Will climate change improve school attendance?

Posted on May 23, 2016 by John Howson

While the furore about the issue of pupils being taken on holiday during term-time was hitting the media the government published the annual data for overall school attendance during the autumn term of 2015 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/pupil-absence-in-schools-in-england-autumn-term-2015

Whether it was a direct consequence of the mild autumn last year or due to other factors isn’t possible to determine from the published data, but the percentage of days lost dropped during the autumn term of 2015 in both the primary and secondary sectors. Overall, primary schools averaged 3.6% of sessions missed, with secondary schools averaging 4.6% in the autumn of 2015. This compares with 4.1% and 5.5% of sessions missed during the autumn term of 2011, in primary and secondary schools respectively.

In 2011, 74.8% of pupils missed at least one session due to absence, whereas in 2015 the percentage was 72.3%, the lowest recorded during this period. Just over two thirds of pupils had an authorised absence, whereas it was around one in five that had at least one unauthorised absence during the autumn term. There was little change in the percentage of pupils arriving late over the five year period, with fewer than one in 25 not making it on time. With all the pressures on family life, this seems like a great achievement in meeting deadlines which in some cases involve several different schools for the same family.

The number of sessions lost through illness was the lowest recorded during any autumn term during the past five years, even so it amounted to 3,664,030 sessions. This compared with a peak of 4,100,750 sessions lost to illness during the autumn term of 2012. Dental and medical appointments accounted for the second highest percentage of lost sessions. I wonder whether a seven day NHS will help reduce this lost schooling even further as it remains stubbornly high at nearly 19% of absences.

Authorised family holidays have fallen between 2011 and 2015, from 6.4% to just 1.1% of absences, whereas unauthorised holidays have increased from 2.9% to 4.2%. Overall, the number of pupils losing time through holidays dropped from 571,260 in 2011 to 343,625 in 2015, with the largest drop in the number of pupils allowed to be absent for an agreed family holiday.

The timing of certain religious events can affect the figures and the number of pupils with at least one day lost for religious observance increased from 78,000 in 2014 to more than 467,000 in 2015 beating the 427,000 total reached in 2013.

If warm dry weather improves school attendance, then this argues for a longer winter break and a shorter summer holidays. Such a pattern might also save schools money on heating bills, but would certainly put pressure on family holidays if more children were trying to go on holiday over a shorter period of time. Perhaps more cruise ships is one answer, with family cruises during the summer holidays using ships from the southern hemisphere that might otherwise be under-filled during their winter months.

W(h)ither UTCs?

Posted on May 16, 2016 by John Howson

This month the Education Funding Agency has issued financial notices to improve to two University Technical Colleges; Daventry and Buckinghamshire. Interestingly, both are cited in a recent House of Commons Library briefing paper on UTCs (No 07250 issued 15^th March 2016) as having relatively low recruitment figures in their early years of operation. Indeed, Daventry, according to the local newspaper, is currently considering moving from its current 14-18 UTC model to become an 11-18 school, presumably to boost numbers and help with school places in the area. Nationally, three of the first 41 UTCs have either closed or are in the process of doing so, as are also some of the other 14-18 Studio Schools. However, a further 20 UTCs are in the planning stage.

So, might UTCs be set to become the ‘De Lorean’ of the education world; a good idea, but not financially viable? Having visited the Didcot UTC recently, I can see the attraction of the concept as supported by Lord Baker. But, they do run into a number of challenges. Firstly, changing school at 14 isn’t a normal part of the school scene, so the UTCs have to persuade young people and their parents that the change is worthwhile. Secondly, the schools that they are departing from will lose cash for every pupil that transfers. After four years a school losing ten pupils a year could be £200,000 down on income, but still be trying to offer the same curriculum to its remaining pupils. Lose twenty pupils a year and the cash burn is even more concerning. Some schools might fight to keep their pupils or only be interested in losing those that cost more to educate than they generate in revenue.

As each UTC has its own brand, there isn’t even a coherent national offering and some UTCs may look more attractive to pupils with an interest in vocational courses rather than academic prowess. This raises the question as to whether or not these pupils could have been more cost effectively educated by the further education sector. Certainly, a school that gains a reputation for only educating part of the ability range is less likely to flourish, especially if that part is the less able group. UTCs are also probably not helped, especially in rural areas, by the fact that there is no support with transport costs unless the UTC is able to provide assistance. This isn’t an issue in London, where TfL provides free transport for all school pupils, but it is in the rest of the country where the cost of attending a UTC may run into several hundred pounds a year compared with staying put at the school you joined at eleven.

