Earlier today, I was appointed as the Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Education and Youth Services on Oxfordshire County Council. As a result of accepting that position, I will be suspending posts on this blog, only posting in exceptional circumstances.

Thank you all for reading the posts, and your many comments.

Previous posts will still remain available to read.

John Howson

2nd October 2023

The new Chancellor of the Exchequer seems likely to impose fiscal restraint on the public sector. A century after the famous Geddes Axe helped finish off The Liberal Party in the 1920s, will we see the biggest split in the Conservative Party since the days of Sir Robert Peel and the repeal of the Corn Laws that we all learnt about in school? Could the present turmoil mark the start of the endgame for the present regime at Westminster.

Should the Chancellor reactivate the famous Star Chamber of Mrs Thatcher’s time and quiz Kit Malthouse and other department heads about savings? If so, what might the DfE offer up in education?

First, The Secretary of State for Education might state that he needs more cash for the High Needs Black and the growing problems with special education funding. This blog dealt with possible solutions to that issue in a previous post When are deficits called reserves? | John Howson (wordpress.com) earlier this week.

Then he will need to answer the Chancellor’s call for fiscal prudence. So, where might Mr Malthouse look for spending cuts in mainstream schooling?

Axe the assistant Head Grade in secondary schools?

Annually more than 1,500 teachers move onto the leadership scale at the lowest rung as Assistant Headteachers. Axing the grade could save upwards of £75,000,000 a year if those promotion opportunities disappeared. This would blight the careers of many middle leaders looking for promotion, and might hasten their departure to other jobs, possibly in some cases schools overseas.

Manage non-contact time for teachers

With devolved budgets, it is difficult for the Secretary of State to actually identify where cuts will fall if funding is reduced because either government spending doesn’t keep up with inflation or because the actual size of the funding package is reduced. The DfE could indicate what they thought indicative non-contact time limits for schools should be in a way that would mean teachers spending more time in front of classes and less time for other activities. This would be deeply unpopular, but might ease the staffing crisis some schools are facing.

Reduce the increase in the National Funding Formula below the rate of inflation

This seems the most likely outcome as it puts the decision-making about how to deal with the problem of less cash in the hands of school leaders and governors. How might they react? Looking back to the early 1980s, when I first became interested in education finance during a period of economic turbulence, my notes tell me that most local authorities that still controlled school budgets at that time did everything to save teaching posts. Equipment and maintenance upgrades were postponed. Non-teaching posts, and there were far fewer of those in the 1970s and 1980s, were either not replaced when someone left or axed, and school visits and contributions to services such as music services were dropped.

If inflation persists at above the Bank of England’s desired level, it seems likely that class sizes will eventually increase and be reflected in a worsening of the Pupil Teacher Ratios. The government could interfere here, by looking at the size of some post-16 groups and encourage or mandate minimum sizes and cross-school working involving greater use of shared lessons.

With the Oak Academy now up and running, the Oak Academy can remain holding the line that their output isn’t mandatory for schools to use, while the DfE took a look at the management of the post-16 curriculum and its delivery with a view to cutting costs.

In the end, how schools will deal with financial pressure will either be decided locally or imposed from the centre. A Conservative Party Government wedded to free market economics is more likely to opt for a free market approach, putting the decision in the hands of schools and MATs.

*This article is based upon speculation,and does not reflect the views of the author as to possible ways forward if there are cuts to the funding of schools over the near-term.

Well, here is a new way to attract people to teaching. I refrained from posting this until after the 16^th February in order not to swamp them with entries for reasons made clear below.

Register your interest

Your chance to win a £1000 tech bundle

Submit your details by 5pm on 16 February to be in with a chance of winning a £1000 tech bundle or one of five £100 vouchers to support you in the classroom

Register your interest | Teach First

Here are the terms and conditions for Teach First’s prize draw competition, running from Monday the 7th February 2022 to Wednesday 16th February 2022.

The competition is hosted by Teach First of 6 Mitre Passage, London, SE10 0ER. The competition is hosted on http://www.teachfirst.org.uk.

The premise is a prize draw to win prizes and gain a better understanding of Teach First’s graduate and undergraduate opportunities. By entering and completing the registration form, you will be put into a prize draw to win a tech bundle worth £1,000 or one of five £100 vouchers. One winner will be chosen at random for the prize of a £1,000 tech bundle and five will be chosen at random for the prize of a £100 voucher. The winners will be selected no later than 5pm on Monday 28th February 2022. The prize promotion will open at 9am on Monday 7th February 2022 (“the Opening Date”) and will close at 5pm on Wednesday 16th February (“the Closing Date”). All entries must be received no later than 5pm on Wednesday 16th February.

….. Eligibility to enter: The competition is open to all residents in the UK aged 18 years or older at the time of entering your data. The competition is not open to employees of Teach First, their immediate families or households, or employees of agents or suppliers of Teach First who are professionally connected with the competition or its management. In entering the competition, you confirm that you are eligible to do so and eligible to claim any prize you may win. Teach First may require you to provide proof that you are eligible to enter the competition. Teach First will not accept competition entries automatically generated by computer, completed by third party or in bulk, incomplete, or multiple entries from one person / one email address.

