Tag Archives: books

Paying for a free press

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This is the latest of my August holiday posts. Somehow, even on holiday on the other side of the world, education stories worth commenting upon still appear. Last Monday (17TH August), The Sydney Morning Herald carried an opinion piece headed, ’Good education ideas need the right execution’.

Interestingly, the story was about the success of the Multi Academy Programme in raising education standards in England. The author of the piece stated that ‘A key enabler of England’s progress has been the Multi-Academy Trust (MAT). He added that  ‘Rather than every school running its own back office, finance, HR and administration those functions are shared across the group’.

The author concluded that the creation of MATs allows teachers to spend more time on teaching and learning, and, hence on raising standards. In essence, this is a critique of the Thatcher government’s 1987 education reforms that took responsibility for schools away from democratically accountable local councils and, by devolving budgets to individual schools, made each school a small business in its own right.

I don’t disagree with Gant Rule’s basic thesis in his Sydney Morning Telegraph opinion piece that schools are better run as part of a larger organisation than as a small business. Where we part company is over the matter of local democratic oversight of schools.

Interestingly, opposite Mr Rules opinion piece in the newspaper is a full page advert placed by The McKinnon organisation that aims to ‘to strengthen the standard of political leadership and improve how our country is governed’.

It seems odd to me that an organisation championing such views about governance should sanction an opinion piece that seems to be in direct opposition to its stated values. This is because in England, MATs are subject to no local political control.

Additionally, a MAT might well have schools spread across the country and thus be in competition with other MATs for pupils and staff with no local accountability for any of its schools.

Indeed, regular readers of my blog will know of the campaign I supported to bring in-year admissions back into a single system rather than allowing MATs to drive a coach and horses through any sensible local planning. That privilege was certainly not in the spirit of improving how England’s education system was governed and was especially harmful for children taken into care and forced to change school mid-year (search for Jacob’s Law om johnohowson.wordpress for more details). The 2026 Education Act in England has returned all in-year admissions to the oversight of local authorities, a bonus for local democracy.

As a former county councillor, and cabinet member for Children’s Services, I am not unbiased in the discussions about who should run schools in England.

However, I find it interesting that a newspaper can publish an. opinion piece by Mr Rule opposite a full-page advertisement from the organisation Mr Rule co-founded. Perhaps the declaration that the piece is part of a partnership between the Herald newspaper and McKinnon makes it alright.  

Unlike Mr Rule, I believe that schools should serve their local communities, and that MATs rarely recognise that fact. Councillors can be voted out of office: CEOs of MATs are safe from local scrutiny. There must be some discussion about how democratic the MAT model of school governance is and how it fits into the McKinnon’s vision for the health of any democracy, either in England or Australia?

Three cheers for books

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Book fairs are fun. Today, was the Wolvercote Book Fair in north Oxford. A small local event, but I sold enough of my book to cover costs and have some enjoyable chats with other publishers, authors and booksellers. See does your library | Search Results | John Howson for details of my book of posts from this bog, available either from Amazon or direct from me by ordering through the comments section.

What struck me today, for the first time, while talking to authors, is that the current drop in the birth rate is going to make life harder for the book trade, and especially those selling into the markets for pre-readers and early readers. I guess that the big publishers will manage, but smaller publishers, and the growing market of self-publishers might notice fewer customers for their writing. However, I suspect that many authors in this market aren’t publishing to earn a living, but either as a side line or even, just because one can these days.

Between 2025 and 2030, the nursery and primary school population in England is expected to shrink by around 300,000, from 4.5 million to 4.3 million. When the latest estimates appear next month, this number may have grown even larger. Release home – National pupil projections – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

Eventually, this downturn in pupil numbers will affect textbook sales and purchases by secondary school libraries, as the secondary school sector is also affected by falling student numbers. If, at the same time, school budgets come under pressure, and in order to support staffing costs, then anything related to pupil numbers, such as books and other resources, may well be high on the agenda for cuts in spending.

I wonder whether there is now a space for competition to Amazon as a publisher for the self-publishing market that is both easy to use and cost effective. Any scheme would need to cover both ebooks and physical books, and to allow for the downloading a copy at home by purchasers. This latter opportunity offsetting the postage and packing costs of a physical copy of a book with the cost of the paper and ink. Would it work, even if it is on paper and doesn’t look like a traditional book. Afterall, articles have been available on-line for years.

