STEM subjects lead retreat from teaching

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In March 2010 I talked to the UCET (University Council for the Education of Teachers) Research and Development Committee about reading the runes on what might happen to teacher supply. My final slide  predicted the next teacher supply crisis would be in London in September 2014.

Now I may have been premature in the arts and humanities subjects because of the time the economy has taken to recover from the battering it took after the banking crisis of 2008, but the latest evidence seems to suggest that in the STEM subjects I was right to be concerned. An analysis of the two key routes into training that are covered by DfE targets – School Direct and Higher Education/SCITTs suggests that unless there is a late surge in acceptances recruitment to STEM subjects will be down on recent years.

The following table is based upon data collected over the period 2-5th August, i.e. last weekend.

Current acceptances 2013 AUG
COMPARED with the 2012 TARGET SUBJECT

-113

 ENGLISH

-844

 MATHEMATICS

-146

 BIOLOGY/ GEN SCI

-235

 CHEMISTRY

-411

 PHYSICS INC PHYSICS WITH MATHS

-452

 ICT

-465

 D&T

-183

 MFL

-31

 GEOGRAPHY

170

 HISTORY

8

 ART & DESIGN

-51

 MUSIC

79

 PE

-127

 RE

-29

 BUSINESS STUDIES

-65

 CITIZENSHIP

130

 OTHER

The advent of pre-entry skills test in numeracy and literacy makes it less likely than in previous years that there will be a significant number of last minute entrants. Indeed, it might help matters if the government suspended that requirement for this year while it sorts out the common admission framework for next year. At present, we don’t know how many candidates may be holding more than one place, and we also don’t know the level of ‘no shows’ when courses actually commence.  Of course, these figures will be boosted by those national providers such as the OU that don’t reveal their acceptances as part of the national monitoring arrangements, but that won’t eliminate the shortfall.

So, if the data is anywhere near accurate, schools may have to start looking for alternative sources of mathematics, science and computer studies teachers in 2014, especially in London and the South East where turnover of teachers doubled between 2010 and 2013. As teachers from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA can now teach in England with no further training needed, and as academies and free schools don’t even need to employ qualified teachers – not that any school ever did in a crisis situation – any gaps will be filled somehow. But teacher shortages are likely to make a mockery of the government’s avowed policy of closing the achievement gap between the rich and the poorest in society.

The government will also need to look carefully at the level of bursary support it provides trainees, although it is somewhat prescribed by starting salaries as there is no benefit in trainees having to take a pay cut when they finish their training on top of starting to pay back their tuition fee loans that already reduces their real incomes in many cases.

With a general election in 2015, the government cannot afford the seeds of another teacher supply crisis even if it is based upon an improving overall economy. A world-class education system cannot be built on a teacher supply crisis, and it would be even more ironic if the success of UK schooling for overseas pupils sucked the brightest and best teachers from the domestic State system at the very point where there weren’t enough to go around.

Conflicting evidence on pupil behaviour?

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Recently I pointed out that there had been a slight increase in the level of exclusions from schools, particularly in the primary sector. It therefore came as a bit of surprise to discover the results of a survey showing that teachers in general think pupil behaviour is improving. The data for the latter comes from the NfER Voice Survey and specifically the questions asked on behalf of the DfE. The analysis can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/210297/DFE-RR304.pdf

In view of the fact that half the profession is now under thirty-five the responses by age groups were especially interesting. Teachers in the younger age groups we less likely to report that behaviour was ‘very good’, only 20% of those under 25, and 21% of NQTs did so, compared with 40% of teachers aged over 50. Now the latter category will have included a number of heads and other school leaders, so perhaps it is not surprising that they think behaviour is better than do relatively new teachers. 88% of those teachers over 50 agreed that they felt equipped to manage pupil behaviour compared with just 73% of the under-25s, and 63% of NQTs; a worrying low figure for those just out of training. 37% of young teachers didn’t feel parents respected a teachers’ authority to discipline a pupil, compared with just 20% of teachers over 50 who felt that way. NQTs were also less likely than other teachers to use force either to remove a pupil from a classroom or to break up a fight. Interestingly, male teachers stated that they were also less likely to use force that did female teachers.

