Supreme Court one; Parliament a half

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This has been a busy week, so I am catching up on various issues. The Supreme Court decision announced last week that cautions are no longer to be required to be disclosed for life makes real sense in a world where a volunteer pensioner reading to under-fives can currently be required to disclose all criminal convictions, even those acquired half a century ago.

Now I think is the time to bring the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act and the disclosure rules into harmony so that everyone can easily understand what is required and why. This would include the police and the issue of ‘soft intelligence’. It would be silly if cautions, having been removed as part of the criminal record, reappeared in enhanced disclosures as part of ‘soft intelligence’ held by police and disclosed as part of the process of ensuring unsuitable people don’t work with children or vulnerable adults.

I have awarded a half to parliament because of the work of the group of parliamentarians that appeared at almost the same time as the Supreme Court judgement saying much the same thing. Less, helpful, as those who followed my blog after the stabbing of the Leeds teacher will know, was the actions of Labour and Conservative back bench MPs ganging up together to insert a new clause in the Bill currently going through parliament requiring mandatory prison sentences for anyone convicted of two offences of carrying a bladed instrument: a knife to you, me and the MPs.

To their credit most Liberal Democrats MPs voted against this proposal, and would presumably be happy to leave judgement on sentencing to the courts within the framework of a maximum tariff set down by parliament and the guidelines from the Sentencing Council.

How little there is to distinguish Labour and Tory policies also became apparent this morning in the interview the Labour Secretary of State gave to the Sunday Times. He is reported as saying that all two-year olds should be sent to school because basic skills such as counting and holding a pen are easier to grasp at school rather than at home or with under-qualified child minders. This sends a shudder through me. I suspect most two year olds aren’t ready for fine motor skills required in holding a pen, and as a colleague emailed me:

 Knowledge is now available through a keyboard and touchscreen and increasingly important works are available online. I was delighted to find Fuster’s “Prefrontal Cortex” and Hubel’s  “Eye, Brain, and Vision” available for free download. The basis skill for writing is therefore keyboarding, not pencil printing. And mathematical comprehension is derived from language not perception, so the best way to learn number is by playing with the symbol system on a calculator first. Remember: language is a set of arbitrary symbols with which children come to school equipped. When will politicians and academics understand that all improvement is technology-based? At present all appear to be in denial.

There is certainly a debate to be had about the importance of early writing skills in a technological age where two –year olds won’t retire from the labour market until the 2080s if present trends continue. By then, pens might be restricted to use in calligraphy as an art form.  I might have been more impressed if Mr Hunt had suggested the use of turtles and coding to make them run around the floor. But, he is a historian, so perhaps he is better at looking backwards than forwards.

Motivation not space for prep?

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The Report on achievement by white working class boys published today by the Education Select Committee makes clear what educationalists have known for some time: this group underperform in school compared with almost all other groups except perhaps traveller children, and have been falling behind as other groups have improved at a faster rate. Why this is, and the solutions proposed by the Committee, reveals the complexity of the problem.

No doubt the one solution highlighted by many commentators will be the lengthening of the school day to provide both wraparound care and somewhere for older pupils to do their homework and participate in after-school activities. The homework facility is a good idea where pupils lack space and facilities at home. But, it will only work if pupils are motivated to learn, and there is a risk that this is too often not the case.

Absence rates for schools serving white working class communities are often above the national average, and it is well known that pupils falling behind early on in their education struggle to catch up. As a result, it might be worth exploring how we ensure the best quality teachers are working in the early years of schools serving these communities, and also how we create learning opportunities that cope with a less than perfect attendance pattern. This would be the opposite of the big stick, fine for non-attendance route that anyway doesn’t take into account the ability of a family to pay any fine.

With a looming teacher shortage in some parts of the country, addressing the problem of who teaches where is vital if the gap between white working class pupils and the rest of society isn’t to widen still further. Such school cannot be allowed to struggle to find teachers.

