Missions still need funding

Posted on July 6, 2023 by John Howson

In February, Sir Keir Starmer outlined his five missions for the Labour Party – one wonders, will they appear on a pledge card, as once before – and the fifth one was ‘raising education standards’ according to a BBC report at the time Keir Starmer unveils Labour’s five missions for the country – BBC News

After a recent announcement about teachers, dealt with in my blog at Labour’s style over substance | John Howson (wordpress.com) came a Leader’s speech today on the subject of what the Labour Party would do about policy for education.

In reality, education seemed to mean schooling, skills and early years, if the press reports are to be believed. Interestingly, the BBC has now substituted the word ‘pledge’ for the term ‘mission’. An example of ‘word creep’, perhaps? Actually, it seems more like sloppy journalism if the text of the speech is to be believed, as it starts by referring to ‘mission’ not pledge. Read: Full Keir Starmer mission speech on opportunity, education and childcare – LabourList

At the heart of the speech seems to be these two questions

‘So these are the two fundamental questions we must now ask of our education system: are we keeping pace with the future, preparing all our children to face it?

And – are we prepared to confront the toxic divides that maintain the class ceiling?’

The speech was about class and opportunity as a means of raising standards. Sir Keir has clearly moved on form the famous ‘rule of three’ and now favour a five-point approach, so we had

Apart from the already announced increase in teacher numbers and the retention bonus, there was little about either how the new education age would be delivered or how it would be paid for. No pledge to level up post 16 funding, so badly hit under the present government.

Plans for Early Years

Oracy to build confidence

A review of the National Curriculum for the new digital age

The importance of vocational and work-related studies

Tackling low expectations

There was little for any progressive politician to take issue with in the speech, but little to demonstrate the drive to accomplish the fine words. Re-opening Children’s Centres will come at a price, as will changing the curriculum.

There was nothing to show how resources will be channelled into areas of deprivation and under-performance. Will Labour continue the Conservative idea of Opportunity Areas that do nothing for pockets of underperformance in affluent areas or will it revive the Pupil Premium introduced by the Lib Dems, when part of the coalition, ascheme that identified individual need, wherever it was to be found.

I think I still prefer the 2015 approach from the Liberal Democrats to end illiteracy within 10 years: something that can be measured, rather than the more nebulous ‘raising of standards’ offered by Sir Kier.

Finally, from the Labour Party that introduced tuition fees, not a word on higher education and the consequence of raising standards on the demand for places. Perhaps Labour has still to reconcile the brave new world of skills and the place of universities in the new education landscape. With higher standards will come another class ceiling at eighteen?

Bad news for January vacancies

Posted on June 3, 2023 by John Howson

The May 31^st date for teacher resignations has come and gone. This year it has excited some interest in the press, as they have finally caught on to the thread this blog has been running ever since the DfE’s ITT census was published last September: namely, this this was going to be brutal recruitment round, and that there would not be enough teachers to meet the demands from schools seeking to fill vacancies for September 2023.

So far this week TeachVac has provided data for both tes and schoolsweek, and had calls on the subject from national newspapers as well. One group that has been conspicuously silent has been the House of Commons Select committee on Education that instituted an inquiry into teacher recruitment and retention on the 20^th March, and required evidence by the 21^st April: since when silence. I know that the Committee normally meets on a Monday, and that there have been a lot of Monday bank holidays, but not to even have considered whether any of the evidence was worth publishing for more than a month does seem a little strange.

Anyway, this blog isn’t about the Select Committee, but about schools faced with unexpected January vacancies. Last year, between the 1^st November 2022 and the end of December, secondary schools posted 7,857 vacancies according to TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk That was a 53% increase in the number of vacancies recorded during this period when compared with the same period in 2021. Geography teachers were particularly in demand.

Whether in the autumn of 2023 it is the 7,857 vacancies of 2022 or just the 5,136 of 2021, schools will struggle to fill these vacancies, regardless of the subject. Some schools will struggle more than others. Indeed, previous analysis by TeachVac of the data, as reported on this blog, has shown that secondary schools with high percentages of pupils on free school meals tend to place more adverts for teachers than either private schools or state schools with low numbers of pupils claiming free school meals.