The government will need to work out how to make UTCs a success if they want the concept to flourish in the manner that Lord Baker intended. This will be a challenge while the government continues to believe in the market approach to education. Funding these schools differently to other schools would result in cries of ‘foul’ from the school losing pupils at 14, but as we have seen with Daventry and Buckinghamshire, the risk of not doing so is that the UTCs will struggle to maintain financial solvency, especially as they are operating in areas of the curriculum with above average teaching costs in both revenue and capital terms compared with say an arts based curriculum. ln a school offering the full curriculum, expensive subjects can be balanced with less costly ones. Alternatively, if you are a free school, you can opt only for a cheap languages and arts subject curriculum and eschew the expensive science and technology areas, however useful they might be to the national economy.

Unless there is a real desire by government to make the UTC idea work for the 14-18 age group the concept seems potentially at risk of becoming like Lord Baker’s earlier foray into this area, City Technology Colleges, doomed to be little more than a sideshow in the educational fairground.

What is reasonable?

Posted on May 15, 2016 by John Howson

Until we see the full judgement in the recent case we won’t know what the judges in the High Court were thinking when they seemed to deemed it ‘reasonable’ for a parent to be able to take a child on holiday for a week during school term-time.

It is worth recalling that the overarching responsibility of parents is to see that their children receive an education when they are of compulsory school-age (there is a grey area for young people between the ages of 16-18 that will need clarification at some point.)

For young people between 5-16 the law says:

Duty of parents to secure education of children of compulsory school age.

The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable—

(a)to his age, ability and aptitude, and

(b)to any special educational needs he may have,

either by regular attendance at school or otherwise

The issue turns on the definition of ‘regular attendance.’ If the parent, as most do, hands over the responsibility to the State, what is the nature of the contract between the parent and the State? The State agrees to provide the child with 190 days of schooling per year. It is accepted that children may be off sick and there may be other reasons for a child not to be present, but these will require ‘leave’ to be absent.

In the 1990s two things happened, Ofsted started reporting regularly on attendance levels at schools and the State wanted to drive up standards of education that were thought to be falling. As a result, the law was tightened to ensure regular attendance, with two defences; ‘sickness or unavoidable cause’ or ’with leave’. Historically, schools could grant up to 10 days leave, but that right was removed over time.

The government explained the basis for this change in relation to family holidays in the background to the secondary legislation making the change.

The 2006 Regulations refer to parents applying for family holiday in “special circumstances” and to schools having discretion to grant up to ten school days of holiday per year. Many parents and some schools have interpreted this law as an automatic entitlement to an annual two-week term time holiday. The Education (Pupil Registration) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2013 amend the 2006 Regulations to clarify that leave of absence during term time shall not be granted unless there are “exceptional circumstances”.

They further explained that;

For pupils to benefit from education and achieve their full potential they must attend school regularly. School attendance data from 2010/11 showed that 90 per cent of pupils with an absence rate of less than 4 per cent achieved 5 or more A*- C grades at GCSE or equivalent. In primary schools, 4 out of 5 pupils with an absence rate of less than 4 per cent achieved level 4 or above in both English and mathematics.

As Oxfordshire County Council’s document on the subject for parents notes;

90% attendance means that your child is absent from lessons for the equivalent of one half day per week.

So how draconian should the State be? Personally, I think in the first year of schooling when routines are being set and key topics may be being learnt for the first time every effort should be made to attend and taking time out may not be helpful either for the child or their classmates if it disrupts the teaching. As a rule of thumb after that I think where pupils are rarely or never off sick, the guidelines in the old 10-day rule probably provided a sensible rule of thumb for head teachers. After all, some parents cannot take holidays during school holiday period because of the nature of their jobs. However, if a child has missed a lot of time through sickness, taking time off turning term-time that year for a holiday isn’t a good idea and I would expect a head teacher to refuse ‘leave’.

Essentially, the legislation should encourage parents to make the most of the education on offer for their children without seriously affecting either their education or that of their classmates.

My parents only ever took me out of school for one week at the start of my third year in junior school and I never really understood the work on fractions that was introduced during that week. Had it been the last week of the summer term it might have been a different matter.

