Best wishes to DfE Vacancy site

Posted on December 23, 2022 by John Howson

It is time to wish the DfE Vacancy site all the best for the festive season. The DfE vacancy site is a good place to look for non-teaching posts: TeachVac doesn’t cover these vacancies at present, but is seeking to do so during 2023 using new investment funding. As of this morning, 37% of the vacancies on the DfE site were for non-teaching appointment, and a small percentage of the teaching posts were actually ‘job opportunities’ rather than stated jobs.

One non-teaching post that caught our eye, and illustrates the challenges such a site faces was posted by a selective school, although it could have been posted by any school.

Job details Chef de Partie Tournant

Job role

Learning support, cover supervisor or tutor

Working pattern

Part-time – 30 hours per week, Mon-Fri, 8.30am-2.30pm, term time only (38 weeks). Some flexibility will sometimes be needed to alter hours for occasional school events.

Contract type

Permanent

Full-time equivalent salary

FTE £20623, with the opportunity to rise to £21879 depending on performance

Actual salary

£14266 (rising to £15135)

What skills and experience we’re looking for

We have an exciting opportunity to join our in-house kitchen team. You will be using your skills to prepare and serve food throughout the school day, so that we offer students a varied, wholesome and tempting balance of foods. This role makes a vital contribution to nurturing students’ life-long interest and independence in making healthy eating choices. We are looking for an individual who can bring good humour, strong communication skills, flexibility, and attention to detail to the kitchen.

The salary works out at £12.51 per working hour, and unlike most in the catering trade there presumably will be no opportunities for tips on top. With the present recruitment challenges in the hospitality area, good luck to the school that is also seeking housekeeping staff.

Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that the limitation of the DfE site means that the job role appears under Learning support, cover supervisor or tutor – none of these classifications really fit the job description.

How does the 1,488 teaching vacancies on the DfE site compare with TeachVac today? The TeachVac counter is currently showing 3,834 teaching jobs, so more than double the DfE’s total. To be fair to the DfE they don’t include vacancies for teachers in private schools, and they may have different cut off dates for the length of time a vacancy is listed.

However, if you were a teacher job hunting which of the two free sites would you choose to register with? If you know which school you want to work in, and that school uses the DfE site, you can choose either site. However, if you have any degree of uncertainty, TeachVac has provided more opportunities.

Schools should note that in 2023 their jobs will only be matched if they register with TeachVac and pay an annual fee of £500 maximum for secondary schools, and £75 for primary schools, payable for new registrations from February 2023. Vacancies at other schools will continue to be logged, but not matched with candidates.

The staff at TeachVac, http://www.teachvac.co.uk where I remain as Chair, wish all readers the best for the festive season and we look forward to 2023; may it be a better year than the one just ending.

Stick a thumb up in the air?

Posted on December 22, 2022 by John Howson

In a recent post I discussed the extension of QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) by the DfE to teachers from more countries. Of course, academies don’t need to employ people with QTS as ‘teachers’. However, most choose to do so as it can reassure parents and colleagues that those responsibly for teaching and learning and pastoral activities have undertaken approved training.

This week the DfE has published a short paper discussing how many additional teachers might be added to the stock with QTS each financial year as a result of the extension of eligibility for QTS to teachers from more countries. Forecasts of overseas trained teachers awarded qualified teacher status (QTS) – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

There is no established methodology for identifying how many additional teachers might by awarded QTS under the new scheme. The DfE provide three projections: high; central and low for a financial year. These projections are calculated by taking the most recent published data of QTS awards from currently eligible countries, and estimating the number that would be awarded from newly eligible countries. As the DfE does not hold data on the potential demand for QTS from newly eligible countries, DfE officials have derived the estimate using the relative split between ITT trainees that come from eligible and ineligible countries.

According to the DfE paper, in 2018-19, out of 28,949 total postgraduate trainees there were 1,496 final-year trainees taking ITT in England from countries that are currently eligible to apply for QTS through the TRA, and 550 from countries that are ineligible.

