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Views on behaviour in schools worsened in latest survey

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It is rare for the DfE to publish research on a Saturday. This week it did so, presumably to allow the Secretary of State to do the rounds of the Sunday morning political shows. National Behaviour Survey: findings from academic year 2023 to 2024 The focus from Labour with the media seems initially to have been on attendance rather than behaviour, but that has changed with the announcement of behaviour and attendance hubs.

The reason may well be the deterioration in views about behaviour in schools reported in the last survey data collected in May 2024 when compared with the March 2023 data. It is difficult to remember that the data from May 2024 was collected under the previous Conservative government. (Figures in the table are percentages.)

QUESTIONGROUPMar-23Dec-23Mar-24May-24
MY SCHOOL CALM & ORDERLYLeadership84938581
Teachers57716053
SAFE PLACE FOR PUPILSTeachers95999696
Leadership82938885
PUPILS RESPECT EACH OTHERLeadership88969088
PUPILS ENJOY SCHOOLALL PUPILS75817673
FEEL SAFEALL PUPILS57656157
BELONGALL PUPILS43455349
PUPIL BEHAVIOUR VG or GLeadership82908172
Teachers55695546
Pupils43433540

In many key questions, such as whether the school is orderly and calm, and whether pupil behaviour is good or very good, the positive percentages have seen significant declines. It is not surpassing that leaders see pupils as better behaved than either their teachers or their pupils. It would be interesting to see how long those school leaders concerned about pupil behaviour had been in post. I doubt many long serving leaders would admit to anything other than schools where pupil behaviour is good.

It would also be interesting to know whether the 12% of pupils that said’ things were thrown in ‘mist lesson’, (albeit not aggressively) were being taught in schools were behaviour was perceived as not ‘good’ or ‘very good’.

Why might views on behaviour have dropped in the last year of the Conservative government? Might the issues with teacher shortages have finally begun to have an effect? Was any effect from teacher shortages compounded by deteriorating staffing levels and greater pupil numbers in secondary schools? Again, it would have been interesting to see some breakdown of the data by school types; free school meal percentages and number of pupils with EHCP. If the behaviour hubs are to have any effects, these are the types of questions that need to be asked.

A question might also be asked about the wisdom of axing Teaching Schools. The current government could do with a comprehensive and cost-effective professional development policy rather than leaving it to individual schools and those MATs that see it as a priority.

Earlier this month I wrote a post about discipline in schools Is discipline worse in schools? | John Howson The evidence for that post came from exclusions. As a result, I wasn’t unduly worried. This new data raises more cause for concern.

Think Tank weighs in on SEND

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Policy Exchange, the Think Tank that describes itself as ‘the UK’s leading think tank’, and ‘an independent, non-partisan educational charity whose mission is to develop and promote new policy ideas that will deliver better public services, a stronger society and a more dynamic economy.’ Has published a new report on SEND, with a foreword by a former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The report contains a great deal of interesting evidence, much of which will already be know to anyone that has been involved with the emerging crisis in SEND that was already apparent from well before the covid crisis hit in 2020. Policy Exchange – Out of Control

A telling paragraph in the report lays bare the need for action

The SEND system established by the Children and Families Act 2014 and the 2015 SEND Code of Practice is inefficient, ineffective and has failed to deliver improved outcomes for children with SEND. Fundamental flaws have created perverse incentives for actors in the system. The current SEND regime was designed to support a much smaller number of acute cases. It has failed to adapt to changing social definitions of SEND that have widened demand. Instead, the concentration of resources and bespoke support at the top end of the spectrum has prompted an escalation of needs which has overwhelmed the system and undermined its long term sustainability. (Page 66).

The paragraph leaves one wondering why the Conservative government that was responsible for the 2014 Act didn’t take action to deal with the problem when in office?

In December 2018, I wrote a blog SEND on the agenda again | John Howson drawing attention to a report from the Local Government Association. There was already concern in local government circles about what was happening in SEND. It is worth repeating the key points from the LGA report.

Addressing the points raised in paragraph 17 of the Report would go a long way to creating a sustainable and successful system for young people with SEND.

