Military families missing out

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Neither Oxfordshire nor Wiltshire were included in the published list of Education Investment Areas designated as part of the government’s levelling up programme. Package to transform education and opportunities for most disadvantaged – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) This may be important because these are two of the local authorities with large concentrations of military families attending schools within their areas.

The RAF will generally benefit because the whole of East Anglia and Lincolnshire are included in the list of authorities and that is where many RAF bases are located. The inclusion of Plymouth and Portsmouth will cover many naval families. However, the families of troops based on Salisbury plain at Tidworth and many other barracks in Wiltshire will still need to rely just upon the Service Children’s Premium and the Pupil Premium for extra support. The same is true for garrisons in Oxfordshire at Bicester, Abingdon and Didcot, and the RAF bases at Benson and Brize Norton.   

Troops moving from Catterick in North Yorkshire or RAF bases in Lincolnshire to Wessex will find the support for their children’s education may reduce under these plans.

Now, our armed forces may be a small part of pupil population, but they do serve to highlight the fact that there are children that don’t stay in one place for their school life. Levelling up probably needs to be more than just about geography and picking areas off a map.

A geographical strategy is anyway easier to achieve when there is a coherent basis for local government areas. Sadly, that is not the case at the present time. Cambridgeshire includes the successful parts of Cambridge, although I acknowledge that like Oxford the whole of the city is neither affluent not without need for extra funding. Was Cambridgeshire included because it is part of a combined authority with a mayor, whereas Oxfordshire is one of the few remaining two-tier local government setups, with no unitary authority.  

I wonder how Medway and parts of Cumbria feel looking at the list of Education Investment Areas? Do they feel that they have missed out?

As I wrote, in the previous post on this blog, the education measures will need to be backed up by hard cash to have any real effect. In terms of teaching staff turnover, TeachVac has provided a number of the Opportunity Areas with data about their local teacher labour markets and can do so for the new Education Investment Areas.

One thing is certain is that teaching cooking and healthy eating to secondary school pupils is going to need a rethink about staffing as within design and technology – a subject that attracts few to teaching these days – food technology is the most challenging discipline in terms of finding teachers anywhere in England.

Levelling up is as important today as ever for our schooling system. How far these moves will help is a matter for debate.

Bizarre

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The DfE’s helpful note issued ahead of tomorrow’s White Paper contains the following:

“In these new ‘Education Investment Areas’, the Department for Education will offer retention payments to help schools keep the best teachers in the highest priority subjects.”

My first reaction was a sense of ‘Deja Vue’ as this was an idea tried in the 1970s under the label of payments for teachers working in schools of exceptional difficulty. There was an initial salary uplift of £201 for all teachers and after three years of service this increased to, I think, £279.

Then I thought, what about the permission that already exists within the Pay and Conditions document for recruitment and retention payments. This permission appears in Section 27 of Part 4.

27. Recruitment and retention incentives and benefits

27.1 Subject to paragraph 27.2, the relevant body or, where it is the employer in the case of an unattached teacher, the authority, may make such payments or provide such other financial assistance, support or benefits to a teacher as it considers to be necessary as an incentive for the recruitment of new teachers and the retention in their service of existing teachers. A salary advance scheme for a rental deposit may be one of a number of tools that schools may wish to consider using to support recruitment or retention.

27.2 Where the relevant body or, where it is the employer in the case of an unattached teacher, the authority, is making one or more such payments, or providing such financial assistance, support or benefits in one or more cases, the relevant body or authority must conduct a regular formal review of all such awards. The relevant body or authority should make clear at the outset the expected duration of any such incentives and benefits, and the review date after which they may be withdrawn.

Teachers Pay and Conditions document England 2021-22

So, the powers are there. This will only mean anything if it creates a hypothecated grant to schools singled out for support. Such an action would be a move away from the idea of the National Funding Formula. Since, I expect, many of the schools are in areas where the Pupil Premium is already being paid at relatively high levels, this will be an interesting measure to examine in detail once the White Paper appears.