This means that for every one ITT trainee from a currently ineligible country, there were approximately 2.7 trainees from eligible countries. The central estimate of these projections is calculated by dividing the current baseline of Teacher Regulation Agency QTS awards by this ratio. Given the 1,684 awarded QTS in 2021-22, the additional number of QTS awards from previously ineligible countries is 619.

The DfE note in the paper that as a result of the uncertainty involved in these projections, these projections also include a high and low estimate. To calculate these different estimates, the eligible to ineligible ratio has been adjusted by increasing or decreasing the ratio by 50%.

For the low estimate, the ratio has been increased by 50%, to approximately 4.1 trainees from eligible countries to every 1 trainee from currently ineligible countries. At this value, 413 additional awards are projected.

For the high estimate, the ratio has been decreased by 50%, to approximately 1.4. At this value, 1,238 additional awards are projected.

At any estimate, these teachers would be a welcome addition to the supply of teachers in England, but there is neither a split between primary and secondary sectors nor any indication of the possible subject mix of such new teachers in the discussion about the potential new teachers. I assume that the Home Office will control the granting of visas in such a manner as to not allow more teachers in subjects where there is already sufficient supply.

However, there may well be teachers eligible for settled status due to familial ties that could result in an influx of new QTS teachers wanting to work in the primary sector in parts of the country where there are no current teacher shortages. However, these teachers will help improve the balance of teachers with QTS from different backgrounds, and that is to be welcomed. The fact that the DfE is prepared to extend the QTS scheme to more countries reveals the current state of play in the labour market for teachers in England at the start of recruitment for September 2023.

Making money from Education

Posted on December 21, 2022 by John Howson

At this time of year, the DfE publishes data about the success of the education sector in generating income from exports. The income can be as a result of students from overseas – traditionally excluding EU students – coming to study in schools; colleges; universities or language schools. Set alongside that is the physical export of goods and services to customers in the education sector overseas. The latest data release covers 2020 and must, therefore, be considered an abnormal year because for much of that year the covid pandemic severely affected opportunities for income generation. UK revenue from education related exports and TNE activity 2020 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The recorded income for education exports in 2020 was some £25.6 billion pounds; up from £25.4 billion in 2019. To put those figures in some form of context, it was estimated that the Track and trace system for tracking covid possibly cost the government and taxpayers more than £30 billion over two years according to many reports on the web.

Higher education was the largest earners, responsible for £19.5 billion of export revenue. In comparison, Further Education, which consists of non-EU students only, accounted for £0.2 billion. The flow of overseas students into the further education sector these days probably doesn’t even warrant being called a trickle.

The income generated from Education Products and Services and Trans National Export activity was broadly similar, at around £2.1 billion and £2.3 billion worth of revenue generated, respectively. English Language Training and Independent Schools generated £0.5 billionand £1.0 billion, respectively. While the contribution from language training has been either static or declining in recent years, down from £2.23 billion in 2010 at current prices, income across the private school sector dipped from it record level of £1.05 billion in 2019, to £1.01 billion in 2020, presumably because of covid affecting the number of new registrations. On the other hand, TNE activity continued to increase, from £2.19 billion in 2019 to £2.28 billion in 2020.

Over the period between 2010 to 2020, the share of Higher Education to the total revenue from UK education related exports and TNE activity has increased by 16.3 percentage points from 60.0%to76.3%.

UK TNE activity increased by 2.2 percentage points over the same period from 6.7% to 8.9%. The share of English Language Training (ELT) and Further Education (non-EU students only) have both fallen by 12.2 and 5.2 percentage points, respectively: the ELT share dropping from 14.0% to 1.8% and the Further Education share dropping from 5.8% to 0.6%.

In 2020, international (EU and non-EU) Higher Education students at UK universities generated an estimated £18.0 billion in exports through living expenditure and tuition fees (£15.9 billion in 2019), which accounts for around 70.2% of the total value of education exports and TNE activity (62.6% in 2019). Overseas students are now clearly a vital part of the income stream for UK higher education institutions and have helped to cross-subsidise home students where fee levels have not kept pace with increases in costs.

