What a tragedy

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It is difficult to know what to say to the family and friends of murdered MP, Jo Cox. Such events come out of nowhere and can affect us all. As a politician, being available to the community and holding regular surgeries is second nature. Even in this time of emails and social media there is something important about being there for members of the public that may want to talk to you.

My condolences go out to all touched in any way by the tragedy, but especially to the family of Jo Cox where the sorrow must be devastating. As regular readers will know, I survived an unprovoked attack as a teacher many years ago, so I can have some little idea of what the the  family of Jo Cox are having to bear. I was lucky, they weren’t. I could continue my career: she cannot now do so. All the tributes suggest Jo had a glittering career ahead of her. This was a life cut short before it could fully be enjoyed, as a politician, mother and all-round great person.

There is little more one can say except to pause, remember, and above all give thanks for a life well-lived, but so brutally cut short. Even though I never met you Jo, thank you for your service to Society.

More to attend school of their choice

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Purdah is turning out to be a curious state of affairs during the referendum campaign. Normally, during a general election, virtually everything in government stops. However, the DfE seem to be carrying on as normal in some ways but not in others during the current period of purdah. Yesterday, the statistical release on the admissions round for September 2016 was published. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/secondary-and-primary-school-applications-and-offers-2016

There was the usual headlines about London parents being less successful than those elsewhere. However, to fully understand the London data, compared with the rest of England, you need both a sense of history and a knowledge of geography. The tightening of rules regarding free home to school transport by many shire counties over the past two years, as austerity has taken hold in local government, inevitably means more parents have no choice of school unless they are willing to pay for travel. Thus, many rural areas have more than 90% of parents receiving their first choice of school even at the secondary school level.

In London, where travel anywhere across the capital is free for travel to school regardless of parental income, parents can make a choice knowing that if unsuccessful they will still be offered a place in a school somewhere. Providing the figures by borough is even more unhelpful in London where the construction of secondary schools, was largely governed by the former LCC and it successor the ILEA often many decades ago. For various reasons, the outcome for the location of schools was not evenly spread around the then boroughs. Add in factors such as single-sex schools and faith schools and even single-sex faith schools and the distribution only makes sense at a greater level than that of the individual borough.

Nevertheless, some of the London problems may be the result the growth of 2.8% in the number of applications received this year to 548,006, compared to 533,310 in 2015. DfE officials said the increase was due to a “rise in births which began in the previous decade”: no surprise there, and London is likely to have seen a growth of more than 2.8% in applications.

The gap between the national average and outcomes for school places in London is much less at the primary school levels that at the secondary, level with Barking & Dagenham even doing better than the national average. This is despite I seem to recall dire warning some years ago of a shortage of school places in the borough.

Indeed, 84.1% of 11-year-olds across the country landed their first preference, compared with 84.2% in 2015 and 88.4% of children seeking primary school places were offered their first choice, up from 87.8% last year. This improvement suggests that the funds David Laws pledged for school building programmes, when he was the Minister, may be starting to have an effect even despite the growing school population. It may also reflect the work done by many local authorities to manage pupil place planning. This is a service that government doesn’t always seem to fully appreciate, especially when dumping a free school or UTC in an area where it is not helpful to effective place planning for all pupils.

Hopefully, the DfE now realises that overall planning at a national level just wouldn’t work and that effective local decision-making, especially for primary education must be retained and even encouraged.

 

Computing in schools

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Did you know that computing was part of the EBacc? I am sure you did. However, not all MPs appear to as clued up, as the evidence published last week as part of the House of Commons Science Select Committee report on the ‘Digital Skills Crisis’ revealed. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmsctech/270/270.pdf

Since the MP unaware that you could study computing as part of the EBacc is a member of the Scottish Nationalist Party, she can perhaps be forgiven for not knowing the intricacies of the education system in England.

Whether the chair of the Committee should have allowed the evidence from the Royal Society of Scotland to appear in the Report as if it was from The Royal Society may be a less forgivable oversight (paragraph 59). I also am slightly perplexed about the reference in the Report to the fact that, ‘The Government has set targets for recruiting teachers in Maths and Physics’ and the requirement from the Committee that ‘They should also make a similar pledge for Computer Science.’ To the best of my knowledge, Computer Science has been treated in the same way as other Ebacc subjects in the 2016 allocation of training places. But, perhaps the Committee knows something the rest of us don’t.

