Progress, but not enough where it really matters

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How much difference is the Pupil Premium cash making for secondary school pupils? Not a lot so far if the latest DfE Statistics on GCSE outcomes are right. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/280689/SFR05_2014_Text_FINAL.pdf  On the wider measure, the attainment gap for the percentage achieving 5 or more GCSEs at grade A* to C or equivalent has narrowed by 8.0 percentage points between 2008/09 and 2012/13, with 69.3 per cent of pupils eligible for FSM achieving this indicator in 2012/13, compared with 85.3 per cent of all other pupils. However, the attainment gap between the percentage achieving 5 or more GCSEs at grade A* to C or equivalent including English and mathematics has narrowed by only 1.0 percentage point between 2008/09 and 2012/13 with 37.9 per cent of pupils known to be eligible for FSM achieving this indicator compared with 64.6 per cent of all other pupils. White boys are still faring badly, with just27.9% gaining the key 5A*-Cs measure including English and Mathematics. This compares with 43.1 of Black boys with similar characteristics, and 39.6% of black Caribbean boys with FSM.

Girls continue to outperform boys at all the main attainment indicators at key stage 4. The gap between the percentage of girls and boys making expected progress in English is 12.4 percentage points. This gap has narrowed slightly by 0.6 percentage points since 2011/12. The gap between the percentage of girls and boys making expected progress in mathematics is narrower than for expected progress in English at 4.7 percentage points, which has remained broadly the same since 2011/12.

All ethnic groups have made progress between 2008/98 and 2012/13in terms of the percentage of pupils obtaining 5A*-Cs including English and mathematics, although the Traveller of Irish Heritage, gypsy and Roma group still remain a long way adrift of other groups despite the small improvement in their performance on this measure. Pupils from a black background remain among the lowest performing groups, although they have shown the largest improvement. The percentage of black pupils achieving 5 or more GCSEs at grade A* to C or equivalent including English and mathematics GCSEs or iGCSEs is 2.5 percentage points below the national average. This gap has narrowed by 1.7 percentage points since 2011/12 but over the longer term has narrowed by 3.7 percentage points since 2008/09.

Outcomes for pupils with SEN remain disappointing. The attainment gap between the percentage of pupils with and without any identified SEN achieving 5 or more GCSEs at grade A* to C or equivalent including English and mathematics GCSEs or iGCSEs is 47.0 percentage points – 70.4 per cent of pupils with no identified SEN achieved this compared with 23.4 per cent of pupils with SEN. This gap has widened by 2.1 percentage points since 2008/09 but has remained broadly unchanged since 2011/12. A lower percentage of pupils with SEN made expected progress in both English and mathematics. The gap is wider for mathematics at 37.0 percentage points, compared to a gap of 30.9 percentage points for English. Both gaps have widened slightly between 2011/12 and 2012/13 (by 0.6 percentage points for mathematics and 0.7 percentage points for English).

On these measures there is still much to be achieved with the target groups. It is to be hoped that by increasing the level of the Pupil Premium more for primary pupils than their secondary compatriots fewer children will enter the secondary phase of schooling unable to access the teaching made available to them through a lack of the basic skills.

Education Quiz

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Regular readers of this blog will know that each year I set an education quiz for the Liberal Democrat Education Association annual conference. As the conference is taking place this weekend, and delegates were offered the opportunity to take the quiz last night I am happy to post it here for anyone that wants to have a go. Good luck, and most answers can be found with a half-decent search engine.

1 How much will the Pupil Premium be for

A] primary

B] secondary school pupils from September 2014?

2 Who was the Chief Inspector before Sir Michael Wilshaw?

3 Name the Lib Dem that sits on the DfE Board

4 What % of pupils gained A*-C GCSE grades in science in 2013?

5 Mr Gove has talked of some educationalists as blobs. Where did the term blob come from?

6 Apart from charming coastlines popular with holidaymakers, what linked Norfolk and the Isle of Wight last year?

7 Why might 5 that used to follow 10 now possibly come after 4?

8 What continent doesn’t feature in the new geography curriculum after Key Stage 1?

9 A new teacher in London could earn more than £36,000 on appointment?

10 Who said ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.’

11 How much money will schools receive for every infant meal served?

12 Which former permanent secretary at the DfE resigned from the board of an academy sponsor after links between the sponsor and its parent organisation in Turkey were revealed in the national press? Bonus mark – where was the school seeking to become an academy using that sponsor?