  1. To create a more sustainable funding settlement going forward there may be merit in considering some key questions around how incentives in the system might be better aligned to support inclusion, meet needs within the local community of schools, and corral partners to use the high needs block to support all young people with SEND as a collective endeavour. These might include
  2. setting much clearer national expectations for mainstream schools;
  3. rethinking how high stakes accountability measures reflect the achievements of schools which make good progress with children and young people with SEND or at risk of exclusion;
  4. correcting the perverse funding incentives that mean that it can be cheaper to pass the cost of an EHCP or a permanent exclusion onto the high needs block than making good quality preventative support available in-school;
  5. looking again at the focus and content of EHCPs to afford greater flexibility to schools in how they arrange and deliver the support needed;
  6. providing ring-fenced investment from government designed explicitly to support new and evidence-based approaches to early intervention and prevention at scale;
  7. providing additional capital investment and flexibility about how that can be deployed by local government;
  8. issuing a national call for evidence in what works for educating children and young people with these needs, backed up by sufficient funding to then take successful approaches to scale and a new focus for teacher training and ongoing professional development;
  9. more specific advice for Tribunals, parents and local authorities on how the test on efficient use of resources can be applied fairly when comparing state and non-state special school placements; and
  10. reaffirming the principle around the equitable sharing of costs between health and education where these are driven by the health needs of the child or young person.   

https://www.local.gov.uk/have-we-reached-tipping-point-trends-spending-children-and-young-people-send-england

Failures by the conservative government up to 2024 to provide enough educational psychologists to meet the growing demand, and to not index-link the basic grant to schools helped produced a system where the explosion in demand broke the system.

While any report with an analysis of the problem and suggestions for how to tackle it, ahead of the present government’s White Paper, is welcome, we should not have reached the current position.  

One final point, the report seems light on the issue of training for all staff from TAs to teachers to school leaders. The lack of an appreciation of the needs of those that work in schools has been another feature of the long period of Conservative government.

I look forward to see what the Labour government’s White Paper will suggest when it appears.

How are secondary schools staffed?

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In a previous blog I looked at some aspects of the school workforce in England for the present school year. After looking at the data from the DfE’s January School Census of schools and pupil numbers, it is now possible to consider questions arising from the staffing of the present curriculum.

On average, each secondary school would have 68 teachers if you divided the number of teachers by the number of schools. Of course, that’s a mythical school, and the mean isn’t a very good measure of central tendency, but it is all we have that is easily accessible in the dataset.

So, how might our mythical school be staffed?

Number of hours taught for all yearsNumber of teachers of all yearsaverages based on 3,456 schools
Total3,807,978234,40668
English Baccalaureate subjects2,412,756164,48748
All Sciences667,23748,38614
Other147,69645,08113
English541,13441,29312
Mathematics548,09137,83511
General/Combined Science440,39136,75311
PSHE78,59535,98810
PE/Sports281,29124,2887
History210,71318,6305
Geography197,70918,0905
All Modern Languages247,87117,9865
Religious Education128,31416,8425
Other/Combined Technology120,66313,6304
Art & Design137,00812,7144
French109,39211,6163
Other Social Studies80,94410,0963
Spanish97,2349,5383
Business Studies89,6859,3313
Drama83,0269,1993
Computer science70,4128,1852
Biology53,1338,1672
Music87,4617,6102
Chemistry48,7747,2452
Design and technology – All52,7377,2032
Physics43,4056,2422
ICT36,8755,5302
Media Studies23,8713,9451
Citizenship8,9553,9411
Careers and Key Skills7,4303,5541
German25,5802,9551
Other Humanities15,4342,6711
Other science11,1212,5341
Other Modern Foreign Language15,6662,0071
General Studies3,0721,8561

The English Baccalaureate subjects account for the majority of the staff. Although design and technology only accounts for 2 teachers, if IT and other/combined technology and computing are added in the total increases to 10 teachers, not far short of the numbers for English and Mathematics.  Of course, not all the teachers will be teaching the subject all the time, and this tells us nothing about how qualified they are to teach the subjects they are actually delivering? It would be interesting to know how many qualified teachers of physics (with a physics degree) are teaching in schools with the highest percentages of free school meals?

As previous blog posts have argued, the staffing crisis may be abating, but is not over. It is good to see the TES taking in interest in these numbers Teacher supply: why 5 subjects face gloomier forecasts | Te as well as making the DfE admit what this blog has thought for some time now that the pledge for 6,500 teachers was totally unrealistic. Falling rolls and budget constraints meant that it was always going to be a non-starter. Labour ‘abandons’ manifesto pledge to hire more teachers

Taking up the reigns again

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Nineteen months ago, I paused this blog when I was appointed as the cabinet member for children, education and families on Oxfordshire County Council. Tomorrow, I officially relinquish that role after failing to win one of the newly created seats in the county council election: one of the few Liberal Democrats to be in such a position.