However, there is much to be done to motivate the parents, many of whom underachieved at school, and don’t see the reason for forcing a regular pattern of attendance on their offspring. But, society must engage with them, and offer help so their children can benefit from our future economic success as a nation.

With the structural changes to the labour market that have taken place over the past few decades many of the jobs that didn’t need much education have disappeared, and those that remain are often not well paid. Some years ago I noted an educationalist that had said that ‘the porter of yesterday had become the fork lift truck driver of today and the operator of a computer managed warehouse of tomorrow’. Well tomorrow has arrived. White working class boys with no qualifications sometimes have a choice between perhaps either window cleaning or driving white vans; and even window cleaning is becoming more skilled, and there are no jobs for van boys any longer.

Whatever society does to attack this problem of underachievement is likely to cost money, and reassessing how schools are funded, especially those offering the early years of schooling, remains an important consideration.

Now that schools are no longer the total responsibility of local authorities, the government must come forward with a programme to help address the underachievement: keeping schools open longer is only a small part of the solution; fining parents is no real solution, but ensuring the right teachers work in the schools where they will make the most difference is something worth trying. Achieving it will either cost money or mean a total rethink of how teachers are employed, and a challenge to school autonomy.

Pay primary teachers more?

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Should we pay primary teachers more than their secondary colleagues? Figures published today by the DfE show that the average primary class, mostly taught by one teacher, but often with assistance from a teaching assistant, is now 26.9 pupils in size, up from 26.3 in 2006; an increase of 3.6 pupils per teacher over the period. During the same time period the average class faced by a secondary teacher declined in size from 21.5 to 20.1; a reduction of 1.4 pupils per teacher. Thus, overall, primary teachers on average face classes 6.8 pupils larger than their secondary colleagues. Put another way, in July a Year 6 teacher has around a third more pupils to cope with than a Year 7 teacher with the same children the following September.

Of course, older children demand more attention, have more behaviour issues with adults, require teachers with more specialist knowledge, sometimes have a longer teaching week, and there are no doubt a whole host of other reasons that could be advanced why secondary teachers should be paid the same as their primary counterparts despite teaching smaller classes. However, on sheer productivity grounds, the average primary teacher now has far more contact with pupils than their secondary colleagues even allowing for non-contact time during the school week.

Disaggregated by Key Stage, the figures look even worse; with Key Stage 1 teachers faced with an average of 27.4 pupils compared with 25.6 pupils in 2006; and Key Stage 2 teachers facing an average of 27.2; actually down on the 27.3 of 2006. These figures are taken from the DfE’s Schools and their Pupils Statistical Bulletin https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2014 that clearly show the pressure primary schools are under as rolls rise while their secondary colleagues enjoy the final years of declining numbers before the avalanche of rising rolls hits them in a couple of year time.

As the Teachers’ Pay Review body Report referred to in my previous post on this blog makes clear, the issue of how to calculate pay for teachers is complicated. However, for many years it has been agreed that the same basic scale applies to both primary and secondary teachers. Now pay is open to a free for all should this basic tenet of pay over the past three quarters of a century be open to discussion? With pupil numbers being a key component of a school’s funding, many primary teachers will no doubt want to know where the £15-£20,000 extra per class implied by the increase in class sizes since 2006 have gone in the school budget? For those schools that have just added to their reserves, there might be some challenging questions for the head and governing body to answer from their class teachers.

Last word is not the most important

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It is not often that I get the last word, but that has literally happened in the latest Report of the Teachers’ Pay Review Body that can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/318574/STRB_24th_Report_Cm_8886_web_accessible.pdf Alright, I know it is only an acknowledgement of the fact that I and the Chief Executive both provided them with a briefing. In my case, one (unpublished) on teacher supply matters.