Will it be paid to all classroom teachers or just some subjects in secondary schools but all primary school teachers or perhaps no primary teachers at all?

Then there is the issue of how any such payments will be funded if there is no extra grant? Will schools be directed to pay the additional salary and left to sort out the budget implications? It is difficult to see how such a move helps levelling up if some other useful programme is to be cut to fund salary increases for teachers but not for other staff.

White flag or shifting the blame

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There is a saying that one should beware of unexpected guests. For reasons obvious to those that know the saying, it is clear why I prefer to compare it with the other saying of ‘not looking a gift horse in the mouth’ – should that be looking an electric car in the battery these days – but without using the actual expression. No matter, what does matter is whether or not local authorities will be able to form and run Multi Academy Trusts/Committees?

Ever since Mr Gove raced the 2010 Academies Act through parliament in the period before the summer break that year, and less than three months after the 2010 General Election, the Conservatives have wanted all schools to become academies. At that time, local authorities were beyond the pale, and a model with no local democratic involvement, similar to that of the NHS, seemed on the cards for education. Peter Downes a former Cambridgeshire Lib Dem councillor and long time secondary head led the Lib Dem charge at their 2010 September Conference, an event where delegates made their support for local democratic involvement in education very clear to Nick Clegg and David Laws.

Over the ensuing decade, most secondary schools have either opted or been forced to become an academy. All new schools are required to become an academy. However, except in a few parts of the country, academisation of the primary sector schools has been slow and patchy. Many primary schools only became academies are a visit from ofsted resulted in compulsory academisation.

The picture that has emerged around the county is of an expensive mess that could make the reputation of a Secretary of State if change is handled properly with a view to the longer-term effectiveness of the school sector.

There are now noises in the press suggesting that the next White Paper from the DfE might allow local authorities to establish and run Multi Academy Trusts or Committees or some new structure such as a Multi Academy Board might be created. Such a suggestion would effectively be a change of direction on the part of central government. Is it either a white flag or preparing the ground to shift the blame for a period of challenge that will face the primary sector where most maintained schools are still to be found?

There is a third possibility. This is that civil servants have been so impressed by how some local authorities have handled the covid crisis that they now recognise their value as part of the middle tier, especially in handling the large number of small primary schools spread across rural England. Certainly, the work by the local authority team in Oxfordshire, where I am a county councillor, has resulted in an email from a headteacher of a private school expressing thanks for the work of local authority staff. Not something you receive every day.

Allowing or even forcing local authorities to take all schools not already academies into a LAB or Local Academy Board would allow the government to tell the public that all schools were now academies. It would allow local authorities to feel that they might be back in the game of education politics and it would allow for more coherent planning for the primary sector less hampered by the legislation on closing rural schools. This may be important should the National Funding Formula create the need to rationalise the school estate.

DfE publishes data on funding for schools

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Hard on the heels of the Treasury Select Committee report, covered by this blog yesterday, the DfE has now issued its own data on funding of schools and their pupils. The data confirms the reflections of the Treasury Select Committee. School funding statistics: 2021 to 2022 financial year – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

locationtime periodPer pupil funding 2021-22 terms in £Per pupil funding cash terms in £
England2010-1163705180
England2011-1263905270
England2012-1363705360
England2013-1463505460
England2014-1563905560
England2015-1664005600
England2016-1762505590
England2017-1861405590
England2018-1961805730
England2019-2062305920
England2020-2162406280
England2021-2265106510
England2022-2367806970
State funding for schools in England

Source: DfE

To quote the DfE’s own words about Per-pupil funding between 2010-11 to 2022-23:

On a per-pupil basis the total funding to be allocated to schools for 5–16-year-olds, in cash terms, in 2022-23 is £6,970, a 35% increase compared to £5,180 allocated per pupil in 2010-11.

After adjusting for inflation, funding per pupil was broadly flat between 2010-11 and 2015-16 at just under £6,400 in 2021-22 prices.