What can be done to help? If, as seems likely to be the case, there are more primary school teachers looking for jobs this year than there are posts available, could there be a one-term conversion course established for the autumn term, along the lines of the subject conversion courses for those lacking the full qualifications to enter ITT in a particular subject.

The primary to secondary course would be different in that the teachers would be qualified. For such a course to work the teachers would probably need to be paid a salary that made it worth their while taking part in the course. If the DfE wanted to recoup their costs they could offer schools a teacher that completed the course for the price of a recruitment advert or the amount a school would spend with an agency to find a teacher.

Such teachers could teach Key Stage 3 based upon their A level subjects and release existing teachers to cover Key Stages 4 & 5, and examination groups left without a teacher by the vacancy created or indeed left unfilled from September.

There is little time to organise such a programme, but the alternative is to saddle schools with the need to spend lots of cash chasing teachers that aren’t there in vain attempts to fill their vacancies.

Note: As a director of TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk I am an interested party in the operation of the recruitment market. However, TeachVac’s £500 offer for listings of all vacancies for 15 months until August 2024 is substantially cheaper than other sites, especially for non-state schools that cannot access the DfE’s job board.

Special Offer from TeachVac: £400 for all teaching jobs

Posted on June 1, 2023 by John Howson

TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk has launched its early bird rate card for 2023/24. Subscribing schools pay one fee for all their vacancies to be listed on TeachVac from June 2023 to the end of August 2024. Sign up your school today.

TeachVac is offering 15 months of matching all vacancies for one fee of just £500 for a secondary phase school, discounted to just £400 for early payment.

Primary schools pay £75, or just £50 for the one yearly payment if made now.

Nine years of experience and extensive use of AI allows TeachVac to offer all schools; both independent and state schools this offer which is substantially cheaper than other recruitment routes.

For groups of schools and agencies there are special rates.

Schools using agencies can benefit from the agency rate if their agency is registered with TeachVac.

Why use TeachVac?

As the leading monitor of the labour market for teachers – NfER used TeachVac data in their 2023 annual survey of the labour market for teachers and both tes and SchoolsWeek also consult TeachVac when they want information about the labour market for teachers – TeachVac has unrivaled data on the job market.

Schools that use TeachVac’s vacancy matching service can access information that enables them to assess the state of the market for new entrants including monthly updates on this blog.

Recruitment for both the January and September 2024 rounds are going to be challenging, parlty because of a shortage of new entrants into the profession in a wide range of secondary sector subjects.

If you need more information or would just like to chat about the offer from TeachVac then email the team at enquiries@teachvac.co.uk or telephone 01983 550408

£10,000 to attract overseas teachers

Posted on May 29, 2023 by John Howson

There has been a lot of chatter across social media about the government’s offer of a £10,000 tax free relocation scheme for overseas students starting ITT in certain subjects, and teachers in these subjects being offered a similar package if they will come and work in England. These incentives are to help to overcome the dire shortage of teachers in many subjects that has been well documented in the posts on this blog. There is now even a letter in The Times newspaper on the subject.

Concerns about the incentive schemes range from the issue of stripping out teachers from countries that need them even more than we do. This theme rarely, if ever, looks at whether those countries are training sufficient, not enough or even too many graduates for the local labour market. Then, there is the argument, as in The Times, that teaching is now a global occupation, as it is, but that schools in England make it difficult for those that have worked overseas to return to teach in England. That is a problem the government could fix immediately, and not by offering cash payments.

The DfE could establish a recruitment agency alongside its job board and hire well respected headteachers to interview would-be returning teachers, and certify them as suitable for employment in England. These applicants could then be matched with vacancies on the DfE job board placed by state school and TeachVac for independent school vacancies, and their details forwarded to the school.

