Tag Archives: DfE

Per Pupil Funding set to fall

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Last week, the DfE released data on the change in per pupil funding for 5-16 year olds between 2010-11 and 2023/-24

One the face of it, this is a good news story. Funding per pupil has increased in cash terms from £5,180 in 2010-11 to £7,460 in 2023-24. After falling in the first few years, per pupil funding increased from 2018-19 onwards, according to the DfE data. School funding statistics: 2022 to 2023 financial year – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Looking at the same data using 2022-23 prices reveals a similar picture up to the projections for 2023-24 funding per pupil where, using 2022-23 cash prices, the increase for 2023-24 is not currently enough to allow for the effects of inflation, and funding per pupil falls below funding in cash terms. After taking into account the extra funds received by schools to deal with the pandemic that have either ended already or are likely to do so soon, and weren’t incorporated into the headline figure to ensure the integrity of the time series data, it is possible to see why some schools, especially in the primary sector may be facing a real funding dilemma once again.

According to the DfE, the figures for 2023-24 are based on a combination of published funding allocations, the budget settlements agreed at the 2021 Spending Review and 2022 Autumn Statement, and some estimates of small grant and high needs spending. Of course, the final outturn might prove to be different, in part depending upon how the government and the STRB deal with the issue of teachers’ pay and pay levels for non-teaching staff.

Will the DfE add funds to cover the eventual pay settlement that will recognise the effects of high inflation or will they expect schools to handle the additional costs within the presently agreed funding envelope?

As I have remarked before, the Pay Review body system worked relatively well in times of low inflation and the date for reporting became decoupled from the pay year. The STRB’s 2022 report was published in January of that year, well in time for the new funding cycle to be adjusted to mee the cost of the settlement.

I guess the political shambles at Westminster in the early autumn, and the revolving door of ministers, prevented both the Treasury and spending departments from making the case for bringing Pay Review body Reports forward once it was clear inflation was going to reach a 40-year high.  

The DfE data aggregates all 5-16 spending, so these data don’t show the potential differential impact on the primary sector of the current Funding formula, high fixed costs and in many cases falling rolls. The policy for handing demographic decline doesn’t seem clear to me. Is the government willing to see large numbers of small schools close or will it expect academy trusts to cross-subsidise between sectors as a means of forcing the remaining primary schools to become part of a MAT in order to survive, since local authorities cannot vire funds between schools as MATs are able to do.

Are you paying too much to advertise a teaching vacancy?

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The most read blog post this month is the one from 2020 entitled ‘How much should it cost to advertise a vacancy?’ Teacher Recruitment: How much should it cost to advertise a vacancy? | John Howson (wordpress.com) So far, yesterday’s 10th birthday post comes in second highes, with 20 views as against the vacancy post that reviewed the publication of the tes company accounts for 2019.

Today, the tes group, now entirely shorn of it print heritage, released its accounts for 2021-22 to August 2022. The company, fronted by its UK management, is ultimately owned by Onex Partners V, part of the Canadian ONEX Group of equity investors. Their third quarter report for 2022 identifies an investment of $98 US in the Tes Global (“Tes”), an international provider of comprehensive software solutions for the education sector  18d46e0 f-a5b9-435a-a039-9849ef723683 (onex.com) page 9

So, our major teacher recruitment platform, now offering a much wider staff management service to schools, increased its UK (mainly England) turnover from £54 million to £68 million in the year to August 2022. How important both staff management and the UK are to the profit of ONEX can be determined form the following figures

Turnover             2022                     2021

UK                        £68.2 mn          £54.0 mn

Europe                £  2.9 mn             £ 2.6 mn

Rest of World     £  9.0  mn           £ 9.0 mn

Income

Staff

Management    £61.2 mn          £56.5  mn

All activities      £80.2 mn           £66.1  mn

TES accounts – see link above page 29

So, in the last school year the tes took £68 million pounds from UK schools, the bulk of the money for recruitment and staff management by subscriptions from schools. 84% of staff management revenue came from subscription income and, as the accounts note (page 2) this was a 26% increase in revenue, presumably as more schools and Trusts migrated to subscription packages from point of sale purchase of advertising. The profit for the operating year was £28.7 million compared with £2.3 million the previous year that was badly affected by covid.

The group values its software at £46 million. That leaves me wondering what the book value of TeachVac’s simple but effective job matching service should be? Perhaps the £3 million suggested by our advisers is a little on the mean side.

TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk costs less than £150,000 a year to operate. Being generous, it might cost £500,000 if operating on a similar cost model to the tes. The DfE job site probably costs a bit more, but we don’t actually know how much. The question for schools, MATs and the education sector is ‘How much of the money you are spending with the tes is for the downstream activities on staff management and how much for the job bord and matching service, and is it value for money?

Assume only 10% is for the matching, that could be £5-6 million of the subscription income after allowing for the tes turnover on Hibernia and other activities. TeachVac was established to demonstrate to the sector the cost-effective nature of modern technology over the former print advertising methods of recruitment. Readers can make up their own minds over value for money when comparing the £500 annual subscription to TeachVac that will reduce as more schools sign-up, and the cost of a subscription to tes.

ITT headlines hide a worrying message?

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Has the current wave of strikes in the public sector over pay affected applications to train as a teacher from graduates? On the basis of the data published today by the DfE 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) the answer would appear to be in the negative, at least as far as the number of offers made and accepted up to 16th January 2023 are concerned when compared with the similar date in January over previous years.

Of course, January is still early in the annual recruitment cycle, and the trend over the next couple of months will be important in determining the outcome for the year as a whole. Such improvements as there are when compared with previous years do not mean targets will be reached with this level of applications, but that if the trend were to continue this year might not be as disastrous as the present cohort of trainees in many subjects.

However, computing is an exception, registering its worst ever January number of offers and acceptances. Interestingly, history is in a similar situation, but I assume that is due to greater control over offers than a real slump in applications. Interestingly, 55% of computing applicants, compared with 52% of history applicants, are recorded as ‘unsuccessful’, so there may be some more questions to be asked about how different subjects handle knowledge levels among applicants?

Overall, applicant numbers at 17.012 are just over 2,000 more than in January 2022. This means that applications are up from the 39,000 of January 2022 to nearly 45,000 in January 2023. Assuming the increase isn’t just down to faster processing of applicants, this must be considered as a glimmer of good news for the government. Even better news for the government, is that the bulk of the additional applications are for secondary subjects. Overall applications for the secondary sector are up from 20,254 last year to 25,063 this year, whereas applications for primary phase courses are only up from 18,300 to 18,824.

The bulk of the additional applications seems to have headed towards the higher educations sector, where applications are up from 18,000 to 22,00. Apprenticeship numbers are stable at just below 1,700, and applications to SCITT courses have increased from 5,400 to 5,800. School Direct fee courses are the other area with a large gain in applications; up from 11,429 to 12,761. Applications for the salaried route barely increased, up from 2,394 to 2,639.

Interestingly, the increase in the number of male candidates in January was larger than the number of women. Male numbers increased from 4,115 in January 2022 to 5,256 January 2023 whereas female applicants only increased from 10,754 to 11,581; still many more, but worth watching to see if there is a trend?

As one might expect with the interest in secondary courses, and the increase in men applying to train as a teacher, applications rose faster from those likely to be career changers than from new graduates. Indeed, the number of applications from those age 22 actually fell, from 2,098 in January 2022 to 2,064 this January. The number of those aged 60 or over applying increased from 34 last January to 72 this January; up by more than 100%.

However, all this good news has to be qualified by the fact that the biggest increase in applicants by geography is from the ‘Rest of the world’ category – up from 1,061 to 2,676. Applications from London and the Home counties regions have fallen: less good news.

Still the overseas applicants do seem to be applying to providers in London, so that may help.

The fact that the good news in the headlines is largely supported by the increase in overseas applicants must be a matter for concern on several counts. If offered a place, will these students turn up, and how long will they stay; will the Home Office grant them visas to teach in England; will places that could be offered to new graduates later in the recruitment round have been filled by these overseas applicants, and what might be the implications for how the recruitment round is managed? All interesting questions for the sector and the government to ponder.

How PTRs have changed over time

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Forty years ago, I wrote an article about variations in local authority provision for education that appeared in the Oxford Review of Education (Volume 8, No2). Part of the discussion in the article centred around the range of pupil teacher ratios within schools after local government reorganisation outside London in 1974 had completed the changes to the local government landscape started in London a decade before.

Of course, our school system was very different in 1974. Most authorities were still transiting from a two tier selective system to a fully comprehensive system; most based their new systems upon the traditional two tiers, but some used one of the variations of first, middle and upper schools that constituted the three tier system.