I have often wondered why schools, and especially MATs and local authorities, don’t do more to sell resources to each other. I know that some schools and colleges do so, but I wonder whether there is scope for more initiatives of this kind now that publishing is so easy. How about a publisher in residence, to sit alongside the artist and musicians in residence to encourage teachers and pupils to generate material for publication and use by others.

Finally, I was asked if I would produce a 100 best posts from the 13 years of the blog. Now there’s a though. No 1 most read post is the one about how much holiday do teachers really have? This was first published on May 30th 2002, and is still available to read.

David Attenborough at 100

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This week the BBC has being paying tribute to Sir David Attenborough, ahead of his 100th birthday later this month. There is no doubting that Sir David has had a great deal of influence on many people through his television documentaries, at first in shades of grey, and then in colours that have improved as television screens have become ever more sophisticated in replicating the colours of the real world.

But who influenced Sir David Attenborough in his choice of career? Way back in 1997, the then Teacher Training Agency decided to commission two cinema advertisements. One, that received all the attention was called ‘talking heads’, and featured head and shoulder shots of a range of celebrities just saying a name to the camera. The trap line at the end was ‘no one forgets a good teacher’.

The other, far less well-known advertisement commissioned by the Teacher Training Agency in 1997 featured a teacher called Horace Lacey and a pupil called David Attenborough. You can see it here. Teacher Training Commercial: Horace Lacey | Catalogue | History of Advertising Trust My thanks to the History of Advertising Trust.

Both adverts were placed in cinemas, and because it was before the general use of websites and urls, postcards were placed in cinema foyers to provide the contact details for anyone interested in teaching. After all, it was impossible to write down a phone number in the dark of a cinema at the time when the advert was actually being played.

At the same time, the agency produced a famous poster with the stap line ‘the dog ate my homework.’ a phrase that passed into common parlance for a period of time.

After a few years, advertisements for teaching as a career started to reappear on TV screens, albeit at the wrong time of year to make any significant short-term difference to recruitment. I made an oblique comment about the effects of TV advertising in this post Do TV adverts work? | John Howson However, I am afraid the title is a bit of a misnomer.

So, my very best wishes to Sir David Attenborough. I hope that all the publicity surrounding his 100th birthday will help inspire the next generation of young people, and the present generation of undergraduates, to take up teaching as a career.  I also hope that the attention to Sir David’s birthday also encourages us to honour the memory of Horace Lacy, and countless hundreds of thousands of other teachers like him that have inspired their pupils down the generations.

Thank a teacher, it is an inspiring job that is like no other. And, although I may not have inspired many of my pupils, I did recognise those around me, both in school and higher education that changed lives and careers. My personal thanks to them.

Celebrating 100,000 Blog Visitors: A Thank You to Readers

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Yesterday evening this blog received its 100,000 visitor, according to WordPress statistics. I would like to say a very big thank you to everyone that has read a post on this blog since I started it, way back in early 2013. According to Chat GPT, only 5% of blogs started in that year still survive. This blog not only survives, but is also thriving.

From time to time, WordPress suggest I make a charge to visitors to read previous posts. I have steadfastly ignored those blandishments in favour of open access for all. I am sure that policy has helped gain me extra visitors.

However, writing a blog does take time and effort, and if you know a library that might like to book of the 2013 posts, some of which WordPress no longer allows access to, please suggest they buy the book either as a e-book from Amazon or as a paperback from myself through the email at: dataforeducation@gmail.com

Once this book has covered its costs, I will publish another on the 100 most read posts – with a bit of commentary as to why they might have received so much attention. To date, posts about teachers’ holiday entitlements lead by a long way. It seems like the myth of long holidays is deeply engrained in the public’s psyche.

As someone that failed their English Language examination at age 16, I never thought that I would write a column for the TES between 1997 and 2010, and this blog since 2013. Sub-editors taught me a lot, and on-line software has helped. Interestingly, I have experimented recently with turning the text of a blog post into a webinar conversation. If you ae interested, I will leave you to search the 2026 posts for an example.   

In the past, comments were more frequent that they are these days, although ‘likes’ still seem to crop up from time to time. My thanks to those that ‘like’ every post I write. I am not used to having such a fan base.

My especially thanks to, Janet D, Frank S and Sue B for their many comments. Along with teachingbattleground, they make up the most frequent commentators over the years on my posts. Frank was at school with me, and I still remember his part in TCS plays.