What remains of far more importance than my evidence is the discussions of the STRB about pay and recruitment to the profession that are neatly summarised in paragraph 3.56 of the Report:

3.56 As this chapter has identified, there is clear and consistent evidence that both the starting and profession-wide pay of teachers is less competitive relative to other professional occupations in several areas of the country, and that this gap is widening. Our evidence also suggests able graduates in other professions progress more quickly in the first three to five years and have more opportunity to reach higher levels of earnings as their careers progress subsequently. This heightens the risk of those in the profession feeling under-valued and recruitment and retention suffering as a consequence.

Now that is a real warning to government about teacher supply going forward. What is curious is that despite London being thought of as the least competitive part of the country in salary terms for new teachers, applications to train in London have been increasing at faster rates than elsewhere in the country this year. I don’t think it is because would-be teachers know that school teachers in Inner London do well compared to others entering the labour market with first degrees; and so they should after an extra year of training, since they fare less well against those entering the labour market with higher degrees. May be it is because of a separate London attraction factor despite the negative high prices of housing and transport in the capital.

I think the STRB have made clear that governments in the future have a real problem in relation to teacher supply that has been articulated on this blog before; but is good to read in an official publication. Increased pupil numbers, and increased demand for graduates from the wider economy, both exert real pressure on the labour market for teachers. While it was good to see that teachers joining the profession between 1997 and 2009 had relatively high retention rates, there is no guarantee in the next economic cycle that this outcome will continue unless pay keeps pace with the private sector. Interestingly, there is clear evidence that the pay reforms of the early 2000s boosted teacher retention by a couple of percentage point overall, and probably more in certain specific subjects and areas.

The STRB Report is useful evidence for NQTs negotiating starting salaries in the new market driven world. Any teachers except those in English, PE and history, are clearly in a position to start salary bargaining at say point M3 on the old scale as a starting salary just to take account of the training year. If they don’t already do so, the professional associations should be offering advice on pay bargaining to new members, and monitoring the results. I expect to be offering schools a new service along these lines, starting with secondary trainees in the class of 2014.

 

Re-writing the rule book on education

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Yesterday, Mr Gove fundamentally changed the rules about how schools in England operate. In answer to a question from Duncan Hames, a backbench Liberal Democrat MP, Mr Gove said:

Michael Gove: That is a very good point. Today we have outlined that we plan to consult on independent school standards, so that schools that are not funded by the taxpayer must meet basic standards of promoting British values, or the Education Secretary will have the capacity to close them down.

Now, I always understood that the State didn’t interfere in the freedom of an individual to educate their children as they saw fit within the law. The State’s role was to provide education for those that didn’t, couldn’t, or wouldn’t provide an education for their children. The fact that most parents since 1870 have passed the obligation to educate their children to the State didn’t alter the basis on which State education was founded. That is until yesterday.

I can understand a requirement on a school not to teach terrorism, but I believe it is a long and worrying leap from there to the commandment that schools must promote British values or they will be closed down. What of the Lycee Francais, its German equivalent, or even the American school? Must they ditch their cultural identity within the curriculum in favour of only British values? Cricket not baseball; field hockey not ice hockey, isolationism not integration? And what about the home schoolers, are they now also to be monitored for British values, and parents told they cannot continue if Ofsted doesn’t think they are British enough?

I am not sure that I subscribe to such a totalitarian attitude, where a politician can decide on what represents British values, and prevent a parent from espousing any other set of values that is within the law. Take respect for the armed forces, whose ‘day’ we celebrate in a fortnight’s time. Can schools now teach about ‘white poppies’ as well as red ones, or will a Minister rule that not pulling together in memory of past wars is contrary to British values?

Even more fundamental is the issue of gender segregation in schools. Is it a British value to permit schools for either boys or girls, but not to allow gender separation within schools? What of the balance between rugged individualism and rigid conformity to social norms?  Can they co-exist as British values or must we sacrifice one in favour of the other? There are lessons from history here that surely won’t have escaped the Secretary of State when he rose to answer the question from Mr Hames.

The Secretary of State is now in charge of all education content in England, not however in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland as it is a devolved power, in these areas as it is in the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Not bad, for a Minister that created schools free from any national curriculum earlier in the same parliament.