The remaining £1.5 billion of exports revenue generated from Higher Education is made of research contracts and other exports income.

With the development of national programmes, such as the new Oak Academy, there must be scope to increase ethe income from experts within the education sector. Should overseas students decide to seek university places in other English-speaking countries and avoid UK universities, this might be of great concern to that sector and its funding.

Why TeachVac is important

Posted on December 20, 2022 by John Howson

Earlier this month I posted about the ITT Census of trainees published by the DfE. I noted in one post that it was necessary to remove from the ITT census those trainees not likely to be looking for a teaching post because they are already in a school on salaried schemes.

From the reduced total also needs to be removed a percentage for in-course wastage and a desire by some teachers to work outside of the state school system in either private schools or Sixth Form/further education colleges.

What is left is the free pool that might look for a teaching post anywhere.

Subject	Open Market
Mathematics	1,467
Physical Education	1,295
English	1,214
History	950
Chemistry	644
Modern Languages	600
Geography	523
Biology	495
Art & Design	440
Other	387
Design & Technology	372
Physics	366
Computing	304
Drama	304
Religious Education	249
Music	228
Business Studies	164
Classics	52
Total secondary	10,054

From the list it seems clear that there are unlikely to be enough new entrants to satisfy the demand for teachers by schools in 2023 unless there is a substantial pay rise for teachers or other demands upon funding dampen demand below the level seen in 2022. To some extent demand will be affected by the actions of teachers already in the workforce. Early retirement, plus income from tutoring and some ‘supply’ teacher work might look attractive to some teachers in the latter stages of their career and with enough pension rights to feel confident about leaving full time teaching.

At TeachVac www.teachvac. We help match teachers to vacancies that meet their needs. Price at just £500 per year for secondary schools and just £75 for primary schools TeachVac has made 2 million matches in 2022 from over 100,000 vacancies listed and our pool of teacher sis growing rapidly at the present time as teachers start to think about where and what they want to teach in September.

Schools signing up to TeachVac now, won’t be invoiced until February and thus need not pay until early March. By then, they may well have already received more than 500 matches that covers the annual fee making all further matches effectively cost free.

Widening QTS but not to all

Posted on December 15, 2022 by John Howson

My attention has been drawn to this excellent BBC article about the extension of QTS to qualified teachers from a wider range of countries. UK Teachers QTS programme: United Kingdom teaching opportunity for Nigeria, Ghana and odas – Wetin to know – BBC News Pidgin

The article is in Pidgin, but easily readable by anyone that uses English as their everyday language. Michael Gove, when Secretary of State extended the right to QT from teachers qualified in certain counties including, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the USA. EU and EEA teachers had right of access under the free movement of labour rules while the UK was part of the EU.

Now countries such as

South Africa,

Ghana,

Zimbabwe,

Nigeria,

Ukraine,

Singapore,

Jamaica, India, and

Hong Kong

Will be afforded similar rights to apply for recognition as Qualified Teachers, if qualified and with a minimum period of experience. Routes to qualified teacher status (QTS) for teachers and those with teaching experience outside the UK – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The extension of the list raises interesting questions. The first is whether the Home Office, keen to reduce inward migration will offer visas to teachers from these countries before any arrival. No doubt teachers from Ukraine and Hong Kong, here as refugees will find the process of gaining employment rights easier than teaches from soe other countries on the list?

There is also the issue of whether taking qualified, and potentially experienced teachers, from other countries might affect teacher supply in those countries, especially if they too are facing teacher shortages either generally or in specific areas of the curriculum.

I also wonder why some other countries are not included on the list. There don’t seem to be any Caribbean States listed despite the high training standards for teachers that some such countries enjoy. Neither is the Indian Sub-continent and its various countries included.

It will be interesting to see how much difference widening the net will make to the 2023 labour market for teachers. As noted in the previous post, training to be a teacher in England seems like an attractive proposition for more applicants designated as from ‘rest of the word’ than in the past. Maybe teaching in England, despite the high cost of living as salary and working conditions teachers and not to mention the weather will see a boost in interest from nationals of the newly recognised countries for QTS; especially where they already have relatives living in England.