It then fell by 4.0% over 2016-17 and 2017-18, but subsequently increased by 1.4% over 2018-19 and 2020-21. Since then, funding increased by 4.5% over the course of 2020-21 and 2021-22 and then by a further 4.2% in 2022-23, reaching £6,780 (in 2021-22 prices).

These numbers only cover the funding of 5-16-year-olds, so don’t account for the reduction in funding for sixth form pupils during the same period. Assuming that the numbers for the most recent periods were subject to inflation deflators not based upon the current high rate of inflation, then, should inflation remain at high levels, it seems likely that the real increase projected for the year 2022-23 of £410 in 2021-22 terms may turn out not to be as great an increase in real terms. Much of the increase may also be taken up in achieving the £30,000 minimum starting salary for teachers promised by the government.

Many secondary schools are enjoying economies of scale at present as their pupil numbers increase, whereas many primary schools outside areas with new housebuilding face the opposite, with diseconomies of scale, as pupil numbers fall. A class of 25 pupils needs the same teaching support as a class of 30 pupils, but will generate somewhat less than £30,000 in income for the school.   Tough times ahead for the primary sector if the government doesn’t want to support them, especially for small rural schools that many need the protection nearly two decades ago should insufficient funding lead to potential closures.

The data used by the DfE on funding covers the following grants:

Dedicated Schools Grant (excluding early years and post-16 high-needs funding);

Grants outside the DSG to the City of London, Isles of Scilly and City Technology Colleges;

Pre-16 high-needs funding in non-maintained special schools,

Special and alternative provision free schools;

Pupil premium (all pupil ages);

Schools supplementary grant (reception to year 11);

Supplementary free school meals grant;

Teachers’ pay grant (reception to year 11);

Teachers’ pension employer contribution grant (TPECG) (reception to year 11).

The DfE points out that the funding in 2022-23 is based on a combination of published funding allocations, and the budget settlement agreed at the 2021 Spending Review, and some estimates of small-grant and high needs spending.

Schools have had a tough time over recent years and many have made great strides at achieving financial stability. The risk now is of high inflation and falling rolls continuing that period of challenge into the foreseeable future.

Attendance Group must address in-year admissions issue

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I recently caught up with news about the DfE’s Attendance Group, and the Minutes of its December meeting.  Attendance Action Alliance January meeting notes: 9 December 2021 (publishing.service.gov.uk)

I am delighted to discover the high-profile nature of membership the Group and that the Secretary of State has taken an interest, as owner of the work. However, although the Group discussed the question of a register for home educated children and the concerns over those children just missing school on a regular basis, I didn’t find any emphasis on ensuring that children taken into care are offered a school palace as swiftly as possible and within set time limits. The same standards also need to be put in place for children with special needs whose parents move to a new location during the school year and need a new school placement.

Taking a new job should not be conditional on whether there is a special school place available for your child.

In a previous post on this blog, calling for a ‘Jacob’s Law’, I laid out the case for in-year admissions to academies not to be held up by such schools not wanting to admit such children. The 2016 Education White Paper: Education Excellence Everywhere recognised there was an issue with in-year admissions to academies because local authorities had no powers to over-rule the decision of a school not to admit a pupil. This was why Jacob was out of school when he died. Time for Jacob’s Law | John Howson (wordpress.com)

Sadly, nothing significant has changed since 2016. I hope that the Attendance Group will consider the issue of in-year admissions at a future meeting, and not just focus on the parents that don’t send their children to school. The system must work for the benefit of all and not just those that are easy to educate. The same is the case of children with SEND requiring in-year admission to a school.

These young people must not be ignored, and just offering tutoring is not the same as admission to a school. Home tutoring doesn’t provide the same social interaction that being in a school provides however good the ‘virtual school’ is at its job.

Of course, there are risks where the school community is hostile to incomers and many schools could well look to improve the transfer experience for in-year admissions that can be even worse than that experienced by pupils transferring at the start of the school-year.

