Category Archives: technology

Is ‘A’ Level Physics too easy?

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This is a silly question, but you might not think so looking at the revised data published by the DfE on the 2022 results for STEM subjects. A level and other 16 to 18 results: 2022 (revised) – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

If you look at the percentages gaining the top two grades of A* and A grade, then you might be misled into reaching this conclusion. After all, only 34.4% of those taking biology achieved those grades, compared with 39% in Physics and 38.6% in Chemistry.

The answer lies by also looking at the data for Further mathematics, where 67.8% achieved the top two grades. But there were only just over 14,000 entrants, and 99% achieved a grade from A* to E.

Subjects can try and match each other for difficulty, and so they should, as the amount of achievement needed to achieve the same result should be proportional to the effort required. However, that approach cannot compensate for entry policies. Some subjects seem to have more open entry policies than others. The gateway may be at the start of the course, where only those likely to be successful are selected, as may be the case in Further Mathematics courses, or at the point of entry into the examination, where only those needing the subject for further study and likely to achieve a god grade are entered.

Assuming that computer studies isn’t that much more challenging to those that have studied it for two years than those studying physics for two years, it would seem computer studies has a longer tail than Further Mathematics.

Then there is the issue of teacher supply to consider. How far does their ability to attract staff result in the higher Average Point Score (APS) achieved by private schools over other institutions, and how far does the fact the general Further Education colleges have the lowest APS reflect their staffing or the students that they receive from schools, and the adults engaging in lifelong learning?

And why are the APS scores for ‘A’ levels lower in the Midlands regions than in London and the South East, where there is generally thought to be more of a teacher recruitment crisis. Could the greater incidence of private schools in the latter two regions be part of the answer?

The London Borough of Sutton and Buckinghamshire both rank amongst the highest placed local authorities for A level APS outcomes. Both have selective secondary education. However, Slough, also with selective secondary schools has a lower APS than either Surrey or Oxfordshire that are both non-selective local authorities, although with a significant number of private schools located within their boundaries.

Interpreting examination results isn’t easy, due to the multiple factors that affect the outcomes. Best wishes to the 2023 cohort as they enter the final lap before the start of their examination season. May the travails of the covid pandemic be behind them as they come to the final point of their school or college careers.

Are you paying too much to advertise a teaching vacancy?

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The most read blog post this month is the one from 2020 entitled ‘How much should it cost to advertise a vacancy?’ Teacher Recruitment: How much should it cost to advertise a vacancy? | John Howson (wordpress.com) So far, yesterday’s 10th birthday post comes in second highes, with 20 views as against the vacancy post that reviewed the publication of the tes company accounts for 2019.

Today, the tes group, now entirely shorn of it print heritage, released its accounts for 2021-22 to August 2022. The company, fronted by its UK management, is ultimately owned by Onex Partners V, part of the Canadian ONEX Group of equity investors. Their third quarter report for 2022 identifies an investment of $98 US in the Tes Global (“Tes”), an international provider of comprehensive software solutions for the education sector  18d46e0 f-a5b9-435a-a039-9849ef723683 (onex.com) page 9

So, our major teacher recruitment platform, now offering a much wider staff management service to schools, increased its UK (mainly England) turnover from £54 million to £68 million in the year to August 2022. How important both staff management and the UK are to the profit of ONEX can be determined form the following figures

Turnover             2022                     2021

UK                        £68.2 mn          £54.0 mn

Europe                £  2.9 mn             £ 2.6 mn

Rest of World     £  9.0  mn           £ 9.0 mn

Income

Staff

Management    £61.2 mn          £56.5  mn

All activities      £80.2 mn           £66.1  mn

TES accounts – see link above page 29

So, in the last school year the tes took £68 million pounds from UK schools, the bulk of the money for recruitment and staff management by subscriptions from schools. 84% of staff management revenue came from subscription income and, as the accounts note (page 2) this was a 26% increase in revenue, presumably as more schools and Trusts migrated to subscription packages from point of sale purchase of advertising. The profit for the operating year was £28.7 million compared with £2.3 million the previous year that was badly affected by covid.