Where now for the blog? Well, I hope to keep it going for some time yet, as there is certainly plenty of material to write about. My special field is the labour market for teachers and, especially, headteachers, where I have more than 40 years of data from my research. Later today, I will post, as my next blog post, about how my findings compare with a report that was published yesterday. AI can do some things, but it still has much to be taught to make it even more useful as a research tool.

So, once again, thank you to my audience, whether you have just read one post, have delved into the archive as part of research for a project, or are one of the small number of regular readers.  

30th April update

A, my thanks to you, the readers for the best April ever for the blog. 2,000 readers over the courses of the month!

Thank you.

DfE Vacancy site – some thoughts

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A great deal of research can be boring to do. That’s certainly true of my research into the labour market for teachers that I first started way back in the early1980s. Currently, I am tracking advertisements for headteacher vacancies in England.

The DfE is running a series of adverts on platforms such as LinkedIn extolling the virtue of advertising on their free vacancy site and claiming almost complete coverage of vacancies.

It is certainly true that the DfE site contains the majority of the headteacher vacancies in state schools in England, but I am not sure whether it has as complete a coverage as it maintains. One wonders what the Advertising Regulatory Body would make of such an unsubstantiated claim? It certainly would not be allowed for beauty products.

The DfE site also has a number of idiosyncrasies. For headteacher vacancies, the most significant is the repetition of certain vacancies, a factor that inflates the total number of vacancies.  For instance, today, the DfE site suggests that there are 185 vacancies listed (1130 on 22.3.26). In reality there are only 160 schools advertising for a headteachers on the site. The other listings are repeats, or in one case a double repeat, with the vacancy appearing three times in all.

Does this repetition matter? It does if anyone is just counting the total of vacancies listed, as that would inflate the turnover of headteachers. Such simple counting would also need to also take into account the length of times each vacancy is listed. This can range from four weeks to a couple of days. Why some vacancies only appear for a short length of time is an interesting question. Do these schools have a candidate in mind, and hence don’t want other applicants?

Then there is the issue of genuine re-advertisements, where a school advertised, but failed to make an appointment. If counting the number of schools seeking a headteacher, then these re-advertisements need to be discarded.  To do so, needs a regular analysis of the whole list of vacancies, as there is no easier way to identify such schools. There is also an irritating practice from some MATs of not identifying the school where the vacancy has occurred. Some MATs also avoid information about the starting salary: I think that this is a mistake, since their idea of generous, may not be the same to MATs as to candidates, and it is embarrassing to find this out at interview stage.  

What of the schools whose headteacher vacancies appear more than once in the same list? Many are newly advertised vacancies; some are re-advertisements, but in each of these groups there seem little logic to the schools listed. At present, there are no schools in either the West Midlands or London regions with double entries. However, of the 25 schools with double entries, six each are in the South East and East of England.  

At the end of the school-year it will be interesting to see whether some MATs, local authorities or dioceses fare worse when it comes to making an appointment of a headteacher. There are some obvious candidates already appearing after just six months of the school-year.

Headteacher: recruitment bonus – good value or not?

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Following suggestions that the DfE might pay a £15,000 recruitment bonus/golden hello to encourage people to take the role of headteacher in a challenging school, I though I would look at the most recent data regarding schools failing to appoint a new headteacher at their first attempt.

The data covers 789 schools that have advertised for a headteacher between 1st August 2025 and the 20th February 2026 on their the DfE vacancy platform or since 1st January 2026, the tes jobsite as well.

Of course, some schools still have active vacancies that have yet to reach their closing date, so the data are probably an underestimate.  The 789 is lower than might be expected number of vacancies from looking at historical data. Is it possible that some MATs no longer advertise headteacher vacancies nationally?

Anyway, there have been 80 schools that have so far readvertised their headteacher vacancy. Of these schools,

50 were primary schools

14 were secondary schools

16 were special schools

13 were Roman Catholic Schools

17 Church of England

  2 other faiths

48 Not faith school

Regionally, the picture is as shown in the table.

REGIONREADVERTADVERT% READ
SE5896%
SW6917%
WM81018%
YH101089%
NW1210711%
EM108112%
L129213%
EE139713%
NE42218%
ENGLAND8078910%

The North East data shows how percentages can be misleading as two of the four schools are special schools. Without those two schools, the percentage drops to a below average 9%.