As a result of no longer being a councillor, and cabinet member, it does mean that I am able to start this blog again. However, even when I was a cabinet member, I have continued to post my views about recruitment into teacher training on LinkedIn. I am grateful to those that have commented on those monthly updates.

Much has changed in the education scene during the time that my blog has been paused. We now have a Labour government, but two-party politics has disappeared from the scene.

What is it, I wonder, about the third decade of each century that results in massive changes in the political landscape. A century ago, the Labour Party displaced the Liberal Party of Asquith and Lloyd George as the opposition to the Conservative Party in a two-party system. Two centuries ago, the start of the urbanisation resulted in a rapid growth in the electorate; a change that in 1832 was to lead to the Reform Act and the start of a road to universal suffrage.

In this context of political change, it is interesting that the DfE’s Interim Curriculum Review had little to say about citizenship as a subject. Perhaps the results of last Thursday might persuade the government to reconsider the importance of protecting democracy by reintroducing the subject into the curriculum.

However, to do so might mean changes in funding, not least for ITT subject targets. I am pessimistic about future funding for education. More funding for defence and the NHS will put pressure on government funding for department such as Education.

Nevertheless, I do believe that rationalisation within the academy sector could reduce spending on back-office salaries. I am also firmly of the belief that with a National Funding Formula being pupil driven, the practice of pooling schools’ balances within a MAT is unhelpful.

When such pooling involves cash balances being pooled across different local authority areas, then I am totally opposed to such a practice. But, then, I believe schooling has a very strong ‘place’ component. I also believe that the local community should have a democratic involvement.  I do not want a schooling system with the same level of local accountability as the NHS.

The nightmare that is SEND was simmering in the background 18 months ago, and it was a poor ofsted judgement that parachuted me into Oxfordshire’s Cabinet, after the Labour Party walked away from the administration. With the National Audit Office, The Education Select Committee and others revealing the scale of the task ahead, there remains much work to be done to support the education of our most physically and mentally challenged young people. As with adult social care, where the Select Committee has reported today, relationships between education and the health service are an important part of the resourcing debate about the best use of funds for the SEND sector.

I take my hat off to the officers managing the remaining local government functions within schooling, many of which, as with home to school transport, often bring parents and officers into disagreement. Although no fan of the undemocratic MATs, I also acknowledge the great work many of their leaders are doing for the education of the nation’s children. I just wish they had more local democratic oversight and support.

An Open Letter to the Secretary of State for Education

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At this important time in our history, I thought that I would post my views for the new Secretary of State for Education

An Open Letter to the Secretary of State for Education

Dear Secretary of State,

You have a tough job ahead of you. Firstly, you need to clear up problems resulting from the campaign promise of 6,000 extra teachers. Those of us in the know, are aware that this September, as for the past few years, all the training places for new secondary school teachers are not being filled. Those gaps need to be filled before you can start on adding 6,000 new teachers to the total.

Don’t think of an easy way out, such as upgrading some teaching assistants to teachers, because it is teachers for the secondary schools that we need, not more teachers for primary schools.

And then, there is the state of our school buildings. Even before the concrete crisis, many of our primary schools were time expired, and many are more than 150 years old. There needs to be a programme of replacement and, for those that will remain, a programme to help make them carbon neutral or even sources of renewable energy. After all, school playgrounds are not being used for their key purpose for 95% of the year. How can we make them earn their keep for the rest of the year, by being sources of renewable power?

Don’t get me started on funding for 16-19 year olds. That’s a battle with the Treasury you must win. At the same time, you could increase the upper age for free transport for young people in rural areas from 16 up to the de facto if not de jure leaving age of 18 from where it now stops at 16. Start by offering it this September to those staying in the same school. This is a levelling up programme for rural areas.

AI and technology are important to our country’s future, and we need to work out how they impact on our education system. Are we training new and existing teachers in a curriculum and teaching style for the future, not the past? Do we need a research body for teaching and learning in schools?

I am sure you will have much to say about early years, and perhaps you could reverse the name change Mr Gove announced when he had your job in 2010.  Bring back the Department for Children Education and Families.

There are other issues, such as higher education, private schools and the consequences of VAT on fees, and the relationship between local authorities and the academies sector, not least for children in care that you will have to deal with, but solving the teacher supply crisis is the number one priority.

You could take a leaf out of David Blunkett’s approach in 1997, and pay the fees of all trainee teachers studying as postgraduates to enter the profession. Paying them all a training salary, as his successor introduced, and the coalition removed, would be another step forward. This year, it should be possible to pay the bills from the unfilled training places where the money has already been allocated by H M Treasury plus the VAT receipts from private school fees.