The group values its software at £46 million. That leaves me wondering what the book value of TeachVac’s simple but effective job matching service should be? Perhaps the £3 million suggested by our advisers is a little on the mean side.

TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk costs less than £150,000 a year to operate. Being generous, it might cost £500,000 if operating on a similar cost model to the tes. The DfE job site probably costs a bit more, but we don’t actually know how much. The question for schools, MATs and the education sector is ‘How much of the money you are spending with the tes is for the downstream activities on staff management and how much for the job bord and matching service, and is it value for money?

Assume only 10% is for the matching, that could be £5-6 million of the subscription income after allowing for the tes turnover on Hibernia and other activities. TeachVac was established to demonstrate to the sector the cost-effective nature of modern technology over the former print advertising methods of recruitment. Readers can make up their own minds over value for money when comparing the £500 annual subscription to TeachVac that will reduce as more schools sign-up, and the cost of a subscription to tes.

ITT headlines hide a worrying message?

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Has the current wave of strikes in the public sector over pay affected applications to train as a teacher from graduates? On the basis of the data published today by the DfE Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2023 to 2024 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK (apply-for-teacher-training.service.gov.uk) the answer would appear to be in the negative, at least as far as the number of offers made and accepted up to 16th January 2023 are concerned when compared with the similar date in January over previous years.

Of course, January is still early in the annual recruitment cycle, and the trend over the next couple of months will be important in determining the outcome for the year as a whole. Such improvements as there are when compared with previous years do not mean targets will be reached with this level of applications, but that if the trend were to continue this year might not be as disastrous as the present cohort of trainees in many subjects.

However, computing is an exception, registering its worst ever January number of offers and acceptances. Interestingly, history is in a similar situation, but I assume that is due to greater control over offers than a real slump in applications. Interestingly, 55% of computing applicants, compared with 52% of history applicants, are recorded as ‘unsuccessful’, so there may be some more questions to be asked about how different subjects handle knowledge levels among applicants?

Overall, applicant numbers at 17.012 are just over 2,000 more than in January 2022. This means that applications are up from the 39,000 of January 2022 to nearly 45,000 in January 2023. Assuming the increase isn’t just down to faster processing of applicants, this must be considered as a glimmer of good news for the government. Even better news for the government, is that the bulk of the additional applications are for secondary subjects. Overall applications for the secondary sector are up from 20,254 last year to 25,063 this year, whereas applications for primary phase courses are only up from 18,300 to 18,824.

The bulk of the additional applications seems to have headed towards the higher educations sector, where applications are up from 18,000 to 22,00. Apprenticeship numbers are stable at just below 1,700, and applications to SCITT courses have increased from 5,400 to 5,800. School Direct fee courses are the other area with a large gain in applications; up from 11,429 to 12,761. Applications for the salaried route barely increased, up from 2,394 to 2,639.

Interestingly, the increase in the number of male candidates in January was larger than the number of women. Male numbers increased from 4,115 in January 2022 to 5,256 January 2023 whereas female applicants only increased from 10,754 to 11,581; still many more, but worth watching to see if there is a trend?

As one might expect with the interest in secondary courses, and the increase in men applying to train as a teacher, applications rose faster from those likely to be career changers than from new graduates. Indeed, the number of applications from those age 22 actually fell, from 2,098 in January 2022 to 2,064 this January. The number of those aged 60 or over applying increased from 34 last January to 72 this January; up by more than 100%.

However, all this good news has to be qualified by the fact that the biggest increase in applicants by geography is from the ‘Rest of the world’ category – up from 1,061 to 2,676. Applications from London and the Home counties regions have fallen: less good news.

Still the overseas applicants do seem to be applying to providers in London, so that may help.

The fact that the good news in the headlines is largely supported by the increase in overseas applicants must be a matter for concern on several counts. If offered a place, will these students turn up, and how long will they stay; will the Home Office grant them visas to teach in England; will places that could be offered to new graduates later in the recruitment round have been filled by these overseas applicants, and what might be the implications for how the recruitment round is managed? All interesting questions for the sector and the government to ponder.

How challenging is teacher recruitment?

