The myth of teacher wastage

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Many years ago Mike Tomlinson gave an interview with The Guardian. It was soon after he became Chief Inspector. In it he referred to a figure of about 40% of new teachers not entering the profession. Like Chris Woodhead’s earlier claim of 15,000 incompetent teachers this figure has entered the mythology of education. Helpfully, in the additional data now published with the 2013 Workforce Census tables the DfE unpick the latest data on what happens to trainees after they qualify to help us understand whether this view is correct.

At this stage it is worth setting the ground rules for understanding the data. Most trainees have to compete for teaching jobs with ‘returners’ and those existing teachers changing schools for whatever reason. There is no logic to the use of teacher resources, so a trainee in their 30s with a house and a partner with a job might not secure a teaching job near where they live, but a footloose graduate in their early 20s might take that job even though they could work anywhere. As training numbers are established some years in advance, although not as far advance as in the past, changes in economic circumstances can radically affect the labour market. The new DfE figures go up to 2011 and concentrate on the early years of the recession when secondary school rolls were also falling.

Overall, the DfE calculate there were 106,000 trainees still under the age of 60 who had never worked as a teacher in circumstances where their employment would have been recorded by the DfE in March 2012. Interestingly, 24,300, or approaching a quarter of the total, emerged from training in the years 2009-2011 after the recession hit in late 2008. Some of these will have started undergraduate degrees way back in 2006 in an entirely different economic climate. The recession matters because the GTCE that still existed then identified a large number of teachers that re-registered with them in 2009. Presumably, some were casualties of the recession and looked to re-enter teaching and were competing with newly qualified teachers for the available jobs. The three years from 2005-2008 only have around 12,000 not recorded as entering teaching, about half the number in the later years. This suggests that it might not have been from a disinterest in teaching that the numbers were higher, but that there were more candidates than jobs.

A second table produced by the DfE confirms that those NQTs that enter teaching are likely to stay. The percentage in regular service after one year has never been below 90% since 1997 and after five years generally around 75% remain in teaching. Even after ten years two thirds of entrants are still teaching. For a profession with so many young women in it, some of whom might be expected to take a career break, this is an impressive percentage. The fact that 55% of those that entered teaching in 1997 were still there 17 years later raises interesting questions about the perception of the profession as a quick in and quick out area of work. But then the DfE made this all clear some years ago in the chapter on teacher wastage in their detailed review of the 2010 workforce Census that can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-profile-of-teachers-in-england-from-the-2010-school-workforce-census The charts on pages 77-79 are especially helpful in understanding what happens.

 

Schools rebuff call to use unqualified teachers

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The DfE tables in the 2013 Teacher Workforce Survey that reveals the changes in pupil teacher ratios over time. The data also says something about the use of qualified and unqualified teachers by the different types of school. Despite the increase in pupil numbers, PTRs in the maintained primary sector appeared to have improved between 2012 and 2013. However, they worsened in primary academies. This may well be down to the mix of schools in the two groups and it is more instructive to note that PTRs across the whole primary sector remained unchanged for the second year in a row at 20.5 for teachers of all descriptions, despite schools adding to their cash reserves during this period.

In the secondary sector, where more schools are academies of one sort or another, PTRs for qualified teachers worsened from 15.5 to 15.7 after improving in the previous year. The overall PTR for the secondary sector is still 1.5 pupils per teacher better than in 2000, so the support for funding in schools during this parliament seems to have helped, at least with staffing levels.

The DfE also published data on the difference in the ratio between qualified teachers in schools and all teachers, qualified and unqualified. As the latter include Teach First and probably some School Direct trainees on the salaried route ‘unqualified’ isn’t the same as the former ‘instructor’ category. As this data is two recruitment rounds after Michael Gove freed academies to employ anyone as a teacher it is interesting to see what signs there have been of any change in the balance between qualified and unqualified teachers being employed.

In primary maintained schools the difference between qualified and all teachers remained at 0.4 of a pupil between 2012 and 2013. In primary academies it reduced from a gap of 0.8 to 0.7 of a pupil; so no dramatic swing towards unqualified teachers there. In the remaining maintained secondary schools the gap between qualified teachers and all teachers widened from 0.5 of a pupil to 0.6. In academies it also widened by 0.1 of a pupil from 0.7 to 0.8.