Being taken into care as a school-age child is a traumatic experience, and we owe it to these children to make sure that their education is affected as little as possible. So, it is my hope that the Attendance Group will as a minimum endorse the 2016 White Paper suggestions and, if possible, go further and set time limits for school places to be offered to children taken into care and requiring a new school placement. For most, it wasn’t their fault that they have ended up in the care of the local authority where all the secondary schools are academies.

Academies increase cash balances

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Hard on the heels of the Treasury Select Committee’s Report, with its comments on government funding of education – see previous post on this bog – comes the 10th Annual Academy Benchmark Report from Kreston Global Kreston-Academies-Benchmark-Report-2022-Web.pdf (krestonreeves.com) This detailed report raises a set of interesting questions, and also offers pointers as to why the labour market for teachers in the secondary sector may have been so buoyant during January 2022.

The Kreston Report comments that

“Once again, we are seeing record breaking in-year surpluses for MATs, whilst secondaries are showing a small increase and Primaries have fallen to 2019 levels. But this top level statistic hides the complex mix of variables giving rise to the surpluses. This result is likely to be a by-product of Covid-19 factors rather than an intentional result. The good news is that fewer Trusts are now in a cumulative deficit position and only 19% had an in-year deficit (2020: 25%).”

And

“The size of the in-year surpluses has gone up to record levels; there are less Trusts making in-year deficits, there are less Trusts with cumulative deficits, free reserves are up, and cash balances are up.” (page 12).

The Kreston Report adds that: “From conversations we have had with our Academy clients many were budgeting for in-year deficits or to break even, and were on track for this to happen. “(page 11).

Now, does this mean that a lot of the cash for catch-up programmes is already sitting in secondary school bank accounts? Why wasn’t the saving on supply teachers and other budget heading immediately transferred into support for pupils?

To allow reserves to increase during the pandemic raises questions abut either a lack of congruence between values and budgets or a less than perfect understanding of financial affairs by school leaders? Surely, neither is the case. However, the increase in balances, even if unexpected, does raise some interesting questions about the relationship between decision-making and educational values.

Way back in the 1990s, when I first worked on Assessment Centres for would-be headteachers, this was an issue of concern. Those in education are good at talking, but do they always possess the skills to put their values into actions? What is the relationship between the values of school business managers and education leaders, especially when faced with challenges for which there is no rulebook?

One reason for high cash balances cited by Kreston in the report is my old bugbear, saving for future capital spending. The Kreston Report says this “Some MATs do have a strategy of accumulating funds within the central fund to meet the costs of future capital projects, so this could explain why there are sizeable balances carried forward in some cases.” (page 20) My view has always been that revenue spending should be for today’s pupils, not those of tomorrow, especially when the non-physical environment is so challenged as it has been during the pandemic.

The Kreston report concludes with some interesting benchmark data, but not, as far as I can see, anything on staff recruitment costs. In view of the amount schools can spend in this area, that seems like a curious admission not to extrapolate it from the measure where it is no doubt currently buried.

Taken together, both the Select Committee Report on future spending and the Kreston Report on past trends make for interesting reading for anyone concerned with the education of the nation’s young people.

Education spending: government less than generous

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The House of Commons Treasury Select Committee has today published its Report on the Autumn Budget and Spending Review 2021. Normally, this blog doesn’t read Treasury Select Committee reports, but this Report did have something to say about government spending on education.

In paragraph 48 the Committee noted the evidence it received from Dr Tetlow and in paragraph 54 it made its own comment, noting that the DfE …’ , did not receive such a generous settlement’ and that ‘School funding per head has only now returned to 2010 levels following the latest Budget.’

The two paragraphs are reproduced below.

48. While the Department for Education (DfE) will have received a real-terms increase in its budget of 2.3 per cent compared to 2009–10, Dr Tetlow told us that the DfE had not done as well in the Spending Review as the sector may have hoped for, given how it had been impacted by the loss of learning during the pandemic, and the need there would be for educational catch-up: Education was clearly one of the relative losers from the Spending Review. Certainly, the £5 billion that has gone into education isn’t large enough to meet our estimate of what might be needed to catch up on lost learning. […] Poorer skills in the cohorts going into the labour market over the next few years does run the risk of having longer-term impacts on productivity.58 […] Even though the Chancellor hailed in his speech that per pupil spending would go back to its 2010 level, it is pretty remarkable to have a decade with no real-terms growth in spending in schools. That is quite unusual and not a strong signal of prioritising improved skills in the UK.