13 True or false – only 410 trainee design & technology teachers were in training at the November 2013 DfE census date.

14 Although the participation age for education has been raised councils still only have to provide free transport for pupils to the end of the academic year in which their 16th birthday falls. True or false?

15 Name the 2 Free Schools that closed in 2013

16 Who said:

‘I’m pleased to announce today that the Government will be setting up a programme to get outstanding leaders into the schools that need them the most. …. But what I can say is that there will be a pool of top talent within the profession, a Champions League of Head Teachers, made up of Heads and Deputy Heads, who will stand ready to move to schools in challenging circumstances that need outstanding leaders.’ Bonus mark where?

17 Who thought he had proposed a motion to the 2013 Lib Dem Spring conference, but actually hadn’t?

18 What placed West Berkshire in the same group as Enfield in December and Cumbria with Sunderland?

19 All new state-funded schools have to be academies. True or false?

20 In the PISA rankings for mathematics Eire was ranked ahead of the UK but Sweden was below. True or false?

Should women teachers wear trousers?

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Is Ofsted’s latest desire to remove scruffy teachers exhibiting poor standards of behaviour real or just another part of the inter-nicene battle currently being fought within Whitehall? I mentioned in my last post that the revised Ofsted framework would consider issues of dress among trainees and new teachers. Interestingly, I have yet to see any evidence from Ofsted to justify this change in the inspection regime. Given that inspectors carry out more than 9,000 visits to schools each year that are regarded as inspections they probably already know what dress standards are like. Backing the need for change with evidence would have provided more credibility for the decision as well as perhaps identifying what is acceptable. Can women still wear trousers or do the fashion inspectors want a return to either dresses or jumpers and A-line skirts? Must men wear ties along with jackets? Will exceptions be made in both cases on the sports fields and in the gym, workshops, and kitchens?

Based upon views from TV documentaries, and not just of the main characters, is how teachers dress really an issue in secondary schools. So, is it the primary sector Ofsted has in mind? Does the HMCI of Schools want formal dress for those teaching five-year olds, and will it extend beyond the teachers to classroom assistants? Is the policy really about distinguishing teachers from others working with children so that they stand out in a crowded assembly hall as the formally dressed adults? Trainee teachers need to know the standards they will be expected to be judged against. What does ‘neat and tidy’ mean, and is it different in West London to say Northumberland?

I went back and reviewed the findings of a survey I conducted for ATL in 1996 that included a question about spending on clothing by trainee teachers. 80% of trainee teachers that completed the survey claimed to have had to buy suitable clothes for the school environment during their training. I observed at the time that perhaps the expenditure was necessary because the casual attire worn by many students on campus wasn’t acceptable elsewhere, presumably including in the classroom.

Personally, I have always taken a relaxed view of these issues, as I always did when discussing whether pupils should stand up when an adult enters the classroom. There are occasions when it is appropriate, and times when it isn’t. Now both fashions and times change, but whether Ofsted monitors or sets the standards is a key question? We have a profession where around half of teachers are below the age of 35, so how does that age gap between many classroom teachers and those that inspect them affect attitudes between the generations over these issues?

Is the issue of dress among trainees in the classroom really a chimera created by Ofsted for its own purposes or does the HMCI have the evidence to justify the change to the framework? How strict will inspectors be, and will it deter some creative and divergent thinkers from becoming teachers if applied too rigidly? Without the evidence we shall never know.

Never mind the quality, feel the width

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The announcement today by Ofsted that it proposes to change the inspection framework for ITE partnerships from May, effectively immediately after the 13 week consultation period ends, http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/proposed-revisions-framework-for-inspecting-initial-teacher-education-consultation-document suggests there is still no answer to the basic question; who is in overall charge of teacher supply policy?

In a year where there are already insufficient trainee teachers in some subjects, making it harder to enter and then to pass the preparation period risks making that situation worse. If that happens, who will teach the children in those schools that cannot recruit a teacher; and will these schools be in the leafy suburbs or the inner cities?

It is now time someone took overall control of how we train and then offer employment to teachers. Are schools and higher education departments of education agents of central government or independent operators in market-based environment working within a regulatory framework?

For design and technology students, a subject area of key importance where the government had difficulty securing enough training places for 2014, presumably because recruitment had been so poor in 2013, the notion of changing the ‘standard of professional dress’ needed in the kitchen or workshop might be open to debate. Will such teachers now need one set of clothes for when they are with their tutor group, and another when they are actually teaching? Will this promote a return to the use of academic gowns as cover-ups for shabby suits, patched elbows, and no doubt the ties that male teachers will be required to wear at all times.