First look at 2023 ITT applications

Posted on December 14, 2022 by John Howson

How content should the government be about the first release of data showing applications for graduate teacher training courses starting in autumn 2023? Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2023 to 2024 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK (apply-for-teacher-training.service.gov.uk) On the face of it, there must be gratification that mostly the numbers are going in the right direction, especially after the disastrous November 2021 data.

Indeed, there are nuggets of good news buried within the tables that regular watchers will discern. The sciences are doing better than last autumn, in terms of applications, as are shortage subjects such as design and technology and business studies. However, all this are relative, and the ‘better’ isn’t on a trajectory to make much of a dent in the shortfalls recorded in the recent ITT census of current trainee numbers; commented upon in three posts on this blog.

Overall, candidate numbers at the November count, are up from 8,831 in November 2021, to 9,557 this year. But, in the vital London and Home Counties regions of the East of England and the South East, candidate numbers are down slightly. This will be set of data to watch. Perhaps, more interesting is the contribution from candidates apply and classified as ‘Rest of the world’. Here candidate numbers are up from 589 to 1,209: more than double last November’s number.

The increase in candidate numbers is stronger among the older age groups and weakest among those of age 23; the only grouping to record a decline from last year’s number for November. As young graduates are the backbone of new entrants, the age profile of candidates will need watching carefully and, if necessary, the marketing mix adjusting to encourage more new graduates from the London area to consider teaching as a career.

Interestingly, applications from men to train as a teacher increased faster than those from women when compared with November 2021 data. Largely gone are the days of providers receiving a wall of applications for primary courses as soon as the recruitment cycle opens. Happy those still favoured with being able to make all their offers for these courses before the festive season and winter break.

Higher educations institutions seem to have borne the brunt of increase in applications. Perhaps affected by the increase in applications for those labelled as ‘Rest of the world’ candidates? Changes in applications for the other routes are too small to make any judgement, but will need watching carefully.

The government is unlikely to be too perturbed by the small decline in applications for primary phase courses, balanced as it is by the increase in applications for secondary courses. Offers in both mathematics and physics are at their highest November levels since recent records began to be collected for that month in the 20106/17 recruitment cycle.

One swallow does not a summer make, as the saying goes, but these numbers can allow the government to produce some positive headlines. Whether they will be justified in view of the big increase in candidates with the designation as from ‘Rest of the world’ is something that will need careful watching. However, it could have been worse; but not much.

At these levels there is a lot of work to do to make the 2024 labour market anything like a comfortable proposition. 2023 will, of course, be a real challenge for school needing to recruit teachers in many different curriculum areas.

TeachVac special offer

Posted on December 11, 2022 by John Howson

TeachVac are now offering a FREE subscription, up until February 2023, if you register a school with TeachVac now! From February, TeachVac will invoice a yearly subscription of £1 per match with a ceiling of £500 for secondary schools and £75 for primary schools.

Sign up at http://www.teachvac.co.uk

TeachVac has made 2,000,000 + MATCHES MADE in 2022

TeachVac has listed 100,000 + TEACHING JOBS in 2022

2023 vacancies will only be listed for schools signed up to TeachVac.

The average secondary school received more than 500 matches in 2022.

2023 will be another difficult year for teacher recruitment, so can you afford to miss this offer?

New NfER dashboard

Posted on December 7, 2022 by John Howson

It is always interesting when large organisations validate comments made on this blog. The new NfER dashboard of historic data about teacher shortages certainly support the view of this blog that schools with high Free School Meals percentages may have more teacher turnover in recent years. Explore by school type – NFER

Interestingly, they also support the higher teacher turnover in London, noted by this blog from time to time. This dashboard is a useful addition to the data about teacher supply, but it does fall into the category of statistical information and not up to the minute management information. TeachVac, the job board for teacher vacancies that I help found has concentrated on the position here and now and linked it to data such as the ITT census and applications for training.

