Category Archives: technology

The Social Bank of Mum and Dad

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I am grateful to BBC Radio Tees for alerting me to this Report by the Prince’s Trust that highlights the work they have been doing across the United Kingdom for the past 40 years. The Report can be accessed at https://www.princes-trust.org.uk/about-the-trust/news-views/social-bank-of-mum-dad with the full report available by clicking on the side bar

According to the findings in the report; 44% of young people from poorer backgrounds say they didn’t know anyone who could help them find a job, compared to 26% of their more advantaged peers. Young people from poorer backgrounds are also less likely than their more affluent peers to have had help writing a CV, filling out a job application, preparing for an interview, or finding work experience or a first job thanks to “the social bank of mum and dad”.

  • While 20% of all young people polled found some work experience through their parents, only 10% of young people from a poorer background said they did
  • More than a quarter of young people from a poorer background (26%) think that people like them do not get good jobs, compared to 8% of their peers
  • More than a quarter of those from a poorer background (27%) feel their family “did not know how to support me when I left school”
  • More than half of young people (54%) “rarely” or “never” received help from their family with their homework.

The next generation are our untapped resource for the future of this country, even more so after the country’s decision to exit the EU.

So, what the BBC asked me, can parents do? I am sure many of you will have better ideas than me and will post them by way of advice. However, in the short time one has in a live radio interview I chose to dwell on the transfer from primary to secondary school. The importance of that transfer cannot be over-estimated and I wonder whether it is where many parents start to think they are less helpful and supportive of their children and live and schooling becomes more of a battle. Parents understand primary schools, as it is all about the basics of learning and easy to provide support. Secondary school is about subject knowledge and parents can quickly feel left behind. Good supportive schools recognise this trend and put mechanisms in place to help: but more could be achieved.

Building social capital is important and government has a role to play here by not downgrading careers education and work experience. How about some virtual work experience in areas of high unemployment to widen horizons with young people working on-line in successful companies. This might also help to show companies in successful parts of the country that there is this great untapped resource of able and enthusiastic young people waiting to be discovered in many areas of high unemployment. It is as much about moving employers out of their comfort zones and telling young people ‘to get on their bike.

Although it is worth noting that many young people that go to university do just that and willingly leave home. This may be because they know that they will be joining a community of like-minded young people. Can we learn something from that willingness to travel?

 

 

 

Counting the cost of Creativity

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There has been discussion this week around the possible consequences for creative subjects in schools as a result of the Tory Government’s push for more pupils to study the EBacc subjects. As there is no creative subject in the EBacc list, any push to widen the scope of that group of subjects could have a disastrous effect on those curriculum areas left out of the EBacc grouping.

Does it matter? Of course it does. While the idea of Progress 8 that was championed by the Liberal Democrat part of the former coalition recognised the worth of creative subjects, the present government clearly prefers geography to art and history to music and anything it seems to design and technology.

However, these creative art subjects and the associated performing arts subjects are an important part of both what makes England what it is and of our wealth generating industries. The latter is a fact it seems completely overlooked at the DfE, at least at ministerial levels. But, think of the earnings from our rich music culture that spans the gamut from popular to experimental. For a number of years I was invited to the Schools Prom every November and witnessed both a transformation in the range of music on offer and also in the diversity of schools encouraging a love of music in their pupils. Perhaps my most abiding memory was of a Norfolk Middle Schools marching round the stage of the Royal Albert Hall and containing pupils of all abilities. Do we really want to lose this heritage? Do we really want to ignore the possibility of enthusing those that could go on to create activities that support our national wealth in the future? Surely not.

The same arguments can be made for other subjects and especially, as I have pointed out before on this blog, for design and technology. Whether it been food preparation, sowing and textile design, electronics, carpentry or even the evolving use of 3D printing technology in new and creative ways, these are all important to generate enthusiasm in young people; have you read the piece on the BBC web site about using a 3D printer technology to create new food arrangements?  Even more importantly, these are areas of significant wealth generation and we impoverish future generations by not understanding this.

In the year we recognise the mid-point of the centenary of World War One, I don’t denigrate the importance of history, but merely observe that culture and creativity can be as important in the education of future generations.

As regular readers of this blog might expect, I am not just relying upon sentiment or even the economic arguments to make the case that these subjects are under threat, but have had a look at the TeachVac data. In the first six months of 2016, TeachVac has recorded a 24% fall in advertised posts for main scale teachers of art and design; a 17% fall in advertised posts for design and technology and an almost unchanged level in demand for teachers of music. Since TeachVac figures include both State Funded and independent schools it maybe that the decline in advertised posts is even greater in the State sector; we haven’t yet had time to drill down through the data.