However, what is clear is that major changes to legislation really ought to be part of primary legislation and not created by secondary legislation and Ministerial fiat. Had that been the case here, Parliament could have discussed in committee what it meant by the phrase ‘attend school regularly’ and the acceptable reasons not to do so.

Perhaps, as a result of this parent’s action it will now have a chance to do so. They might also ask whether if the State isn’t able to fulfil its part of the contract it should make up the missing days? Lord Denning did discuss this in Meade v Haringey in 1979 at the end of the Winter of Discontent, but it never came to trial and a decision.

Recruitment a key issue for school leaders

Posted on May 12, 2016 by John Howson

Earlier this week I attended the launch of The Key’s ‘State of the Nation’ Report. The Key’s Report http://www.joomag.com/magazine/state-of-education-survey-report-2016/0604114001462451154?short looks at what is of interest and concern to school leaders. Perhaps not surprisingly, recruitment and retention off staff figure highly, although not in top spot. The analysis by The Key backs up TeachVac’s analysis in relation to the regional picture of where the greatest recruitment challenges are to be found: London and the Home Counties.

At the launch, Fergal Roche was kind enough to mention the expertise that the writer of this blog has built up in understanding the workings of the labour market for teachers. I am grateful for the public endorsement.

Anyway, we are now approaching the endgame for the normal recruitment round for vacancies to be filled at the start of the school-year in September. As we report regularly to schools that are signed up to TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk there are going to be problems again in September, this despite the government taking cash out of schools through increased pension and National Insurance contributions. As an aside, governments really cannot claim schools are fully funded if they do not recompense them for adverse changes in taxation since they are just paying money with one hand and taking it away with another. Unless that is this is an attempt to either force schools to employ less well paid staff or to substitute technology for people in the learning process.

But, back to the recruitment situation. Vacancies continue to run at a higher rate in London and the Home Counties than further north and west in England. For the second year in succession, Business Studies is the first subject to effectively run out of trainees across much of the country and school looking to appoint teachers in this subject may well need recourse to returners or the use of expensive agencies. Later this month we expect to warn that in both Geography and English there will be unlikely to be sufficient trainees to meet demand across the whole recruitment round. Design & Technology, or at least some aspects of the subject, will likely follow soon afterwards. These issues are, of course, on top of the perennial problems in subjects such as Physics, problems that are masked by schools advertising for teachers of ‘science’ rather than a specific scientific discipline.

Even though most schools will make it to September fully staffed, vacancies in January 2017 will be much more of a challenge to fill and schools may face the full effects of market forces and the inevitable rising price of acquiring teachers in shortage subjects. Schools that use TeachVac will, at least, know how bad the situation is when they post their vacancies. And, just a reminder, TeachVac is free to schools and operates a daily matching service.

Bring back local democracy for schools

Posted on May 8, 2016 by John Howson

At the last county council meeting in Oxfordshire we discussed school organisation and the government’s proposals for making all schools academies. During the debate one Tory councillor said he didn’t believe in the need for trained teachers. As he is the Tory representative on the committee overseeing the Police & Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley I asked him bluntly whether I could enrol as a police officer without training and, if so, could I be issued with a firearm? Not surprisingly, he said the two jobs were different.

In the past I have asked journalists that question me on the need for teacher training whether I could become their editor without having been a journalist; most say that’s not how it works. Of course, it is the way it worked in the past as Lord Adonis will tell you if you ask what training he received before becoming the education reporter at the Financial Times.

With this background of establishment belief that anyone can be a teacher, and indeed run a school, I read this week’s Profile interview in Schools Week with interest. This is a regular series that I was proud to be part of when it first started and they were looking volunteers to interview. This week the interviewee was Toby Young, http://schoolsweek.co.uk/toby-young-free-school-chief-executive/ He was the man that helped start the free school movement and has more recently been paid £50,000 a year as CEO of the Trust, according to the last accounts of the MAT that now runs three schools in West London and is about to open a fourth (visit https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/07493696/filing-history and click on accounts for details).

According to Toby Young in his Schools Week interview he said;

“I was very critical of England’s public education system under the last Labour government, and I hadn’t grasped how difficult it is to do better, and to bring about system-wide improvement.

“The last government and this government have achieved a remarkable amount, and I do think the direction of travel is the right direction, but there is no question that it was arrogant of me to believe that just having high expectations and believing in the benefits of a knowledge-based education for all, that those things alone would be enough to create successful schools.”