If the schools did not take the application forward, they could be asked to explain why these teachers were not short-listed for interview or, if interviewed, not appointed. The feedback could be used to help develop the scheme, if necessary, by offering appropriate one-term conversion courses. An autumn term course, offering say £10,000 to participants that complete the course, would mean these teachers would be available to fill January vacancies. These are vacancies where schools are really struggling each year to fill unexpected departures.

Such a scheme would also stop the return of headteachers flying off to Canada and Australia in search of candidates to fill their posts, as has happened in past periods of teacher shortage.

Expanding on the re-training scheme, the government might also look at the increasing pool of teachers trained for the primary sector that are unable to find teaching posts. Could a one-term conversion course to teach Key Stage 3 in a particular subject allow them to be employed by secondary schools, and release teachers with more subject knowledge to teach Key Stages 4 & 5?

The DfE has been happy to interfere in the recruitment market with its job board, but could be much more involved than just designing the current hands-off incentive schemes and other actions such as writing to ITT providers asking them to consider applicants from around the world. This letter was at the point in the ITT cycle where providers are mostly looking to keep places for home students in case they appear. After all, who knows when the next downturn in the economy will emerge and teaching will once again be a career of interest, a sit briefly was in the early days of the covid pandemic.

Some marks to the DfE for doing something, but there are more marks to be obtained for being even more creative in solving our teaching crisis.

Physics looks like a success story

Posted on May 22, 2023 by John Howson

This morning the DfE published the data on applications for postgraduate ITT courses up to the 15^th May 2023. As ever, the key table at this time of year is the number of offers that have been made to candidates. The good news is that the 469 offers in physics represents the highest number in May since 2015/16, albeit the total is only nine above that in May 2021. Still, we must celebrate good news where it is to be found. However, the 469 offers still means that the target for the year will likely be missed by a long way unless there is an influx of new graduates over the next three months wanting to train as a teacher of physics.

Elsewhere, design and technology as a subject is also doing well compared with the dreadful lows of recent years. Mathematics, geography computing, chemistry and modern languages are all subjects that have bounced back from last year’s incredibly low levels, but have yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels of offer for this point in the recruitment cycle.

There is less good news in the arts, with art, religious education, music and history recording their worst offer levels for a decade. Business Studies is also recording a low level of offers. Drama, classics and the catch-all of ‘other’ are also recording lower levels of offer than last year.

Both physical education and history that have provided a buffer of new entrants through over-recruitment in the past seem less likely to do so this year. Indeed, history with only 721 offers – the lowest number of offers in May since before 2013/14 – might end up being classified as a shortage subject for the first time in recorded memory.

Applications for primary courses remain subdued with 33,392 applications compared with 35,401 in May 2022. Overall, candidate numbers were 32,481 this May, compared with 28,977 in May 2022. On the face of it, this is also good news. However, ‘Rest of the world’ applications are up from 2,310 in May 2022 to 5,781 this May and those from the EEA from 411 to 485. The 3,545 extra applications from these two areas outside of the United Kingdom may account for all the 3,500 additional applications this May compared with May 2022. Certainly, there are fewer applications from the London area this year. However, there are more applications across most of the north of England and the Midlands.

Young new graduates are still not being attracted to teaching in the same numbers as previously. Applications from those age 21 or under are still lower than in May 2022, as are applications form those age 22. It is not until the 25-29 age-group that the upturn in applications becomes apparent. The decline in applications for primary courses may be reflected in this trend to fewer young applicants to teaching.

Perhaps related to the geographical distribution of applications is the increase in rejections; up from 22,136 in May 2022 to 33,580 in May 2023. Numbers actually ‘recruited’ have fallen from 1,519 to 1,102 this May. However, perhaps because of the many bank holidays, the number of applications awaiting provider decisions has increased sharply. Next month should provide a clearer picture about the trend in ‘offers’ for September 2023.

Despite the limited good news in some subjects this recruitment round looks as if it will be another one where targets are missed and schools recruiting for September 2024 will again face a challenging labour market unless the STRB report and the rumour of a 6.5% pay award boosts recruitment over the next three months.

