most of the higher education student growth was, perhaps not surprisingly, in the non-EU student sector of the market. The latter remained stable. What will happen to this income stream in 2021 and future years will be interesting to observe, but it might be 2025 before data are published that reveal any trend post Brexit.

These figures may well be the penultimate in a run of good years for exports. There is little reason to believe that 2019 will not have produced further growth, although EU higher education income might have slowed down. Come the 2020 data, the results might be different. Will new income from distance learning have been sufficient to offset losses elsewhere resulting for the covid pandemic affecting the second half of the year?

Perhaps now is the time to remove overseas students from the immigration statistics, at least for those on first degree courses, even if not for sub-degree and postgraduate level courses where monitoring might be more challenging?

Still, let’s congratulate a successful export drive in 2018, and hope that covid and Brexit between them create new opportunities rather than decimate an otherwise successful sector of the British economy, since these are UK numbers and not just for England.