Among the different types of secondary academies, in free schools the ratio between qualified and all teachers widened from 1.3 to 2.3, a noticeable change in the ratio in a single year. However, in converter academies there was little change in difference between the PTR for all teachers and for just qualified teachers increasing by just 0.1 of a pupil.

In UTCs and Studio Schools serving the post-14 age-group the gap was largest of any group of schools, with a difference of 3.4 pupils per teacher between the all teacher PTR and the qualified teacher PTR. This was up from 1.7 in a year, possibly because of the number of these schools opening had increased.

Overall, there doesn’t seem to have been a large swing towards the use of unqualified teachers and much of the change may be down to the expansion of Teach First and School Direct between 2012 and 2103. Rejecting the unprincipled use of unqualified teachers is sensible. Whether, as a recruitment crisis develops, there will be enough qualified teachers to go around is another matter. As regular readers know, we are tracking that situation in secondary schools through TeachVac at http://www.teachvac.co.uk if you are interested. The February newsletter to be issued next week will reflect our latest finding.

Happy 2nd birthday

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240 posts in 24 months: more than 30,000 views: visitors from across the globe. Little did I think when I posted my first entry to this blog in January 2013 that it would reach such an audience only two years later.

My thanks to those of you that read the postings regularly. I fear that the blog has strayed slightly from its original purpose of re-telling the stories behind the numbers into a wider range of topics.  Perhaps that was inevitable given the range of issues arising out of education policy over the past two years. However, the topic that has come to the front, especially during the past eighteen months, is that of teacher supply, and recruitment into both training and employment.

I started my career in teaching in January 1971 in the middle of a recruitment crisis, being hired as a supply teacher to cover parts of two vacancies the school couldn’t fill. The school was a challenging one and a place some teachers came to look, but didn’t bother to stay even for the interview as they know there were other vacancies they could apply for in easier schools. I don’t want to see this situation again. We came close to it in 2003, and the risks are once again in plain sight.

By the time the general election campaign is in full swing in April the situation both regarding recruitment for September and for recruitment into training for 2016 employment will be well known and the government will have nowhere to hide if the situation has deteriorated compared with last year, especially for entry into training.

As a Lib Dem county councillor I am still aware that the issue left over from the Labour government of a well defined and engaged middle tier to sit between Westminster and the schools still hasn’t been properly solved. Academies, as the recent events over their accounts show, are not part of a unified system working for the good of all. Competition hasn’t yet been fully replaced by cooperation, and the notion of good schools for all with choice between good schools and not between a good school and a less good one is still little more than an aspiration on parts of the country.

So, we now wait to see what will happen after the general election. Will there be another whirlwind, as there was in 2010 with the Academies Act arriving on the statute book less than three months after the election. I would be surprised if that turns out to be the case. Much, as ever, will depend upon the personality of the Secretary of State and what they want to achieve. Gove wanted to be Education Secretary: does either of the current Labour or Conservative politicians with the brief really want the job after May?

This year I have helped create TeachVac as a new and free matching service for schools looking for teachers and applicants looking for teaching posts. Full details are at www.teachvac.co.uk. This may take more of my time, so I cannot guarantee to continue ten posts per month in the next year: but I will see what can be done. Once again, thanks for reading.

 

 

No good with numbers

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This blog has always contented that numeracy wasn’t Michael Gove’s strong point during his time as Secretary of State for Education. Today the National Audit Office seemed to affirm that view when it produced an adverse opinion on the financial handling of Mr Gove’s flagship academy schools policy. The NAO concluded that the DfE failed to meet Parliament’s accountability requirements on academy spending. The NAO said that ‘the inability of the Department for Education to prepare financial statements providing a true and fair view of financial activity by its group of bodies means that it is not meeting the accountability requirements of Parliament.’ Their analysis continued, ‘In particular, if the challenge posed by consolidating the accounts of so many bodies and the fact that so many have a different reporting period is to be surmounted, the department and Treasury need to work together to find a solution.’

Much of the problem stems around the fact that academies have the same financial year as their academic year but the department reports on a government financial year to end of March so don’t know the absolute state of finances at the end of the financial year in academy trusts, but must make some assumptions. This isn’t a new problem for government since universities have had academic years as their financial years for a long time and the department could no doubt have learnt from that experience. But, as universities are now in the business department and not the DfE, perhaps they didn’t think to ask for advice in the headlong rush to get the 2010 Academies Act on to the statute book.