As –U- turns go, this seems like that of a super-tanker not a black cab.

Birmingham is as much about governance as extremism

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There are at least two facets to the Birmingham story. One, mostly catching the headlines today, is about extremism; the other is about governance. Birmingham is our second largest city, with what looks like a generally centralised approach to governance from City Hall. Since most of the schools caught up in the row are academies, with only one apparently being a maintained school, Birmingham can claim ‘not our fault gov’ if you believe that academisation, started under Labour and pursued with vigour by Mr Gove, absolves a local authority from any involvement in the running of such schools. Personally, I don’t, but it shows what can happen when a system of education governance is systematically weakened over time by denigrating the role of one participant, in this case local authorities, and talking up the important of Whitehall.

When the discussions about how we educate our young people have subsided, and these discussions are important, especially when communities live in specific neighbourhoods, as I have known since a childhood being brought up on the borders of Stamford Hill and its orthodox Jewish community, the issue of effective governance will remain to be decided. Does education in London work better because education is divided between the different boroughs, whereas in our metropolitan cities of the midlands and the north there has been since 1974 one large local authority, and several relatively small ones, whether in Merseyside, Greater Manchester or West Yorkshire.

Realistically, the span of control is important; too small, and overheads become too expensive, especially without a geographical integrity common to local authorities: this is something some academy chains may well now be finding out. On the other hand, too large, and without sub-divisions, such as the divisional structure used before London was broken up into its boroughs, and there is a risk of a lack of oversight. This is especially true when resources for administration are seen as an unnecessary waste of money; a view strongly peddled by successive Tory administrations, and the last Labour government. In education, handling control of finance to schools just made certain most oversight would be neutered.

So why does all this matter? Well, apart from the mess the governance of education is in at present, there is the issue of eradicating illiteracy and innumeracy within a generation, highlighted by Mr Gove over the weekend, possibly as a diversionary tactic to his other problems. After all, what government doesn’t aspire to do so, and why hasn’t he, as Secretary or State, had a plan to do so over the past four years? Why has creating academies and free schools been more important? Governance matters in eradicating failure, such as illiteracy, because planning is involved.

Last week we celebrated one of the major events of planning in the last century; the ‘D’ day invasion of Europe. Imagine saying to a group of regiments, and a bunch of ship’s captains, just work out your own plan of attack and then get on with it. Planning isn’t something Mr Gove is good at; take the introduction of Computer Science instead of IT. Because academies don’t have to follow the National Curriculum, many may have just ignored the change because they already had staff teaching the subject, and no vacancy to recruit a different specialist. Where is the follow through from Whitehall?

Ideas are a start, but not enough. A good Department has ideas, knows what is happening, and manages the outcomes. Perhaps that explains why our education system hasn’t been world class. Too many ideas, and not enough effective action.

Fine the feckless?

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There are reports in the media that Michael Gove wants to deduct fines imposed on parents of those pupils not attending school from child benefits. This policy was suggested earlier in the coalition by a Conservative adviser, but blocked by the Liberal Democrats. Presumably, this revival of the idea could be designed to prevent UKIP announcing it as a policy ahead of the Conservatives.

As a headline it no doubt resonates with groups that feel you shouldn’t get something for nothing, and part of the contract in receiving state benefits is that you play your part; in this case ensuring your offspring go to school regularly. From the opposite perspective it looks like punishing the child by reducing family income, often already low in real terms, because of the actions of the parents. The sins of the fathers or in this case possibly even the mothers, being transferred to the next generation.

None of this is to underestimate the problem of children missing education, and the part parents play in conniving in their absence from school, but to seek to discover how best to deal with the issue.