The Committee held an oral evidence session with some witnesses from the school sector. The report notes that, ‘Not only do just 35% of ICT teachers have a relevant qualification but the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) calculated that 22% of IT equipment in schools is ineffective.’ They also noted that ‘Ofsted has concluded that the impact of digital technology on education standards has been varied, reflecting different levels of investment, access to high quality broadband and teacher support.’ They also interviewed the Schools Minister, Mr Gibb.

However, they didn’t seem to notice that computer science and its predecessor IT has failed to meet the Teacher Supply Model number set in each of the last three years and seems set to do so again this year. Perhaps the Science Committee might like to go on and hold a joint inquiry with the Education Select Committee so that can consider the evidence about IT and computing in schools in more detail. They might like to ask how schools are coping with the digital divide? I am sure a lack of access to IT resources whether because of poverty or through being located in a rural area without fast broadband speeds must hold back social mobility.

I agree with the Committee that the digital economy is of great importance to the future prosperity of the country. After all, TeachVac, our free recruitment site, depends upon high quality programming skills for its success. Hopefully, we can increase the number and quality of those teaching the subject to ensure every child is both taught the subject effectively and motivated to see its wider place in future society.

Finally,a little grumble, the fact that the Committee held its last evidence session in the spring, but it has taken three months for the Report to appear is slightly depressing. I do hope it doesn’t mark a trend among Select Committees to sit on evidence for long periods before producing their reports.

Congratulations and commiserations

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Congratulations to everyone awarded an honour in the Queen’s Birthday honours list announced earlier today. Governments always seem more likely to honour those working in the policy areas that they favour and the latest list doesn’t appear to have bucked that particular trend. Sure, there are governors, crossing patrollers and those working in school meals awarded honours, but many of the top honours have gone to those working in the academies or free schools areas.

The honours’ list comes at the end of a week where UCAS have published some detailed data on offers made by individual universities https://www.ucas.com/corporate/data-and-analysis/ucas-undergraduate-releases/ucas-undergraduate-reports-sex-area that show some have different offer rates for different groups when analysed by race, class and gender.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, the soon to retire Chief Inspector, also added his voice to the debate on how well pupils from poor backgrounds do at school and, according to the BBC report of what he said, he highlighted how gifted children from poor homes entitled to pupil premium money were still lagging well behind. He said, “The most recent statistics paint a bleak picture of underachievement and unfulfilled potential.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-36490164

Social mobility appears to have stalled in many schools. Even among the ‘best in class’ schools, whose heads are honoured today, there may still be some under-achievement of disadvantaged and among the poorest performing pupils.  Of course, parents may be partly culpable by not helping instil the value of education in their offspring, and it can be a real challenge to educate children in care whose lives, by the very fact they have been taken into care, are often among the most damaged and who present some of the greatest challenges to educators. It would surely be encouraging to see the head of the school that does best for these pupils rewarded with an honour and also some recognition of the virtual school services across the country that help coordinate the education of these often seriously challenged young people. How they would operate in a fully academised education service is another interesting question for the future.

So, commiserations to those pupils still not receiving the best possible education they could. They may also be affected by the other news story of the week, the debate in two parliamentary committees – the Education Select Committee and the PAC – about teacher supply and the role of government. If there are insufficient teachers in some subjects the ‘low attainers’, to use the DfE terminology, may study at Key Stage 4, such as design and technology, business studies and IT then perhaps it isn’t surprising that they don’t fulfil their potential.

I am sure that the in-coming Chief inspector, assuming her appointment is confirmed, with a background in leading a charity whose academies are aimed at developing the potential of all their pupils, will want to make the part schools play in helping achieve social mobility a key priority for the period in office.  Our aim must be to be able in a position where it is possible to congratulate every school on achieving the best possible outcome for every child.

 

 

 

Teacher Supply: a national issue

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The publication today of the Report into teacher training from the Public Accounts Committee that arose out of their consideration of the National Audit Office Report published in February finally brings to an end a period of mounting concern over teacher supply, with the recognition that there is an issue to be resolved. Regular readers of this blog will recall that in a seminal post on the 14th August 2013, I wrote that ‘It is time for a radical overhaul of teacher preparation to really meet the needs of a 21st century education system.’ The post had been headed ‘scaremongering’ after the government had said there wasn’t a problem.

