Tag Archives: Education. teachers. teacher supply

Good news or not?

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The latest data on applications through UCAS to train as teachers contains both good and disturbing news. The good news is that around 10% more offers have been made than at this point last year to applicants wishing to train as secondary school teachers. The more disturbing news is that the majority of these offers are in just three subject areas; languages, physical education and history. These are likely, on the basis of the current position, to be the only three subjects that will meet the government Teacher Supply Model figure for estimated recruitment needed into training. All other principle subjects are now likely to fall short of their Teacher Supply Model number, although some subjects will hopefully do better than last year.

Part of the problem is that the required number has increased in some subjects, making the likelihood of it being reached less than if it had remained at the 2014 level.
Perhaps more worrying for the government is that the decline in applications this year covers both School Direct and University courses and is reflected across all geographical regions and among all age-groups, with significant declines among the young age-groups of applicants. There are, for instance, around 1,500 fewer new young graduates applying to become a teacher than at this stage last year. Indeed, although gaps between the total number of applicants this year and last year has been reducing month on month, it still stands at just under 4,000 or a 10% reduction on this point last year.

Perhaps even more alarming than the secondary numbers is the fact that the number of offers for primary training only amount to just over 12,000. This is around 1,000 less than at the same point last year and nearly 2,000 fewer than the 14,000 places allocated. If the allocated number is anything close to the actual requirement for September 2016 then there will need to be a recruitment drive over the new two months to fill the empty places. It is one thing to under-recruit in the secondary subjects but quite another to create a situation where primary courses also don’t meet their targets.

These numbers must give pause for thought over the distribution of places between universities and schools. The fact that probably less than two thirds of the School Direct Salaried places allocated for 2015 may be filled by the end of the cycle across both primary and secondary sectors must be of some concern.

By next month the conditional offers that make up the bulk of the offer totals will largely have been translated into full places as degree results and other issues are resolved and the picture will be clearer, at least in the secondary sector. For primary, there will remain the uncertainty of the undergraduate cycles and the outcome of the ‘A’ level examinations. Whether the clearing system will be able to handle places in ITT with the issues over the pre-entry skills tests required will be worth watching.

This autumn may well be a time to reflect about the balance between the teacher preparation system desired by government and what is achievable on the ground. As regular readers will know, I would start by abolishing the £9,000 tuition fee for graduates. Compared with the complex bursary system a no fee policy is easy to sell and easy for applicants to understand.

Normal service has now been resumed

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Regular readers will have noticed the absence of posts on this blog during the past few weeks. This is mainly because I have been involved in the general election as the Lib Dem candidate for the Banbury Constituency. This was an interesting exercise, and will probably be the subject of a discussion in more depth in another post.

Compared with previous elections education didn’t really hit the headlines very much during the campaign; although I am pleased that it featured on the front of the Lib Dem manifesto and that public sector pay increases and extending free school meals to all primary pupils were on offer as part of the Lib Dem campaign announcements. Even tuition fees didn’t really feature all that much in the debates.

So what else has been happening? The DfE stopped publishing statistics after 31st March when parliament was dissolved. The last to appear showed the continued improvement in attendance levels by pupils. However, buried in the numbers was a possible interesting issue of rural attendance and also data that could initiate the need for a discussion as to why school attendance is so poor in parts of the relatively affluent South East of England? If there’s time, I will discuss that concern in more detail in another post.

Teacher supply was an area of interest following the teacher associations annual conferences. I was surprised, and not a little disappointed, to see the General Secretary of ATL use data from 2011 – data from during the height of the recession – to discuss recruitment and staying-on rates for teachers in 2015. It may well be that in London and the South East more teachers will leave during their first year, but in 2011 the problem for many teachers was finding a job in the first place. This year the problem for some schools has been finding a teacher at all.