Compared with a previous survey in 2008 there was an increase of seven percentage points in teachers seeing behaviour as ‘good’ or ‘very good’. As this has been a period of stable staffing in schools, it may well be that after a period of turmoil pupils in general are becoming better behaved. Alternatively, acceptance of low level disruption is now such that after a few years what is acceptable becomes different to standards expected by new entrants to the profession. I suspect that there may be a bit of both at work in the responses.

Nevertheless ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’ is the main reason for pupils to be excluded from most schools so there still remains a bit of a mis-match between the two sets of statistics. I think in this case I am more likely to accept the evidence of the exclusions, based as they are on actual events rather than the answers to hypothetical questions posed as part of a survey. But it may be that a small number of pupils spoil the good behaviour shown by the majority.

However, I am sure most schools are full of better behaved pupils than when I started teaching in 1971. In those days, the key task for a new teacher in the area where I taught was keeping the pupils contained within the classroom. As ever, the better the lesson the more chance one had of achieving that result; only then could teaching and learning begin.

350 pupils educated in ‘outstanding’ free schools

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As regular readers will know, I am not a great fan of free schools. Not because I don’t agree with the principle of different groups running schools funded by the State, because I have no problem with that concept per se. After all, ever since 1870, churches, charities, and many other voluntary bodies have been funded by the State to run schools even before the Labour/Tory academy programme was developed. Generally, in the past such bodies have open schools within an arrangement that has at least some local coherence, even if that has meant some parents weren’t able to persuade their local authority to fund a school that they wanted. The present arrangement sees Westminster ignore the views of local authorities, and even their planning for future places can be disregarded by Ministers.

I agree with Mr Gove that J. S. Mill’s view was that the State shouldn’t necessarily run schools. I think he said that it was the role of the State to see its citizens were educated, but not necessarily to do the education themselves. Where I probably differ from Mr Gove is that I see the State as the default provider of schooling, not the funder of first resort. I find it frankly incredible that a Conservative minister can advocate an open-ended cheque to any parent who wants the State to fund their child’s education, especially in a time of economic uncertainty and with so many other demands upon the resources of the State.

All this is by way of a rather long preamble about the fact that Ofsted has released inspection data on the first 81 free schools as what were originally known as ‘additional schools’ are now universally known.

Four free schools were judged ‘outstanding’. Together they currently educated some 350 pupils at the date of their inspection, but their pupil numbers will grow over the next few years as they develop to serve all year groups. In one case the inspection report noted that attendance didn’t meet the school’s target, and was only broadly in line with national trends. In another school judged outstanding the inspector noted that the school would need to: Raise achievement further by ensuring that all lessons progress at an equally good pace, and pupils are encouraged to think critically about their learning. This was a comment I found slightly surprising for an ‘outstanding’ school.

Still it is interesting to know that these schools when inspected in numbers have a profile similar to the profile of schools in general, but that fact doesn’t assuage my concerns about their role in the education system as a whole. It is also surprising that in a free school in Tower Hamlets the proportion of pupils eligible for the Pupil Premium is well below the national average as that is probably not typical off the borough as a whole or perhaps even of the faith schools across the borough. Indeed, one Limehouse community primary school, not all that far away, had 61% of pupils on free school meals in January 2012 according to the Ofsted dashboard. No doubt, as the number of pupils of school age increases at that free school so too will the percentage of those on free school meals, although whether from both the 50% of faith places or the other 50% reserved for community applicants will not be clear for some time to come. By then we will have a lot more comparison data on free schools and, hopefully, no more will be in the placed in the inadequate category as was one of the original 81.

SEN: a trend towards more segregation?

