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Oxford ITE Conference talk

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Teacher Supply: Crisis, challenge or no problem?

1 Overview

1.1 Over the past half century teacher supply has been through a number of different cycles during which there have been short periods of over-supply interspersed with longer periods of shortages. Within these macro cycles there have been other periods where particular subjects or parts of the country have been affected by more local supply problems.

1.2 Since 2013, the recruitment into teacher preparation courses has become more challenging as numbers enrolled have declined. This would likely have been the case despite the fact that this period also witnessed a shift towards a more school-led approach to teacher preparation programmes. The development of new programmes has been a feature of periods of teacher shortage from the Articled Teacher scheme of the late 1980s through the SCITTS of the 1990s to the GTTP and Teach First of the early years of this century and now the school-Direct   programmes.

1.3 With a significant increase in pupil numbers over the next few years it seems likely that staffing schools will become a serious problem over the next few years. We will know more on Thursday when the 2015 ITE Census is published by the DfE. I expect some improvement over last year as a result of the better marketing campaigns, but still insufficient new entrants in many subjects to meet the Teacher Supply Model numbers that historically have been seen as targets. The NCTL allocations merely blur the understanding of numbers needed, but may have helped keep higher education alive in teacher preparation. Without such over-allocation against the TSM in 2014, as I pointed out to the Minister, the loss of most English and history places from higher education would have made many more vice-chancellors question the viability of their PGCE courses.

2 Introduction

2.1 The debate about whether or not there an issue in teacher supply at the present can really only be answered in terms of what it is the school system is trying to achieve? If it is to provide the highest quality education to all pupils in order to ensure that they are able to achieve the highest possible personal outcomes from schooling, then the part teachers’ play in achieving this outcome needs to be determined. Without agreed goals for the school system it is difficult to assess whether or not there is a teacher shortage at the present time.

 2.2 Crisis or Challenge?

2.2.1 There is no current definition of when a shortage of teachers or trainees might be described as either a challenge or a crisis. This lack of any benchmark has allowed language to be used in a casual and imprecise manner. In an attempt to inject some clarity into the debate, some suggested definitions are offered for both recruitment into teacher preparation programmes and for recruitment into main-scale teaching positions for classroom teachers.

2.3 Entry into preparation programmes

2.3.1 A “challenge” to the system might be described as a situation where more than 60% of applicants are offered places on preparation courses: such a figure demonstrates that there is little competition to enter the profession. A lack of competition means there is no incentive to create minimum benchmarks for entry in areas such as extent of subject knowledge or experience beyond schooling and university education.

2.3.2 A “crisis” might arise when, despite offering more than 60% of applicants places on teacher preparation courses, there are still insufficient applicants to fill all the places on offer over a two-year period. (This avoids issues over a shortfall in one year due to unforeseen events).

2.3.3 On this basis some subjects may be facing challenges and, possibly, a few are in crisis.

2.4 Entry level vacancies

2.4.1 There are no current descriptors for how to measure either a challenge or a crisis in recruitment at the level of entry grade employment in teaching.

2.4.2 A challenge might be described as a situation where there are sufficient entrants to teaching from all sources, but, because they are not distributed according to need across the country, some schools are forced to employ candidates without the skills or subject knowledge required to fully undertake the role for which they have been recruited. This could be the consequence of a shortfall in entry into training when there are insufficient other teachers available to make up that shortfall.

2.4.3 For this challenge to become a crisis, there would need to be insufficient entrants to the profession from all routes to reduce the percentage of teachers 1) with no relevant post ‘A’ level qualification teaching the subject in a secondary school, or 2) no training in the phase of primary education they are teaching (again over a two year period). The crisis could be limited to specific parts of the curriculum.

2.4.4 It seems likely that an analysis of the 2012-2014 School Workforce Census data may reveal a number of subjects where this definition of a crisis is met. It is not clear whether the DfE has the data to identify whether there is a crisis in our primary schools.

2.4.5 However, another way to consider the issue is to look further at three areas of teacher supply where the terms crisis or challenge may be used.–

  • crisis of numbers,– There needs to be enough teachers
  • crisis of location – they need to be in the right place and–
  • crisis of quality – they need to be good enough.

The issue of numbers can be further sub-divided into numbers in training, and numbers in the profession, as already discussed. A shortfall in training numbers will create a shortage in the profession, which will become compounded if the problem lasts for several years and will lead to problems with middle leadership after about 5-10 years.

2.5 Crisis of numbers.

2.5.1 In order to have enough teachers, we need to train enough in each subject area because, according to DfE modelling, the existing teachers, returners and “churn” (teachers moving schools) will only make up 50% of those needed. The government uses the Teacher Supply Model and ITT allocations to help recruit potential teachers into training, setting levels that will provide an adequate supply of teachers once those that complete training and enter teaching have been added into the overall mix.

2.5.2 Considering just the trainee numbers, TeachVac’s http://www.teachvac.co.uk data reveals that some subjects have an overabundance of trainee teachers compared with the number needed, some have just enough and some are woefully short.