More seriously, providers have no control over where their former trainees find a teaching job. Many years ago I questioned the problem of trainees that learnt their craft skills in a cathedral city, but ended up working in an inner city. The cultural and other shocks for the successes of our education system learning to work as teachers with the whole range of learners have been brought home very clearly in the two recent TV series. Preparing teachers for the ‘real world’ in its many manifestations is a key part of training, but at present using their skills and qualities to best effect as they emerge during training isn’t part of the deal.

Are Ofsted really pointing to a disconnect in the profession between training and employment that has affected the primary sector ever since training was taken away from the employers and moved to higher education, where training for selective schools and the independent sector already mostly took place to the extent that there was any training at all.

Ofsted, do at least seem to be on the side of the need for a training requirement; otherwise what’s the point of the framework? However it isn’t clear whether they support the notion of any school-based trainees teaching from day or accept the need for some initial input such as the 30 days offered by Teach First. What may be more important is how trainees in schools with few behaviour-management issues are prepared for more challenging situations where they might eventually want or be required to work? Is training entirely in one school a good idea, or does a period in more than one school enhance and deepen the experience of learning how to become a teacher?

It seems to me that changing the framework for inspection without clear ministerial guidance on the training process, and its link to employment, is like putting the mobile phone before the mast to update the cart before the horse analogy.

You cannot penalise a provider that has no control over where a trainee takes a job unless you make it an absolute requirement as to what needs to be covered during the training period, and make that the same for all providers.

Ofsted, the NCTL through the DfE, and the employers of teachers, all need to sort out a framework for producing both enough teachers, and teachers of high quality so that we can move the school system forward. At present, what is emerging is a muddle that might have serious consequences for teacher supply at a time when the school population is rising rapidly.

Am I a blob revisited

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At the end of March last year Mr Gove attacked those who opposed his views as being ‘blobs’. I wrote a blog about whether or not I fell into that category on the 25th March in case anyone is interested in seeing how the debate has moved on during the past year.

I was at one with the Secretary of State in believing in high standards of education for all, and still am. State schools cannot, and generally do not, aspire to produce second class citizens. Although, in the era of secondary modern schools, before the abolition of selection at eleven became the norm, around two thirds of secondary age pupils were in a system that wasn’t especially interested in their abilities. That should have changed, but we still see the greatest under-achievement among our less able pupils. If the message from Mr Gove is ‘educate these pupils’ and stop them disrupting your school then, so long as he recognises the key role of the classroom teacher in achieving this end, he may have the right idea.

If a focus on quality stops the time-wasting, and indeed, money-wasting, emphasis among Conservative, and some Labour politicians at Westminster seemingly determined on creating a nationalised and centralised school system, and recognises the need for local involvement in education, especially primary schooling, the present debate might even achieve a new understanding about how schools should be led: but I doubt it.

On the issue of the day, I might have more respect for David Laws position on Baroness Morgan’s contract as Ofsted chair if I wasn’t aware that alongside Theodore Agnew on the DfE Board sits Paul Marshall as the lead non-executive member. Now Paul helped set up ARK, and has both written books about education, and helped sponsor the Lib Dem leaning think tank CenteForum, as well as once being a researcher for an SDP MP. He was also involved with David Laws in the publication of the controversial Orange Book that upset some Lib Dems a few years ago. I am sure as a financier he and Theodore Agnew each brings financial discipline to a government department often in need of such skills. But, I doubt if he has suddenly become politically neutral. So, perhaps David Laws really wanted a Lib Dem in the job of chair of Ofsted. There are a number of possible candidates in the House of Lords that would fit the bill nicely as a replacement for Baroness Morgan. But, the row is now so political that I am sure it will be the Prime Minister that will make the decision helped by the independent commission on appointments.

Any way the row won’t have done the Lib Dems any harm among teachers and educationalists that Gove sees as blobs, even if it hasn’t fundamentally changed any Lib Dem policy on education. In the short-term it may have enhanced David Laws’ credibility, but, longer-term, his reputation may rest on ensuring there isn’t a teacher supply crisis between now and the general election.

Where have all the flowers gone

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Pete Seeger, who died earlier this week, was a constant presence on the record player during my university days in the 1960s. Interestingly, one of the songs he recorded in 1963, ‘Little boxes’, formed the background to a student project undertaken by my first group of trainee teachers at the University of Worcester during the early 1980s. Persuading the external examiner that group work was a good idea, and that the outcome could be a tape-slide presentation, and not just an essay, was an interesting challenge: now it might be impossible.