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The debate about increasing pupil numbers has generally centred on the need for more primary places. However, it is important that children with special educational needs aren’t overlooked in this focus on the primary sector especially after the recent figures for pupils with SEN published by the DfE. They can be accessed at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/special-educational-needs-in-england-january-2013

On the face of it the story is an encouraging one, with the number of pupils in the three northern regions of England with statements of SEN actually reducing between 2009 and 2013. However, in the other six regions the number of pupils with statements has risen over this period. At first, I wondered whether this had to do with the larger number of academies in the southern half of England during the review period or whether it was a consequence mainly of the falling rolls in the secondary sector. By reviewing the number of new statements issued during 2012 and comparing them with the number of those first made during 2008 it became clear that the number of new statements has risen across most of the country in 2012, except for the East of England where the number remained the same in the two years, but had dipped and the risen during the intervening period.

So, although the overall numbers of children with SEN and no statement has decreased over the past few years much of this may be due to the decline in the secondary school population rather than a shift in attitudes to SEN. As with all statistics one must be wary of reading too much into some of them. For instance, the table for the percentage of pupils with a Statement educated in a local authority area shows West Berkshire right at the top of the local authority list with 4% of pupils with statements of SEN: anyone with a knowledge of the SEN world will know that the presence of the Mary Hare School for pupils with hearing impairments within this small unitary authority will have significantly affected the outcome for the authority on this measure. Had the table considered home authority and the number of pupils with statements placed ‘out of the authority’ the result would undoubtedly have been quite different. No doubt the concentration of SEN provision in various parts of London is behind the fact that Newham has the lowest percentage of SEN pupils with statements educated in the borough of any authority in England except the City of London.

Young people with SEN remain some of the greatest challenges facing our education system and despite the progress being made those from some ethnic and social groups are more likely to feature in the statistics that those from other backgrounds. It may be 40 years since the Caribbean community in parts of North London challenged the apparent overuse of special schools for pupils from their community but, along with the Traveller and Roma/Gypsy communities, pupils of a Caribbean heritage still have a higher incidence of SEN needs than the school population as a whole.

Finally, the trend towards integration of those with SEN into mainstream provision seems to have been reversed with number of pupils attending special schools increasing by more than 6,000 over the past four years. However, it still represents just 1.2% of the total school population. But for many that will be an unjustifiably high figure.

Exclusions need watching carefully, especially in the primary sector

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Recent figures from the DfE* showing data relating to exclusions by schools in 2011/12 reveal a picture where exclusions are happily still lower than a few years ago. Sadly, the downward trend of the past few years has been reversed and, particularly in the primary sector, there has been an increase in exclusions. However, who you are, and where you live, still plays an important part in your risk of being excluded. Boys aged 14, from an Irish Traveller heritage background, and living in one of the most socially deprived parts of the England will face many of the risk factors associated with membership of one of the groups more likely to be excluded: boys are far more likely to be excluded than girls. This isn’t to say that every boy meeting these criteria will be excluded, but for some the risk may well be greater than for others with different profiles. However, by diagnosing the groups most at risk, schools can often put policies in place to minimise the need for exclusions.

For some reason the Hampshire Coast has a reputation for containing special schools with above average rates of fixed term exclusions. This year, The Isle of Wight, Southampton and Portsmouth fill three of the four top spots for fixed term exclusions from special schools. Brighton and Hove comes two places lower. Whether there is something about the sea air, or it is the fact that they are all relatively small authorities with large areas of deprivation isn’t clear from the statistics. The Isle of Wight Council received a stern letter from Ofsted this week for a failure to effect school improvement policies on the island. No doubt Southampton and Portsmouth will also have to convince the inspectors that it isn’t their fault that so many of their most challenging children are disruptive.

Southampton and the Isle of Wight also take the top two places in the secondary school list of authorities where schools have the highest levels of fixed term exclusions, although in this case Portsmouth and Brighton and Hove are lower down the table, but both are still uncomfortably near the top. Hartlepool and South Tyneside, again small coastal authorities, have the lowest levels of fixed term exclusions in both the secondary and special school lists.

Reading, Medway and Portsmouth top the primary sector list, with Tower Hamlets and Richmond upon Thames having the lowest percentages of fixed term exclusions in the primary sector.

As a councillor, I am especially concerned that Oxfordshire is in the top third for secondary school fixed term exclusions, and has above average levels of such exclusions from the special school sector.