Cut recruitment costs

Posted on May 17, 2023 by John Howson

TeachVac is currently receiving a number of calls from schools that are finding either very few or no responses to their adverts for teaching posts. This is not a surprise to me because this blog has been predicting a very challenging recruitment round in 2023 ever since the DfE published its ITT census in December of 2022.

However, I imagine it must be galling to a school leadership team to have handed over thousands of pounds for recruitment advertising and not to have received a single response to an advert. TeachVac was founded on the principle that modern technology could reduce prices dramatically. Up until this year, schools have often ignored the cost of advertising on the grounds that their recruiter delivered results. Not anymore.

TeachVac has been offering secondary schools a three-month deal of £125 for unlimited vacancies during the three months that covered the key recruitment season. This offer is still available at www.teachvac.co.uk

For schools thinking about their recruitment budget for the next school year starting in September, TeachVac will offer secondary schools the same package as this year; £500 for unlimited matches for all teaching jobs advertised during the year.

As an incentive, secondary schools signing up in June will only pay £400 if they pay on sign-up or £500 if invoiced in August. Primary schools continue to pay £75 for the year. Groups of schools can benefit from further discounts depending upon the volume of vacancies and the number of schools in the grouping.

Currently, TeachVac also has rates for agencies and other non-school advertisers wanting to match their teaching jobs with TeachVac’s database of jobseekers. Rates start from as low as £3 per vacancy registered, with users identifying the specific local authority area where the school with the vacancy is located and £10 for matches across a government region such as London or the South East. Matches are made for 21 days or until the closing date for the vacancy.

TeachVac’s database of registered users is growing by the day. As a ‘closed’ system users need to register to be matched with vacancies as they are posted. This means that TeachVac has an accurate count of registered users. The basic service remains free to teachers seeking a job.

TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk invites schools to discuss any specific needs beyond the basic service offered, including the wider placement of vacancies on social media, and advertorials about the benefits of working in the school.

TeachVac has a wealth of information on the job market, and can produce reports tailored to the needs of MATs; local authorities; dioceses or others interested in the working of the labour market.

Unlike the DfE site, TeachVac’s closed system does not muddle up non-teaching and teaching posts and also offers teachers the chance to see job opportunities across both state and private sector schools in one place.

TeachVac is backed by eight years of operation and staff with 40 years of knowledge of the labour market for teachers. It is also UK owned.

Four-day week for teachers?

Posted on May 15, 2023 by John Howson

A Labour MP has called for a four-day working week to be introduced across the public sector.

Lib Dem-run South Cambridgeshire District Council’s cabinet will meet today to approve the continuation of the trial for all desk-based staff as well as extending it to cover caretakers and binmen.

These are just two of the headlines from an article that I read this morning. What would be the implications for teachers of the introduction of a four-day week? The answer depends upon whether the same amount of face-to-face contact with pupils was maintained as at present and whether that was contact time spread over four or five days? What effect would four longer school days have on pupils, especially younger pupils? After all, some early years settings already offer wrap around care that is much longer than the traditional school-day.

What would the psychologists and those that study brain development in children have to say about putting five days of work into four? Perhaps a model would develop of four days of taught time and the fifth for ‘homework’ or supplementary activities.

On the plus side, parents also working a four-day week would have an extra day with their children: on the downside, parents whose working week did not coincide with the school four-day week would have to deal with the need for extra childcare.

Any change would come with a cost both to individuals and to the State. If there wasn’t sufficient funding, schools might be tempted to cram the teaching into four days and use the fifth day to generate income from their school sites and playing fields.

In a sector struggling to recruit enough teachers at present, would a four-day week make the profession more or less attractive to potential teachers. Certainly, if the bulk of graduate careers moved to a four-day week, teaching, already operating an employer-driven form of flexi-time, might be unattractive without some other boost to conditions of work.

A four-day working week might be a real challenge to the private school sector, where the additional costs would most likely have to be passed on to parents through increased fees. An increase of this magnitude might drive more parents back into the state sector, upping the cost of state education to the government. Add VAT on to the costs, and such numbers switching might increase still further.