I was reminded of Pete Seeger’s ‘Where have all the flowers gone’ when I saw the figures produced by UCAS earlier today about applications up to the 20th January this year for the unified teacher training application scheme. Now, it is a new process, and there are still seven months to recruit and still leave time for taking the Skill Tests before courses start, so today’s figures are really only straws in the wind.

However, the headlines show that while younger applicants appear to be applying in good, if not yet sufficient numbers,applications from those between the ages of 25 and 40 seem below the numbers that might be expected, especially since all career changer routes now go through the unified admissions process.

What could be especially worrying is the apparent decline in applications for primary courses.  In January 2011, some 21,300 applicants had applied for primary PGCE courses, and an unknown number had applied for employment-based routes into teaching. Last year, the primary PGCE number was just over 17,000. This year, when applicants can make up to three applications to different courses at this stage of the process it is impossible to know the actual number of applicants from the published figures. However, if applicants made, on average, 2.5 course choices per applicant, the number of applicants would be just less than 15,000 or 6,000 fewer than in 2011 despite the inclusion of the employment-based places. The position for secondary subjects is even more confusing, partly because of the possibility of candidates making applications to different subject areas amongst their three choices. However, Chemistry, languages, music, Religious Education and Physics look to be ones to watch for potential problems; and both art and drama may be less attractive this year than in the past.

Whether Educating Yorkshire, and the TV series about Teach First currently being shown on BBC, are helpful to recruiting probably hasn’t been tested yet. But, unlike the army, teaching currently isn’t running any recruitment adverts on television. This is despite the need for around 40,000 trainees this year, roughly half the size of the British land army after its latest cutbacks. Spending a bit of cash on recruitment advertising might be a wise move for the government because it cannot afford to under-recruit on primary preparation courses given the increase in pupil numbers over the next few years. A more radical move would be to reassess either the bursary levels or the need for trainees to pay fees. After all, the government could either just pay the fees or even say to schools that they should pay to participate in School Direct rather than be paid by the trainees or the government.

The longer the government leaves any reaction to these numbers, the more they risk compounding the shortfall in recruitment they witnessed last year and that won’t play well in the run up to the 2015 general election. The government has the luxury of weekly data, whereas the rest of us will have to wait until the end of February for the next set of figures.  By then, the recruitment round will have reached the half-way point, and in previous years the trends across the whole cycle will be readily apparent: the clock is already ticking.

Work smarter not harder

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A big thank you to the Guardian.com that featured my blog post on episode two of the series about Teach First currently being shown on the BBC: It brought in around 1,000 extra views of this blog over four days, and make the target of 10,000 by the end of January into a feasible proposition.

Episode three of the series was aired last Thursday, and I caught up with it on the BBC i-player yesterday. The underlying themes of the episode seem to be the continuing discipline issues encountered by one of the trainees, and the interaction between teachers and pupils as they learnt about both motivation and setting boundaries. In doing so they also learnt about themselves. What was missing, I felt was any analysis of feedback to trainees making satisfactory or better progress. On the other hand, the one teacher causing concern said at one point she as being observed in half her lessons. How any preparation programme can afford such a high level of observation is a matter of no little wonder to me. What we didn’t see was the way the feedback from these observations was translated into action by both the school and the teacher. There was an interesting juxtaposition of one trainee teacher making a class enter the science lab several times because they didn’t do it to her satisfaction the first time and the trainee judged to have problems were there was no sense of what strategy she was using to gain control of the class.

As I expected, Caleb, and his opinions, featured in the episode along with the views of several other pupils, particularly about examinations. Perhaps too much time was spent on the slaughtering of the birds as a bonding exercise, and we didn’t really hear what the teacher though the outcome of that exercise had been after teaching the pupil again for several lessons. Also, did the RE teacher set to find an Arab looking Joseph (non-speaking) by his head of department really call another teacher Sir when he entered his tutor group to speak to a pupil? I will need to go back and re-check.

The new teachers spoke frankly to camera about their experiences, and the first year trainees were compared to a second year Teach First participant that the school wanted to keep even thought she expressed concern that the results for her Year 11 group would show a dip over the previous year: time will tell. One teacher that featured in episode two didn’t seem to appear this time, but there was no explanation as to why he didn’t feature.