Since behaviour management is the topic many new teachers often cite needing more of during their preparation courses some attention might be paid to how they are trained to deal with behaviour leading up to exclusions especially since many of these fixed-term exclusions are for persistent disruptive behaviour. However, it will be interesting to see how the changes to the 14-18 curriculum will affect exclusions among the most numerous group of excludees, boys in that age bracket. Will Science, technology and vocational schools help re-engage these young men with the purpose of education or just add a further stopping point on the road that for too many leads to a life of anti-social behaviour and, too often, crime.

But it is the primary sector, with its rapidly increasing pupil numbers, that should concern policy-makers the most. The reasons for exclusion of these younger children need to be considered, and any feedback on what can help prevent them being excluded should be circulated to all concerned. If necessary, more emphasis on understanding disruptive behaviour will need to become a part of teacher preparation programmes, especially if it is shown that new teachers face unacceptably high levels of disruption without all the skills necessary to deal with them.

*https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/permanent-and-fixed-period-exclusions-from-schools-in-england-2011-to-2012-academic-year

Are academies hoarding their cash?

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What’s the use of giving schools money they don’t spend? This has been a theme running through this blog ever since the first entry way back in January. The latest figures for academies and the other esoteric school types funded from Westminster shows that these schools were in some cases no better than their maintained counterparts in using revenue cash to support the learning of their pupils. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/income-and-expenditure-in-academies-in-england-academic-year-2011-to-2012

No doubt the Treasury will eventually ask why school budgets should be protected if the cash handed to them is promptly put in the bank. Mr Clegg might also ask whether schools are really helping in his drive for a million new jobs by sitting on plies of cash.

Anyway a few numbers:

For 2011/12, the median total income (£ Per Pupil) for secondary academies with Key Stage 4 was £6,333, compared with £7,880 in 2010/11. The decline between the two years may indicate exactly how much initial converter academies were funded in excess of what they had previously received as maintained schools.

According to the DfE, the changing composition of secondary academies, with increasing numbers of converters, has narrowed the difference in total income (£ Per Pupil) between academies and maintained schools (secondary with KS4). For 2011/12 the median total income (£ Per Pupil) for academies (secondary with KS4) was £713 higher than maintained schools (secondary with KS4), compared with £2,469 in 2010/11. Many might ask why median total income per pupil in academies is still more than £700 higher than median per pupil income in maintained schools.

For 2011/12, the median total expenditure (£ Per Pupil) for secondary academies with Key Stage 4 was £6,058, compared with £7,405 in 2010/11. For 2011/12 the median total expenditure (£ Per Pupil) for academies (secondary with KS4) was £556 higher than maintained schools (secondary with KS4), compared with £2,052 in 2010/11. Nevertheless, an academy with median income and expenditure per pupil still banked £275 per pupil. For a school of 1,000 pupils that’s £275,000 just over 4% compared with 6% in the previous year. However, as this is the median figure it may not be as helpful as either the mean or modal class would be.

The trends are similar for secondary schools without Key Stage 4 and for primary and special school academies, although the small numbers make comparisons not really sensible.

A quick bit of arithmetic with the raw data suggests that the overall balance in academy bank accounts might be in the order of £175 million including muli-academy trusts where data is available. Around 100 academies may be sitting on cash pies in excess of £1 million each, and this figure is supposed to exclude any reserves held by the schools before they became an academy. However, there are also a large number of academies that appear to have spent more than their incomes.

We will need to see a few more years of data in order to discover whether these initial figures represent a trend. However, we won’t need to wait to discover whether the portion of grant income spend on teaching costs is similar to that in maintained schools. After all, one of the reasons for providing academies with their freedom was to allow them to spend their funding as they see fit to improve the standard of education of their pupils.

Hard times hit some secondary schools

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There was good news for some primary schools this week with the announcement that the Pupil Premium for pupils in the primary sector would increase from £900 per pupil to £1,300 from April 2014 despite the general cutback on government spending. The Premium for secondary school pupils will remain at £900 for another year; the level of the Service Children Premium for 2014/15 has yet to be announced.