Even today, in their response to the PAC, the DfE spokesperson has rightly alluded to the fact that the government has upped its game; with better marketing, more bursaries and improved levels of recruitment: all true, but if these measures still have not solved the basic problem of not hitting correctly determined training targets, then what are the consequences for pupils in our schools? Asking that question has always been at the forefront of my attempts, now successful, to ensure teacher supply matters didn’t slip below the radar. The issue is now regularly discussed, but has still to be resolved.

At the heart of the matter was the long-standing debate about quality training versus training where it was needed most to address teacher supply concerns. Ideally, the answer was to create sufficient high quality places where they were most needed, but that just didn’t seem to happen, as the NAO’s Report showed in its table of training places per 100,000 pupils in each government region. The East of England, an area with a fast growing population, had barley half the number of training places as there were in London, this despite both regions have significant demands for new teachers.

Readers will know that although Ofsted can conduct surveys, as it has recently, my view is that nationally we need regular on-going management information on the labour market in schools whether for classroom teachers, middle leadership or for senior leadership posts. That’s why TeachVac www.teachvac.com was created.

Over the next few weeks the TeachVac team will analyse the results of the 2016 recruitment round for September and compare it with the 2015 round. The outcome should be reported by early July at the latest. By the next recruitment round we hope to be able to look at the labour market more widely as TeachVac collects data on posts at all levels and in all types of school.

The DfE now has a large team working on the teacher supply issue, but it probably needs some more senior staff at the policy level to become more involved with the issue. I don’t know who has responsibility at the DfE Board level, but if it isn’t an explicit responsibility then perhaps it ought to be.

As the Chief Inspector said, those that suffer most when there is a teacher supply problem aren’t those that can help themselves, but those without the least social or actual capital to remedy the situation. These pupils can be found in almost every school. As a result, teacher supply is a national problem that needs a national solution.

Management Information and Statistics

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The session of the Education Select Committee held this morning was an interesting one. Clearly, the mention of TeachVac www.teachvac.com  as a data source in both a question and answer will help draw attention to the team’s  aim of creating a free vacancy web site for schools that helps free-up cash for teaching and learning. To that end, the TeachVac team are delighted with early take-up of the new free Vacancy Portal announced last Friday (see earlier post). This is especially useful to primary schools that have no place on their school web site to list any vacancies.

However, to return to the issue behind the title of this post, the difference between management information and statistics. The DfE is very good at collecting statistics and there was much discussion among the witnesses at the Select Committee about the data in the School Workforce Census, completed every November by all schools. Much of it is available to everyone and the 2015 data should be published next month. However, the data down to individual teacher level is rightly only available to bone fide researchers. By its very nature this data is of historical interest in terms of the labour market because, by the time it is published, schools are well into a further recruitment round. By comparison, management information seeks to identify what is happening in the here and know. For example, it is useful for shops to know what they sold a year ago, but to reorder they need to know what is happening to sales now. Most have sophisticated point off sale information systems.

Now, if the labour market for teachers is stable from year to year using statistics to help decide how many teachers to train next year is fine. It doesn’t matter if the data is out of date so long as it is accurate. But, if the market is changing, it might help to know what is happening in the current recruitment round. Hence my question in yesterday’s post about the business studies and PE trainee numbers providing a shortage and an over-supply. You cannot easily aswer those questions from the Workforce Census data, but you could from the ITT destinations data. Joining up the information still seems to be something of an issue between different parts of the DfE.

Without the data, you often don’t know the questions to ask. It wasn’t until I started monitoring leadership vacancies that I discovered the difference in re-advertisement rates between Roman Catholic schools and community schools. Similarly, TeachVac has brought into sharp focus the regional differences in adverts placed per school during the recruitment round. Turnover could be deduced from the Workforce Census, but did anyone every bother to do so and then match need to regional allocations even though, as the witnesses accepted this morning, much of the teacher supply market is very local in nature. Incidentally, I don’t think head of department posts are a sub-regional market, but are mostly constrained within a travel to work area. It is only for leadership vacancies at the more senior levels that I think significant numbers of teachers are prepared for the upheaval of a house move.

So, both statistics and management information have their place and their uses. It just seems to me we have lots of the former but not enough of the latter in education.

Select Committee: more questions about teacher supply they might want to ask

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Tomorrow the House of Commons Education Select Committee resumes its hearings into the question of teacher supply. This inquiry started in the autumn, so it is two days short of six months since the last public evidence session. Much has happened in that time, as readers of this blog with know; not least the NAO report and the White Paper, where Chapter 2 concentrates on the question of teachers without really providing much that was new in policy terms.