A Secretary of State interested in the finances of the department might have seen this issue coming. His hedge fund managers and others on the department’s board must also answer as to why they either hadn’t noticed or weren’t bothered by the reporting arrangements for academy trusts’ use of public money. As the following extract from the department’s consolidated accounts shows, there was in fact an awareness of the issue.

Followings discussion with Ministers, the Group has chosen not to compel ATs to adopt its 31 March financial year end, both to avoid misalignment of ATs’ financial and academic years, and on the principle of giving ATs as much operational independence as reasonably possible. This allows synchronisation of both their business and financial decision making: alignment of an AT financial year to the academic year enables the accounts to be more useful at a local level, as factors such as budgeting, recruiting and funding are usually based on the academic year.

This decision makes operational sense for ATs but it means that the Group accounts now have to be constructed through the application of a number of significant and material adjustments. This is to cope with problems that arise from having different financial year ends within the Group, and from ATs and the rest of the Group preparing financial statements using different accounting standards. As the number of Academies increase, there is a growing risk that this will give rise to material error or uncertainty within the financial statements. This risk has been realised for both the Group’s 2012-13 and 2013-14 accounts, as set out in the C&AG’s audit certificates and reports, which issued a qualified audit opinion for 2012-13 and an adverse audit opinion for 2013-14.

One wonders what those schools that are not academies make of this justification since their budgeting and funding would also be more usefully based upon an academic year as is most of their recruitment. The operation of two different sets of reporting years is surely not a long-term solution for a government that claims to want to reduce costs. A process of harmonization should be high on the agenda of the department after the general election.

Finally, buried in the depth of the report, is the fact that spending on international air travel has increased from £30,000 in 2010-11 to £234,000 in 2013-14. Even more worrying is the associated comment that ‘reasons for this are being investigated.’ This seems to be another area where financial controls don’t allow for immediate explanations.

Carter and after

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Launched into the expectant world on the day the World Education Forum opened in London, The Carter Review of Teacher Training seems to have passed by much of the national media largely un-noticed. That’s a shame as a lot of hard work went into the Report even if its recommendations were hardly earth shattering and probably won’t do much to help solve the teacher supply crisis schools are facing.

I don’t see it as my place to critique the Report in detail, but to highlight the bits that interest me. These are; the return of an understanding of child development; subject knowledge and its importance in teaching; the issue of qualification versus certification; and finally the question of a quart into a pint pot – sorry, that shows my age; a litre into an eighth of a litre jug.
But first, Carter reaffirms that those preparing to be a teacher need both practical experience of the task and an under-pinning of theoretical knowledge. This really reasserts the partnership model developed in the 1990s after Kenneth Clarke’s reforms that established the TTA. To that extent there is really not a lot that is new in the Carter Report, only nuances reflecting the manner in which the system has developed over the past 20 years.

However, one new aspect is the mention of child development. Ministers in the Thatcher governments of the 1980s didn’t think that knowledge of the ‘ologies were important for those training to be teachers and sometimes seemed to equate them with views that weren’t acceptable to free market Conservatives. The recognition of the importance of an understanding about child development for trainee teachers is a welcome change. An understanding of their social settings might also be a useful addition to the curriculum. But, adding anything to the overcrowded curriculum and classroom experience for trainee teachers is fraught with difficultly as there is no spare time in the present preparation period on whatever route a trainee takes.

To that end, the discussion about subject knowledge while welcome reflect the concerns raised ever since the 1990s when the Clarke reforms effectively removed subject knowledge development time from most secondary courses in favour of extra time in schools. There just wasn’t time for both within the 38 weeks of a course. To allow for subject knowledge to be re-introduced would mean extending the course, and changing the funding structure. This could allow fees to be replaced with a grant from central funds as was the case before tuition fees were introduced, but would bring new challenges. However, even more important to government is that if subject knowledge is vital during the preparation period it is obviously as important in schools. This raises the question of why Carter didn’t ask whether QTS once gained should continue to allow a teacher to teach anything to anyone as is the case at present. After all, what the point of subject knowledge in geography if you spend two thirds of your timetable teaching history and RE as part of a Humanities programme and you dropped history before GCSE and have no training in RE. Not to address this issue raises questions about how coherent the Carter Review actually was in trying to develop a strategy for the teaching force.