In Oxfordshire, the changes will especially benefit schools in the East Oxford constituency which has the highest levels of deprivation in the county. There will also be some schools in Banbury, Didcot and Abingdon that will receive additional cash. The breakdown of the Pupil Premium by Oxfordshire’s parliamentary constituencies is shown in the following table.

Parliamentary Constituency

Pupils included in the Deprivation Pupil Premium allocations

(Jan 13 census)

Total funding for the Deprivation Pupil Premium for 2013-14 at £900 per pupil

Illustrative primary funding totals for the Deprivation Pupil Premium for 2014-15 at £1,300 per pupil

Increase between 2013-14 and 2014-15
Banbury

1675

£1,507,500

£2,177,500

£670,000
Henley

713

£641,700

£926,900

£285,200
Oxford East

2421

£2,178,900

£3,147,300

£968,400
Oxford West and Abingdon

987

£888,300

£1,283,100

£394,800
Wantage

1236

£1,112,400

£1,606,800

£494,400
Witney

1045

£940,500

£1,358,500

£418,000

The government has now taken to calling the Pupil Premium the Deprivation Pupil Premium, presumably to explain to schools exactly what it is intended to be used for. However, the naive attempt to distinguish why the rate has been set higher for the primary sector than for older children by demanding that primary schools make pupils ‘secondary ready’ can only have come from politicians without any real understanding of the education sector.

Commentators have been suggesting for some time now that money spent ensuring pupils make the best progress early on in their schooling pays dividends later. But, to call it making them ‘secondary ready’ was an insult to the real purpose of schooling at both primary and secondary levels. As a cheap sound bite it fell flat, but sadly it did draw attention away from the real purpose of the Pupil Premium that is to help ensure that more pupils are able to achieve higher standards. There is plenty of data to demonstrate that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds achieve less well than those from more favoured homes when at school. Indeed, figures released by the army this week showed the poor literacy and numeracy rates among young trainee soldiers compared with ratings in the navy, and recruits to the Royal Air Force.

The government hopes that the extra Pupil Premium will help whole classes move forward faster together as a unit. Although it admits that Schools will be able to spend this money in ways that they feel helps their pupils best. Evidence shows some schools use it to hire extra staff, reading and maths classes for children who need an extra hand, or to provide appropriate other facilities. The scale of the problem can be seen in the fact that in 2012, only 68 per cent of 11 year olds eligible for the Pupil Premium achieved the expected level in English and Maths despite the fact that 84 per cent of all other pupils aged 11 achieved that level.

Of course the downside is that some secondary schools, still losing older pupils as their rolls continue to decline at the upper end, won’t see this extra cash just as their intake of pupils from the primary sector that hadn’t benefited from the Pupil Premium at the start of their school careers begins to increase. Only time will tell if Ofsted will take this factor into account when judging secondary school performance.

Sunshine, but political and personal sadness

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Political parties are like large extended families. And, like families, every member has their own way of looking at the world even as they join together in confronting it. This week I have lost two good political friends from the Liberal Democrat family; one by choice, the other by sudden death. My memories of both are connected through education. In the case of Richard Grayson, who has publicly made it known that he has allowed his Party membership to lapse, it was initially as the author of the first ever pamphlet produced by the Centre for Reform, produced soon after Richard became its founding director in the late 1990s. Discipline in Schools, which he authored, and to which I lent my name as the joint author, was a short pamphlet about an issue that has plagued schools throughout history. Richard went on to much greater heights within the Party, including helping to write the 2001 general election manifesto, and now holds a senior academic post at Goldsmiths in London. He taught me much about the art of politics.

I am sad to see Richard leave the Lib Dem Party, but I think I know why he has reached his decision, one that was not, I am sure, reached lightly. Andrew Bridgwater’s sudden death that I leant about last weekend has robbed the Party of one if its key champions for education in general, and special education in particular. Andrew was no happier with the current direction of the Lib Dems than Richard was, and made that fact clear on many different occasions during his period of office as Chair of the Liberal Democrat Education Association, an office that only ended as recently as this year’s spring conference. He was delighted to have joined me as a Vice President of the Association. Andrew was at one time a councillor in Hackney, and I first got to know him when I joined the small group that met Don Foster regularly in the late 1990s to discuss education policy when Don was the Party’s shadow spokesperson on Education.