Local authorities had the freedom in the 1970s to decide how much of their funding to spend upon schooling, and although there were national guidelines on spending on resources and staffing, they were not mandatory. However, teachers’ pay, then as now the largest item of a school’s expenditure, was centrally controlled, as was the ratio of promoted posts to classroom teachers. The differential between the highest paid teacher and a classroom teacher was much narrower than it is today, especially in the secondary sector.

On the staffing side, there were few support staff, and hardly any classroom assistants working in schools forty years ago, so one class one teacher was very much the model across the board, with classroom teachers in the primary sector, and comprehensive schools following the model of the selective sector with subject specialists replacing classroom teachers that had been commonplace in some secondary modern schools.

Pupil Teacher Ratios (PTRs) can be calculated in the same way today as they were in 1974. Helpfully, the DfE published the results for all state-funded schools in England, by local authority, based upon the data collected in the November Staffing Census. The latest data, published in June 2022, was from the November 2021 census, so now some 14 months old.

What is interesting, despite the changes in local government boundaries is to compare the range of 1974 PTRs in the secondary sector with those from the 2021 census.

Best PTRWorst PTRdifference
197415.719.74
198013.618.65
202113.618.44.8
Source Howson 1980 and DfE 2022
Source Howson 1980 and DfE 2022

 Compared with 1974, the difference between the best and worst local authority areas was greater in 2021 than in 1974, and similar to the difference in 1980 when the article was being prepared. What is noticeable is that both the best and the worst levels improved between 1974 and 1980, but are now, forty years later, still very similar to where they were in 1980. This despite academies, unitary authorities and the devolution of budgets to individual schools.

Even more interesting is the position of London schools. In 1980, London boroughs occupied eight of the top ten places for ‘staffing’, using data from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy data. In the 2021 census, four outer London boroughs have dropped down the ranking, as has Newcastle, to be replaced by northern towns and cities. However, London, now with individual boroughs rather than the combined Inner London Education Authority still takes a disproportionate number of the places in the authorities with the most favourable PTRs.

Since 2010/11, all but two local authorities with data for the whole period have seen a deterioration in the secondary PTR for their area. Slough and Southend on Sea, both authorities with selective school systems, have seen the biggest worsening in secondary PTRs over the period of Tory government.

With the pressure on funding, it is interesting to speculate what the outcome of the 2022 census will be when published this June. Could we witness some of the worst secondary PTRs in half a century?

How challenging is teacher recruitment?

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The staffing crisis in the NHS often receives more publicity than the festering crisis in teacher recruitment. This week, TeachVac has supplied data for articles in tes, and by the Press Association. The latter story make many local newspapers, but little impact on the broadcast media that still seems obsessed with the NHS.

Next week, TeachVac will publish its two detailed reviews: one on the labour market for school leaders and the other looking at the labour market for classroom teachers during 2022. Schools signed-up to TeachVac’s £500 recruitment deal for unlimited matches of their jobs can ask for a free copy of both reports. Copies are priced at £100 for each report to non-subscribers. www.teachvac.co.uk

Both reports comment on what is now history. January marks the start of the key recruitment round for September 2023. As part of its data collection, TeachVac, where I am chair, monitors its collected vacancies against the numbers recorded in the DfE’s annual ITT census of trainees. Of course, some of those trainees are already in the classroom on programmes that mean they will be unlikely to be job seeking for September in any large numbers. TeachVac’s index takes these numbers into account when calculating its end of week numbers.

Despite only being at the end of week 2 of 2022, I thought it might be useful to compare 2023 with 2022 at the same point. When looking at the table, it is worth recalling that in many subjects the number of trainees is lower than it was last year, so the supply side is reduced. As a result, it would take a reduction in demand for the index to improve on week 2 of 2022.

Subject13th January 202314th January 2022Difference
Computing76%90%-14%
RE80%93%-13%
Business Studies70%82%-12%
All Sciences85%92%-7%
Music84%91%-7%
Languages87%94%-7%
Mathematics87%93%-6%
English87%93%-6%
Geography87%92%-5%
Art93%97%-4%
PE96%98%-2%
D&T73%75%-2%
History97%98%-1%
Source TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk

Sadly, the reduction in trainee numbers hasn’t been offset by any reduction in demand: quite the opposite. All the subjects in the table are indicating a worse position at the end of week 2 in 2023 than at the same point in 2022; even history.