Finally there remain the issues around certification and accreditation. Again, this is not new a new debate. In the original Bill establishing the TTA in 1994, the famous Clause 13 was about whether trainees would be required to have a higher education qualification as well as QTS. It was accepted that QTS was the licence to teach and the issue, as today, was whether or not it required a university qualification as well. In those days, it was just about SCITTs, as employment based routes were in their infancy. Realistically what matters is, if government is going to control the supply of places on training routes, how those places are allocated, and to what type of providers, rather than qualifications. As I have suggested before, uncapping university numbers means that if teacher training is within that same fee regime as other university fee programmes then the government has to establish why the removal of the cap doesn’t apply to teacher preparation courses as well.
Carter could have been more radical, but seems to have chosen a path where most can agree with many of the recommendations while leaving something for everyone to take forward. Sadly, his terms of reference didn’t allow him to explore the real question of the day, how to recruit enough trainees of the right quality in the right places. The next government won’t be able to duck that question quite so easily.

Prediction comes true

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In December I wrote on this blog in a post headed crocodile tears that: ‘One must assume that since the majority of academies are secondary schools the overall figure for school balances might be in excess of £4 billion and possibly even higher across the system.

’ According to figures obtained from the DfE and printed in the Guardian today schools are carrying balances of more than £4 billion and, as I predicted, academies had more than £2.4 billion in reserves at the end of March 2014, although one must be slightly careful as that isn’t the end of their financial year as it is for other state funded schools.
Although schooling is big business, with millions of pupils and more than half a million teachers, this is still a sum across all schools equal to half the level of investment it is suggested that the NHS needs in England between now and 2020. The question must therefore be, is this level of reserves necessary at the school level and, if not, what can be done about the situation?
Guidelines suggest reserves of 5% for secondary schools; 8% for primary schools and I would suggest perhaps 10% for the smallest rural primary schools. However, the Minister in his answer to Frank Dobson’s question referred to schools holding one month’s expenditure as the test of solvency. That equates to just over 8% of annual revenue, so probably a bit high for a large secondary school since academy financial years mirror the school year so salaries are secure for the whole of an academic year.
Today Children’s Services Weekly has reported that Cambridgeshire faced a large increase in home to school transport costs due to more staying on after sixteen and increased SEN transport costs. This highlights the dilemma facing our education system: putting the funding where it is most useful. Certainly sitting idle in schools bank accounts because there might be a rainy day at some point in the future, is a waste of public money. As regular readers of this blog know, I dislike revenue spending being saved and turned into building projects for future pupils. The money is, in my opinion, for the education of the present generation not for their younger brothers and sisters.
Personally, I think the government should now publish the revenue balances of all academies in the same manner as they do for other publicly funded schools. They should also measure overheads paid to academy trusts compared with local authority charges for similar services and those bought directly from the private sector. Protecting the education budget is one thing, but obtaining value for money is another and equally important duty.
As regular readers know TeachVac launches today. It was originally an idea to collect data about the labour market but now, like the disruptive retailers, it has been shown to offer significant saving while providing the level of management information any large organisation should possess about the turnover of its workforce. If you haven’t been to http://www.teachvac.co.uk do pay a visit and view the demo videos on both the schools and teachers sections of the web site.