“As someone coming into education from the outside, the bits you see of other schools are only the tip of the iceberg. You’re not aware of everything that is going on beneath the surface. You think, ‘well, I could do better than that’, as you are pointing to the tip of the iceberg, without realising how much more there is to it.”

He sighs. “If I could rewind six years, and know then what I know now, I would have been much less critical of other schools, local authorities, and England’s public education system in general.”

At this point I might rest my case for a return to local democratic control after the Thatcher/Blair assault on local government’s role in education. Sure, there were bad local authorities and taking control of them for a period has been a good idea, but throwing the baby out with the bath water was plain daft.

If Toby Young had seen free schools as a new type of voluntary school for the 21^st century then much of the grief of the past few years might have been avoided and the government wouldn’t have been faced with having to make Friday’s –U- turn.

However, the job is only half done. We still need a governance system for schools that is credible, reliable and is geared to improving outcomes for all young people at every stage of the education process. Personally, I believe that should involve democratically elected local representatives in mutli-service authorities responsible to a single government department at Westminster.

A first step would be to identify how many system leaders we need and where we are going to find them? We also need to train them in a first-class education leadership academy led by professionals but supported by those with a wide range of skills. Something like the concept I mentioned in a recent post. Toby Young may have good ideas, but perhaps he has now discovered that good intentions are not enough.

Oh, and by the way, his MAT has been looking for a chief finance officer http://www.wlfsat.org/vacancies although the vacancy for a CEO has yet to appear on their web site.

Fast-track to headship

Posted on May 7, 2016 by John Howson

Recently there has been some publicity in the Daily Telegraph and the TES about a scheme whereby new entrants into education will be prepared for headship after just two years of experience. Now, I am not clear whether this is a scheme to be aimed at either new graduates or career changers with significant amounts of management experience or a mixture of both.

However, after more than 30 years of studying leadership appointments in all types of schools, I wonder if this is an interesting new attempt to solve a problem governments often don’t fully understand. The Blair government attempted to tackle a shortage of leadership candidates by introducing a civil service style fast-track scheme for entry into the teaching profession: it lasted a few years and was then quietly dropped. One of the intentions behind Teach First was to attract potentially high flyers in the hope that some would stay in teaching and progress to headships. In recent years there has also been the ‘future leaders’ scheme. So, why another new initiative?

It may be that in looking ahead to an all academy world the government or at least its friends at the University of Buckingham have realised that if there are to be between 500-1,000 multi-academy trusts in the future then there won’t be enough leaders available within the present system capable of running these trusts effectively without seriously affecting the numbers of school leaders available to run individual schools, whether as heads or deputies. Filling such positions might argue for a scheme aimed at career changers rather than new young graduates. However, such a scheme might face recruitment issues, since only the highest paid positions in schools and MATs are in any way comparable with the sort of salary and benefits a successful graduate can earn in many other sectors. This will, possibly, be less of an issue outside London and the Home Counties where graduate salaries are often less different to those in the public sector, but there are often fewer graduates working in some of these areas to attract into teaching.

There are other issues that will face a scheme of this sort if it is to attempt to become a national scheme. How will vacancies be offered to candidates on the scheme? Will it be an extension of the National Teaching Service with, perhaps, certain types of school being required to place a request for a leader with the scheme based upon a school’s location, achievements and perhaps other factors? Will the two main faith groups the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, buy into such a scheme or will it only be for schools and MATs with no religious character and background? How will existing teachers view any narrowing of their possible promotion opportunities; will more decide to go and seek promotion abroad?

Of course, it could be a scheme that comes to the aid of MATs and schools that have tried to recruit a leader and failed to do so. Over more than half a century of detailed analysis of leadership recruitment, I have seen trends showing such schools facing recruitment challenges to have been overwhelmingly in the primary and special school sectors and frequently to have been schools that have had a religious background. There are schools in coastal and the more remote inland areas where small primary schools can face recruitment challenges, but in the secondary sector there is usually a further factor such as poor performance of a school behind recruitment difficulties. So, will the scheme be aimed at filling these types of vacancies where I would have thought more experience of teaching than a mere two years in a school might have been required? Even the late Sir Rhodes Boyson was thirty before he achieved his first headship, and he is often held out to conservatives as an earlier achiever of leadership. Like many early achievers, he didn’t stay in headship but eventually entered parliament: here lies another challenge for such a scheme, not only selecting those that will be successful candidates, but also finding those that will stay in education leadership.