Design and technology’s apparently favourable position is due more to how badly it was faring in 2022 than to any real improvement, as it still has the second lowest index score in 2023, only business studies – the DfE’s forgotten subject – is in a worse position, and will certainly register an amber warning of recruitment challenges by next Friday.

Indeed, computing and design and technology will both also almost certainly have posted amber warning by the end of week 3! Several other subjects might have amber warning in place by the end of the month.

I am sure that the worsening trend in recruitment is why schools and MATs are signing up to TeachVac’s recruitment offer. At less than £10 per week for all a schools’ vacancies to be matched to TeachVac’s database, with no extra work required by the school than doing what it already does, must be the best deal in town. Schools not signed up with TeachVac will no longer see their vacancies matched each day. The fee for primary schools is just £75.

School Leadership trends in 2022

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This week TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk has published its 2022 Review of Leadership Vacancies in schools across England. Next week, the report on classroom teacher vacancies will be published. If you would like a copy of either then email enquiries@oxteachserv.com Schools signed up to the TeachVac platform can request a copy of both reports.

These are challenging times for the public sector. Education, and in particular schools, has not escaped the challenges of a period of high inflation and full employment. However, the most serious effects in schools are to be found at classroom teacher and middle leader levels and the recruitment of non-teaching staff. These will be discussed in a future post once the Classroom Teacher Review of 2022 is published.

Leadership vacancies are mostly filled by those already working in schools or other posts in the education sector. Headteacher posts are frequently the final post in a teacher’s career, although some headteachers do change schools, often from a smaller school to a larger school, specially in the primary sector.

TeachVac’s main findings for 2022 are that:

  • There were more leadership vacancies on offer during 2022 that during the previous two years, when recruitment was badly affected by the covid pandemic
  • In the primary sector 2034 headteacher vacancies were recorded during 2022, compared with 1,556 during 2021. In the secondary sector, the numbers were 585 headteacher vacancies in 2022 compared with 368 during 2021.
  • For schools advertising during the 2021-22 school-year there was a re-advertisement rate for primary schools of 25%, and 19% for secondary schools. The South East was the region with the highest re-advertisement rate for primary headteachers
  • Schools advertising for a headteacher outside of the first quarter of the year were more likely to need to re-advertise their vacancy, as are schools that differ from the norm in size, type of school or control by a faith grouping.
  • After two years of lower vacancy number for deputy headteachers, 2022 levels recorded a rebound to pre-pandemic numbers across both the primary and secondary sectors.
  • There was a strong demand for assistant headteachers in both the primary and secondary sectors during 2022. The grade is now popular in schools across more regions than previously.
  • One effect of the covid pandemic may have been more retirements of senior leaders. Any effects resulting from ‘long covid’ on the labour market for senior staff in schools is yet to be fully appreciated. 

Readvertisement rates are for the 2021-22 school year to allow for re-advertisements during the autumn term to be included in the totals. Re-advertisement rates in the primary for headteacher vacancies are towards the lower end of expectations, whereas re-advertisements for secondary headships are at a percentage more in common with long-term trends.

The most interesting statistic is the increase in vacancies for assistant heads during 2022. Is this because middle leaders of large departments need the salary available on the Leadership Scale to attract them to apply for such posts, especially in high cost areas in and around London? Some of the increase may be due to new schools building up their leadership teams, but that fact alone does not seem sufficient to account for the increases.

What will 2023 bring in terms of leadership vacancies? As around half of such vacancies appear during the first three months of the year, we won’t have long to wait to find out.

Debate about Oak Academy

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There is to be a short debate in the House of Lords this afternoon, initiated by a Conservative Peer, about the creation of the Oak Academy to provide government funded resources for schools to help teach the curriculum. The House of Lords library has a helpful briefing note ahead of the debate Oak National Academy: Impact on the publishing and educational technology sectors – House of Lords Library (parliament.uk) I find the debate about the Oak Academy interesting in the light of the lack of any concerns about the government’s creation of a recruitment portal and control of the ITT application process.

Clearly, control of the curriculum through a body such as the Oak Academy can have implications for the publishing and technology industries that are both sectors that are large export earners for the education sector. This debate reminds me of when the same sector challenged the BBC over their potential control of education resources in the early days of the internet.

I will be interested to see the arguments put forward on both sides today. I am sure that there will be concerns that Ministers can direct schools to use Oak generated resources, and ensure that the values imbedded in such resources contain values approved by the current government. What might this government and a Labour government have to say about lessons generated by Oak Academy in such circumstances on the issue of industrial relations and the right to withdraw labour in any dispute between employer and their employees in history materials generated by the Academy.