Ending child illiteracy by 2025

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The Liberal Democrat plan to end illiteracy by 2025 announced today would mean that every child born in 2014, ought to leave primary school in 2025 able to read and write at a standard identified to lead to success in secondary school and beyond. To help them meet this commitment to end child illiteracy by 2025 the Lib Dems would boost the early years Pupil Premium to an even higher level than the primary school Pupil Premium thus recognising the vital importance of a child’s early years for learning and development.
The Lib Dems would also overhaul early years teaching qualifications by letting nursery staff work towards Qualified Teacher Status and by 2020 requiring a qualified teacher graduate in every school or nursery delivering the early years curriculum.
As a Lib Dem, I have been fighting for better early years education for decades. This aim is reminiscent of the Millennium Development goals of 2000 that sought to ensure primary education for every child throughout the world by 2015. And what’s the point of primary education if children don’t learn to read, write, count, and lay down the skills to acquire the tools they will need for their future lives as adults.
Despite a focus of attention on the lack of education success among the poor that goes back to work undertaken when Ruth Kelly was Secretary of State in the Labour government, it is still clear, as Nick Clegg pointed out, that it is those less well off in society whose children don’t make the expected levels of progress.
Labour has been hinting about cutting tuition fees if elected. As Labour was the Party that introduced them in the first place in 1997, and then increased them, requiring students to repay the cash borrowed from day one rather than when they started earning, as now, Labour must say if it favours supporting undergraduates ahead of ending illiteracy in the next parliament; it cannot do both and still stick to its spending plans.
To achieve the ambition of ending illiteracy by 2025 means providing the cash for schools and early year settings to achieve this goal. Depriving local authorities of the cash to support pre-school settings where health, welfare and education issues can be dealt with together won’t allow the goal to be achieved. Yes, the bulk of the funds should go to schools and through an early years premium, but the work needs co-ordination and that is where local authorities need funds. By all means make it a ring-fenced grant, but do not force local authorities out of supporting initiatives by cutting their funding.
Schools also need to know how to deal with that small group of parents that are indifferent to their child’s progress and don’t, can’t or won’t work with the school and pre-school setting in helping their children learn. Helping schools know what works rather than everyone re-inventing the wheel will also ensure best use of the money. Does that mean a role for local authorities?

Unqualified Teachers: where next?

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On the day before the Carter Review is expected to publish its awaited report there has been a flurry of interest in the use of unqualified teachers. Since the data from the DfE is nearly a year old and relates to data collected from schools in November 2013 it might not be expected to be a topic to attract much interest. However, perhaps it has been a slow news day ahead of Carter and at least one post on another bog appeared on the subject this week.
It is worth reminding ourselves of the DfE definition of an ‘unqualified teacher’. Such a person is: ‘a teacher in an LA maintained school is either a trainee working towards qualified teacher status; an overseas trained teacher without QTS or an instructor who has a particular skill who can be employed for so long as a qualified teacher is not available.’ Now an academy may employ such people according to the doctrine of the former Secretary of State. Michael Gove but the DfE definition doesn’t seem to have caught up with that change in their School Workforce Survey, at least in the 2013 edition.
However, it probably doesn’t matter because the total number of unqualified teachers in November 2013 was still below that in the early 2000s during the Labour government’s period in office. In November 2013 there were 17,100 unqualified teachers in all state funded schools in England compared with 18,800 in 2005 and 18,200 in 2006. The 2013 figure will have included both those on the first year of Teach First, a programme introduced by Labour, and probably those on the School Direct salaried route where they are employed by schools. As their predecessors on Labour GTTP Scheme were also included in the totals there is little change methodology there, although the supposed popularity of the scheme might have been expected to boost the numbers. But, this blog has already pointed out that there are fewer School Direct salaried trainees this year than there were GTTP trainees in secondary schools a few years ago.
It would be helpful to know how many instructors are being employed in schools by returning to the separate categories for trainees and ‘instructors and other unqualified teachers’ employed by the DfE until a few years ago. This would allow commentators to check trends in genuinely unqualified staff that had no intention of obtaining a teaching qualification. Such numbers are important to know with a looming teacher supply crisis and mixing up school-based trainees and staff recruited to fill vacancies otherwise unfilled or because a schools doesn’t believe in the present preparation methods for teachers isn’t helpful, but perhaps it wasn’t meant to be.
Tomorrow is the official launch of TeachVac our free service for schools seeking secondary classroom teachers and trainees looking for their first job. http://www.teachvac.co.uk has already attracted sufficient trainees to make over 1,000 matches in the first two weeks of January and provide valuable information about the state of the job market. Do take a look at the video on the site if this is an area of interest.

Worrying reports for teaching

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Two new pieces of evidence that support the ‘NO FEES for trainees’ campaign launched by this web site at the beginning of January were published today. High Fliers, the organisation that has been monitoring graduate recruitment since 1995, updated its forecast for 2015 graduate recruitment to suggest the market is still growing and that Teach First will be the largest single employer of new graduates in 2015. But, they don’t count the 30,000 graduates entering training to be teachers in their survey partly because to do so would demonstrate how teaching dominates the graduate labour market.