To remove the creative subjects from our state secondary schools would be nothing short of a national disaster.

 

A new future

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Waking up to the news that the United Kingdom has voted to leave the EU is a disappointment. Oxford, along with cities such as Cambridge and Bristol, was one of the few places outside London to vote strongly in favour of remaining. However, I am not surprised by the overall result. My previous post, on the speech by The Chief Inspector about the failure of our education system to provide an education for all, recognised the deep gulf that has opened up in England and parts of Wales between those that have gained the most across the board from the past half century and those that feel impoverished by the direction of travel the country has taken. This feeling of impoverishment and associated alienation has nothing to do with any economic benefits the region where they live may have received.

The irony is that those voting to leave the EU could in some measure be dependent upon those that voted to remain if the economic miracle those advocating leave believe can happen is now to come about. The entrepreneurial success of parts of the country must be broadened and deepened. To that extent the aim of a northern powerhouse is a good move, but 20 years too late.

On the more narrow focus that is of direct interest to me, I wonder what the outcome of the referendum will mean for the staffing of our schools. One scenario has lots of young graduates, the group that voted mostly strongly to remain in the EU, looking for teaching posts overseas. At the same time, the unknown number of EU trained teachers working in schools across England may re-consider their position here and also look either to return home or seek another post overseas. On the other hand, those from EU countries where unemployment is still high and where teaching pays less than it does here may wish to remain, if allowed to do so. In any teacher shortage that might develop it must not be the least advantaged that suffer the most, for access to a high quality education remains a universal right regardless of the political grouping to which we belong as a country.

A fall in sterling will be good news for independent boarding schools offering an education to those from across the globe, as it will become cheaper to study in Britain. For the same reason, universities may find attracting students from overseas slightly easier, although presumably once Britain leaves the EU all students from overseas will pay the same in fees.

Personally, I will continue to fight to ensure that Britain continues as an outward looking, tolerant and liberal society where Human Rights remain important. Education plays a large part in achieving this goal and it must be protected in any of the possible hard times ahead. I do not want to become a member of a vassal state of either the USA or China, instead of a full-member of the EU, should these superpowers use any period of economic uncertainty to harvest UK assets at a bargain price.

 

 

Computing in schools

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Did you know that computing was part of the EBacc? I am sure you did. However, not all MPs appear to as clued up, as the evidence published last week as part of the House of Commons Science Select Committee report on the ‘Digital Skills Crisis’ revealed. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmsctech/270/270.pdf

Since the MP unaware that you could study computing as part of the EBacc is a member of the Scottish Nationalist Party, she can perhaps be forgiven for not knowing the intricacies of the education system in England.

Whether the chair of the Committee should have allowed the evidence from the Royal Society of Scotland to appear in the Report as if it was from The Royal Society may be a less forgivable oversight (paragraph 59). I also am slightly perplexed about the reference in the Report to the fact that, ‘The Government has set targets for recruiting teachers in Maths and Physics’ and the requirement from the Committee that ‘They should also make a similar pledge for Computer Science.’ To the best of my knowledge, Computer Science has been treated in the same way as other Ebacc subjects in the 2016 allocation of training places. But, perhaps the Committee knows something the rest of us don’t.

The Committee held an oral evidence session with some witnesses from the school sector. The report notes that, ‘Not only do just 35% of ICT teachers have a relevant qualification but the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) calculated that 22% of IT equipment in schools is ineffective.’ They also noted that ‘Ofsted has concluded that the impact of digital technology on education standards has been varied, reflecting different levels of investment, access to high quality broadband and teacher support.’ They also interviewed the Schools Minister, Mr Gibb.

However, they didn’t seem to notice that computer science and its predecessor IT has failed to meet the Teacher Supply Model number set in each of the last three years and seems set to do so again this year. Perhaps the Science Committee might like to go on and hold a joint inquiry with the Education Select Committee so that can consider the evidence about IT and computing in schools in more detail. They might like to ask how schools are coping with the digital divide? I am sure a lack of access to IT resources whether because of poverty or through being located in a rural area without fast broadband speeds must hold back social mobility.

I agree with the Committee that the digital economy is of great importance to the future prosperity of the country. After all, TeachVac, our free recruitment site, depends upon high quality programming skills for its success. Hopefully, we can increase the number and quality of those teaching the subject to ensure every child is both taught the subject effectively and motivated to see its wider place in future society.