According to the eligibility criteria – The competition is open to all residents in the UK aged 18 years or older at the time of entering your data. This didn’t seem to restrict it either to graduates or to those not already holding QTS. Of course, most people won’t bother to read the terms and conditions so mostly it will be those that see the advertising aimed at potential teachers, but it looks as if anyone could actually enter. Hence my delay in posting this.

I am not sure about how I feel about offering prizes to attract people to teaching. As a Charity, I assume Teach First are not using public money for the prizes and regard it as marketing spending. I know that this is seen as a legitimate way of attracting attention to your service; in this case becoming a teacher, but how would I feel if a university took the same approach? Proving all that join with a tech bundle is a very different thing.

The DfE’s ITT Census for 2021/22 was published yesterday – see previous post for the headline data (December 2021). Over time, it will be possible to mine a great deal of information form the open-source information now provided by the DfE. This post got overlooked but is still worth publishing.

Those schools signed up to the new TeachVac service Are you overpaying to advertise your teaching posts? | John Howson (wordpress.com) for a registration fee of £100 plus VAT and  maximum annual charge of £1,000 plus VAT will be able to ask TeachVac staff to match this data with regional data for their area to help predict possible local labour shortages during 2022. So, if you are a school governor, headteacher or work for a MAT or diocese do read what is on offer and go to Teaching Jobs School Vacancies – The National Vacancy Service for Teachers and Schools (teachvac.co.uk) and hit the red tab at the top labelled New Matching Service

Taking physics as an example, the DfE data shows that the 537 trainees in the census are spread unevenly across the country.

Approximately 43% of trainees are located in London or the South East, with just eight per cent located with providers in the West Midlands. This can be important because London and the South East contain a significant proportion of the country’s independent secondary schools. Such schools are more likely to advertise for a teacher of physics than do most state schools.

Many of the remaining selective schools are also in London and the South East, and they are the state schools most likely to advertise for a teacher of physics rather than a teacher of science. If just a quarter of the trainees in London and the South East opt to teach outside the state sector, this reduced the pool national to little over 500 trainees many of whom will be on school-based courses and not looking for a job on the open market.

A slightly different picture emerges for design and technology

Source TeachVac from DfE ITT census 2021

Here the North West looks like an area where recruitment will be a real challenge whereas the West midlands seems relatively, and it is only relatively, better off for teachers of this subject. However, we know nothing about specialisms with the subject.

This type of information is key to sensible recruitment planning and should play an important part in discussions about the working of the leveling up agenda in education at the level of the school.

Buried on the government website is the Annual Report and Accounts of the Teacher Regulation Agency for 2020/21. This is the agency that handles all teacher regulation matters in England, including registering Qualified Teacher Status, maintaining the register of Qualitied Teachers and handling the disciplinary process against teachers where misconduct is an issue. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teaching-regulation-agency-annual-report-and-accounts-2020-to-2021

However, since the term ‘Teacher’ isn’t a reserved occupation term, the Agency can only restrict where individuals may work as a teacher, and not the complete use of the term by anyone. For many years, I have felt that teachers deserve parity with other professionals in the protection of their well-earned rights to be called a teacher. So far, governments haven’t agreed and teacher associations haven’t be seen to put the issue on behalf of their members. I think that is a pity.

The Agency’s Annual Report notes that:

During 2020-21, the TRA received 628 teacher misconduct referrals. The TRA took no further action on 138 referrals received due to them not falling within the TRA’s jurisdiction and/or not meeting the threshold of serious misconduct. The TRA referred 286 cases of alleged serious misconduct to an independent hearing in 2020- 21.

During 2020-21, the Agency held 58 virtual hearings resulting in:  

39 teachers being prohibited from teaching:  

13 hearings where unprofessional conduct was found but did not result in a prohibition  

6 hearings where facts were found but there was no finding of serious misconduct.

 All hearings were postponed between March and August 2020 due to COVID-19, this alongside the many complexities of cases, meant that the median time to conclude teacher misconduct cases referred to an independent panel was 66.29 weeks, against the target of 52 weeks.

This is a commendable achievement in the face of the unprecedented challenge presented by the covid pandemic.

On the registration side of the Agency’s work the notable change during the year resulted from the exit of the European Union of the United Kingdom.

Registrations from different routes are shown in the table

No doubt the covid pandemic played some part in the reduction of Overseas Trained teacher registrations that was not fully offset by the small increase in QTS awards.

The reductions for certain countries are shown in this table

The effect of covid on the labour market for teachers, often noted by this blog, can we seen in the reduction from 467,084 to 325,209 in the number of pre-employment checks by employers using the Agency’s on-line service. This is a reduction of 141,875 checks or around a third on the 2019/2020 figure.  

This is a small Agency with an important function in the smooth running of our school system. If I have one very small nit-pick it is that in a profession dominated by the number of female teachers the front cover of the Annual Report features two men and only one women, albeit with a positive BAME balance.