Analysis of vacancies advertised against trainee numbers as at 21st October 2015 –since start date 1st January 2015

Group ITT Number left % left

21 Oct

 % left 13 Nov
Art 534 193 36.24 34
Science 2277 285 12.52 9
English 1689 -84 -5 -9
Mathematics 2186 439 20.08 17
Languages 1105 256 23.17 20
IT 519 -46 -8.86 -11
Design & Technology 450 -161 -35.8  

-38.9
Business 200 -173 -86.5 -92
RE 385 4 1.17 -4
PE 1271 864 68.02 67
Music 372 36 9.81 5
Social Sciences 113 -96 -84.96 -91
Geography 601 -28 -4.66 -7
History 786 210 26.78 25

Source TeachVac

2.5.3 As a guide, at the end of the recruitment round having + or – 5% of trainees left in a subject or phase within primary still looking for a teaching post would be the aim; a shortage of trainees of between 5% and 10% compared with advertised need would be a challenge and a shortage of more than 10% could be construed as a crisis. This situation can arise either because of issues with the Teacher Supply Model or because insufficient trainees are recruited to meet the number suggested in the Teacher Supply Model.

2.5.4 In some subjects the opposite situation can occur, where the numbers of trainees are too high. Again this may be due to either over-recruitment against identified need from the Teacher Supply Model or a mis-match between need and reality in the recruitment round.

2.5.5 More than 5% of trainees above need, but less than 10% too many is a warning, more than 10% too many trainees means that there will be a significant number of trainees who will not be able to find a job, anywhere in the country, yet will be saddled with a significant additional student debt.

2.5.6 A quick summary suggests that at the end of December, the following will be the case for 2015 as a result of the numbers trained in 2014/15:

Numbers Crisis – Business Studies, English, IT, design & technology, Social Sciences and possibly Geography

Numbers Challenge – Science, Music, RE

Numbers Correct – Languages, History and Maths (but see later)

Numbers over-supply – PE and Art

Some Crisis subjects are a whole year’s cohort behind, but PE is at least a year’s cohort ahead of itself.

2.5.7 The recruitment round might be considered to cover vacancies for September and January and to follow the calendar year (there are few vacancies advertised for an Easter start). At the current time there are already more vacancies than available trainees in subjects such as English, IT, Design & Technology, Business Studies, Social Science and Geography. Once their contribution to the teaching of humanities was added in to the total, there were insufficient RE trainees and probably insufficient trainees in history. By the end of the recruitment round it seems likely that the sciences (overall) and music will be added to the list. This would leave mathematics, languages, art & design and PE as the only subjects where trainee numbers will have been sufficient across the whole recruitment round.

2.5.8 It seems likely that had the government not increased employer pension and National Insurance contributions in 2015 then the number of vacancies on offer might have been even greater since schools would have spent the money on extra staff in some, if not all, cases.

2.6 Crisis of location.

2.6.1 I believe that most trainees tend to look for a job either in their home area or around their training location. This tendency gives rise to a potential crisis of location if the distribution of training places does not reflect local needs. As the geographical allocation numbers were not published by the DfE in the past, it has been very difficult to ascribe the term challenge or crisis to any subjects. The exception is Mathematics where there is widespread anecdotal evidence of shortages yet the overall numbers look satisfactory. On that basis it might seem as if Mathematics has a “location crisis” in some areas.

2.6.2 An analysis of the published vacancies for entry level teaching posts tracked by TeachVac between January 2015 and mid-October 2015 suggests that there are marked regional differences in the average number of advertisements placed for such posts by schools in different regions of England.

Average number of jobs advertised per school

North East North West Yorkshire & the Humber East Midlands West Midlands London East of England South West South East
4.56 4.37 4.92 5.21 4.46 7.15 6.97 4.36 5.98
Source TeachVac                

2.6.3 The vacancies counted by TeachVac include those posted by both state-funded and private schools. It is noticeable that London, despite the presence of Teach First, has recorded the largest number of vacancies per schools with the East of England and the counties closest to London within that region a close second. There are issues with individual schools in areas such as coastal locations, but these have not been sufficient to affect the regional average.

2.7 Crisis of quality.

2.7.1 Quality is a very subjective area and yet everyone can see the difference between good and poor quality.

2.7.2 For trainees, there are two further aspects. Firstly, if there are too few applicants, then there is little opportunity to select the ‘best’ candidates. This can be measured by the application to training place ratio. From a measurement point we could say that between three applicants per place and two applicants per place would be a challenge and fewer than two applicants per place would be a crisis. The second trainee measure is that of completion – poor trainees will be less likely to complete their course and enter teaching. This issue can be exacerbated by the funding methodology used by the government and, this year, by the recruitment controls methodology.

3 Leadership Vacancies this section was omitted from the talk

3.1 Since the abolition of a compulsory qualification for headship – the NPQH – it has been difficult to know objectively, in advance, whether the number of aspiring head teachers meets the likely demand. Now that the bulge in retirement numbers has passed, the demand for head teachers should have returned to a figure more in line with long-term demand. However, a number of factors, including the creation of new schools such as Free Schools, UTCs, Studio Schools and new academies, as well as Executive Heads of multi-academy trusts, has probably increased the demand for head teachers to a level above the long-term trend, especially in the secondary sector.

3.2 Over the past quarter century, a number of factors have affected the labour market for new head teachers. Faith schools, and especially Roman Catholic schools within that group of schools, have consistently found it more of a challenge to recruit new head teachers than community schools. This may have been partly a reflection of the changing nature of society in England.

3.3 More generally, any school that has one or more factors from the following list may have experienced greater difficulty in recruiting a school leader;

  • size – both very small and very large;
  • limited age range – infant, junior or middle compared with primary or secondary;
  • single sex schools;
  • limited section of the ability range;
  • some specific types of special schools where relocation is necessary due to the small number of such schools;
  • time of year vacancy occurs if outside the key January to March period;
  • unusually low salary;
  • performance, especially on Ofsted inspections but also in examination or key stage results.