A bonus of £15,000 might look attractive to someone thinking of a headteacher post in a primary school, but with many secondary headteacher vacancies being advertised with a starting salary in six figures, would £15,000 be enough to attract candidates to apply for the vacancy? How does it compare with subject bonuses for working in such schools?

A review of the 14 secondary schools for percentage pass at Grade 5 in English and mathematics from the DfE website, shows a range of outcomes

22.8
27.0
32.9
33.5
38.5
39.5
40.2
43.7
49.8
51.3
51.5
62.3
64.6
83.5

However, it would suggest that re-advertising secondary schools do appear to have below average outcomes.  However, four of the schools posted their vacancy just before Christmas, and that might be more of reason for the re-advertisement than their GCSE score, that is unless the school has to re-advertise for a second time after an early 2026 re-advert.

Special schools do seem to have difficulty attracting a head teacher, so a bonus there could potentially be useful as an inducement, especially as taking such a headship often involves a house move.

Overall, if the scheme just covered secondary and special schools, it might cost the DfE around £1 million a year. Add in primary schools, and the cost could be much higher.

However, it does seem clear that a school’s results may not be the only barrier to a school recruiting a headteacher easily.

There needs to be certainty that there are sufficient candidates willing, able and experienced enough to move into headship. There the DfE certainly has a role to play.

Banning young people from social media – a sign of the times?

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I wonder how many readers of this blog in the United Kingdom remember the passing of the The Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1955? The passing of the law in Australia banning those under 16 from a slew of social media platforms jogged my memory of the campaign in the 1950s to ban ‘horror comics’ from sale in the United Kingdom that led to the passing of the legislation.  

These comics were imported from the USA, and created something of a panic. Interestingly, it was the Communist Party that started the drive to ban such comics, but it wasn’t until the campaign gathered mainstream support from those that would never vote for a communist candidate that the conservative government of the day took notice and action.

See Wikipedia Comics Campaign Council – Wikipedia for more details. I recall the debate about these comics in our household as a primary school pupil at the time, although I never actually saw any of the offending titles. This was, perhaps, my first awareness of the power of mass movements.

At the same time as that debate about harmful publications this side of the Atlantic, there was discussion about the consequences of free local telephone calls in the USA. These were provided by the Bell Telephone Company. Films of the time showed teenage girls, and it always seems to be girls, coming home and spending all their free time on the phone to friends they had just left at the high school gate.

For landline phone or the 1950s, read mobile phones of the 2020s.

The Bishop of Blackburn in his ‘Thought for the day’ on BBC Radio 4 this morning made the interesting point that perhaps the cuts to youth services and the decline in alternative activities in a society, where adults don’t have time to volunteer in the way that they used to do, might have left young people with fewer opportunities, so that interacting with a phone or screen has replaced the comment that ‘he always has his nose in a book’.

I think that the bishop has a point. The problem with the Australian move is twofold. Firstly, it doesn’t offer anything in the place of the banned activity, and secondly, and more worrying for the governing party in Australia, is whether there will there be any long-term consequences when the generation banned from social media become voters. We won’t know for a few years yet, but how long will the ban linger in memories? Of course, much depends upon what happens over the next few months.

I trust young people, but my instinct is that just banning something without wondering what will happen is not a smart political move. Anyway, can young people, better versed in the technology of the future than their elders, just use VPNs or similar to avoid the ban completely?

For most of history, governments have regulated or banned certain activities. It is only in the past half century that freedom rather than censorship has been the watchword. Is the pendulum of public opinion, and hence government action, now starting to swing in the other direction?

Headteacher vacancies: even in August

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More than 40 years ago, I first started counting heads. That’s actually headteacher vacancies, not actual heads. With some spare time on my hands, I thought that I would go back to my roots and look at what is the current state of play this August?

Of course, August is a quiet month, and there are currently fewer than 60 headteacher vacancies listed on the DfE website that is the main go-to place these days, just as the TES was in the 1980s.   

The DfE vacancy website still contains some of the flaws created when it was established. Anyone trying to use modern methods of’ scraping’ jobs will come across the random duplication outcome that has been a feature of the site ever since its inception. I am not sure whether it was deliberate or a fault in the coding, but it always used to annoy me when I was running TeachVac to see the same job repeated in the listing more than once.