54. While some departments which had been significantly disrupted by the pandemic, such as the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Transport, received large increases, the Department for Education, which was also affected by the pandemic, did not receive such a generous settlement. School funding per head has only now returned to 2010 levels following the latest Budget.

Budget report (parliament.uk) 27th January 2022

No doubt in their defence The Treasury would point out that more children are being educated because of the increase in the birth rate and the move to all staying in education or training until age 18 than in 2010. They might also point out there are more students in higher education, but most of their costs are probably being taken on the student loan account.

Without a more generous settlement over the next few years, spending per pupil on education is once again going to be tight, and probably will fall in real terms. The DfE needs to look at the costs of running a mixed system of academies and maintained schools. Why are there several hundred Chief Executives of Academy Trusts when previously there were only around 150 Chief Education Officers in local authorities. What is the extra salary bill costing and how many more civil servants are needed to manage the Department to School budget process compared with discussing with just a limited number of local authorities? It really is time to sort out the middle tier of schooling and the extent to which there should be democratic accountability.

Finally, if I can suggest a simple cost saving measure to the DfE. Compare the cost and effectiveness of your job board for teacher vacancies with other products offering similar services and check that you are now spending more than necessary on this service.

Happy Birthday

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Today is the ninth birthday of this blog! A birthday is a good time to look back at what was written in the past on the blog. One of the interesting posts came early in the life of the blog, in July 2013, when I called for action by the government and suggested that “ministers must take urgent action if we are not to see a re-run of the crisis in teacher recruitment that occurred in the early days of the Blair government.” The full quote is reproduced below and can be seen on the blog by searching the July 2013 posts.

“Coming, as this outcome does, after several years when recruitment to teacher training has largely not been an issue, the present situation is a wake-up call for all concerned, and ministers must take urgent action if we are not to see a re-run of the crisis in teacher recruitment that occurred in the early days of the Blair government.  There are two months left before the training courses start, so all is not yet lost. However, if my predictions prove accurate, some schools are going to struggle to recruit teachers next summer: good news for recruitment agencies, but probably not for some pupils. And, as I have said before, this is no way to create a world-class education system.”

Extract from

Has Michael Gove failed to learn the lessons of history?

Posted on July 2, 2013

There was a fairly swift response from Sanctuary Buildings that sparked something of a spat and the first Statistical Bulletin on the Teacher Supply Model for a while. Regular readers can make their own minds up about the extent to which I was “scaremongering” or a prophet ‘crying in the wilderness’. I wrote in August 2013 the following:

“So now I know I am officially a scaremonger. A DfE spokesperson, helpfully anonymous, is quoted by the Daily Mail today as saying of my delving into the current teacher training position that there was no teacher shortage, adding: ‘This is scaremongering and based on incomplete evidence.’

Well, the first thing to note is that I haven’t said that there is a teacher shortage, just that training places are not being filled: not the same thing. Indeed, I have said a teacher shortage is less likely than in the past in the near future because Mr Gove has mandated that qualified teachers from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the whole of the USA can teach here as qualified teachers with no need to retrain. With an oversupply of teachers in parts of both Canada and Australia that should prevent any short-term problem developing even though another part of the government isn’t very keen on importing workers from abroad, presumably including from within the Commonwealth and a onetime colony.”

Extract from

Scaremongering!

Posted on August 14, 2013

I suspect anyone interested in the supply of teachers of physics, design and technology and business studies may have a different view about these quotes from those interested in the supply of PE and history teachers.

The DfE now controls the whole teacher supply pipeline from applications to train as a teacher to offering a job board as somewhere for schools in the state sector to place vacancies. To talk or write of a local education service these days would be as much of a misnomer as the write of a local health service rather than of the NHS.