3.4 Finally, geography can play a part. In regions where house prices are higher than average this may restrict the number of applicants willing to move into the area but permit outward movement from possible candidates for headship. There has also been concern about areas with limited hinterlands such as coastal fringes of England. Areas where there may be limited scope for work for a partner may also be less attractive to potential head teachers. There are exceptions to these rules, but the occasional outstanding new head does not provide a solution to any specific problem.

4 The root causes of the lack of supply of teachers

4.1 Assuming that no issue is taken with the modelling undertaken by the DfE to determine the number of training places and the deterioration of the percentage of teachers teaching a subject that have a post ‘A’ level qualification in the subject they are teaching indicates a lack of supply, then the root causes may be regarded as:

  • Insufficient recruitment into training
  • Undue levels of early departure from the profession
  • A growing school population
  • The development of teaching as an international career and of schooling in the UK as an export industry. Both offer opportunities to teachers that can reduce teacher numbers available for state-funded schools.

5 Action the government could take to tackle teacher shortages

5.1 The government has a considerable body of evidence from previous teacher supply crises to be able to understand what actions they can take that may or may not work to solve any teacher supply crisis, even though they do not directly employ any teachers – at least until the National Teaching Force comes along. There is also evidence on the issues affecting teacher supply from the work of the School Teachers’ Review Body and the research undertake for them by the Office for Manpower Economics in connection with several of their Reports. This body of evidence could enable the DfE to consider the success or otherwise of previous attempts to solve each crisis.

5.2 However, in an age when investment in higher education is the responsibility of the individual, rather than the State, it seems perverse that a large number of individuals should have to bear the cost of their training as a teacher, with the added risk of no guarantee of a job on successful completion of the course. Simple economics suggests that although this may pose less of an issue when the private sector is not hiring graduates, it is an issue when the graduate recruitment market is buoyant, as it was after 1997 when tuition fees were first introduced, and applications from graduates to train as teachers slumped.

5.3 For instance, in 1997–98 some 1,540 of the mathematics teacher training places were filled, but 830 remained un-filled. The following year, the number of unfilled mathematics places increased to 1,080 and the number of those entering teacher preparation courses declined from 1,540 to 1,190. The eventual solution to the recruitment problem was the introduction of the training bursary in 2000.

5.4 The continual changes to the level of bursary funding, and the relative financial attractiveness of different teacher preparation routes, makes for a muddle that may make it more difficult to attract new entrants to teaching, especially when the economy is growing. Teaching cannot be seen just as a safe haven career in times of economic uncertainty if England is to have a world-class teaching profession. Teaching needs to be able to recruit high quality entrants in boom times as well as in times of recession.

5.5 There are other solutions to deal with any shortage of teachers. These include ensuring a better transition from preparation to employment that reduces wastage of qualified entrants. This ought to be easier when schools, as employers, control a greater proportion of the training than providers that do not employ teachers, such as universities.

5.6 At present, the balance of new entrants to other entrants to main scale vacancies is estimated by the DfE at around the 50:50 mark, according to evidence provided in the past by the DfE to the STRB. If there are insufficient new entrants, more could be spent trying to attract other qualified teachers either from those not working or nor currently working full-time or from teachers from either within the EU or elsewhere in the world. The DfE currently has a pilot programme underway for attracting returners in EBacc subjects.

5.7 Should there be insufficient teachers, schools have the option of changing the curriculum offer to reduce time spent on particular subjects – although there will need to be an increase in other subjects if the total time taught doesn’t alter. Re-training of teachers through programmes such as the suggested TeachNext concept and attracting new groups through programmes such as the Troops to Teacher scheme can also help at the margin in dealing with shortages.

5.8 On the demand side, group sizes in schools may be altered, subject to the capacity of classrooms to handle larger groups. The use of new technology to alter the instructional method could have profound implications for the supply and training of teachers in the future. Although wide scale use of the internet has now been around for almost two decades, the impact on teaching and learning in schools is probably very limited in its effects on the model of teacher-pupil interaction.

6 The Future of teacher supply up to 2020 and beyond

6.1 The key driver of teacher supply issues during this Parliament will be the increase in pupil numbers. The primary school population started increasing some years ago, and will continue to increase through the life of this parliament. The secondary school population fell nationally through the last Parliament as the effect of a decline in the birth rate during an earlier period worked through the system. However, from a low point in 2015, the secondary school population will increase through the whole of this Parliament and probably most of the next, assuming two fixed term parliaments. By 2023, the STRB estimated, based on DfE evidence, that the secondary school population would be 17% higher in 2023 than in 2014 (25th Report page 29).

6.2 Any reduction in numbers entering training or increase in numbers leaving the profession, for whatever reason, would obviously add additional pressure on teacher supply. In a market based system those schools with the ability either to pay more or to offer a more attractive teaching environment would probably suffer less than schools where teaching was more demanding, pay lower, or the school located in an area where teachers either did not want to live or could not afford to do so.

6.3 Teaching has become an increasingly feminised profession in both the secondary and primary sectors. Although the percentage of men entering the primary sector has probably stabilised, fewer men now train as secondary school teachers than a generation ago. The extent of any drive to make graduate careers more widely available to women than in the past could have an impact on the interest shown by women in teaching as a career. Recent data on applications by graduates to train as a teacher has shown a faster decline in applications from women than from men. This has resulted in an overall decrease in applications of several thousand and a resulting increase in the percentage of applicants accepted onto teacher preparation courses.