I am sure that the government has consulted its friends and advisers about how any such fast-track systems work in other people-focused sectors and how much support those on fast-track schemes need after appointment to a leadership post.

Perhaps talking to the churches and other faith groups about such a scheme might not be a bad idea for the DfE since many clergy acquire significant management responsibilities for churches and congregations very early in their careers. Might we learn from their experience? Of course, the whole scheme could be a mere speculative venture by a private university and a small number of individuals. Time will tell and no doubt the DfE will make it clear whether such a scheme has their backing.

-U- turn on a Friday afternoon

Posted on May 6, 2016 by John Howson

I prepared this post before the announcement of the government’s –U- turn on forced academisation. We still need to see the small print of any Bill to know how far the government has really made concessions. As a result, I thought it worth posting my thoughts.

Now that the Police & Crime Commissioner elections are over it can be back to normal again for this blog. The big debate over the past few weeks has been about forced academisation. Much of the debate so far has failed to address in depth any of the three main points behand the argument about changing the structure of schools: the place of democracy in education; how important is geography in the organisation of our schools and does the primary sector need a middle-tier to ensure the survival of small schools?

None of these issues are new. Indeed, the last one has been around ever since the 1988 Education Reform Act revealed the depth of the Thatcher government’s mistrust of local authorities. However, the first one is the most important. Do we want our public services increasingly managed from Whitehall with no local democratic involvement? As I have pointed out before that is what has become the lot of our National Health Service. There is a case for education to go the same way; a national funding formula backed by a National Curriculum and testing regime and a uniform arrangement of school types that does away with anomalies such as randomly scattered selective schools or 14-18 UTCs and Studio Schools could create such a system. But, allowing free schools to spring up anywhere without fitting into this pattern suggests either a degree of anarchic thinking or a lack of understanding about the delivery of effective and efficient public services. The same arguments can be made for random collections of schools being formed into academy chains. How important is the need to have community involvement in schooling and if it is important is this aim weakened by chains with no link to the community where they operate a school?

I think everyone that wants to retain small primary schools, whether in rural areas or urban settings, recognises that they need support and help that larger schools could provide for themselves. This raises the issue of how such support should be arranged and paid for? If we knew the outcome of the government’s thinking on the National Funding Formula then this issue might be easier to resolve. A formula weighted towards pupil-based funding that did away with a lump sum for each school would probably spell the death of small schools and make the argument unnecessary. However, if the pressure on a Conservative government is to design a formula that allows small schools to survive, then it has to address the question of their organisation and support. Many years ago, pyramids were suggested with clusters of primary schools linked to their local secondary school or their nearest secondary school of the same faith in the case of church schools and those of the other faiths. This would argue that geography is important but harks back the part 3 Authorities of the 1944 Education Act that operated within the larger counties. Do we wish to go back to the pre-Taylor Committee Report of 1976 position with one governing body for all schools in an area? Does such a system produce rotten boroughs or community cohesion? My guess is that it depends upon how the system is regulated by the next tier upwards?

Any system is also only as good as the people operating it. The government needs to take a long hard look at the size of the leadership cadre, both professional and political and ask what the cost of increasing the size of the pool will be. I have watched leadership salaries increase in response to the economics of supply and demand and to ignore this basic principle of economics and to create say 500 new multi-academy trusts without working out how they could be funded doesn’t strike me as good government. To return to the Police & Crime Commissioner elections for a minute, it would be poor government that were to impose cuts on police forces to fund the academisation of all our schools.

Do TV adverts work?

Posted on May 6, 2016 by John Howson

The recent publication of the April admissions figures for ITT courses starting this autumn look like further acceptable news for the government. I hesitate to say ‘good news’ because it is still probable that not all subjects will reach their required levels of admissions to meet the probable demand for new teachers in 2017. That’s a rather convoluted way of saying some Teacher Supply Model numbers will be missed again this summer.

As ever, despite the upturn in university admissions for undergraduate courses in many STEM subjects, it is the mathematics, physics, design and technology and IT areas that are most likely to miss their targets again. Even Teach First, when I looked at their web site https://graduates.teachfirst.org.uk/application-selection/subject-availability on 6th May hadn’t yet closed any of their subjects including some where recruitment controls have been applied to the courses in the UCAS admissions scheme; Teach First don’t, however, offer PE as a subject.