In recent years Andrew would often ring me up for a conversation about the state of education policy, and I knew I was in for a long and thorough discussion.  Andrew was a strong supporter of the motion Peter Downes and I put to the 2010 Liverpool Conference about academies and free schools. His most recent successes included work on the role of governing bodies and the wider need for the strong governance of schools to prevent the community being excluded from the decision-making process; a policy he was passionate about.

Despite his move a few years ago to Devon, Andrew still regularly made the long journey to Birmingham for the LDEA Executive meetings, and frequently to London for meetings of the parliamentary group. Andrew’s plain speaking was not to everyone’s liking, but that is the nature of families. He was also a strong supporter of the LDEA annual conference in Nottingham. Within the wider Party, he was recently the regional Vice-Chairman and fought the Totnes Division in this year’s county council elections, losing to the Green Candidate, and thus forming another bond, since I once lost a by-election in Oxford to a Green Party Candidate.  

I will miss Andrew’s boundless energy and determined view of the direction Liberal Democrat education policy should take, and I am especially sorry I didn’t have the opportunity to say good-bye. Andrew, thank you for everything you did for Lib Dem politics: especially for your contribution to my own thinking, particularly in the area of special needs.  I will miss you.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws. 

From Tennyson’s In Memoriam

Not a transport of delight

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As a teenager 50 years ago I used to listen to the BBC’s Round Britain Quiz and puzzle over the cryptic questions set for the teams. So I thought that I would set one of my own for this blog. What links together the representation of Downton Abbey, the RAF, and a school established over 600 years ago? And how might the Prime Minster have needed to keep an eye on the outcome?

Anyone who sat through the Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet meeting yesterday afternoon will have had no difficulty answering the question set above. But, for everyone else, I have added an explanation at the end of this piece.

Home to school transport has always proved a contentious issue in time of government spending cuts, as the rules, although seemingly simple, are often challenging to enforce fairly. Basically, the principle established many years ago is that children under eight don’t have any access to free transport if the distance to school is less than two miles unless the route is unsafe. For those between the ages of 8 and 16 the distance increases to three miles by a safe route. Changes to existing policy can have significant implications for those who live in rural counties such as Oxfordshire. Since the passing of the 1980 Education Act the issue of parental choice, and the ‘duty’ of authorities to do their best to meet parental preferences, has caused significant issues as it has made the status of ‘catchment areas’ or ‘designated schools’ much less rigid in meaning. Additionally, local authorities are still charged to do nothing that is ‘prejudicial to the efficient use of resources’.

After the county elections this May, Oxfordshire County Council embarked on a consultation to change their present travel arrangements. The consequence of that process came to a head at the cabinet meeting yesterday where the decision was taken to start the whole process again in the autumn after the level of opposition from schools, parents, and the community proved overwhelming. The actual reason given was that the DfE, who had placed new ‘guidance’ on their web site in March – and thus triggered the local review and consultation, had announced a –U- turn and dumped the March guidance and returned to the status quo ante by restoring the 2007 guidance. Interestingly, nobody challenged whether the 2007 guidance affected the consultation in any way, but I suspect that there was great relief among the ruling Conservative and Independent Alliance Group or CIA that currently governs Oxfordshire.

Much of the challenge to the consultation is centred on a small number of schools, many within the Prime Minister’s own constituency, where one secondary school was in favour and another against the changes. There are certainly anomalies that have grown up over the years across the county, and it will be interesting to see whether the new consultation goes back to first principles or tries to bury the problem.

Looming in the background is the issue of how the County deals with free schools, academies, studio schools and UTCs. I am reminded that the 2007 Guidance said:

The Secretary of State expects that local authorities may wish to exercise this discretionary power to ensure that pupils whose parents had expressed a preference for a vocational education at a 14-19 vocational academy were not denied the opportunity to do so by the lack of, or the cost of transport arrangements to such a school. Local authorities should use this power to facilitate attendance at a vocational academy where the school’s catchment area included all, or part of the local authority’s area. Where such pupils were from low income backgrounds, then such arrangements should be free of charge.