Finally,a little grumble, the fact that the Committee held its last evidence session in the spring, but it has taken three months for the Report to appear is slightly depressing. I do hope it doesn’t mark a trend among Select Committees to sit on evidence for long periods before producing their reports.

Teacher Supply, a longer-term issue

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According to a Local Government Information Unit bulletin issued on Saturday, and citing a report in the Birmingham Post that was apparently based upon Office of National Statistics data, the number of people aged 0-14 in England will increase by 951,200 between 2014 and 2039. This will take the number from 9.7 million to 10.6 million. If anywhere near accurate, these figures will mean that there is likely to be no let-up in the demand for more teachers for most of the next quarter century.

The ONS will release some more data at the end of June but, whatever happens, the demand for more teachers is not likely to be spread evenly across the country. At present, ONS projects the following increases for the different regions of England.

Percentage increase in population 2024 on 2014

Region 0 to 15 years old
England 8.7
London 14.9
South East 8.8
East Midlands 7.7
East 10.9
South West 9.2
North East 4.0
Yorkshire and The Humber 4.9
West Midlands 6.9
North West 5.3

This table is very much in line with the findings of our TeachVac www.teachvac.com vacancy tracking. Both in 2015 and so far in 2016, London has had the largest percentage of vacancies per school for classroom teachers of any region, followed by the South East and East of England regions. There have been far fewer vacancies registered in the regions of the north of England.

If the population of London and the Home Counties is going to continue to increase, then governments, whatever their political complexion, will need to solve the staffing crisis in these regions as well as finding sufficient space for the extra pupils. Finding locations for new schools will be a real challenge and it might in extremis require building on existing playgrounds, with new outdoor space being located on the roof. There are precedents for such schools in inner city locations, although they probably aren’t ideal. I recall visiting one such inner city high school in New York located in a former office building that had no windows on several of the upper floors where the classrooms were located.

But, the longer-term strategy for teaching such large numbers of pupils also needs to be addressed by government. The issue is not, will they be taught, because somehow they will be. But, will it be to a standard we require to maintain our position in an evolving world economy? Schools in London have made great strides in achievements this century, it would disappointing to see that progress stall and even worse to see it go into reverse with falling standards just because there were insufficient appropriately trained and qualified teachers.

Whether the solution is a longer working life, more late entrants into teaching as career changers living in London already won’t face a problem of where to live or the more advanced use of technology and private study for older students is all open for discussion.

What is not a matter for debate is the need to take action for the longer-term in a strategic fashion. The first step might be identify a regional commissioner group for London and the surrounding areas.

 

 

New free job portal from Teachvac

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Two years ago I helped start TeachVac. Today, TeachVac, the free web site when schools can log vacancies for teachers and teachers and trainees can indicate their job preferences, all for free, takes another step forward.

I am delighted that TeachVac has today launched a free job portal for those schools that don’t have a vacancy page on their own web site. This will be of most interest to primary schools, since most secondary schools do have a page for vacancies. You can find it by visiting www.teachvac.com and clicking on the details of the portal in the middle box.

The free TeachVac job portal essentially creates a special page with the school name and details of vacancies entered by the school. After a set period of time, usually 14 or 21 days, the job is removed automatically. If the position hasn’t been filled the school will need to re-enter the vacancy. Teachers matched with the vacancy are directed to an email supplied by the school where they can request full details and any necessary application form.

At present the portal is only for teaching posts but, if demands by schools requires, it can be extended to cope with all types of non-teaching vacancies including teaching assistants, administrative staff and others types of post. We can even configure it to offer details of School Direct training posts if there is the demand from schools.

When a school with a portal decides to add a vacancy page to its own web site it is a simple exercise either to close down the portal or a school can just let any jobs listed expire and be deleted by the system leaving the portal remaining as inactive.

Teachvac has a free helpline. The two most common questions are: we are trying to register and what is a school’s URN and is it really that simple? The answer to the first is that it is not the same as a school’s DfE number and if a school doesn’t know their URN the team at TeachVac will help them locate it quickly and easily. The answer to the second is, yes it really is that simple to either register a job as a school or register a requirement for a vacancy as a teacher or trainee. And for everyone, it is a free service. All that we ask is that users spread the word to others. Word of mouth reduces the marketing costs and so far it seems to be working as 2016 vacancies and numbers looking for jobs is showing impressive returns over 2015.

TeachVac covers all schools in England, both state funded and private, but doesn’t yet go beyond the borders. That’s something we are looking at for the future to see whether there might be a market for a TeachVac service for international schools. Teachvac is also looking at the further education sector as another area for expansion.