If, as I expect, the Committee members are on the ball, to use a footballing metaphor ahead of Euro 2016, they will ask the witnesses, some from the subject associations and others from higher education, the school sector and Ofsted, how much of an understanding the DfE really has of the issue of teacher supply?

Some possible questions the might ask could include:

Why are there too many PE teachers and too few business studies teachers being trained if the Teacher Supply Model is doing its job properly?

Given that by the Workforce Census date in November all pupils are being taught for the correct amount of time each week, how do we deal with the consequences of accumulated teacher shortages in a particular subject.

For the representative of DATA, how are possible shortages spread out among the different component parts of the D&T curriculum. Are there greater shortages of say food technology teachers than those with expertise in resistant materials? The same question might be applied to a representative from the languages area, but as there isn’t one it might as well be addressed to the Ofsted witness about the data they collect on subject knowledge and how teachers actually spend their time teaching.

Is the present squeeze on budgets affecting the demand for teachers and who would know if it was? How long would any slowdown in demand take to affect the supply side of the equation and could it leave more trainees with an extra £9,000 of fee debt, but no teaching job in England? If they took a teaching job overseas presumably the Treasury wouldn’t see any repayments during the period of time a teacher was outside the country.

There are lots more questions the Committee could, and no doubt will, ask tomorrow. I hope they do dis cuss the issue of primary teachers and subject knowledge as this is often overlooked. There was a useful APPG report on RE teaching a few years ago now that showed how little time a PGCE student had on developing their subject knowledge. This may also be true in other subjects and is a concern for those teaching at Key Stage 2. Are MATs, with an exchange of teachers between primary and secondary schools, a possible way forward? Will technology help with the brightest pupils or is it off-putting?

The Committee could also ask about part-time working in the secondary sector since that has risen up the agenda recently, but I doubt any of the witnesses will have much evidence on the matter, even if they have an opinion.

Finally, I hope someone will ask about the government’s idea of a national vacancy web site mentioned in the White Paper and whether TeachVac is not already providing such a service to schools, trainees and teachers at no cost as a public service, especially now TeachVac has launched its free job portal for schools.

Teacher Supply, a longer-term issue

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According to a Local Government Information Unit bulletin issued on Saturday, and citing a report in the Birmingham Post that was apparently based upon Office of National Statistics data, the number of people aged 0-14 in England will increase by 951,200 between 2014 and 2039. This will take the number from 9.7 million to 10.6 million. If anywhere near accurate, these figures will mean that there is likely to be no let-up in the demand for more teachers for most of the next quarter century.

The ONS will release some more data at the end of June but, whatever happens, the demand for more teachers is not likely to be spread evenly across the country. At present, ONS projects the following increases for the different regions of England.

Percentage increase in population 2024 on 2014

Region 0 to 15 years old
England 8.7
London 14.9
South East 8.8
East Midlands 7.7
East 10.9
South West 9.2
North East 4.0
Yorkshire and The Humber 4.9
West Midlands 6.9
North West 5.3

This table is very much in line with the findings of our TeachVac www.teachvac.com vacancy tracking. Both in 2015 and so far in 2016, London has had the largest percentage of vacancies per school for classroom teachers of any region, followed by the South East and East of England regions. There have been far fewer vacancies registered in the regions of the north of England.

If the population of London and the Home Counties is going to continue to increase, then governments, whatever their political complexion, will need to solve the staffing crisis in these regions as well as finding sufficient space for the extra pupils. Finding locations for new schools will be a real challenge and it might in extremis require building on existing playgrounds, with new outdoor space being located on the roof. There are precedents for such schools in inner city locations, although they probably aren’t ideal. I recall visiting one such inner city high school in New York located in a former office building that had no windows on several of the upper floors where the classrooms were located.

But, the longer-term strategy for teaching such large numbers of pupils also needs to be addressed by government. The issue is not, will they be taught, because somehow they will be. But, will it be to a standard we require to maintain our position in an evolving world economy? Schools in London have made great strides in achievements this century, it would disappointing to see that progress stall and even worse to see it go into reverse with falling standards just because there were insufficient appropriately trained and qualified teachers.

Whether the solution is a longer working life, more late entrants into teaching as career changers living in London already won’t face a problem of where to live or the more advanced use of technology and private study for older students is all open for discussion.