7 Conclusion

7.1 The various routes into teaching have been undergoing a fundamental politically driven change from a higher-education based system to a school-led system. This change has occurred as the economy has shifted from recession into a period of growth. It is not yet clear how far the changes in training routes may affect the attractiveness of teaching as a career. Indeed, salary and other associated benefits such as work/life balance and pension arrangements may be of more significance in recruitment into the teaching profession.

7.2 What is certain is that to create a world-class education system, we need not only world-class teachers but sufficient of them in the right places and right subjects with a willingness to become the school leaders of both today and tomorrow.

 

 

 

Reclaiming Education – conference talk

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What follows below is the written text of the talk I gave on Saturday at the Reclaiming education conference. The string of conferences and other talks I am giving between Saturday and the end of the month has rather restricted my time for other posts. After the event, I will upload the text of the various talks to this blog and report on the ITT census, hopefully on Thursday.

We are facing the largest increase in pupil numbers since the 1970s that even under normal circumstances would put a strain on the system in terms of producing enough teachers to meet the demands of the labour market. But;

With salaries uncompetitive in comparison with those for graduates a year after they have completed their degrees;

the pressure to teach every child to the maximum of their potential increasing workload;

a workforce with the largest number of women of childbearing age since maternity leave was introduced;

a housing market that makes it unattractive for teachers to work in large parts of the south of England and

a teacher preparation system lacking a long-term agreed plan that will guarantee places where they are needed to meet the requirements of schools

there are significant challenges if we are to continue to improve our school system. Additionally, the lack of a coherent governance system probably doesn’t help.

Of course, if you are a PE teacher that trained in the North East you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. You may well not have a teaching job, and if you do, it may well not be teaching PE or only for a part of the week. Even so, this is not just a problem of London and the South East, although that’s where it is at its worse; possibly in parts of Essex and Hertfordshire and other authorities where the out-dated funding formula affects the funds schools receive.

The DfE policy decisions that underpin the Teacher Supply Model will force secondary schools towards EBacc subjects and away from the other curriculum areas as despite rising pupil numbers training targets have been reduced for 2017 for almost all non-Ebacc subjects.

In primary, the situation is even more challenging. If the TSM figure is too low, as many seems to think it is,  then by 2017 there may be recruitment difficulties that no National Teaching Service will be able to prevent. There is will almost certainly be more problems with equality issues in the profession as a result of the recruitment controls being used this year. I am on record in my blog wondering whether they might be imposed in PE before the end of this month in view of the number of applications already in the system. (see recruitment controls 2)

Of course, the export industry that is using UK trained teachers to teach children from other countries won’t be affected by a teacher shortage so long as they can put up the fees to pay higher salaries to attract teachers.

In the end it will be an understanding of economics that will solve the problem of teacher supply. When something is in short supply you either ration it or allow the price to rise to a level that satisfies demand. I cannot see this government wanting to ration the supply of teachers into the market; at least not directly. In some ways the distribution of training places, and especially those through school direct, could be seen as a form of rationing, but a very crude one.

However, if price is used – and we can see the pricing of physics graduates has increased for 2017 with the rise to £30,000 in a small number of bursaries. Although I see that more as a marketing exercise to create a headline for the advertising campaign rather than a real attempt to tackle the problem. I think that will come later if greater efforts on the part of government and NCTL don’t pay off.

I expect that next week when the ITT census is published we will learn that there are more trainees in 2015 than in 2014, but not I think enough to meet the TSM targets in many subjects. Still, the government is likely to announce any increase in EBacc subject recruitment as good news and I suppose it certainly isn’t bad news. Whether achieving increased trainee numbers by allowing around 50%+ of all applicants to be offered places is a good idea is something we can debate later.

So, on to solutions.

Well, better marketing is clearly stage 1 of the process and that is now happening.

Make teaching an attractive career. This helps retention and probably involves doing something about workload. What are the workload implications for teaching children as individuals rather than as classes, especially in the secondary sector?

As some of you know from my blog, I am not an enthusiast of the present system of bursaries that I think is difficult to market and inequitable. I would prefer a return to the pre-2010 situation of abated fees and a training grant for all entrants to the profession. After all, if it is good enough for cadet officers at Sandhurst, it should surely be good enough for trainee teachers wherever they train.

Without sufficient teachers in training not only will schools have to spend more money on recruitment until they have all switched to TeachVac our free service that matches school needs with teachers and trainees job requests. Why pay private companies and their profits when you can use a free service set up by those that understand the needs of the teaching profession.

Finally, shortages in training now have consequences for years to come. If we take D&T as an example:

In 2012 there were 1,200 trainees –about 103% of TSM need. This means about 500 remaining after 5 years, enough to satisfy the demand for heads of department and other middle leaders in the subject. In 2015 there were around 450 entrants to the profession meaning around 150 are likely to remain by 2020; not enough to provide an adequate supply of middle leaders.

Sword of Damocles

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I assume the government knows what a coasting school is, but it seemingly just doesn’t want to tell the rest of us until it has seen the new Education and Adoption Bill pass through parliament. The alternative view is that the government is keen not to reveal its hand even then and that the definition will be changeable depending upon circumstances.