The next episode will take the teachers into their second term when my advice to them would have been, work smarter not just harder. It assessment and preparation are taking over your life, look at how you can restore some normality, because it you aren’t teaching a full timetable think what it will be like when you are. So far, apart from assessed lessons, we have seen few interactions between the Teach First teachers and the bulk of the staff at the schools. Do they ever take part in department meetings or socialise outside of their group?

As a series about human interaction, and the feelings of young people, it makes interesting television, but whether I am not sure about what I have learnt about the Teach First method of preparing teaching that is different to other methods once they are in the classroom except that after a whole term of teaching the team are still being supportive of the teacher facing the most challenge. In this episode she received a warning about her progress from a University tutor. Next time, will she sink or swim in the new term?

Happy birthday

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The first post on this blog was exactly one year ago today. Since then there have been more than 8,500 views of the 114 posts. Some 86 people have identified themselves as following the blog, and there are a number that repost to their own followers. Interestingly, the last two days have been the best two for views, with more than 650 views on Friday alone, after the link to the blog was posted on a national site.

During the past year, several issues about education in England have become clearer. Schools remain the focus of much of government policy, but how they are managed is still not clear. The differing roles of mutli-academy trusts, academy chains, and School Commissioners, let alone dioceses and local authorities are still to be fully determined, especially in the primary sector.

Schools are expected to play the key role in preparing the next generation of teachers, but whether they do so won’t become clear until this summer. If they fail to recruit enough trainees over the next few months there might be a real crisis in teacher supply by 2015, especially in the subjects that don’t interest the Secretary of State, but may be vital to the economic well-being of the country. Over-allocating training places is fine, but ensuring the required numbers are recruited is even more important.

The good news is that schools are performing better probably than at any stage in the past fifty years, at least for their most able pupils. There is still some way to go in many schools with helping their less able pupils reach their full potential. However, the government, at least at official level, seems to be more willing to consider progress measures rather than a focus on just outcomes. After all, we don’t know how much of the GCSE and A level success is due to schools, and how much to the investment in private tuition many parents are willing to fund.

Despite the rapid strides in new technology that are occurring almost on a daily basis, with open access courses probably being the triumph of 2013, schooling is still a very labour intensive activity. For that reason the morale of the workforce is vital to pupil achievement. The government seems to recognise that in relation to school leaders, but might be more understanding of the support needed for classroom teachers. Educating Yorkshire and the travails of the Teach First trainees have shown TV viewers across the country what working in real school is like on a day to day basis, and made teacher bashing by ministers less believable. Between now and the general election the government has to think about recovering from its short-sighted abolition of the GTCE, the professional body for teachers. Supporting a College of Teachers might be a sensible option.

Looking back across the past year, if this blog has achieved anything other than to allow me the pleasure of writing a weekly column, as I did for the TES for more than a decade, it has been to highlight the issue of teacher supply. There is more discussion, and more data available, than for many years. If that helps prevent a teacher supply crisis in the future then I will be more than content. In the meantime, I will continue to write at roughly weekly intervals with the aim of discussing the numbers around the school system in England. Thank you for reading, and a big thank you to those who have sent me comments during the past year.

 

 

More on made not born: how teachers are created

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Last night I caught up with the second episode of BBC3’s new series, ‘Tough Young Teachers’ that is all about the progress of a group of Teach First recruits. (Past episodes are available on the BBC i-player). The teachers featured were working in Harefield Academy, Crown Woods School and the Archbishop Lanfranc School. Although Teach First started as a programme for inner city schools, these three schools that are located in Uxbridge, Croydon, and Bexley, might better be characterised as suburban, and not inner city. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t challenging. Their Free School Meals measure for the Pupil Premium – anytime in the past six years on free school meals – ranges from 29.2% at The Harefield Academy, to 41.7% at Archbishop Lanfranc, and 46.2% at Crown Woods College according to DfE figures; all well above the national average. Both the latter two schools have a significant number of pupils whose native language isn’t English; although as a measure of the need for support it is probably worth re-visiting this indicator to see how it is calibrated. It might be better to classify whether pupils have a level of English that allows them to function effectively in a learning situation rather than know what their native tongue might have been.

All three schools have above average levels of persistent absence, and perform less well with least able pupils than their most able. According to the DfE, Archbishop Lanfranc is an 11-16 school, and the other two have sixth forms. This point worries me, since it is not clear how Teach First ensures any exposure to post-16 teaching for those placed in 11-16 schools? If they want to stay in teaching after two years, this lack of sixth form experience might restrict the range of schools willing to employ them. This is always a risk with a single-training location over courses that allow training in several schools during the programme.