What is not a matter for debate is the need to take action for the longer-term in a strategic fashion. The first step might be identify a regional commissioner group for London and the surrounding areas.

 

 

New free job portal from Teachvac

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Two years ago I helped start TeachVac. Today, TeachVac, the free web site when schools can log vacancies for teachers and teachers and trainees can indicate their job preferences, all for free, takes another step forward.

I am delighted that TeachVac has today launched a free job portal for those schools that don’t have a vacancy page on their own web site. This will be of most interest to primary schools, since most secondary schools do have a page for vacancies. You can find it by visiting www.teachvac.com and clicking on the details of the portal in the middle box.

The free TeachVac job portal essentially creates a special page with the school name and details of vacancies entered by the school. After a set period of time, usually 14 or 21 days, the job is removed automatically. If the position hasn’t been filled the school will need to re-enter the vacancy. Teachers matched with the vacancy are directed to an email supplied by the school where they can request full details and any necessary application form.

At present the portal is only for teaching posts but, if demands by schools requires, it can be extended to cope with all types of non-teaching vacancies including teaching assistants, administrative staff and others types of post. We can even configure it to offer details of School Direct training posts if there is the demand from schools.

When a school with a portal decides to add a vacancy page to its own web site it is a simple exercise either to close down the portal or a school can just let any jobs listed expire and be deleted by the system leaving the portal remaining as inactive.

Teachvac has a free helpline. The two most common questions are: we are trying to register and what is a school’s URN and is it really that simple? The answer to the first is that it is not the same as a school’s DfE number and if a school doesn’t know their URN the team at TeachVac will help them locate it quickly and easily. The answer to the second is, yes it really is that simple to either register a job as a school or register a requirement for a vacancy as a teacher or trainee. And for everyone, it is a free service. All that we ask is that users spread the word to others. Word of mouth reduces the marketing costs and so far it seems to be working as 2016 vacancies and numbers looking for jobs is showing impressive returns over 2015.

TeachVac covers all schools in England, both state funded and private, but doesn’t yet go beyond the borders. That’s something we are looking at for the future to see whether there might be a market for a TeachVac service for international schools. Teachvac is also looking at the further education sector as another area for expansion.

 

Recruitment round enters final stage

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The end of May marks the traditional climax of the recruitment round for September appointments in schools. From this point onwards most existing teachers cannot change jobs for September. As a result schools must rely on the remaining trainees, returners and overseas teachers to fill any vacancies still remaining.

At TeachVac, the free recruitment site that is used by an increasing number of schools, teachers and trainees, we have been busy computing the results of the recruitment round so far in 2016 compared with last year.

Secondary schools that post vacancies receive the latest information about the market in that subject every time they post a main scale vacancy. They also receive monthly updates of the overall position in the newsletter posted on the TeachVac website. There is a similar newsletter for teachers.

The more detailed summer review is now being written and will appear by the end of June. It will summarise both our view of the recruitment round to date; prospects for the autumn term and the latest analysis of recruitment into training that will allow early predictions to be made about the recruitment round for September 2018 and January 2018.

TeachVac has always recognised that many primary schools don’t recruit often enough to make it worthwhile having a vacancy page on their website. For that reason TeachVac are launching a vacancy portal that will allow primary schools to use a school specific page within the TeachVac site on which to place their vacancies when they do arise. Simple to use, it will like the other key TeachVac services be free to schools and will provide interested teachers with a link to the school for more information.

At TeachVac we don’t see why anyone should pay for recruitment unless it is absolutely necessary. The basic service should be free. The DfE accepted this view in the recent White Paper, but we still have to see whether they will accept what is already provided in the market or spend public money creating a new system of their own?

Despite the stories of budget cuts and redundancies, TeachVac has recorded more adverts for main scale teachers so far in 2016 than in the first five months of 2015. Some of the vacancies reported early in the year may have been as a result of schools being unable to fill vacancies for January with appropriately qualified teachers. However, it is noticeable that vacancies advertised during May were little changed to the numbers advertised last year, especially the case in subjects where schools might struggle to find a teacher.

Location undoubtedly matters. There are large differences between parts of the north of England and London and the Home Counties in the average number of vacancies advertised per school. These regional differences really do mean that not taking location into account when allocating teacher preparation places can affect some schools’ chances of recruiting appropriately qualified staff with high quality subject knowledge.