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The staffing crisis in the NHS often receives more publicity than the festering crisis in teacher recruitment. This week, TeachVac has supplied data for articles in tes, and by the Press Association. The latter story make many local newspapers, but little impact on the broadcast media that still seems obsessed with the NHS.

Next week, TeachVac will publish its two detailed reviews: one on the labour market for school leaders and the other looking at the labour market for classroom teachers during 2022. Schools signed-up to TeachVac’s £500 recruitment deal for unlimited matches of their jobs can ask for a free copy of both reports. Copies are priced at £100 for each report to non-subscribers. www.teachvac.co.uk

Both reports comment on what is now history. January marks the start of the key recruitment round for September 2023. As part of its data collection, TeachVac, where I am chair, monitors its collected vacancies against the numbers recorded in the DfE’s annual ITT census of trainees. Of course, some of those trainees are already in the classroom on programmes that mean they will be unlikely to be job seeking for September in any large numbers. TeachVac’s index takes these numbers into account when calculating its end of week numbers.

Despite only being at the end of week 2 of 2022, I thought it might be useful to compare 2023 with 2022 at the same point. When looking at the table, it is worth recalling that in many subjects the number of trainees is lower than it was last year, so the supply side is reduced. As a result, it would take a reduction in demand for the index to improve on week 2 of 2022.

Subject13th January 202314th January 2022Difference
Computing76%90%-14%
RE80%93%-13%
Business Studies70%82%-12%
All Sciences85%92%-7%
Music84%91%-7%
Languages87%94%-7%
Mathematics87%93%-6%
English87%93%-6%
Geography87%92%-5%
Art93%97%-4%
PE96%98%-2%
D&T73%75%-2%
History97%98%-1%
Source TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk

Sadly, the reduction in trainee numbers hasn’t been offset by any reduction in demand: quite the opposite. All the subjects in the table are indicating a worse position at the end of week 2 in 2023 than at the same point in 2022; even history.

Design and technology’s apparently favourable position is due more to how badly it was faring in 2022 than to any real improvement, as it still has the second lowest index score in 2023, only business studies – the DfE’s forgotten subject – is in a worse position, and will certainly register an amber warning of recruitment challenges by next Friday.

Indeed, computing and design and technology will both also almost certainly have posted amber warning by the end of week 3! Several other subjects might have amber warning in place by the end of the month.

I am sure that the worsening trend in recruitment is why schools and MATs are signing up to TeachVac’s recruitment offer. At less than £10 per week for all a schools’ vacancies to be matched to TeachVac’s database, with no extra work required by the school than doing what it already does, must be the best deal in town. Schools not signed up with TeachVac will no longer see their vacancies matched each day. The fee for primary schools is just £75.

Is your school using TeachVac?

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Created eight years ago, TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk has already matched nearly 4,000 teaching posts so far in 2023 with teachers and other interested in filling these jobs.

After eight years of being a free service TeachVac now charges secondary schools less than £10 per week -£500 per year plus VAT – for matching all their teaching posts for a year with its ever growing database of new and experienced teachers and recruitment companies. Primary schools pay £75 per year and can be free to academy trusts and other groups of schools that sign-on together with at least one secondary school.

Schools can sign up on the website – use the button to start the registration process or email enquiries@teachvac.co.uk and the staff will answer any queries about the service.

As TeachVac has traditionally had more jobs that the DfE site, it is a better place for jobseekers to register to be sent the links to jobs that meet with their specifications and a few that they might not have thought about. New registrations are being added to the list of those matched with vacancies every day.

With 75% of the teaching posts in 2023 posted by schools in or around London, schools in London, the south East and East of England should be at the front of the queue in signing up to TeachVac. Can you afford to miss out on access to the jobseekers in TeachVac’s database that receive relevant new jobs every afternoon. www.teachvac.co.uk

As an example, those teachers looking for a maths teacher post in North London will have received details of 14 different vacancies over the past two days from TeachVac. If your school isn’t using TeachVac then your vacancy won’t have been one of these sent to TeachVac’s users, if you posted one.

TeachVac is looking to use the income from schools to expand into offering a similar service for non-teaching posts and if enough schools sign-up the additional cost would be minimal. In the school-term, where schools offer a visa service for overseas applicants we will be introducing that fact into the matching service shortly.