This part of the guidance has implications for the cost of transport to the new UTC in Didcot and the Studio School in Banbury, and may cause other schools to ponder whether it might affect their post 14 numbers if free transport was offered.

Perhaps, with the raising of the statutory learning age to 18, it is time for central government to review the whole set of principles behind home to school transport in an age of parental and even student choice. What worked in the uncomplicated state school system of the Nineteenth Century may not be appropriate for the Twenty First. Perhaps, travelling costs could be free for all, as in London, or be added to tax credits of Child Benefit? There is certainly, time for a wider debate than just what happens in Oxfordshire.

The answer to the question set above. Bampton features as the village in the TV series Downton Abbey. Many families from the RAF at Brize Norton send their children to secondary school in either Carterton or Burford. The secondary school in Burford traces its history back many centuries. All these towns are in the Prime minister’s Witney constituency. And the school bus from Bampton effectively goes past Carterton Secondary School on its way to Burford School. The former is an 11-16 school; the latter an 11-18 school. One or other might be affected depending on whether Oxfordshire changes the rules or not.

Quality comes at a price

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Teach First have recently filed their accounts with the Charity Commission for the year ended 31st August 2012. Anyone interested can read them at http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends94/0001098294_AC_20120831_E_C.pdf

There is no doubt a lot to be said for the school-based approach to converting graduates into teachers for two years in the hope that some will remain in the profession. 89% of those who started the programme in 2010 completed their two years in teaching. Curiously, although 80% became ambassadors for the programme after two years, the review accompanying the accounts seemingly doesn’t say how many remained in teaching for a third year. As numbers on the programme grow that performance indicator assumes more importance because if it is below the figure for other types of teacher preparation programme, such as School Direct or the higher education routes, it will be a hidden cost because it will require extra numbers to be trained as teachers. Of course, if it is lower than wastage through other routes Teach First can claim to be more cost effective.

Located in an expensive part of London, even though it is now a national programme, the accounts reveal a cost base that many teacher trainers can only view with awe. The average salary with on-costs for the 216 employees in 2011-12 was £48,000, with the Chief Executive earning a salary similar to one of the best paid secondary heads in a London Academy. Although the trustees weren’t paid, one did claim the equivalent of £400 per week in travel, subsistence and office costs for the second year in a row. That’s over £40,000 across the two years. No doubt their experience is unique and cannot be replicated for less.

Still you would have thought a programme that has trainees placed in schools wouldn’t need to spend much money on rent for offices. Teach First appears to have spent around £750 per trainee on premises costs and rent, although since they also run other programmes it might be better to halve that figure to £375 per trainee. Similarly, the £1,450 staff costs might be better reduced to £700 to allow for the other programmes. Whether it is possible to reduce the £4,600,000 spent on graduate recruitment by spreading it across other programmes may be more of a moot point. Using the 7,000 applications received in 2012 that works out at around £650 per applicant. If you just look at how much it cost per successfully recruited participant the figure is nearer £4,500. This is the equivalent of the DfE spending £46 million on recruitment for School Direct or universities more than £80 million on attracting students to PGCE programmes. It would be nice to see these figures benchmarked both against other graduate recruitment programmes and against the less well-funded teacher preparation programmes. In their 2008 accounts the Charity spend £1.1 million to recruit 373 new trainees, so there doesn’t yet seem to be any economies of scale in the recruitment process. Undoubtedly the assessment centre process used by Teach First is expensive, but I well remember being told it couldn’t be afforded for trainee head teachers, so should it be part of selecting new teachers?

The next few years may be testing times for the Teacher First programme as it has to compete with both a recovery in the wider graduate recruitment market and the growing School Direct programme that seemingly offers many of the same benefits to would-be career teachers without the need to work in a challenging school. Hopefully, they those managing the programme will be able to rise to the task without having to spend even more money to achieve their goals.