In the next few weeks, I will be putting together the reports on vacancy trends during 2022 for classroom teachers and school leaders after what has been a record-breaking year for vacancies. These annual reports should be available early in January 2023.

I hope as NfER update their dashboard that they will take into account the effects of the covid pandemic on the labour market for teachers.

If I have a quibble, the recent NfER document that cited the North East as an area of teacher shortage doesn’t seem to be borne out by the maps at district level. Only a handful of North East authorities recorded over 10% turnover of secondary teachers where as most inner London authorities breached that level. That outcome is what I would have expected from the TeachVac data on vacancies.

The only authorities where primary sector turnover exceeded 10% in 2020 were in Yorkshire and the Humber region, and not in the North East. Still, perhaps the survey returns for the earlier study could not be compared with this dashboard.

The subjects with the lowest leaving rates according to the dashboard as physical education and history: no surprises there. However, among early career teachers, physics was the subject with the third lowest departure rate after those two subjects. Perhaps when numbers entering ITT are low, those that do enter are the most committed to teaching as a career?

The presence of modern languages teachers and IT teachers at the top of the table is also probably not much of a surprise given their opportunities to use their skills elsewhere.

Those interested in the topic can thank NfER for producing data that the DfE really should provide as part of open government. Hopefully, this week the DfE will provide the data about applications to ITT in November. Last year, the data appeared on the 8^th December.

More ITT census data

Posted on December 1, 2022 by John Howson

London appears to have fared better than the rest of England in terms of the percentage decline in trainee numbers. That said, there isn’t yet time to investigate any a regional breakdown by subject.

Postgraduate new entrants by region
	2021/22	2022/23	Decrease in trainee numbers	% Decline
South East	4,429	3,039	-1,390	-31%
Yorkshire and The Humber	3,224	2,368	-856	-27%
West Midlands	3,251	2,417	-834	-26%
South West	2,177	1,679	-498	-23%
East of England	2,499	1,932	-567	-23%
North East	1,178	935	-243	-21%
East Midlands	2,095	1,666	-429	-20%
North West	4,345	3,473	-872	-20%
London	6,895	5,715	-1,180	-17%
England	30,093	23,224	-6,869	-23%

Source ITT Census

Since some parts of the South East region already have limited access to trainees in some subjects, the overall decline in trainee number sin that region must be of concern.

Of more interest to schools is the likely open market numbers after removing those on the high Achievers (Teach First) programme and on apprenticeships or the salaried route where the trainees may be committed to a particular school. Assuming that 5% of the remainder don’t end up in state schools for any one of a number of reasons; this may be an underestimate in some parts of the country, the ‘free market’ pool of trainees likely to be looking for a September 2023 teaching post looks something like the following table

Subject	Open Market
Mathematics	1467
English	1214
Modern Languages	600
Biology	495
Physics	366
Chemistry	644
Physical Education	1295
Other	387
Design & Technology	372
History	950
Geography	523
Computing	304
Art & Design	440
Religious Education	249
Music	228
Drama	304
Business Studies	164
Classics	52

Source TeachVac analysis

Should this table be anywhere near correct, then there will be shortages in many subjects from quite early in 2023. As mentioned in the first of this series of posts, schools might do well to ensure that they can retain staff. Paying large sums to try to recruit teachers may just be a wate of money.

Although all ethnic groups have seen a decline in trainee numbers since 2019, the decline has been most obvious in the ‘White’ group where there are around 5,000 fewer trainees this year compared with 219/20. Most other ethnic groups have seen only a small decline in trainee numbers since 2019.

Ethnic Group	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23
Asian	2,840	3,378	2,862	2,752
Black	1,054	1,427	1,159	1,027
Mixed	856	1,060	900	820
Other	346	495	447	406
White	22,210	26,324	21,563	17,394

Source ITT Census

Part of the reason for the decline in ‘White’ trainees may be the reduction in the number of trainees needed for the primary sector where this group has dominated in certain parts of the country.