If the government is serious about education, then now is the time for action. Good luck in your first 100 days in the job.

Cllr Prof. John Howson

Thank you for your readership

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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

Labour’s style over substance

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I woke up this morning to news that the Labour Party had some new proposals to end the teacher supply crisis. Strangely, the press release section of their national website hasn’t posted anything, so I am reliant on what the BBC has said for the following thoughts. Labour plan to give teachers £2,400 to stop them quitting – BBC News

In passing, the Labour Party website generally doesn’t seem to be up with events, something that surprised me for a national Party aiming for government. But there are some issues, such their relationship with other political parties, and stories of suspensions and expulsions of members that I am sure they would want to bury. Still, that is all for another day and another place.

What are Labour suggesting and why do I say that it is style over substance? Firstly, there is nothing to ease the pain of training. No fee payments, as agreed when Tuition Fees were introduced by Tony Blair’s government. This would have been an excellent opportunity for a headline along the lines -well it’s not up to me to do Labour’s work for them.

Instead of targeting trainees and entrants, we get a survivor bonus according to the BBC story

The plans to improve retention rates, announced by Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson on Sunday, would see new incentive payments awarded once teachers had completed a training programme known as the Early Career Framework, which covers their first two years in the classroom.

Apparently, the payment would be £2,400 or only between a gross one-off five to ten per cent payment of what a teacher would be earning at that point in time, before tax, national insurance and pension deductions. Less, with a £30,000 starting salary. Paying this to all survivors, regardless of the help or salary they received during training would according to Labour cost £50 million. I wonder what paying fees and a training salary to make all trainees equal, and it easier for career changers to become a teacher, would cost?

Labour’s other key promise is welcome, but even more hollow when you burrow down into what it means in reality.

The [Labour} party says it would also make it compulsory for new teachers to have a formal teaching qualification or be working towards one – a requirement scrapped by the coalition in 2012.

Sure, Gove made a headline announcement that academies did not need to employ qualified teachers: and most academies ignored this freedom, as they often did with the freedom to pay classroom teachers different salaries. However, it hasn’t stopped all schools employing unqualified teachers when they cannot find a qualified one to fill a post. After all, it was the Labour government that changed the name of these staff from ‘instructors’ that clearly demonstrated that they were not qualified teachers, to the more positive term ‘unqualified teachers’, and also created a pay scale for them.

Curiously, there were fewer unqualified teachers by headcount working in schools last Novermber (2022) than in November 2010, the first census after the end of the last Labour government – 14,389 in 2022 compared with 15,892 in November 2010 according to the DfE’s Workforce Census.

Ensuring all teachers are qualified, and qualified in teaching their subject or phase, something the Labour announcement doesn’t offer, must be a requirement. However, Labour doesn’t say what schools, faced with a vacancy, should do if a qualified teacher isn’t available: send children home? The lack of a credible answer to this question makes the policy no more than idle rhetoric about trainee teachers not about solving the teacher supply crisis.

I would offer emergency certification with a required training programme from day one for unqualified teachers, including those not qualified in the subject that they are teaching.

Labour final policy on staff development is again good in principle; this area has been neglected by the present government, despite the limited experience of much of the teaching force. However, the policy lacks detail, and detailing who will be responsible for implementing and paying for it?

Taking tax breaks away from private schools would probably affect the special school sector, where local authorities mostly pay the fees, more than schools where parents are responsible for the fees. Such saving would also probably be stretched thinly to pay for all the mooted changes.

Retention can be cheaper than recruitment, but by making training more attractive for all, there is more chance that schools currently unable to recruit teachers would fill their vacancies. All too often these schools are situated in the more deprived areas. These are the schools any policy should be tested against: does it improve the education of children in these schools?

For those that don’t know, I am a Liberal Democrat County Councillor in Oxfordshire

Has DfE ignored the Coronation?

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Less than two months before the date of the Coronation of King Charles, and close to the end of this term, I have finally found some suggestions for schools about activities around the Coronation. Unlike Twentieth century coronations, when schoolchildren were often provided with mementoes of the day, nothing like that is planned for 2023. No mug, spoons, New Testaments or other books, as in 1953, just a few suggested activities and a photographic competition.

The suggestions was only brough to my attention after I asked a question at Oxfordshire’s County council meeting yesterday about what arrangements had been made by the DfE. At 1030 yesterday morning the Cabinet Member could not tell me of any arrangements and only sent me the details later in the afternoon after some work by the director of Children’s Services’ staff.