TeachVac’s users are loyal, with 75% of all registered users still receiving daily matches,. This allows teachers considering a  move or looking for promotion to monitor the job market in the area where they are interested in working. Feedback tells us teachers used TeachVac to secure their job.

However, there are shortages of teachers in some subjects and TeachVac acknowledges that fact. But by not using the TeachVac platform for less than £10 per week schools can miss out on TeachVac sending their job details to those that are registered with TeachVac. Is it worth the risk for just £10 per week?

Tomorrow, TeachVac will publish an analysis of the first two weeks of 2023 compared with the same period in 2022 and compare the position with the government’s ITT census of trainees expected to be job hunting for a September 2023 post. The figures in some subjects will look extremely worrying.

Debate about Oak Academy

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There is to be a short debate in the House of Lords this afternoon, initiated by a Conservative Peer, about the creation of the Oak Academy to provide government funded resources for schools to help teach the curriculum. The House of Lords library has a helpful briefing note ahead of the debate Oak National Academy: Impact on the publishing and educational technology sectors – House of Lords Library (parliament.uk) I find the debate about the Oak Academy interesting in the light of the lack of any concerns about the government’s creation of a recruitment portal and control of the ITT application process.

Clearly, control of the curriculum through a body such as the Oak Academy can have implications for the publishing and technology industries that are both sectors that are large export earners for the education sector. This debate reminds me of when the same sector challenged the BBC over their potential control of education resources in the early days of the internet.

I will be interested to see the arguments put forward on both sides today. I am sure that there will be concerns that Ministers can direct schools to use Oak generated resources, and ensure that the values imbedded in such resources contain values approved by the current government. What might this government and a Labour government have to say about lessons generated by Oak Academy in such circumstances on the issue of industrial relations and the right to withdraw labour in any dispute between employer and their employees in history materials generated by the Academy.

Similar arguments were current when the Education Reform Bill in the 1980s mandated a National Curriculum. The concerns were around the powers of any Secretary of State to dictate to teachers what to teach and how to teach it. Of course, since then, we have seen Ministers dictate on phonics and multiplication tables, and schools being forced to follow the ministerial line even when authorities question its validity.

The Oak Academy started with good intentions during the covid pandemic, and removing the profit element, could produce materials at a lower cost than the private sector. Lower costs would be helpful to schools, but there does need to be effective oversight of materials being produced. There is also the issue of whether schools should be compelled to use Oak Generated materials? I am sure that these and other issues will be raised in today’s debate at Westminster.

As the chair of TeachVac, www.teachvac.co.uk the job board for teachers established before the DfE vacancy site was even considered, I can see the concerns of the industry about the loss of income from a lucrative sector that always needs new resources. However, there is a need for a wider debate about the role of government in state-funded education in a democracy, and that debate is more important than just the possible loss of business to existing providers. We cannot ignore the fact that ‘values’ are implicit in much of what we both choose to teach and how we then teach it.

Maths for the Millions*

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Nobody can have been surprised about yesterday’s announcement about extending the learning of mathematics for all up to age 18. In 2017, Prof Adrian Smith was commissioned to write a report for the government reviewing the state of post-16 mathematics.

The relevant paragraphs of this report said;

33. There is a strong case for higher uptake of 16-18 mathematics. Increased participation would be likely to deliver significant payback in terms of labour market skills, returns to individuals, increased productivity and longer-term economic benefits.

34. The government should set an ambition for 16-18 mathematics to become universal in 10 years. There is not a case at this stage, however, for making it compulsory.

Smith review of post-16 mathematics: report and letter – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The Minister that responded on behalf of the DfE was, of course Nick Gibb, once again ensconced in Sanctuary buildings, so perhaps the emergence of this policy must have been expected.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there are not enough teachers and lecturers in mathematics at present to provide for universal education for all 16–18-year-olds; Smith’s report identified that three-quarters of 16-year-olds with an A*-C in mathematics didn’t continue to study the subject at Key Stage 5. However, the government has done more to upgrade the qualifications of those teaching mathematics post initial teacher training over the past few years than in probably any other curriculum area. But not enough to balance current demand with supply, let alone to meet the increase in demand universal provision for all students at Key Stage 5.