During the Corbyn era, Labour proposed four additional bank holidays for workers; all during school holidays, so teachers would have seen no benefit from them. The implications for the teaching profession and others working in schools of the widespread introduction of a four-day working week do need to be considered.

However, I don’t think that the present model of schooling will continue as it has for the past 150 years. The AI revolution may well turn out to be as profound for society as the microchip revolution that started in the 1970s and transformed the world of work beyond recognition in many areas, but only to a limited degree in schools.

Technology and its interaction with the process of schooling has further to go in the future. Perhaps the pressure for a four-day working week for humans might be the catalyst for major changes in schooling?

Is the job boom for teachers ending?

Posted on May 3, 2023 by John Howson

After three months of record numbers of vacancies for teachers being recorded by TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk April saw something of a slowdown in the pace of advertised vacancies. No, there wasn’t an overall decline compared with the record set for April in 2022, but the rate of increase, as the table makes clear, was less then during the first three months of 2023. Nevertheless, the monthly total of 8,557 was a new record for the period since 2018, the year when TeachVac first started analysing monthly trends in vacancies.

	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023
January	3582	4818	6497	2079	6269	7807
February	3010	4174	6318	3896	4628	9056
March	4215	6185	6811	6039	10516	12289
April	4777	6022	4432	5110	8461	8557
May	6327	7845	4375	6741	14211
June	2223	3296	1886	2795	5968
July	612	908	580	705	1812
August	377	390	287	315	794
September	1772	2718	1956	2960	4711
October	2569	3745	2232	3131	5106
November	2305	2897	1977	3392	5063
December	1382	2090	1214	2177	3112

Source: TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk

There may have been special factors restricting the number of vacancies in April this year. The holiday period always has an effect on the April vacancy numbers and this year there may have been an effect due to the industrial action affecting many schools.

The interesting question is what will vacancies be like during May in 2023? Traditionally, May is the peak month for classroom teacher vacancies in the secondary sector. It is too early to predict what will happen in 2023, and the effect of the coronation and the extra bank holidays in addition to the hardening of the industrial unrest in the profession might affect the profile of vacancies this month.

Nevertheless, schools do need to be fully staffed for September, and there are fewer new entrants than in recent years, as this blog has pointed out in recent posts. Should serving teachers decide to quit, in greater numbers than last year, for whatever reason, then vacancies will remain buoyant. But, should the effect of the cost-of-living crisis and increased rents and mortgages in particular deter teachers from leaving, especially if they think that in doing so, they might miss any one-off payment for back pay, then perhaps the 14,000 recorded vacancies of May 2023 might not be bettered this year.

Within the overall national picture there are examples to be found of both significant increases such as for IT teachers in London, although that was balanced by a decrease in demand for such teachers from schools across the South East. Maths teachers were in demand in the North Wet, but not in the North East during April, and Science teachers were wanted in the Yorkshire and The Humber region, but less so in the West midlands than in April 2022.

Demand for primary classroom teachers was weak in April. Leaving aside the special circumstances of April 2020, the recorded vacancies were the lowest seen since before 2018 across England as a whole, with demand across the South East being especially weak this April.

Anyone interested in more granular data by local authority or other filter is welcome to ask for a special report from TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk Prices are reasonable and include a breakdown by state and private schools as well as by academies and maintained schools.

Warning signs on ITT recruitment

Posted on April 24, 2023 by John Howson

The DfE is holding a webinar for teachers looking for a job this afternoon. I suspect that it may well be full or primary teachers and trainees, plus some history and PE teachers. Anyone else still looking for a teaching post for September either has only just started or may need more than a webinar to help them find a job. TeachVac www.teachvac.couk along with other services does offer one to one advice sessions.

However, based upon the applications data for 2023 postgraduate courses released today, the DfE might be better advised chasing up more applicants for next year. April can be a tricky month to assess the status of the applications round for any year because of Easter and other faith festivals. However, some trends are becoming clear.