My starting point for a discussion about a definition might be something like this:

a) Any school that is two or more quintiles below similar schools in reading, writing and mathematics if a primary school or English and mathematics if a secondary school, as measured by the ofsted dashboard or such similar measure as may be prescribed by the Secretary of State, shall be regarded as a coasting school once the school has been in such a position for a period covered by two sets of such measurements.

b) A school shall be able to challenge any classification of it as a coasting school, and the consequences for any such classification, if it can show that the staffing of any of the appropriate classes or subjects contributing to the measurement was hindered by a shortage of qualified staff. A school would need to demonstrate that it had been unable to recruit sufficient staff trained and qualified in the teaching of the relevant classes or subjects.

Trained and qualified staff means teachers both with Qualified Teacher Status as awarded by the DfE or such other awarding body as the DfE may licence to award such a qualification and with a subject or phase qualification appropriate to the teaching of the relevant pupils contributing to the assessment of performance or other measure on which the assessment of coasting is to be judged.

Any school that successfully challenges an assessment would have twelve months from the designation of it as a ‘coasting school’ to no longer be two or more quintiles below similar schools. If it failed to make such an improvement it would be confirmed as a ‘coasting school’. Any school whether community, voluntary or academy can be defined as a ‘coasting school’ if it meet the appropriate criteria cited above.

There might be a discussion as to whether or not a fund to help such schools improve could be established. This might, after all, be a more cost-effective way of improving standards than changing the administrative structure of the school when that has not proved to be at fault.

A more serious concern is whether such an ill-defined threat as the academisation of coasting schools may affect the labour market for teachers. Will teachers shun certain schools until the government makes clear what will happen to teachers in schools judged as coasting by the un-disclosed definition? Will it also affect recruitment into the profession?

I suppose that the churches will be content as long as any change of status for a voluntary church school allows it to remain within a mutli-academy trust led by the church. But, what if the bill fails to provide for such a guarantee and Regional Commissioners are granted a free hand as to where to assign control of schools judged to be coasting? The same question will no doubt be asked by governors of other voluntary schools, some established several hundred years ago, that could be taken over when the Bill become law.

I think the lack of a definition at the discussion stage is too serious an omission to be allowed to pass unchallenged because the consequences for the control of schools could be immense and needs to be properly thought through. That cannot happen if the parameters of what is a coasting school are not enshrined in primary legislation. .

A decent, honorable and likeable man

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The news yesterday of the death of Charles Kennedy, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, at the early age of only 55 came as a bolt from out of the blue. Charles was leader of the Lib Dems when I stood for parliament as the Lib Dem candidate in the 2005  general election in the Reading East constituency .

Charles was everything I am not. He was gregarious, knew instinctively how to work a crowd, lit up any room he entered and was the perfect  person to take on a walkabout. He was the heart and soul of the Party. Charles came into politics with the rise of the SDP, whereas although I was already a member of the Liberal Party long before the early 1980s and the days of the alliance and then the merger, on many issues we had similar views.

However, education in England was not always top of Charles’ agenda, probably because he was a product of the Scottish school and higher education systems. However, he was steadfast during his period as leader about supporting the abolition of tuition fees across the United kingdom.

The news is especially saddening since on Monday evening I had chaired a meeting of the Liberal Democrat Education Association. It was an extremely positive affair, already looking forward to the part the Association can play in helping develop policies for this parliament and beyond, hopefully of the very sort that Charles would have approved. After all, education is the key to progress and to deny education to any young person is to limit their opportunities. One challenge is still to reinforce this message to those in society that either don’t want to or don’t care to hear it.

One thing that being in politics helps you face up to is that life must go forward. After a period of mourning and reflection there are new challenges to face and political battles to fight. So, on the day the Liberal Democrats again passed the 60,000 member mark I celebrate the work of those that helped us shape the past, recognise the challenges of today and step out on the journey into the future taking with me the lessons learnt from those such as Charles Kennedy who had achieved so much, but still left those remaining with yet more to strive for.

More may be better in the classroom?

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Many years ago I was travelling back from a conference in the USA on an Air New Zealand flight where the newspapers handed out to passengers were New Zealand daily papers a couple of days old. Among the articles in one paper was a review of an education conference at which a DfES official – I think it was during that period of initials – had noted that many Asian countries had larger classes than in England and perhaps we might want to consider whether or not to copy them. I passed the item on to the education press when I reached England. The resulting piece in the now long gone weekly Education duly appeared under the headline that appears at the top of this blog. I was reminded of that episode, and the unfortunate civil servant who no doubt thought going all the way round the world he would be safe to speculate on such issues without anyone back home noticing – note for younger readers, this was in TDBI, the days before the internet, when it was normally safe to say things at conferences down under without any comeback in London – on reading about a report on the BBC Education page. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-29063679

All this is by way of introduction to the new research published today by GEMS Education Solutions, but not yet seemingly available on their web site. According to the BBC Report, the researchers looked at education indicators from around the world and raked the UK – note it was the UK and not England – in 11th place. Two of the indicators were class sizes and teachers’ pay. Assuming that smaller class sizes don’t bring better results is, as I have shown above, not a new discussion and neither is teachers’ pay and remuneration. Outside of Helsinki, I don’t know what the demand for graduates is like in the rest of Finland compared with the output of new graduates. Wages may be relatively low because demand isn’t strong or because the national labour market has narrower differentials between jobs requiring a higher degree of education and those that don’t. There is evidence here that in the past depressing the pay of teachers reduces interest in the profession. Indeed, teachers are one of the few groups that have not benefited from the extra holidays most workers now receive. Fourteen weeks without pupils does not equate to 14 weeks of holiday whatever some of the press think. Add in INSET days, the days before and after term, parents’ evenings, the hours it is generally agreed teachers work during term-time, and it soon dips below the 8 weeks many professionals receive after holiday entitlement, bank holidays and the Christmas closures.