TeachVac, our free recruitment site for schools, trainees and now all secondary school teachers, has tracked sufficient vacancies in business studies and social studies to have exhausted the 2014/15 cohort of trainees. Design & Technology might well see its trainee pool eliminated next week. If you want to know the details for other subjects then register at www.teachvac.co.uk either as a school or a teacher and then download the full report.

Even more worrying is the fact that applications to train for 2015 through the UCAS graduate process remain stubbornly some 5,000 below the end of April last year. Even on a 20% conversion rate that would put acceptances at 1,000 below last year: and there weren’t enough trainees in many subjects last year. In my mind, the teacher supply issue is the number one problem facing the new Secretary of State and it is time for some radical thinking. This is especially the case as Teach First, the government supported charity also seems to be struggling to attract applicants into teaching in some subject areas; at least at levels compared with recent years.

So, now it is back to business and it will be interesting to see how quickly the last few weeks are relegated to the history books.

Divide by three

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The government’s new TV advertising campaign to attract entrants into the teaching profession cannot come soon enough. Data released today by UCAS shows that at the halfway point in the recruitment cycle the grim picture I highlighted when the January data emerged has not improved; in some cases it has even become worse.

Normally, in past years most primary PGCE places have been taken up by now. This year, applicants are holding 7,610 offers compared with 8,540 at the same date in 2014. Now, because of the new, expensive and unhelpful admissions arrangements, candidates may hold a number of offers for a period of time. Thus, real acceptances this year could be less than 3,000, including candidates required to meet conditions such as passing the skills tests. In 2012, there were 18,700 applicants for primary courses at this point in time, whereas if we assume the current 37,000 applicants have all made their possible three applications then there may be fewer than 12,500 applicants for primary courses are in the system. That’s a big drop in four years.

The picture is little better in secondary where many of the subjects that under-recruited last year aren’t doing much better this year. The total of offers are higher than at this point last year in languages; PE; art; and probably in IT and Chemistry. They are basically the same as at this point last year in Physics; mathematics; history; English; business studies; and biology. Most worrying is the fact that current offers are probably below last year in RE; music; geography and probably design and technology. The concerns over the future of the arts in schools are probably not mis-placed and no doubt potential teachers in these subjects are picking up on the messages.

With School Direct closing down applications in many cases during July, there are less than 20 weeks to turn around the current situation. A TV advertising campaign may not be enough: Fees should be either abolished for all trainees or guaranteed by the government. Increasing bursaries that are tax free risks trainees being paid more after tax and NI than the mentors helping train them in the schools. It also risks trainees having to take a pay cut on entry into the profession, especially if the £25,000 bursary is grossed up from the time spent in training to an annual salary.

There is a rumour that the NCTL is handing out more places to providers willing to take them. That is not a sensible move at this stage as it risks destabilising the sector. Providers that cannot fill enough places to make ends meet and cover their costs might just pull out. This is especially true of small primary school providers put in jeopardy by the current drop in applications. The government should look at possible safety net arrangements for providers faced with a shortage of applicants but serving parts of the country where their disappearance would cause real supply problems.

Unless teaching can attract career changers, and so far only 10,000 of the 24,600 applicants are over 25, then there will be few new applicants from now until after final exams finish in May or June. That will be too late to redeem recruitment failures earlier in the cycle.

 

Grim news on teacher training

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The first figures for applications to teacher preparation courses starting in September 2015 were released by UCAS earlier today. As far as providers in England are concerned, applications overall are down from 71,980 to 60,890 a drop of around 11,000. Assuming every applicant makes the maximum possible of three applications, this would be a drop of more than 3,500 applicants compared with the same point last year. In fact the drop in applicants domiciled in England is actually 4,540 compared with last year. This suggests not all applicants use their full number of possible applications; presumably some are location specific and can only apply to providers in particular areas. The decline in applicants is reflected across the country and in percentage terms is greatest for higher education courses, where applications are down from 43,000 to 32,000 between January last year and January this year. This is despite the application process opening earlier than last year and running more smoothly, so that the number of applicants placed is running about a month ahead of last year in most subjects. However, some of the fall in higher education applications will have been due to reduced government allocations, especially in the popular subjects.