The increase in applications, as reported previously, is being driven by an increase from those recorded as from the ‘rest of the world’. Thus, of the 2,601 recorded increase in applicants compared with April last year, some 2,014 are shown as from ‘rest of the world’.

The danger is that this increase is masking some worrying trends. The number of applicants under the age of 25 continues to be below the number recorded last year by around 400 applicants, or more than 2%.

More concerning are the nine secondary subjects where offers are at their worst level since before 2016/17. Of the other secondary subjects, most are still below the offers at April in the 2020/21 cycle. Only geography and design and technology are back to offer levels in earlier years. For geography it is the best April since 2018/19, and for design and technology, the best since 2016/17, although even at the current level the target won’t be met for this year.

The sciences and modern foreign languages are the subjects where the greatest improvements in offers can be identified. So, perhaps the bursary and scholarships are making a difference. However, there is not the data to see the extent to which these extra offers are being made to ‘home students’ or those from overseas.

The increase in applicants is significantly affecting universities, faced with nearly 8,000 more applications so far this round: a 20% increase in workload. The total number of applicants rejected has increased from 3,727 in April last year to 5,612 this April. Nearly 300 more applicants have also withdrawn their applications.

Another worrying sign is the decline in applicants domiciled in London and the South East regions where demand for teachers is always the highest.

Unless there is an increase in home applicants over the next couple of months this round is beginning to look as if the outcome will be grim for providers trying to fund courses with limited numbers of students, and for schools seeking teachers in September 2024 and January 2025.

Hopefully, the resolution, when it comes, of the pay and conditions dispute between the teaching associations and the government will include provisions to encourage more graduates to choose teaching as a career. Paying their fees might be a useful concession.

Could everyone study mathematics to 18?

Posted on April 18, 2023 by John Howson

Are there enough teachers of mathematics to allow all 16-18 year olds to be taught the courses required by the Prime Minister? Not surprisingly, the teacher associations state that in the middle of a teacher recruitment crisis then there certainly are not enough teachers. Are they correct?

Well, as a famous radio personality of the 1950s once said, ‘it depends upon what you mean by’. In this case it depends upon what you mean by a teacher of mathematics? The first problem is that those in the 16-18 year old age-group divide into four: those in the school sector; those in further education; those in apprenticeships or other work environments and finally the NEET group, not in employment, education or training for one reason or another. Some of these, such as the small group in custody could receive some maths education, but most, by the nature of the category, would be outside any scheme.

However, let’s concentrate on the school sector. Could adding perhaps two hours a week to the curriculum of those in Years 12 and 13 be staffed? The obvious answer is that yes it could be. After all, any teacher can be required to teach any subject to any year group while QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) remains just that, a certification to teach, not a curriculum limited certification as I have long advocated. Additionally, academies don’t even need to employ staff with QTS, so they could hire retired engineers or undergraduates from a local university interested in earning a bit of cash to support their studies.

With the Oak Academy, schools might just sit the students in a room and show them pre-recorded learning modules, especially if no assessment was required at the end of the course. After all, discipline shouldn’t be an issue with this age group that are still in schools.

Of course, schools would expect some more funding from the government for putting on more courses, even if they reduced other teaching hours so as to keep programme levels at the same overall package length for students.

The government has been developing strategies to improve the teaching of mathematics in schools with more maths hubs and CPD available, that will have made a difference to the skill set of the teaching force, but probably only a small impact.

More importantly is the number of new teachers, where there are far fewer in training than in recent years.

2013/14	2014/15	2015/16	2016/17	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23
2125	2170	2450	2545	2450	2174	2145	2792	2671	1834

The ITT Census number of 1,834 is by far the lowest for over a decade. With STEM subject trainee numbers also being lower, there is support for the position being taken by the teacher associations.

Even if the mathematics was in fact statistics and problem-solving father than pure mathematics, it seems likely that there would not be sufficient teachers to staff any normal method of delivery. Might this be a time to consider the use of technology in delivery of the curriculum?

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Category Archives: technology