I have never liked the idea of schools being able to fine parents. Recent governments have taken the idea that fines can be administered by public bodies without recourse to the judicial system to absurd lengths. This means that, unlike in court, those imposing the fines have neither the whole picture nor the means to compel someone to attend to discuss their means. As a result, fines are a very blunt instrument, and this often resorts in them eventually being written off unpaid. If fines are the solution they need to be imposed by a court with oversight of all State imposed penalties: as a form of punishment a community sentence to some form of parenting programme might well be a better alternative, especially if imposed early in a child’s record of unapproved absence. Personally, I think returning Magistrates’ Courts to local areas so that they can act quickly and decisively with the ability to understand the whole picture might be better than allowing head teachers to cut child benefit.

On the other hand, schools do need to consider how, especially in the early years, they can tackle those children that fall behind in their learning through absence. I am sure that the best schools do this as a matter of course, but some research into outcomes at the 20 or some primary schools with the worst attendance records might pay some interesting dividends. It would be an easy win to ask these schools that the DfE has already identified whether they are using their Pupil Premium to help these children?

Where the welfare of the child is in danger a local authority has the extreme option of directly intervening in the parenting of a child. Perhaps the Secretary of State should start by asking his colleagues in the Children’s Services part of his Department what they would recommend before targeting benefit cuts as the headline solution. Liberal Democrats were correct to block this policy last time it was mooted, and although they cannot stop Mr Gove campaigning to put it in the Tory manifesto for 2015, I hope that they will make clear their opposition to it by a definitive statement to that effect from their education minister, David Laws.

Teacher training transfer window opens

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As I hinted in a recent post, things are seemingly not going to plan in this year’s recruitment round for teacher preparation courses. If they were, then today’s announcement from the NCTL would not have appeared offering as it does additional places to providers with courses that are full. http://www.emcsrv.com/prolog/NCTL/Additional-HEI-places-available-for-2014-guide.pdf What is interesting is not so much the list of secondary subjects reproduced below, but the fact that places are also still up for grabs for non-specialist primary trainees.

According to the NCTL places are available in the following subjects:

  • biology
  • citizenship
  • classics
  • computer science
  • design & technology
  • engineering
  • geography
  • health and social care
  • modern languages
  • music
  • religious education
  • primary mathematics specialist and
  • all non-specialist primary

And the NCTL will continue to allocate places on request for all physics and maths courses, as it has done all year.

It remains to be seen how responsive schools and universities will be at this stage of the year to the invitation to top up courses that are full.

What this move by the NCTL will mean for the regional distribution of places is not clear. In the case of geography, often a bellwether subject in terms of charting recruitment challenges, most regions of England have six or seven schools showing no vacancies today on the UCAS web site and would thus be eligible to take on more places. Helpfully, there are nine such schools in London, and 12 in the south East where teachers are often needed in greater numbers.

Two of the four universities that would be allowed to recruit more trainees are in the North East, where there appear to be no schools with their full allocation. The other two universities that could bid for more places are one each in London and the South East according to the UCAS public site.

It is surprisingly to see primary places being offered in June as historically almost all courses are fully recruited by now; many with waiting lists.

What the announcement does to the government’s intention to transfer more training to schools will not become clear until the autumn, when it will become clear how many places have been taken up, and by what providers. If these places need to be filled, and are not, then next summer some schools may struggle to recruit new teachers in a wider range of subjects than I was predicting only a couple of weeks ago.

Ofsted changes ITT inspection rules again

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The latest changes by Ofsted to the inspection of initial teacher training announced today look interesting on the surface, but may be fraught with some interesting issues.

The two stage inspection process; Stage 1 in the summer term, and Stage 2 in the autumn following the completion of training assumes inspectors will visit many more schools to see NQTs teaching in their first term than has been the case in the recent past. Indeed, they may almost take on the role of the former LA adviser dropping in to see how an NQT is progressing.

The new process raises interesting challenges for providers. For instance, the reference will take on a new role. A trainee that has only been in mono-cultural school settings teaching a specific subject might warrant a more caution reference when applying for a post in a multicultural setting dealing with many students whose first language isn’t English. Similarly, it might lead to specific subject certification, such as ‘this NQT is has only taught history during their training, and cannot be deemed to be suitable to teach humanities without further preparation’. If the school appoints the NQT, and the HMI doesn’t like the RE lesson observed because of the material used, does that reflect badly on the ITT provider? The same issue might arise where a primary trainee was appointed to teach a mixed-age class having never experienced that situation in training: does the ITT provider bear the responsibility for the observed outcome? And what of undergraduate trainees that might not normally teach in the final summer term of their course? Will special placements now need to be arranged to satisfy Ofsted?