Understanding and controlling teacher supply is important in the national interest and it is worth speculating what the landscape of teacher supply might look like in another nine years if the DfE became seriously involved in the ‘levelling up’ agenda?

Directing new teachers where to work and directing the management of promotions by specifying how MATs ought to deploy their staff might just be two of the ‘innovations’ to look forward to in the next decade if market forces are abandoned in favour of a more interventionist approach.

I am not sure that this blog will be there to chronicle those changes, but I hope to make it to its tenth birthday next year, if that isn’t tempting fate too much.

Teacher Supply – long term strategy needed

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Here is a short piece commissioned by the ‘foundation for education development’ that first appeared on their website as a think piece .

The long-term planning of teacher supply in England is once again in a ‘bit of a mess’. After renewed interest by graduates in teaching as a career at the start of the pandemic, there is now little chance that the government will hit its 2022 target for the number of secondary trainees required to meet the demand from schools in 2023 as modelled by DfE statisticians.

2022 marks nearly a decade of missed training targets in subjects such as physics, business studies and design and technology across the country as a whole and for a wider range of subjects in much of southern England where the state sector is competing in the labour market with private schools and tutorial colleges for the services of teachers. In recent years, the new factor of a growing global market for teachers, fuelled to some extent by schools founded in England opening campuses overseas, has created new competition for the scarce resource that is secondary school teachers in some subjects.

Any shortage of teachers affects the campaign to level up outcomes. Ever since I joined the teaching profession over 50 years ago, schools in challenging circumstances and serving communities with high levels of deprivation have usually suffered the effects of teacher shortages more than schools where teaching is a delight and ofsted awards good grades.

So, if the problem isn’t new, and is well known, what are the solutions? Making teaching an attractive career starts with three basic requirements. These are pay; conditions and reputation. The last is the easiest to deal with: Ministers need to talk up teaching and recognise the work of classroom teachers and not just school leaders. A great deal of work was undertaken on conditions of service in the first decade of this century: now is the time to revisit and review that work. Finally, if new lawyers in London are starting with top firms at £150,000 a year, £35,000 or so to start in a challenging school in London may not look attractive to many graduates in key subjects: pay matters.

The pandemic has also shown the value of technology and the balance between teachers and learning technology needs to be addressed. This may be the simplest way to pay teachers more. Finally, good employers recognise the need for professional development. The government now needs to fund programmes that keep teachers in the profession and nurture them during career breaks. Is it time for a Teaching Czar?

Start Recruiting now

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This is the stark warning to schools across much of Southern England that may need staff this September and especially to secondary schools. TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk data has shown that the first three weeks of January have witnessed a continuation of the trend at the end of 2021 with a considerable increase in vacancies recorded.

TeachVac hasn’t changed its vacancy collection methods since 2020 but it has seen vacancies listed in the first 19 days of the month in 2022 increase by 14% over the recorded numbers recorded in early January 2020 pre-pandemic, and by a whopping 135% over the depressed level of last January.

As reported in a previous post, design and technology staff will be especially hard to recruit in 2022. Already in 2022, vacancies recorded are 48% up on the same period in 2020. Vacancies for teachers of music are up by an eyewatering 73% on 2020 vacancies in early January.

All these vacancies mean that the pool of new entrants will be reducing at a faster rate than in previous years. High quality trainees will be offered vacancies by schools that understand these trends and are aware of the state of the pool of trainees, either because they run school-based programmes or because their mentors have told them what higher education providers are saying.

TeachVac’s low-cost service can keep school up to date with trends for as little as £100 and a maximum of £1,000 per year that includes listing and matching all the school’s teaching vacancies with TeachVac’s growing pool of register users.

Registration also provides access to far better data than on the DfE site and also intelligence on the state of the recruitment round for trainees for September 2022 and hence the labour market in 2023.

Signing up today at www.teachvac.co.uk and the tab matching service will also bring a free copy of TeachVac report.  Message me if you want more information or use the comment box.