Similar arguments were current when the Education Reform Bill in the 1980s mandated a National Curriculum. The concerns were around the powers of any Secretary of State to dictate to teachers what to teach and how to teach it. Of course, since then, we have seen Ministers dictate on phonics and multiplication tables, and schools being forced to follow the ministerial line even when authorities question its validity.

The Oak Academy started with good intentions during the covid pandemic, and removing the profit element, could produce materials at a lower cost than the private sector. Lower costs would be helpful to schools, but there does need to be effective oversight of materials being produced. There is also the issue of whether schools should be compelled to use Oak Generated materials? I am sure that these and other issues will be raised in today’s debate at Westminster.

As the chair of TeachVac, www.teachvac.co.uk the job board for teachers established before the DfE vacancy site was even considered, I can see the concerns of the industry about the loss of income from a lucrative sector that always needs new resources. However, there is a need for a wider debate about the role of government in state-funded education in a democracy, and that debate is more important than just the possible loss of business to existing providers. We cannot ignore the fact that ‘values’ are implicit in much of what we both choose to teach and how we then teach it.

Maths for the Millions*

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Nobody can have been surprised about yesterday’s announcement about extending the learning of mathematics for all up to age 18. In 2017, Prof Adrian Smith was commissioned to write a report for the government reviewing the state of post-16 mathematics.

The relevant paragraphs of this report said;

33. There is a strong case for higher uptake of 16-18 mathematics. Increased participation would be likely to deliver significant payback in terms of labour market skills, returns to individuals, increased productivity and longer-term economic benefits.

34. The government should set an ambition for 16-18 mathematics to become universal in 10 years. There is not a case at this stage, however, for making it compulsory.

Smith review of post-16 mathematics: report and letter – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The Minister that responded on behalf of the DfE was, of course Nick Gibb, once again ensconced in Sanctuary buildings, so perhaps the emergence of this policy must have been expected.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there are not enough teachers and lecturers in mathematics at present to provide for universal education for all 16–18-year-olds; Smith’s report identified that three-quarters of 16-year-olds with an A*-C in mathematics didn’t continue to study the subject at Key Stage 5. However, the government has done more to upgrade the qualifications of those teaching mathematics post initial teacher training over the past few years than in probably any other curriculum area. But not enough to balance current demand with supply, let alone to meet the increase in demand universal provision for all students at Key Stage 5.

Was the singling out of mathematics by the Prime Minister a message that the notion of a wider Baccalaureate qualification was no longer on the policy agenda?  Who knows, but as a story, it did manage to gain traction as a reverse ‘Jo Moore’ good policy story on a day when the Prime minister was faced with a raft of bad news stories about the economy and the public sector.

TeachVac  www.teachvac.co.uk has calculated that there are only around 1,500 trainee mathematics teachers this year currently in training to work in secondary schools, plus an unknown number training to work as lecturers in the further education sector, including those training ‘on the job’.

TeachVac has also calculated that there were more than 9,000 advertised vacancies for teachers of mathematics placed by schools across England during 2022. Even allowing for the repeat and re-advertisements, there doesn’t yet seem to be enough supply of teachers of mathematics to meet current needs, let alone increase demand by mandating the teaching of mathematics to all at Key Stage 5.

Nevertheless, the government does recognise that in our increasingly technological world, an increased understanding of mathematics to a higher level is important for ever more people in society. As I have mentioned before, the 19th century market porter became the 20th century fork-lift truck driver, and is now the 21st century software engineer writing code to manage robots in an automated warehouse.

It will be interesting see where this policy goes. Will it be a one-day wonder, or will Prof Smith’s Report finally become accepted as necessary policy for a modern first world economy?

