How challenging is teacher recruitment?

Posted on January 14, 2023 by John Howson

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.

Subject	13th January 2023	14th January 2022	Difference
Computing	76%	90%	-14%
RE	80%	93%	-13%
Business Studies	70%	82%	-12%
All Sciences	85%	92%	-7%
Music	84%	91%	-7%
Languages	87%	94%	-7%
Mathematics	87%	93%	-6%
English	87%	93%	-6%
Geography	87%	92%	-5%
Art	93%	97%	-4%
PE	96%	98%	-2%
D&T	73%	75%	-2%
History	97%	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

Posted on January 13, 2023 by John Howson

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

Posted on January 12, 2023 by John Howson

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*

Posted on January 5, 2023 by John Howson

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 19^th century market porter became the 20^th century fork-lift truck driver, and is now the 21^st 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

Posted on January 4, 2023 by John Howson

At the end of January, this blog will celebrate its 10^th 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

Posted on January 2, 2023 by John Howson

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 Market	London Vacancies in 2022	40% Vacancies from Trainees	Remaining Trainees	% Open Market Remaining
Business Studies	164	837	335	-171	-104%
Religious Education	249	715	286	-37	-15%
Computing	304	818	327	-23	-8%
Music	228	511	204	24	10%
Design & Technology	372	829	332	40	11%
Physics	366	744	298	68	19%
Geography	523	914	366	157	30%
Modern Languages	600	990	396	204	34%
Biology	495	744	298	197	40%
English	1214	1629	652	562	46%
Chemistry	644	744	298	346	54%
Mathematics	1467	1518	607	860	59%
Art & Design	440	435	174	266	60%
History	950	402	161	789	83%
Physical Education	1295	226	90	1205	93%

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

ITT applications better: but not good enough

Posted on December 29, 2022 by John Howson

Despite this week being a holiday period for most people, the DfE has published the data about ITT applications up to 19^th December 2022. This is the second monthly set of data about applications for 2023 courses. While December is still too early to be certain about the outcome of the recruitment round, it is now possible to see the strength of the interest in teaching as a graduate career at the start of the recruitment round.

The headline is that as far as offers are concerned most subjects have made more offers that at this time last year, but generally fewer than in December 2020. However, some subjects such as religious education, computing, drama, history and physical education have made fewer offers than in December 2021. For history and physical education, the number of offers is probably not of concern since traditionally both these subjects over-recruit against any DfE number supplied for the Teacher Supply Model. For the other subjects, the lack of offers this early must be of some concern since they failed to reach expected levels last year, and the mountain is now looking even steep to climb during 2023.

The total number of applicants by 22^nd December was 12,897 compared with 12,310 on the 20^th December 2021. This year the applicants generated 33,688 applications compared with 32,016 at December 2021. It is welcome that both these numbers are up this year, but the increase is not enough to suggest that there will not be concern about meeting targets during 2023.

More worryingly, only 196 applicants have been ‘recruited’, although the number of candidates with ‘conditions pending’ is similar to the number in December 2021. Fortunately, the number of candidates that have received and offer and are yet to respond is up by several hundred on the December 2021 figure.

The total number of applications for secondary courses is up on December 2021, by around 2,000 while the number of applications for primary courses is down by nearly a thousand to 14,500. More disturbingly, the number of unsuccessful applications for secondary courses is up from 8,377 in December 2021 to 9,654 this year. Some of these applicants may still find a place though the Apply 2 route later in the recruitment round.

More than 10% of candidates this year are classified as having applied from ‘the rest of the world’. The increase in this group masks the fall in applicants from London; the South East and the East of England regions. As these three regions are the parts of England struggling most to recruit teachers, the loss of potential candidates for 2023 is a matter of concern although applications to these regions are higher than last year, possibly boosted by the increase in overseas applicants.

Applications from candidates age 22, probably recent graduates or those graduating in 2023 are slightly down, applications from most other age groups are at similar levels to last year.

Higher Education courses remain buoyant, with all other types of courses also recording more applications. Of the 196 applicants so far ‘recruited’, 181 have been recruited by higher education providers to their courses.

Two swallows don’t make a summer, and two months data may not represent the rest of the application round, but, unless there is a significant upturn in applicants to secondary courses during the first eight months of 2023, the outlook for courses in autumn 2023 will not be much better than the dismal numbers recorded in the recent DfE ITT Census for courses that started in autumn of 2022. Such an outcome would imply another challenging labour market for secondary schools in 2024 that is unless school funding for future pay awards was such as to drive down demand for teachers to cover the increased pay awards.

Best wishes to DfE Vacancy site

Posted on December 23, 2022 by John Howson

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

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

Job details Chef de Partie Tournant

Job role

Learning support, cover supervisor or tutor

Working pattern

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

Contract type

Permanent

Full-time equivalent salary

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

Actual salary

£14266 (rising to £15135)

What skills and experience we’re looking for

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stick a thumb up in the air?

Posted on December 22, 2022 by John Howson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Widening QTS but not to all

Posted on December 15, 2022 by John Howson

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

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

Now countries such as

South Africa,

Ghana,

Zimbabwe,

Nigeria,

Ukraine,

Singapore,

Jamaica, India, and

Hong Kong

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

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

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

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

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

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: DfE