The summer term may also be too late to observe trainees effectively, especially those in UTCs, Studio Schools, or sixth form colleges where the majority of students might be on examination leave. At the very least, these students might have different timetables to those in 11-16 schools and their primary colleagues. I would personally favour a window between February and May for the observation phase, as ITT providers should by then be indentifying those students that are making good progress, and those that need additional help to reach the required standard. That is one of the benefits of HE and SCITT provision over some forms of School Direct in that the training provider can tailor the placements more directly to the needs of the trainee.

At the end of the day, we need to train enough teachers for all schools, and if the Ofsted process does not match outcomes to training, there is a risk that won’t happen.  Of course, since academies can employ anyone, it is difficult to see how Ofsted can judge training provision against teachers seen where the ITT provider has specifically stated that the trainee is not suitable for the post. That raises interesting questions for providers going forward, and for partnership agreements with School Direct. ITT providers will want to know how they will be judged on the part of a training regime they offer where they have no relationship with the trainee, and where they eventually work. Unless that scenario is discussed, the risk to HE and SCITTs will be greater than to the same training provision offered through School Direct: but perhaps that the logic behind the change.

 

 

 

 

Losing the teacher supply battle

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This time last year I raised the question of whether we would recruit enough trainees to become teachers in 2014, in a post dated 1st June 2013, and headed ‘Missing the Target is a Known’. Sadly, I have to make the same prediction for the 2014 round that now has but three months to run before the majority of courses start in September.

With schools so heavily involved, and would-be trainees needing to pass the Skills Tests before starting their course, anyone that hasn’t applied by mid-July, effectively at some point during the next six weeks, will probably struggle to find a course unless the NCTL makes it clear to providers that they should recruit right up to the wire, as many universities have always had to do when recruitment was challenging.

The auguries for recruiting new trainees are not good. Recently the Association of Graduate Recruiters said that nine out of ten graduate employers still have vacancies for this autumn, with businesses in engineering and IT particularly suffering. Recruiters, they added, ‘cannot find enough quality candidates’. So the golden years of the recession, when a surplus of good quality graduates flowed into teacher preparation courses at the point in the demographic cycle when rolls in secondary schools were falling, and demand for teachers was declining, is over. We need more teachers and they are becoming harder to recruit.

My current predictions based upon data released this week by UCAS from the unified application process is that the following  subjects may well miss the lower of their DfE Teacher Supply Model figure or their NCTL allocation:

  • Biology
  • Design & Technology
  • Geography
  • Mathematics
  • Music
  • Physics
  • Religious Education

The jury is still out on Chemistry, but science overall is likely to face some sort of shortfall, if only because of the serious shortage of physics trainees. Although English will meet its target, I still do not believe we are training enough teachers, and governors still tell me that they are facing challenges recruiting such teachers in some parts of the country. It is significant that the TES job site has around 250 main scale positions for teachers of English today, but only around 200 for teachers of Mathematics.

Many of the subjects in the list where I expect shortages of trainees this year, were also subjects where there was a shortfall last year, so the warning that I and others made this time last year may been heeded, but has not been dealt with, unless you consider hiring unqualified personnel as the solution.

This year, there is also some nervousness about recruitment to primary ITT courses in some parts of the country. A shortfall there would be a real disaster, especially as schools with cash reserves will undoubtedly start upping the salary they are prepared to pay in the new de-regulated world of teachers’ pay and conditions. From there, it is but a short step to abandoning the principle of free schooling so parents can top up school coffers to help attract teachers through better pay. How that will affect the notion of fairness and equity only time will tell.