Another risk of such single-school programmes also became apparent in last night’s episode. One of the group was seen facing considerable discipline challenges in their classroom. In a traditional programme of teacher preparation they would receive a second chance to start again in a new school on their next placement. This would allow for a fresh start and see whether they could improve with a new set of pupils. On Teach First, it was suggested last night that the choice is to be battle through or be sacked. In an earlier post last year, I commented how much Teach First appeared to spend on recruitment and selection, so it is worrying that someone can pass through selection, and the six weeks of training, and still face such challenges in a school where many pupils are there because of their sporting achievements: judging by their appearance, and that of the school, they are also generally working in a supportive learning establishment. But, television has to tell as story that entertains, informs and hopefully educates the viewer, so we may not know the real situation. However, that student was filmed sitting down in the classroom too much for my liking, although the arrangement of the furniture probably also didn’t help a new teacher.

For entertainment value, watching endless lessons can become a bit like watching paint dry for the average viewer, and even I looked at my watch a couple of times, so the storyline of the pupil recently returned from a spell in a Pupil Referral Unit offered an interesting counterpoint. Caleb was articulate, truculent, and as viewers know from Educating Yorkshire before Christmas, exactly the sort of pupil to challenge a school, and its experienced teachers, let along one just arrived from six weeks of basic training outside the classroom. No doubt viewers will see more of Caleb in later episodes.

By now the viewer also knows something of the personalities of the new recruits. They also know, if they didn’t already, that teaching is not easy, and there is no such thing as deference to authority in modern society. Respect has to be earned in the classroom as on the beat or by anyone in a position of authority.

As ever, one asks of oneself, how would I have fared?  I don’t know, but if it is any consolation to those training at present, my first year, admittedly with no training, and as a supply teacher in Tottenham, was far worse than some of the scenes from last night’s programme. I will watch future episodes with interest.

Do 40% of teacher quit in their first five years?

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When the HMCI makes a statement such as ‘we invest so much in teacher training and yet an estimated 40% of new entrants leave within five years’ it much be taken as being authoritative, and presumably correct. However, it is worth digging a bit more deeply into the data to see what actually happens to new teachers. Fortunately, the DfE published a detailed analysis of a cohort in their review of the first School Work Force Survey of 2010. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/182407/DFE-RR151.pdf

According to the DfE’s analysis of 100 entrants to training, 56 would still be teaching in the state-funded sector five years later, and another six would be teaching in the non-maintained sector; others might be teaching abroad or in the further education sector, possibly in a sixth form college. So, the 40% looks like an upper limit on the number leaving post-qualification.

What is more interesting is the loss after actually entering the profession. According to the DfE analysis, only 4 of the 47 postgraduates that found a teaching job left after five years, and the number of undergraduates was actually greater by one at the five year point than the number counted at the first year after training; presumably as late entrants found a teaching job. This analysis, therefore, points to the greatest loss being between training and employment. Indeed, of the 63 postgraduates that completed training only 47 will be teaching in publicly-funded schools a year after training, along with 12 of the 17 undergraduate completers.

So, is this loss of around a quarter immediately after training a matter for concern? Much may depend upon whether during the period of the DfE analysis too many teachers were being trained. Hopefully, some decided after completing the course that teaching wasn’t the career for them. Other students, especially mature students, may be tied to a particular location, and just haven’t seen a job in their subject advertised yet.

Indeed, since HMCI Annual Reports in recent years have said how good new teachers are, it seems a little odd to suggest there might have been a dip in quality recently. HMCI cannot have his cake and eat it. Either he repudiates publicly the work of his predecessors or he explains what evidence he had to use for his speech to the North of England Education Conference.

Personally, in the new world where many schools sail alone, I think it is important to ensure adequate professional development for new teachers. The audit trail will quickly reveal whether it is during training or afterwards that problems arise. What is more important is for the evidence of any systemic weakness during training to be fed back into consideration of how teacher preparation might evolve. For instance, more time in the classroom might not improve classroom management outcomes unless it is associated with the time spent on the theory and techniques of behaviour management, and the part played by good subject knowledge and an understanding of young people. If, as a result, HMCI decides to tell the government that the present one-year course, especially for new primary schools teachers needs a complete overhaul, I would be delighted.