The main argument against bigger classes is that the classrooms simply wouldn’t accommodate them in many schools. Also at the start of schooling there are already wide differences between the stages of development of many children. Making them learn in larger groups won’t reduce that gap. As the statistics show, and has been reported on this blog, average class sizes have reduced in the secondary sector over the past few years while results have improved. Does that fact counter evidence of larger classes elsewhere? How do the researchers account for the behaviour of the private sector in this respect? I believe that GEMS did have schools with different class sizes in The Gulf, but I have no knowledge of them trying such an idea here. Perhaps they might experiment with offering a school with larger classes, but lower fees than is normal in the private sector, in a UK city and examine the results. My hunch is that there wouldn’t be many takers, but I am willing to be proved wrong.

Falling Foul of Fees?

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Following on from yesterday’s post about current levels of recruitment into teacher training among graduates, I have been delving further into the data. One interesting aspect is the data provided about the age of applicants. Overall, the number of applicants increased from some 23,000 to almost 44,000; an increase of around 80% between January and mid-August. However, the increase among younger candidates has been somewhat smaller at just 42% for the youngest group of new graduates; up from around four and a half thousand in January to some six and a half thousand in mid-August.  By contrast, the increase in applications from potential trainees in their thirties has been from just over three thousand to more than six and a half thousand; an increase of more than 100%. While it is good to have a mix of ages entering the profession, those that join as teachers in their 30s, and especially their late 30s, have traditionally struggled to have their previous work experience recognised and to progress in their new career, although there have been some notable exceptions to this rule.

So why has this lack of young recruits come about? Could it be that the new fee levels are something of a deterrent? After all, older entrants may have paid off their previous student debts, and be prepared to take on one year of new debt as the cost of changing careers whereas new graduates are looking forward to a fourth year of debt that may seem less attractive than a salary. As a result, the School Direct Salaried route looks a bit like a perverse incentive, aimed as it is at the career changer with at least three years of work experience. However since there have been only 2,700 of these recruited among the potential 29,000 graduate entrants they clearly aren’t making a huge difference to the total.

At present, we don’t know whether older applicants are being discriminated against in terms of the numbers being made offers. However, they are more likely to have a stake in the community and want to teach close to where they train. From that respect, it is interesting that London has attracted the largest number of applicants of ant region in England; over eight and a half thousand, compared with six thousand each in the South East and North West regions.  The lack of any London supplement in funding doesn’t seem to be putting off applicants from applying to train with providers in the capital. It would be helpful to know more about the age profile of those applying in the different regions, but that will have to wait until the annual report is published by UCAS, probably next year.

Before then, I hope that there will have been a review of the first year of the new application system. It had an inauspicious start last November, and I don’t think offering three choices through the Apply 1 route right up to August helps either candidates or providers fill the places still available just before courses start. I would add the number of training places and the number still available to the information provided to candidates, as the DfE did last year when they managed the School Direct application site.

Perhaps the Carter Review Team can have a think about the application process or UCET, NASBITT, the professional associations and the NCTL can get together with the DfE and have a frank discussion about how we can best recruit candidates into training for 2015.

Normal service has been resumed

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The technical difficulties replying to comments made to me have been resolved. The issue was with my internet browser. I was using Chrome but have switched to Firefox through which I can access all parts of my blog again, including updating posts and replying to comments. My apologies for the down time. The rest of this post still remains relevant

However, I am not the only one to have had difficulties. The DfE seem to have pulled the research and priorities document from their web site that featured in my post of earlier this week. If anyone downloaded a copy before it was removed, I would welcome a copy. You can email me via the comments page, and once WordPress is fully functional again I will be able to access it.

The suite of DfE documents that emerged, and in some cases disappeared, today did seem to lack coordination, and it is tempting to wonder which Minister gave approval for their release?

The whole saga might merit a footnote in Private Eye.

Sunshine, but political and personal sadness

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Political parties are like large extended families. And, like families, every member has their own way of looking at the world even as they join together in confronting it. This week I have lost two good political friends from the Liberal Democrat family; one by choice, the other by sudden death. My memories of both are connected through education. In the case of Richard Grayson, who has publicly made it known that he has allowed his Party membership to lapse, it was initially as the author of the first ever pamphlet produced by the Centre for Reform, produced soon after Richard became its founding director in the late 1990s. Discipline in Schools, which he authored, and to which I lent my name as the joint author, was a short pamphlet about an issue that has plagued schools throughout history. Richard went on to much greater heights within the Party, including helping to write the 2001 general election manifesto, and now holds a senior academic post at Goldsmiths in London. He taught me much about the art of politics.

I am sad to see Richard leave the Lib Dem Party, but I think I know why he has reached his decision, one that was not, I am sure, reached lightly. Andrew Bridgwater’s sudden death that I leant about last weekend has robbed the Party of one if its key champions for education in general, and special education in particular. Andrew was no happier with the current direction of the Lib Dems than Richard was, and made that fact clear on many different occasions during his period of office as Chair of the Liberal Democrat Education Association, an office that only ended as recently as this year’s spring conference. He was delighted to have joined me as a Vice President of the Association. Andrew was at one time a councillor in Hackney, and I first got to know him when I joined the small group that met Don Foster regularly in the late 1990s to discuss education policy when Don was the Party’s shadow spokesperson on Education.