Was the singling out of mathematics by the Prime Minister a message that the notion of a wider Baccalaureate qualification was no longer on the policy agenda?  Who knows, but as a story, it did manage to gain traction as a reverse ‘Jo Moore’ good policy story on a day when the Prime minister was faced with a raft of bad news stories about the economy and the public sector.

TeachVac  www.teachvac.co.uk has calculated that there are only around 1,500 trainee mathematics teachers this year currently in training to work in secondary schools, plus an unknown number training to work as lecturers in the further education sector, including those training ‘on the job’.

TeachVac has also calculated that there were more than 9,000 advertised vacancies for teachers of mathematics placed by schools across England during 2022. Even allowing for the repeat and re-advertisements, there doesn’t yet seem to be enough supply of teachers of mathematics to meet current needs, let alone increase demand by mandating the teaching of mathematics to all at Key Stage 5.

Nevertheless, the government does recognise that in our increasingly technological world, an increased understanding of mathematics to a higher level is important for ever more people in society. As I have mentioned before, the 19th century market porter became the 20th century fork-lift truck driver, and is now the 21st century software engineer writing code to manage robots in an automated warehouse.

It will be interesting see where this policy goes. Will it be a one-day wonder, or will Prof Smith’s Report finally become accepted as necessary policy for a modern first world economy?

* With apologies to  Lancelot Hogben 

Don’t forget Jacob

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At the end of January, this blog will celebrate its 10th birthday: a decade of writing. As of today, the blog has published 1,364 posts during those 10 years, with a total wordcount, according to WordPress analytics, of around 800,000 words, or around nine or 10 PhDs. Of course, blogs aren’t peer reviewed in the same way as academic articles are pre-publication, but, like journalism, they are subject to the gaze of readers from around the world. What I think are important posts are sometimes barely read, whereas other posts have been read much more frequently. The most read posts each year are listed below:

2022 Teacher Recruitment: How much should it cost to advertise a vacancy?

2021 Half of secondary ITT applicants in just 3 subjects

2020 Poverty is not destiny – OECD PISA Report

2019 How do you teach politics today?

2018 Applications to train as a teacher still far too low for comfort

2017 Coasting schools

2016 1% pay rise for most teachers likely in 2016

2015 Grim news on teacher training

2014 More on made not born: how teachers are created

2013 Has Michael Gove failed to learn the lessons of history?

The most read of these was the September 2020 post entitled ‘Poverty is not destiny’ that was read 1,544 times during that October and was read more than 1,600 times in all during the autumn of 2020.

Older posts can collect more ‘reads’ overall as new readers browse the back catalogue. Just before Christmas 2022, someone browsed the whole of the back catalogue, resulting in the highest monthly figures recorded for any single month since the blog started.

The genesis for the blog was the columns that I wrote for the then TES between the late 1990s and my retirement in 2011. I am lucky to have many of those columns in a presentation book created for my retirement.

This column has looked at numbers to do with education, mostly statistics, but also management information. Some of the latter has been provided by TeachVac, the job matching site I helped create and run some eight years ago.

There are a few other posts of which my, so far unsuccessful, campaign for a Jacob’s Law is the most important. This Law would ensure no child was left without a school place for longer than three weeks and is especially important for the many children taken into care. If we want to stop them becoming NEETs, we need to keep them in education not cast them aside because they might be a ‘bit of challenge’. Who would be a challenge if taken from home without any warning as a young person and moved to a different location away from friends and familiar locations and your school. (Search for Jacob for the various posts about this issue)

Please campaign to ensure a place for every child in a school. These young people are the education equivalent of the patients in A&E waiting on trolleys, but their wait can be six months, and just as life changing! Lt’s make 2023 the year the DfE tackled this issue.

ITT applications better: but not good enough

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Despite this week being a holiday period for most people, the DfE has published the data about ITT applications up to 19th December 2022. This is the second monthly set of data about applications for 2023 courses. While December is still too early to be certain about the outcome of the recruitment round, it is now possible to see the strength of the interest in teaching as a graduate career at the start of the recruitment round.