The alternative, pioneered by TeachVac was to ‘scrape’ school websites where schools placed their jobs. However, for obvious reasons, not all schools placed headship vacancies on their website. Presumably not to let staff and parents know of the impending departure of their headteacher.

At least with headteacher posts, there is no problem deciding whether the vacancy is a repeat listing or a re-advertisement. Headteacher posts are unique, and thus easy to track.

Anyway, what did I learn from collecting the first 50 vacancies? Special schools were over-represented, with eight such schools looking for a headteacher this August. As a part of the White Paper on SEND, I hope that the government will consider the staffing and training of staff for the special school sector that has long been a Cinderella, and if not bullied by the bigger primary and secondary sectors, it is certainly still in search of a fairy godmother.

There are only two secondary schools in the list, and one is a 10-14 school, and the other a private school. That doesn’t surprise me, as secondary schools usually sort out headship vacancies well before the start of the school year. If there is an unexpected vacancy, then there is often a deputy head that can ‘act up’ until an appropriate time to advertise the vacancy.

Of the 50 or so primary schools, including one First School, 17 were faith schools: ten Roman Catholic; six Church of England and one other Christian faith. These numbers don’t surprise me in the least; indeed, I would have been surprised if there were fewer Roman Catholic schools in the list. All the years I monitored headteacher vacancies, Roman Catholic schools often featured prominently in any listings. 

The relative absence of schools from London and much of the South East is interesting, but I need more data to say anything else than that.

Almost all schools provide a starting salary, either as a point on the scale or as a cash sum. One academy adds 5% to the quoted salary. The indication of a starting salary is an improvement over the time when schools rarely quoted a starting salary for those interested in becoming their headteacher.

Whether I keep us this task will no doubt depend upon how much else I have to do, but it was interesting retracing my footsteps.

.

Big range in candidate’s chance of becoming a teacher

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The latest ITT data for applications and offers for course starting this autumn was published by the DfE this morning. Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2025 to 2026 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK Normally, the data appears on the last Monday of the month, so this moth’s data is a week early. However, at this stage of the year the early publication probably doesn’t make much of a difference to any analysis of the data.

The good news is that the DfE allocations or targets, call them what you will, have already been exceeded in some subjects; even before any Teach First data has been added to these numbers. However, what matters is how many of the ‘offers’ turn into trainees on the ground when courses start. Based on previous years, it seems likely that this will turn out to a good year for the government and schools, but challenges still exist in some subjects.

At least four subjects, business studies; design and technology, music, and religious education won’t meet their targets this year. This is despite music having the highest conversion rate of applicants to offers of some 63%. By comparison, business studies has the lowest conversion rate of just 27%. It is possible that both classics and drama might also fall short of their targets this year, but the jury is still out.

SubjectTarget 2025/26June offersJune applicationsoffer to candidates’ ratio
Business Studies90025593427%
Chemistry730730243230%
Physics1,4101431476330%
Others2,520399117934%
Mathematics2,3002321621637%
Religious Education780397102939%
Biology9851275330339%
Total Secondary19,270161003848142%
English1,9501648393742%
Classics60419543%
Computing895895201544%
Art & Design680817165050%
Geography935854171250%
Design & Technology965587117450%
Modern Languages1,4601418272352%
Drama62026950154%
History790924166356%
Physical Education7251514263957%
Primary7,65087901527358%
Music56532551663%

For some subjects the ‘offers’ are well in excess of the targets/allocations, with physical education have offers double the requirement, and a high ratio for offers to candidates. The cash this will bring to universities through fees will no doubt be welcome, but is it a good use of taxpayers’ money? If the Teacher Supply modelling is correct, many of these trainees might struggle to find a teaching post in 2026: not a phrase I have written recently.

I am curious as to where the more than 4,700 physics candidates have come from? If those with offers turn up, then that will be really good news, but I think we need clarity about the numbers and their reliability in predicting trainee starters this autumn.

Although all regions have seen an increase in candidate numbers, the Midlands have seen a fall in candidate numbers as measured by the region of the training provider. There is an imbalance between provider regions with just three regions; London, the North West and the South East accounting for the bulk of ‘offers’. As some providers are located in one region but provide wider, and even national coverage, this should not be an issue, but is worth monitoring, especially in the subject that won’t reach their targets, for any regional shortages.

Still, for many admissions tutors in ITT this will be their easiest summer for more than a decade. 2026 might be even better.