More worrying is the loss of young graduates coming into teaching. These are the potential leaders of tomorrow. Although undergraduate numbers are up; postgraduate numbers are nearly 800 below their pre-pandemic level

	Aged under 25
	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23
Postgraduate Total	14,564	17,455	15,736	12,281
Higher Education Institution	7,561	9,252	7,909	6,351
School Centred ITT	1,693	2,209	2,198	2,012
School Direct (fee-funded)	3,591	4,304	4,209	2,709
School Direct (salaried)	578	540	255	205
Postgraduate Teaching Apprenticeship	37	76	225	193
High Potential ITT	1,104	1,074	940	811
Undergraduate	4,417	5,448	5,511	5,350
Total	18,981	22,903	21,247	17,631

Source ITT Census

Higher education seems to have bene most affected by this decline in interest in teaching among new graduates and those in the early years of their careers. This year, the number of men entering teaching as graduates fell to 7,155 well below the 9,229 of 2019/20.

As I commented in the two previous posts today about the ITT census, these are challenging numbers for the government and very worrying for schools.

More on the ITT census

Posted on December 1, 2022 by John Howson

It is a fair comment to say that comparing this year’s data on trainees with last year doesn’t take into account the covid pandemic effect. Because it could well be so, I have looked back at trainee numbers reported in autumn 2019, before we had ever heard of the term covid, and compared those trainee numbers with the current ITT census

	2019/20	2022/23	22/23 compared with 19/20
Subject	Postgraduate total new entrants to ITT	Postgraduate total new entrants to ITT
Biology	1,937	664	-1273
English	2,907	1,762	-1145
Geography	1,317	656	-661
Modern Foreign Languages	1,387	726	-661
History	1,460	1,134	-326
Mathematics	2,159	1,844	-315
Religious Education	494	341	-153
Computing	472	348	-124
Physics	527	444	-83
Classics	71	58	-13
Chemistry	770	758	-12
Music	312	301	-11
Design & Technology	433	450	17
Drama	294	329	35
Business Studies	185	232	47
Art & Design	413	478	65
Physical Education	1,281	1,405	124
Other	282	426	144
STEM Subjects	5,865	4,058	-1807
EBacc Subjects	13,007	8,394	-4613
Non-EBacc Secondary Subjects	3,694	3,962	268
Primary	12,216	10,868	-1348
Secondary	16,701	12,356	-4345
Total	28,917	23,224	-5693

Source DfE ITT census

The good news is that six subjects recruited more trainees this year than in 2019/2020, providing a total of 432 additional trainees in secondary subjects to offset against the more than 4,500 fewer trainees in other key subjects. Now, some of the reductions may be due to changes in targets in popular subjects, but with over recruitment still possible it is difficult to see why providers would take that approach.

The chaos that is science recruitment continues, with biology providing nearly 1,300 fewer teachers this year. Do we need a ‘general science’ category, and for all science trainees to receive similar bursaries if that is still the favoured route to attract new teachers?

The decline in trainees in English, so that there are this year fewer trainees this year than in mathematics and more than 1,000 fewer than in 2019/20, must be of concern as must be the collapse in Modern Foreign Languages trainees, especially if we are to remain a trading nation, not only with the EU, but across the world. Whatever happened to Mr Gove’s 5,000 Mandarin teachers?

Is it good news that the decline in design and technology and business studies has stopped or should we still be worried that the decline has been arrested at such low levels?

The decline in primary trainee numbers must partly reflect the decline in the birth rate and the expected continued decline in the primary school population. Nevertheless, this sort of overall number may cause some local staffing issues for the sector unless the trainee numbers are well spread across England to meet the needs of all primary schools.

There may be a glimmer of good news in the fact that non-Ebacc subjects fared better than Ebacc subjects over the period. Might this be providing a portent of a change in the overall labour market that with the coming recession might meant that this years’ numbers really were the bottom of the cycle? The first set of applications data should provide clues for the 2024 recruitment round when the DfE issues them; hopefully next week.