The second piece of evidence was a research report by Income Data Services for the NASUWT on pay in teaching. This shows pay on entry falling behind. Governments have always been reluctant to accept that by imposing an extra year of unpaid preparation on would-be teachers that affects the decision of some that would become teachers when there are plenty of other graduate job opportunities. Making trainees pay fees just adds insult to injury and further reduces the incentive to teach. It have pointed out before that if the Ministry of Defence can pay trainee officers at Sandhurst, the DfE should be able to pay all trainee teachers rather than impost a levy on training through the fees.

With the labour market for graduates now recognised as buoyant, the fee remission is something that can be achieved quickly and relatively cheaply for government and could make a difference to recruitment. Yes, some individuals would have become teachers and be prepared to pay for the privilege, but the same is true for army, navy and air force officers, not to mention civil servants and many others in the public sector.  We don’t expect them to, so why teachers?

After the recruitment crisis of 2000-2003 teachers’ pay rose in relation to the private sector, partly because Ministers took the brakes off the progression through to the Upper Pay Spine. It may have been reasonable during the recession for public sector pay to be kept down, but once pay starts becoming uncompetitive something has to be done or a teacher recruitment crisis develops. The warning signs have been there since 2012, as readers of this blog know.

With most graduate jobs located in or around London traditionally it is in the capital that pay pressures have been likely to exert the greatest effect. But, with new businesses able to start in bedrooms these days and then turnover many thousands of pounds through a single computer pay and conditions have become a national issue that the government’s broadband strategy will only make worse.

Schools can offer what salaries they like these days, and we will try to monitor this trend. Schools may seek to use their reserves to offer higher salaries and savvy trainees will undoubtedly use the evidence from today’s reports to negotiate higher starting salaries, especially if they know that they are in a shortage subject. Schools that register their vacancies with www.teachvac.co.uk will be told about the size of the market and can respond accordingly.

At the end of this month we will know the initial recruitment figures for 2015 training places and can compare the situation with January 2014. Any deterioration will be bad news. Cut tuition fees now.

First data from matching

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www.teachvac.com the data information system for teachers that monitors the job market for trainee teachers* wanting to work in the secondary sector has made its first matches after going live on Monday. With trainee teachers, schools, SCITTs and local authorities all registering and the system monitoring more than 3,000 secondary schools http://www.teachvac.com is creating a real-time database of the labour market for teachers.

Schools, local authorities, dioceses and others that register jobs will receive updates of the changing state of the market as part of the registration process. This provides participants with information on how the market for classroom teachers is developing for September 2015 appointments when they register jobs.

Take the example of design and technology as a subject where the ITT census last November revealed around 420 students on one-year preparation courses. Allowing for non-completion, there are likely to be around 400 possible trainees looking for jobs for September 2015. However, as a proportion of these trainees are in schools working on the School Direct salaried scheme they may be expected to be employed by the school where they are currently training. This reduces the ‘free’ pool to less than 350 trainees likely to be job hunting. The DfE estimates that 50% of main scale vacancies are taken by trainees. If that proves the case, then after we have recorded vacancy 700 in the subject there is a risk that the trainee pool will have been exhausted.

Using data from trainee notification of where they are seeking to work we can also identify both hot spots and areas where there may be shortages even before the ‘pool’ has been exhausted. The TeachVac team are able to create reports for interested parties on request, but at a cost as the basic service is free to both schools and trainees. For information can be obtained from enquiries@oxteachserv.com

Trainees also receive a helpful monthly newsletter about recruitment and tips on how to make the most of their application. Later we hope to offer a catch-up seminar programme for trainees once they have secured their first teaching job and can identify areas where they feel they need more preparation to cover issues and topics that they didn’t expect to be teaching.

If you know a trainee or secondary teacher looking for a classroom teacher vacancy for September 2015 please invite them to register at www.teachvac.com The same goes for schools wanting to publicise vacancies. As it is free to both schools and trainees they will be helping develop an entirely new system that tracks the changing labour market for teachers on a daily basis. Sadly, at present it is only England and just secondary. If anyone wants to extend it to primary schools then I know that the team at TeachVac would be delighted to talk with them.

* I am involved with the TeachVac project especially on the data and information side so declare an interest in the contents of the post. As the service is free to users they aren’t being asked to buy anything but encouraged to use the service for free.