In recent years Andrew would often ring me up for a conversation about the state of education policy, and I knew I was in for a long and thorough discussion.  Andrew was a strong supporter of the motion Peter Downes and I put to the 2010 Liverpool Conference about academies and free schools. His most recent successes included work on the role of governing bodies and the wider need for the strong governance of schools to prevent the community being excluded from the decision-making process; a policy he was passionate about.

Despite his move a few years ago to Devon, Andrew still regularly made the long journey to Birmingham for the LDEA Executive meetings, and frequently to London for meetings of the parliamentary group. Andrew’s plain speaking was not to everyone’s liking, but that is the nature of families. He was also a strong supporter of the LDEA annual conference in Nottingham. Within the wider Party, he was recently the regional Vice-Chairman and fought the Totnes Division in this year’s county council elections, losing to the Green Candidate, and thus forming another bond, since I once lost a by-election in Oxford to a Green Party Candidate.  

I will miss Andrew’s boundless energy and determined view of the direction Liberal Democrat education policy should take, and I am especially sorry I didn’t have the opportunity to say good-bye. Andrew, thank you for everything you did for Lib Dem politics: especially for your contribution to my own thinking, particularly in the area of special needs.  I will miss you.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws. 

From Tennyson’s In Memoriam

Mrs. Thatcher as Education Secretary

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When I left LSE in 1969 I cannot recall a single person who wanted to start their own business. Although I took over the running of AIESEC-UK the student organisation, most of my graduating class headed for the civil service; large companies or a period of further study. It was not until the advent of the Thatcher government that entrepreneurship once again became something for the new breed of graduates to consider or even aspire to achieve in large numbers.

In reflecting on that change in society; a change that may have done more to allow the development of new industries that have in part replaced the ‘smokestack’ industries of the first industrial revolution I recalled that Mrs. Thatcher’s time as Education Secretary in the Heath government has perhaps received less notice than her premiership. However, as it was on her watch that I first entered the profession as an un-trained graduate and temporary supply teacher, at Tottenham School, in January 1971 some six months after the election. Those years between 1970 and 1974 that Mrs Thatcher spent as Education Secretary may be worth a moment of reflection on the day of her funeral.

The legacy of Mrs. Thatcher is best remembered by the general public through the slogan ‘Mrs. Thatcher: milk snatcher,’ as she was responsible for removing the right to free school milk from many older pupils. But, is that a fair summing up of her time as education secretary? Interestingly, as an aside, at least two Labour controlled education authorities, of which one was the London Borough of Hillingdon, attempted to take the ruling as only applying to the provision of milk, and continued to supply a ‘nourishing beverage’ to replace the lost milk supply. This stopped in Hillingdon when Labour lost control at the next London council elections. So what else did her time as Education Secretary leave behind as a mark on the world of state education?

One of Mrs. Thatcher’s first actions as Education Secretary was to continue the plan to eradicate schools built before 1906, started under the former Labour minister. I am not sure why that date was chosen, and it was interesting that Mrs. Thatcher extend the plan to cover primary as well as secondary schools. Those who teach or were educated, and indeed still are being educated in schools built either substantially or completely before 1906 will know that the ambitious plan failed, and has never featured in any subsequent discussions about school building. Indeed, until Mr. Blair’s ‘Building Schools for the future’ programme there was a period of almost 30 years when there was no national plan for a replacement school building programme, and Mr. Blair was seemingly only interested in the secondary sector, like so many politicians both before and after him.

Perhaps Mrs Thatcher’s high point as Education Secretary came in December 1972 with the publication of the White Paper ‘Education: A Framework for Expansion’. Sadly, this document appeared just as the oil crisis was breaking, and the Barber Boom was collapsing, so its plan for a ten-year expansion programme largely disappeared in the economic turmoil of the following decade.

However, here are a few extracts from what was promised:

Nursery Education

Within the next 10 years nursery education should become available without charge to those children of three and four whose parents wish them to benefit from it. If demand reaches the estimates in the Plowden Report, some 700,000 full-time equivalent places may be needed by 1981–82. Some 300,000 are already available, half of them for children of rising five. As the extent of demand and its future growth are uncertain it will be necessary to watch the development of demand carefully in the early years. As a first step the Government propose to authorise earmarked building programmes of £15m each in 1974–75 and 1975–76. Total current expenditure on the under fives is expected to rise from nearly £42m in 1971–72 to nearly £65m in 1976–77.

Besides helping families in deprived areas—both urban and rural—in bringing up young children, the extension of nursery education will also provide an opportunity for the earlier identification of children with social, psychological or medical difficulties which if neglected may inhibit the child’s educational progress.[fo 2]

The provision of nursery education will be generally on a half-time basis but allowance has been made for about 15 per cent—as recommended in the Plowden and Gittins Reports—of three and four year olds to attend full-time for educational and social reasons. It is hoped that most of the extra nursery places will form part of primary schools to avoid a change of school when the child becomes five.

School Building

There should be a more systematic long-term approach to the renewal of school buildings, to prevent the accumulation of backlogs of obsolete buildings. But such a policy needs to be very flexible, not only between primary and secondary schools, but also to take account from year to year of variations in the level of basic needs and other factors.