* With apologies to  Lancelot Hogben 

Don’t forget Jacob

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At the end of January, this blog will celebrate its 10th birthday: a decade of writing. As of today, the blog has published 1,364 posts during those 10 years, with a total wordcount, according to WordPress analytics, of around 800,000 words, or around nine or 10 PhDs. Of course, blogs aren’t peer reviewed in the same way as academic articles are pre-publication, but, like journalism, they are subject to the gaze of readers from around the world. What I think are important posts are sometimes barely read, whereas other posts have been read much more frequently. The most read posts each year are listed below:

2022 Teacher Recruitment: How much should it cost to advertise a vacancy?

2021 Half of secondary ITT applicants in just 3 subjects

2020 Poverty is not destiny – OECD PISA Report

2019 How do you teach politics today?

2018 Applications to train as a teacher still far too low for comfort

2017 Coasting schools

2016 1% pay rise for most teachers likely in 2016

2015 Grim news on teacher training

2014 More on made not born: how teachers are created

2013 Has Michael Gove failed to learn the lessons of history?

The most read of these was the September 2020 post entitled ‘Poverty is not destiny’ that was read 1,544 times during that October and was read more than 1,600 times in all during the autumn of 2020.

Older posts can collect more ‘reads’ overall as new readers browse the back catalogue. Just before Christmas 2022, someone browsed the whole of the back catalogue, resulting in the highest monthly figures recorded for any single month since the blog started.

The genesis for the blog was the columns that I wrote for the then TES between the late 1990s and my retirement in 2011. I am lucky to have many of those columns in a presentation book created for my retirement.

This column has looked at numbers to do with education, mostly statistics, but also management information. Some of the latter has been provided by TeachVac, the job matching site I helped create and run some eight years ago.

There are a few other posts of which my, so far unsuccessful, campaign for a Jacob’s Law is the most important. This Law would ensure no child was left without a school place for longer than three weeks and is especially important for the many children taken into care. If we want to stop them becoming NEETs, we need to keep them in education not cast them aside because they might be a ‘bit of challenge’. Who would be a challenge if taken from home without any warning as a young person and moved to a different location away from friends and familiar locations and your school. (Search for Jacob for the various posts about this issue)

Please campaign to ensure a place for every child in a school. These young people are the education equivalent of the patients in A&E waiting on trolleys, but their wait can be six months, and just as life changing! Lt’s make 2023 the year the DfE tackled this issue.

Happy New Year: we can but hope

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For most of the past 30 years, I have spent the week between Christmas and New Year drafting annual reports on aspects of the labour market for teachers during the previous 12 months for TeachVac’s and its predecessors, and also making a prognosis of what might happen in the labour market during the year to come. The finished reports; one on classroom teachers and promoted posts, and the other on leadership scale vacancies should, this year, be completed by the middle of the month.

Headlines include the steep increase in recorded vacancies across all grades during 2022; and the fact that schools in an around London recorded more vacancies than schools elsewhere in England. The problems, although not confined to the secondary sector are worse in that sector than in the primary school sector, where pupil numbers are now falling across much of England.

Of more interest that what happened in 2022 for most readers of this blog is, no doubt, my predictions for 2023. Based upon the trainee numbers in the DfE’s ITT census as a starting point, and abstracting those trainees already in the classroom and less likely to be job hunting, at least for a teaching post, for September 2023 from the totals, the numbers must be of concern.

After factoring in non-completions; those seeking posts in Sixth Form Colleges or elsewhere in publicly funded education outside of schools; and allowing for the demand form the private school sector, especially in the south of England, where a large number of such schools are concentrated; the final numbers may be the worst this century.

If the London region is taken as an example, using 2022 vacancies as the basis for the calculations, and assuming 40% of classroom teacher vacancies are taken by new entrants to the profession, with the remainder filled by those returning to teaching or switching schools, then some subjects do not have enough trainees to meet the possible demand from London’s schools

Open MarketLondon Vacancies in 202240% Vacancies from TraineesRemaining Trainees % Open Market Remaining
Business Studies164837335-171-104%
Religious Education249715286-37-15%
Computing304818327-23-8%
Music2285112042410%
Design & Technology3728293324011%
Physics3667442986819%
Geography52391436615730%
Modern Languages60099039620434%
Biology49574429819740%
English1214162965256246%
Chemistry64474429834654%
Mathematics1467151860786059%
Art & Design44043517426660%
History95040216178983%
Physical Education129522690120593%
Source TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk

Business Studies, religious education and computing might be the most worrying subjects for London schools seeking to fill vacancies. Of course, a school advertising in January will always fare better than one looking for an unexpected appointment for January 2024 late in the autumn, but schools should not need to be worrying about filling vacancies advertised as early as February this year.

TeachVac is increasing its registers of teachers looking to be matched to jobs, and secondary schools wanting their vacancies matched can sign up for £10 a week (£500 per year plus VAT) or miss out on this resource that aims to match 15,000 teachers this year. Sign up at www.teachvac.co.uk