Royalist or Republican, the coronation is an era changing day in people’s lives, and I think the schoolchildren of England deserve better than this from their government.

All Schools

Celebrating the Coronation of King Charles III and the Queen Consort

You can check out the Coronation map to find Coronation events happening in your local area, or if your school is hosting a public event, you can add it yourself.

If you have any questions about the Coronation website, please contact: coronation@dcms.gov.uk

Get involved

Downloadable materials in the Coronation toolkit

Also on the Coronation website you’ll find the Coronation toolkit – a range of downloadable materials to help with your Coronation celebrations, including homemade bunting templates, recipe inspiration and fun activities such as word searches and colouring pages.

Children’s artwork, baking creations, bunting designs and lots of other Coronation celebrations will also be showcased in a photo gallery on the Coronation website. To share your photos, tag DCMS on social media (Twitter, Facebook or Instagram) or submit your photos via email to coronation@dcms.gov.uk with the subject line ‘Coronation Creative Challenge’.

Look out for a Coronation explainer video for primary schools

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is commissioning a short film aimed at primary school children explaining the history and significance of the Coronation. The video will be made freely available to schools for use in assemblies and lessons, and will be shared ahead of the Coronation.

Coronation Generation – poster design challenge

Award-winning educational charity, Ideas Foundation, are inviting schools and colleges across the UK to take part in a poster design challenge to celebrate the Coronation of King Charles III.

Submitted designs should reflect four key themes – community, diversity, sustainability and youth. Over the Coronation weekend, selected posters will be displayed across hundreds of digital poster sites, donated by Clear Channel UK, with the potential to be viewed by thousands of people each day.

Free downloadable resources for use in classrooms are available, including the brief, a toolkit of materials and guidance on submissions.

The deadline for entries is 30th April.

More at

Resources for Schools – Coronation of His Majesty The King & Her Majesty The Queen Consort

I couldn’t find anything on the DfE website this morning the 29th March.

Teaching staff ratios worsens in secondary sector

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The DfE has published the latest Education and Training Statistics for the four nations of the United Kingdom. As education is a devolved activity, each nation choses how to use its funds in its own way. The remainder of this blog refers to outcomes in England. Education and training statistics for the UK, Reporting Year 2022 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk)

The largest expenditure item in schools is staffing, with teaching staff taking the largest share of that budget. One measure over time of the trend in that spending is the Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR). The ratio allows for changes in pupil numbers are well as in funding. When pupil numbers are falling but funding increasing, PTRs sometimes fall – i.e. show an improvement as there are then fewer pupils per teacher. In the primary sector, this is sometimes talked about in terms of class sizes, but such a measure is less useful in the secondary sector, so allow for comparisons in trends, PTRS are a more useful measure.

At present, pupil numbers in the primary sector are in decline, whereas they are still rising across the secondary sector as a whole. This is reflected in the trends in PTRs.

PTRs for school sectors in England
2017/182018/192019/202020/212021/22
NurseryEngland21.922.823.521.823.4
PrimaryEngland20.920.920.920.620.6
SecondaryEngland15.916.316.616.616.7
SpecialEngland6.26.26.36.26.3
Total MaintainedEngland17.918.018.218.018.0
(1) In England, special schools include pupil referral units.
(2) In England, the primary pupil-teacher ratio includes local authority (LA) maintained nurseries.
Source DfE November 2022

Primary school PTRs remained constant in 2021/22 compared with the previous year, whereas in the secondary sector they continued to worsen, reaching their worst aggregate level since before 2016/17. The small number of state-maintained nursey schools came under the greatest pressure, with their PTR almost returning to the record pre-pandemic level recorded in 2019/20.

Most of the remainder of the data are for the United Kingdom as a whole, and not dis-aggregated into the national levels. Across the United Kingdom as a whole, Expenditure on education in real terms increased by 5.4% from Financial Year 2020-21 to Financial Year 2021-22. Expenditure on education as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) decreased by 0.2 percentage points.

Later today, the Chancellor, in his autumn statement, may well announce cuts to the education budget in England. Any significant cuts to revenue funding will have repercussions for the 2023/24 data when it is published later in the decade. PTRs may well worsen significantly, especially if teachers are offered a pay increase anywhere near the current rate of inflation.

However, past experience in previous ‘hard times’ has shown that schools do everything to protect teachers’ jobs and will first cut everything else in the budget to the bone. Today, a MAT in Oxfordshire has made that clear Oxford and Abingdon schools face choice of heating or teaching – BBC News My guess is, as she picture shows it will be the heating that is cut and not the teaching.