The size of the Teaching Force and Pupil Teacher Ratios

School staffing standards should continue to improve progressively. The Government believe that local education authorities will welcome a broad policy objective of securing by 1981 a teaching force 10 per cent above the number needed to maintain 1971 standards. After allowing for the increase in school population and the increased proportion of older pupils, this will require about 110,000 extra teachers, bringing the total to about 465,000 qualified teachers for pupils aged 5 and over. With about 25,000 teachers needed to staff the expanded nursery programme, and another 20,000 to meet the needs of the Government’s policy for in-service training and the induction of new teachers, there would be some 510,000 (full-time equivalent) qualified teachers employed in maintained schools by 1981. The Government propose that this figure should be adopted as a basis for planning. This would represent an overall pupil/teacher ratio of about 18½:1 by that date compared with about 22½:1 in 1971.

Teacher Training and Professional Development

The Government propose to work towards the achievement of a graduate teaching profession. During probation teachers should receive the kind of help and support needed to make the induction process both more effective and less daunting than it has been in the past. Also they should be released for not less than one-fifth of their time for in-service training. For the remainder of their time probationer teachers would be serving in schools, but with a somewhat lightened timetable, so that altogether they might be expected to undertake three-quarters of a full teaching load. The Government propose to give effect to the James Committee’s recommendation that teachers should be released for in-service training for periods equivalent to one term in every 7 years of service. It is their aim that a substantial expansion of such training should begin in the school year 1974–75 and should continue progressively so that by 1981 3 per cent of teachers could be released on secondment at any one time. This involves a four-fold increase in present opportunity.

Some of these proposals have still not been achieved more than 40 years later, especially in respect to teachers’ professional development. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the lack of attention by successive governments to primary teachers, their training and professional development that includes the current coalition. With a primary sector facing many of the same issues as during Mrs Thatcher’s tenure at Elizabeth House, the home of the Department in the 1970s, especially in relation to rising pupil numbers and the pressure on places, and a young and relatively inexperienced teaching force, it is to be hoped that the current administration will find time to do more than just talk about creating a world class school system and take the steps to ensure it actually happens.

Finally, it is perhaps the supreme irony of Mrs Thatcher’s times as Education Secretary that she is also remembered for implementing two of Labour key education policies that were blown off course by the economic crisis of 1967: the raising of the school leaving age to 16, and the creation of a largely non-selective secondary school system. Both had a massive impact on the England and Wales of the Thatcher government, and will continue to do so when the coalition introduces the further raising of the learning leaving age to 18: again a proposal initiated by a Labour government.

Sir Christopher Wren’s inscription in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral, the church where Mrs Thatcher’s funeral took place, finishes with the Latin words LECTOR SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE which translates as, ‘Reader, if you seek his monument – look around you.’ It is a thought that each and every education secretary might bear in mind when they contemplate their legacy.

More secondary schools or better secondary education?

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According to the BBC, but not yet the DfE, the government are going to allow a further 13 studio schools for 14-18 year olds. These schools seem somewhat similar to University Technical Schools, another new form of school administered, along with academies and free schools, from Whitehall. These schools are in the tradition set by Kenneth Baker when he was Secretary of State for Education and established the City Technology Colleges, not all of which were in cities, nor were colleges rather than schools and had varying degrees of technology in the curriculum.

Also according to the BBC there is an interesting array of employers involved in the new studio schools, including charities such as the RSPCA. One does wonder why it needs a new type of school, with all its associated overheads including the salary of the leadership team, to solve what looks like local skill deficiencies in the labour market. Now that pupils can move to further education colleges from 14 onwards why cannot specific courses be developed there rather than creating yet more institutions, especially when numbers at the upper end of secondary schools are generally still falling.  It is worth recalling that in the famous Section 6 of the Thatcher Education Act that granted parental choice over schooling there was a ‘get out’ clause of not being ‘prejudicial to the efficient use of resources’. No such fetter appears to hamper the present government when it comes to setting up new schools.

However, Andrew Webb, the new President of the Association of Directors of Children Services believes that the debate about new forms of schooling is over, and everyone should just move on. Like so many others, his comments seem to focus mainly on the secondary sector whereas the future of the growing primary sector seems anything but clear.

One of the new Studio Schools announced today is to be a space studio in Banbury with the involvement of The National Space Centre, UK Space Agency and European Space Agency. This is a town where one of the current academies has just been consulting on altering its admission arrangements to introduce banding. Across the town there were 697 pupils in state schools at the end of Key Stage 4 in 2012 according to DfE figures. If the Studio School is to have an intake of, say, 100, giving a school of about 400; small by current standards for secondary schools, it will need to take almost 15% from each existing school or perhaps 10% if the catchment area is widened to include towns like Brackley, Bicester, Leamington Spa and Oxford where there are good travel links to Banbury. What the knock-on effect on the viability of science and technology courses at these schools will be is a moot point, but has not doubt has been considered somewhere before approval was given for the space studio to be announced.  And some pupils may choose instead to opt for the new University Technical School to be established elsewhere in Oxfordshire that was announced on the 28th March and will specialise in science research, engineering and computing. Its proposer is Oxford and Cherwell Valley College. The university sponsor is the University of Reading and according to the DfE its partners include BMW, IBM, Culham Science Centre, and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

There are those, not least in some of the teacher associations that are concerned about whether these new schools will encourage specialisation too early, and it is to be hoped that pupils who attend these schools will not have too narrow a focus too soon in their education. Will they also be drawn from across the ability spectrum or just from those regarded as in the top third of the ability range?

What is becoming clear is that the blueprint for the shape of schooling in England isn’t being widely discussed and tested in the cauldron of public debate. It hardly constitutes open government and if the new President of ADCS doesn’t care, who does?