 

Geopolitics and macroeconomics

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Whether the world is a more dangerous place this January isn’t for me to say. However, to balance my short-term views about teacher supply problems I thought it worth thinking about what the combined effects of a downturn in China; tensions in the Middle East; falling oil prices and the possibility of rising interest rates might do to the longer-term teacher supply position.

An analysis of data over the past fifty years suggests teacher supply problems ease when the economy is subdued or in recession. Whether there is a direct link between these two facts may be arguable, but while there is a need to educate children there will be a need for teachers. Again, over the past fifty years, there have been massive strides in technology since the famous BBC programme of the late 1970s ‘The chips are down’ about the microprocessor revolution. Classrooms have adapted to make use of the new technology, but there has been no seismic shift away from traditional patterns of pupil teacher numbers. Indeed, in secondary schools over the past decade, pupil-teacher ratios have even improved, according to DfE data.

The recently reported growth in home schooling may be the first signs of a coming revolution, driven by parents no longer satisfied with the current model of schooling. Tablets, TVs and computers can provide more learning power than any school library of a couple of decades ago. What is needed is the means of instruction and the method of motivation to keep youngsters on task. How much more likely is that in a home environment than when youngsters are faced with the distractions caused by 25 or 30 other children: could learning me more focused and take less time in the home than the classroom?

No doubt, parents would still want children to socialise in order to learn team games, sing together and undertake risky science experiments under the control of a qualified person. However, that might mean only sending your child to school for a couple of days a week. Such a shift might also boost the market for tutors as parents just buy in specific skills where their offspring are facing issues with learning.

As the BBC recently highlighted, the spirit of enterprise is abroad in Britain at the present time. I am sure that there are many developers in both large companies and small start-ups eying what could be a lucrative market that has world-wide potential; some of which will be on display at BETT.

Such a shift in technology from a labour intensive to a technology driven learning process could have a profound effect on both the need for teachers and the spending by the State on education. However, in the short-term, the geopolitical and macroeconomic signals might suggest that if a downturn is coming then teaching might benefit from renewed interest as a career choice.

As I have said at several conferences recently, I am one of the only people that might see benefits from a slowdown in China, even if it only reduces the inflow to that country of UK teachers to work in the growing international school market.

However, with the allocations for 2016 entry into teacher preparation courses set and fewer places available on non-EBacc subjects than in 2015, none of this will matter before 2017 unless, as in 2009, any downturn in the world’s economy bring back greater numbers of returners into teaching: such an effect could dramatically alter the picture of teacher supply, even for 2016, were it to come about.

An end to vocational courses in secondary schools?

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I wonder at what point the national employer organisations will wake up to the current trends in the staffing of vocational subjects in our secondary schools. The recent announcement of the bursary levels for those entering teacher preparation courses in 2016 show the removal of the bursary from design and technology students with a 2:2 degree; it was previously £4,000 for such students. This is despite the collapse in trainee numbers in recent years.

Now TeachVac, our job board for teachers, http://www.teachvac.co.uk has recorded far more vacancies in the subject than there are trainees this year, so cutting the bursary is somewhat odd.  Even odder is the absence of Business studies from the bursary list. This is despite TeachVac showing far more vacancies than there were trainees in 2015, with shortages reported almost across the country.

Despite the likely increase in teachers’ salaries in 2016, the funding for School Direct salaried places in design and technology, along with many other subjects, has been held at 2015 levels; a cut in real terms.

However, the effect isn’t ’s severe as it is in primary, where the funding per School Direct salaried trainee has be reduced by between a third and 40% depending on the location of the school. Along with the cuts in the primary bursary, this seems like a high risk strategy that is presumably based on an improvement in recruitment in 2015. Changing the rates from year to year can cause a yo-yo effect that isn’t helpful to either training providers or schools that recruit NQTs. TeachVac staff will be monitoring the UCAS data for evidence of the effects of these changes on the primary sector now we also handle primary vacancies as well as secondary ones.

Returning to the issue of staffing secondary subjects that might feed through employees to the wealth creating part of the economy in the future, I wonder whether the cutbacks are because Ministers only really care about the EBacc subjects and don’t understand the value of early encouragement to think of the value of design and technology for careers in manufacturing, textiles, electronics, the catering and food trades and many other possible jobs not yet imagined.

Perhaps there is a policy to direct such ‘applied’ subjects to 14-18 studio schools and UTCs leaving other secondary schools to concentrate on non-vocational science and art subjects for those wanting to enter higher education at eighteen? This might be a back-door method of creating a selective school system for the 14-18 age group, with most of the new schools being aligned to the further education sector. Of course, it could all be a mistake, and the next ITT census, due out later this month, will show my worries about recruitment in these subjects are a mere chimera.