Still, after a couple of frankly dreadful years, applications are generally holding up so far. The real issue is what will happen between now and the end of the recruitment round and then how many applicants turn up when courses start. There may also be regional issues, but they are not apparent from the data publically available. Whether or not training ‘career changers’ in parts of the country where vacancies are relatively rare helps the task of staffing schools is a moot point.

Looking at the UCAS figures in detail, it seems as if the trend to fewer applicants from the 22-24 age-group is continuing. This decline, reported in earlier blog posts on this site, is balanced this year by a slightly greater increase in the number of applicants over the age of 40. Overall, applications with a domicile in England increased by around 1,470 compared with April 2015 numbers. This is an increase of between 4-5%. In view of the recruitment controls, I am sure the percentage would have been higher with unfettered recruitment policies. So, I am sure that the TV advertising does make some difference to recruitment.

The other issue is whether the recruitment controls have allowed the best candidates to be recruited? There is a loss of recruits to choose from in PE, English and History, although the exact change in the number of applicants isn’t disclosed, even though the probable change in the number of applications can be deduced from other data. It would be helpful to know the number of applicants per subject and their age ranges to help inform the debate about what sort of system should be used for the 2017 admissions round?

Regionally, there are more applicants across the country with London and the Home Counties seeing the largest increase in applicant numbers, if not the greatest increase in the percentage of applicants. In terms of applications rather than applicants, the re-balancing of places has resulted in fewer applications to universities and more to SCITTs and the School Direct routes although overall there has been a slight drop in applications, possibly due to the effects of the recruitment controls.

With university finals looming, there will probably be little change in the May data, so it will be late June before it becomes obvious where new graduates are looking to teaching as a late career choice.

Home Schooling

Posted on April 11, 2016 by John Howson

I apologise for not posting much recently, but, like last year, I am busy with elections. This year I am the Lib Dem candidate for Police & Crime Commissioner in the Thames Valley. This post covers the three areas of Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire. The present PCC is a Tory.

If you live in the area or want to know more about my campaign, visit jh4pccblog.wordpress.com where there are my thoughts on the role.

As part of my campaign I am investigating whether there is a growing trend on the part of a few schools to suggest the perfectly legitimate policy of home schooling to parents of a small number of Year 11 students.

Home schooling, where there are the resources and desire to do, so can work effectively. However, I am worried that some schools might see it as an option rather than to exclude a pupil and I want to know whether this is the case?

Could you please let me know if you have come across this happening by leaving a comment? There is no need to name the school, but an indication of the geographical region and whether it is an academy would be helpful.

Thank you for your help.

Better news on teacher supply

Posted on March 31, 2016 by John Howson

Whether it is a result of improved marketing; the slowdown in the Chinese economy or the introduction of recruitment controls, offers made this year to graduate applicants for teacher training in England are above the levels seen at this point last year. Total applications – candidates may make up to three applications – are up from 85,500 to just over 88,000; an increase of around three percent. But, this is still well below the 102,000 applications recorded in March 2014.

However, the number of conditional offer for both primary and secondary courses are well up on last March, with only Computing as a subject having had a poor month. Most of the offers are conditional, only 880 of the 10,800 secondary offer as firm offers; the remainder still require applicants to either pass the skills test; gain a degree or possibly in a few cases do both. As a result, these numbers could alter. What is of more interest is whether the increase in applications will continue or whether it just represents a bringing forward of applications from those that might in the past have been slower in applying but because of the marketing and recruitment controls have been persuaded to apply earlier in the cycle: only time will tell.

What is also interesting is that applications from those aged 23 are still down on last year at the same time, and those from the 24 age group have remained almost static, whereas there are 600 more applicants from among those in the over 40 age group, more than the total increase from the 20-24 old age group combined. This might suggest that the increased fees faced by new graduates are having some effect on turning away younger students from teaching and taking on a greater degree of debt.

While the increase in applications from those in the older age-groups is welcome, it is important to know whether these applicants are more likely to be limited in their choice of location where they will be seeking a teaching job since vacancies are not evenly spread across the country. Fortunately, the increase in applications is spread across the country with London and the South East now accounting for around 29% of applicants compared with 28% this time last year.

If this increase in applications and offer continues, more subjects will meet their Teacher Supply Number including, hopefully, mathematics. However, Physics still seems likely to fall short along with Design & Technology. Such a shortfall will have implications for classroom teacher vacancies in 2017.

Nevertheless, the government will be feeling a lot more cheerful than this time last year which marked the low point in the present cycle. Hopefully, the loss of young graduates can be overcome.