The decline in School Direct is not as marked as for higher education, but with more places allocated to that route any reduction in numbers must be a worry. Applications to SCITTS are actually above where they were last year, but again that reflects greater provision and a significant number of new SCITTs having joined the system.

Any drop of this magnitude must be of concern even at the start of the recruitment round, especially as it reflects a decline in applications from all age groups, with both new graduates and career changers seemingly not applying in such large numbers as in the past.

The January numbers reflect the size of the cohort that knew they wanted to enter teaching and applied in the early stage of the recruitment round. An analysis of more than 20 years of applications to teacher preparation courses by graduates suggests to me that in those years when the economy is doing well it has proved almost impossible to reverse any early decline in applications without significant inducements to train. The exception was the year that the bursary was introduced in the March when applications rose subsequently.

The figures issued today explain why I started the campaign for the government to once again pay the fees of graduates entering training by whatever route. Unless the government either agree to pay the fees or offer some other solution then I fear that we are headed not just for the seven per cent shortfall of last autumn’s training numbers but possibly a shortfall of 10% of even more this year.

The government may point out that offers are up on January last year, but that is only because the system is operating a month ahead of last year.

A failure to recruit trainees in 2015 will mean an even greater job crisis in 2016. With more pupils in schools by then that must not be allowed to happen.

Hard work ahead on teacher supply

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This has been a busy week for statistics about teacher preparation courses in England. Along with the full details of allocations made for 2014, published last Friday afternoon with little or no notice, always an interesting sign when that happens, there has been the census of recruitment to 2013 courses that was published on Tuesday.

The headlines from 2014 allocations are that higher education is still massively involved in teacher preparation, either directly or through validating the offerings of schools places offered via the School Direct scheme. However, many universities find themselves with allocations that are not economic in terms of viable courses, and there may still be other higher education institutions that follow Bath and the OU and either exit teacher preparation completely or withdraw from particular subjects. As the DfE has ensured some 30% more secondary places than might have been allocated if the Teacher Supply Model was followed more closely the risk has been transferred to students should all places be filled. In reality, there will be a tussle between the School Direct route and higher education in many subjects as to which places will be filled if the government cannot attract enough potential applications into teaching.

This is where the evidence from the 2013 ITT Census becomes important. Taken in association with the figures from the previous two years it shows some reduction in places filled. But, this was partly due to the 13% over-allocation the government has now owned up to. However, that does not explain either the massive decline in applications to train as design and technology teachers or the further declines in computer science and physics trainees accepted on to courses. The lack of awareness on the part of ministers as to how important the study of design and technology in schools is to the British economy is extremely worrying. Whether this lack of concern is part of the class system that says since you cannot study the subject at Oxford or Cambridge it cannot be important, or comes from a ministerial team with limited experience manufacturing industry I cannot tell. However, I might have expected the RSA along with other bodies with an interest in the future of design to be alarmed by the figures. The same is true for computing. I doubt whether the government will easily fulfil its desire to improve the skills in programming across the nation unless something is done to overcome a lack of trainees.

On May 8th I posted on this blog my concerns about recruitment for 2013, and that helped spark a debate about both where we train teachers and how many to train. My prediction for 2014 is that the challenge to recruitment may well be even tougher than last year, and the failure of the head of the NCTL to address the issue of teacher supply in his speech yesterday at the Academies Show, at least in the version I have seen, was a missed opportunity. In almost every subject the School Direct scheme under-performed higher education in recruitment, apparently leading one Vice Chancellor to reflect that universities rose to the government’s rescue. I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but how schools handle the significant increase in places allocated to them needs close monitoring. After all, in 2013, School Direct barely recruited more trainees than the former employment-based programmes achieved at the height of their popularity. That’s a long way off the total domination of teacher preparation ministers were championing only a year ago. This will be an interesting twelve months.