Along with these subjects that are obviously out of favour, both art and music and the humanities other than pure history and geography don’t seem to feature in the forward thinking of this government. I wonder it is time to ask what the government is trying to achieve with its teacher supply policy for the remainder of this parliament. Perhaps it knows something about the health of the economy we don’t.

Thank You

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Earlier today this blog welcomed its 25,000 visitor in just under three years. The average visitor looks at just fewer than two of the posts meaning that views are very close to the 50,000 mark. As might be expected with a blog of this nature, the majority of visitors are from the United Kingdom; more than 43,000 of the views were by Uk based visitors. The United States comes second, with almost 1,500 views and the EU and Australia are third and fourth in the list.

Overall, someone in each of 117 countries has viewed the blog. I was especially pleased to welcome a recent viewer from Malawi, one of the poorest countries in Africa but a stunning place to visit if you are ever looking for an interesting holiday destination. There have been two visitors from China, one after I mentioned in a previous review that we hadn’t had a visit. Interestingly, the number of visitors from both Macau SAR and Hong Kong SAR has been higher than from mainland China.

At one point there was a flurry of visitors from Kazakhstan, but numbers have fallen away recently, even so they still come sixth in the country list by number of views.

The Middle East, French speaking Africa and some South American countries have still not provided a single visitor to the site, but give language issues that isn’t perhaps surprising. The most popular post attracted over 700 views in a single day after a mention in The Guardian. The post  More on made not born: how teachers are created has been viewed over 2,000 times since it was originally posted; not bad.

For those that like statistics and this blog has a healthy number of those, I write on average about ten posts a month and I aim for around 500 words; some seem to grow a bit beyond that length and a few are much longer for obvious reasons. This one might end up be a bit shorter.

I would like to thank all those that have registered a following; those that re-blog links to what I have written to their own followers and those that send in comments. These are helpful, authoritative and insightful and demonstrate the depth of knowledge out there among the readership of this blog. The internet is a truly wonderful development that has transformed out lives in so many ways.

There are, of course, many errors in the posts, mostly I hope of grammatical and spelling rather than of fact. The posts are often written in a hurry, and rarely take more than half an hour to compose. The exceptions to that rule are obvious, such as the submissions to other sources that I have posted here as well for interest and visibility to a wider audience.

I hope to go on tempting fate and writing for some time to come, especially as my specialist topic of teacher supply in England seems to be the topic of the term, so to speak.

So, once again, thanks for reading.

Time for radical solutions

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Secondary schools across England might well have been facing much greater issues over staffing their timetables for September than they are but for the syphoning off of cash into increased National Insurance and pension contributions.  While that decision to boost government finances may be a relief to both the Treasury and the DfE, since it both diminishes the size of any crisis and provides so much needed cash for the government, it doesn’t mean that there is any reason to relax.

As this blog has shown, 2016 is likely to be as challenging a recruitment round as was 2015, if not more so. At TeachVac,  www.teachvac.co.uk the free recruitment service, the average secondary school in London had placed more than six advertisements for classroom teachers since the start of 2015 and the end of June: some schools have placed many more.

This blog has long recognised that something has to be done to alleviate the growing pressure on staffing and the associated recruitment issues. At the start of 2015 I advocated a return to a ‘no fees’ policy for graduates, with the State once again paying the fees of those graduates opting to train as a teacher. So far, the government has been resistant to this proposal.

What else might be done? We know that there are a few subjects, physical education and history being the main ones, where there is some over-capacity emerging from training programmes. There is a need for a programme of post-training subject knowledge enhancement that might help some of these teachers secure employment in another subject. After all, they have shown a desire to become a teacher and undergone a training programme, often at considerable expense to themselves. Do we just abandon them to their fate or try to harness their potential?

We know that IT and business studies teachers are both in short supply. How about a one term conversion course to equip some of these teachers with subject knowledge. They have the knowledge to teach for their existing training so most of the time could be classroom based with some days spent turning the new knowledge into practical experience teaching classes. The whole program could be university or school-based.

I wonder if there is an IT company that might sponsor a group of 25 through a pilot programme as it is difficult to see what new steps the National College are taking to help reduce teacher shortages. Indeed, it is surely time for a management change at the top of that organisation if it once again fails to deliver as many trainees as a required having been warned of what was to come two years ago.

If the troops to teacher model has proved its worth, it is surely time to roll it out to a wider group of potential career changers or create a whole new programme to encourage teaching as a second career. For those with really long memories, we might even call it the TASC programme.