The headline is that as far as offers are concerned most subjects have made more offers that at this time last year, but generally fewer than in December 2020. However, some subjects such as religious education, computing, drama, history and physical education have made fewer offers than in December 2021. For history and physical education, the number of offers is probably not of concern since traditionally both these subjects over-recruit against any DfE number supplied for the Teacher Supply Model. For the other subjects, the lack of offers this early must be of some concern since they failed to reach expected levels last year, and the mountain is now looking even steep to climb during 2023.

The total number of applicants by 22nd December was 12,897 compared with 12,310 on the 20th December 2021. This year the applicants generated 33,688 applications compared with 32,016 at December 2021. It is welcome that both these numbers are up this year, but the increase is not enough to suggest that there will not be concern about meeting targets during 2023.

More worryingly, only 196 applicants have been ‘recruited’, although the number of candidates with ‘conditions pending’ is similar to the number in December 2021. Fortunately, the number of candidates that have received and offer and are yet to respond is up by several hundred on the December 2021 figure.

The total number of applications for secondary courses is up on December 2021, by around 2,000 while the number of applications for primary courses is down by nearly a thousand to 14,500. More disturbingly, the number of unsuccessful applications for secondary courses is up from 8,377 in December 2021 to 9,654 this year. Some of these applicants may still find a place though the Apply 2 route later in the recruitment round.

More than 10% of candidates this year are classified as having applied from ‘the rest of the world’. The increase in this group masks the fall in applicants from London; the South East and the East of England regions. As these three regions are the parts of England struggling most to recruit teachers, the loss of potential candidates for 2023 is a matter of concern although applications to these regions are higher than last year, possibly boosted by the increase in overseas applicants.

Applications from candidates age 22, probably recent graduates or those graduating in 2023 are slightly down, applications from most other age groups are at similar levels to last year.

Higher Education courses remain buoyant, with all other types of courses also recording more applications. Of the 196 applicants so far ‘recruited’, 181 have been recruited by higher education providers to their courses.

Two swallows don’t make a summer, and two months data may not represent the rest of the application round, but, unless there is a significant upturn in applicants to secondary courses during the first eight months of 2023, the outlook for courses in autumn 2023 will not be much better than the dismal numbers recorded in the recent DfE ITT Census for courses that started in autumn of 2022. Such an outcome would imply another challenging labour market for secondary schools in 2024 that is unless school funding for future pay awards was such as to drive down demand for teachers to cover the increased pay awards.

Why TeachVac is important

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Earlier this month I posted about the ITT Census of trainees published by the DfE. I noted in one post that it was necessary to remove from the ITT census those trainees not likely to be looking for a teaching post because they are already in a school on salaried schemes.

From the reduced total also needs to be removed a percentage for in-course wastage and a desire by some teachers to work outside of the state school system in either private schools or Sixth Form/further education colleges.

What is left is the free pool that might look for a teaching post anywhere.

SubjectOpen Market
Mathematics1,467
Physical Education1,295
English1,214
History950
Chemistry644
Modern Languages600
Geography523
Biology495
Art & Design440
Other387
Design & Technology372
Physics366
Computing304
Drama304
Religious Education249
Music228
Business Studies164
Classics52
Total secondary10,054

From the list it seems clear that there are unlikely to be enough new entrants to satisfy the demand for teachers by schools in 2023 unless there is a substantial pay rise for teachers or other demands upon funding dampen demand below the level seen in 2022. To some extent demand will be affected by the actions of teachers already in the workforce. Early retirement, plus income from tutoring and some ‘supply’ teacher work might look attractive to some teachers in the latter stages of their career and with enough pension rights to feel confident about leaving full time teaching.

At TeachVac www.teachvac. We help match teachers to vacancies that meet their needs. Price at just £500 per year for secondary schools and just £75 for primary schools TeachVac has made 2 million matches in 2022 from over 100,000 vacancies listed and our pool of teacher sis growing rapidly at the present time as teachers start to think about where and what they want to teach in September.

Schools signing up to TeachVac now, won’t be invoiced until February and thus need not pay until early March. By then, they may well have already received more than 500 matches that covers the annual fee making all further matches effectively cost free.