The new NPQs

Posted on June 14, 2022 by John Howson

The DfE has published a one-off document about participation in the National Professional Qualifications. Participation in the reformed NPQs in the academic year 2021 to 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) The report identifies the number of confirmed starts for all NPQs funded by the DfE by region. The data covers two starting points, Autumn 2021 and Spring 2022. The DfE make the point that starts don’t equate to actual numbers of people, as it is possible to start more than one NPQ.

The total starts over the two cohorts were 29,153. I though it would be interesting to see how that compared with the number of advertised vacancies in 2021 for promoted posts with a TLR and also for leadership posts across the primary and secondary sectors.

The data from TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk suggests that there were around 13,000 vacancies recorded during the whole of 2021 where an NPQ might be a useful part of a teacher’s application.

	Promoted post	Assistant Head	Deputy Head	Headteacher	Total for 2021
Primary	1261	651	965	1536	4413
Secondary	7023	1034	628	310	8995
	8284	1685	1593	1846	13408

Source: DfE

So, that might suggest that if registrations continue at this level with another intake in Autumn 2022 there is potentially a healthy supply of teachers able to seek promotion with recent experience of an NPQ assuming not too many multiple registrations by each participant.

The number of starts differed by regions according to the DfE statistics

Number of confirmed NPQ starts by region
Region	Confirmed starts (DfE-Funded)	TeachVac vacancies 2021	TeachVac vacancies as % of the total
North-east	1,561	390	25%
North-west	4,267	1560	37%
West Midlands	3,439	1282	37%
East Midlands	2,528	1029	41%
Yorkshire and the Humber	2,853	1286	45%
South-west	2,582	1249	48%
London	5,065	2530	50%
South-east	4,162	2438	59%
East of England	2,693	1644	61%
Not available	3		0%
Total	29,153	13408	46%

Source DfE and TeachVac data

In the North East, there a much larger number of NPQ starters across the two cohorts compared with promotion opportunities identified by TeachVac than in London and the Home Counties. This raises interesting questions about the allocation of resources across the regions that might encompass the ‘levelling up’ agenda and the extent to which NPQs are useful in providing a pool of teachers equipped for promotion or whether the NPQs are to help the school where the teacher is currently employed?

It would be interesting to see a further breakdown by the local authority where the teacher’s school was located to further match provision against need. For instance, was there any difference between the estuarine part of the East of England along the north bank of the Thames Estuary and the two counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. The same might be asked between Oxfordshire and Kent in the South East?

The data relates to ‘starters’. I hope the DfE will eventually publish data about completers. I remain in awe of teachers that take on professional development on top of a working week in the classroom. The fact that nearly 30,000 did so in a year when covid was rampant speaks volumes for the teaching profession.

150,000 views

Posted on June 14, 2022 by John Howson

Yesterday, this blog recorded the 150,000th view over the course of its lifetime. Not a huge number, especially when compared with those that bloggers that measure their followers in terms of such numbers and their views in the millions, but a pleasing response to the effort required to write the nearly 1,300 posts over the lifetime of the blog to date.

The blog has widened its scope since its inception in January 2013, when it first appeared. At that time, I was experiencing withdrawal symptoms from no longer facing the discipline required in writing a weekly column for the TES, as I had done for more than ten years. Over time, this blog has become a means of recording my thoughts on what has mattered to me about the changing face of education than just a replaced for that long-departed column.

As regular readers know, I am not a neutral commentator, but an active politician serving the Liberal Democrats as a councillor in Oxfordshire. My political beliefs undoubtedly colour my views on the many topics this blog has covered that have values associated with them. After all, education is not a value free activity, as the challenges of the past two years have so clearly demonstrated to us all.

There is, perhaps, less about the curriculum and assessment in this blog than some might wish and for a few perhaps too much about teachers and the labour market for teachers. However, counting heads and teachers has been something of a lifetime’s work for me. I first started counting headteachers in the early 1980s and apart for the period between 2011 and 2013 have never stopped doing so since then.

My aim has been posts of around 500 words, although a few substantially longer ones, such as my submission to the Carter Review, and transcripts of various talks that I have given, have appeared from time to time. There have also been some shorter posts, although WordPress informs me that the average length has been nearer to 600 than 500 words. Perhaps some of that is down to the manner in which tables and statistics are counted.

So, if you have read this far into this post, my challenge to you, either as a regular reader or someone that has dipped in and out from time to time, is to ask you to put in the comment section the post would most want to highlight.

And above all thank you for both taking the time to read my posts and to communicate via comments and emails your views to me. I have much appreciated the dialogue.

There have been times when I thought about stopping this blog, but I would now like to see out a decade of writing and then reassess where the blog goes from there. Podcasts and even videos are now more fashionable that just the written word, but both are technologies I have yet to conquer. Should I bother? There is time to ponder that question.

Do you want to work in a selective school?

Posted on June 13, 2022 by John Howson

This bog post was first Posted on August 7, 2016 with the title ‘Do you want to work in a grammar school?’ and is now reposted in view of the revival of the debate about selective schools after a reader reminded me of its existence. Although the world has moved on in many respects – a National Funding Formula being one of them – the questions asked in 2016 remain pertinent today.

Grammar schools were a product of the nineteenth century that lingered overlong into the twentieth and have no place in the modern world. We should not ensure the effective education of those gifted and talented in some areas by separating them from the rest of society at an early age. Even where their education is fundamentally different, whether for future ballet dancers, musicians, footballers or choristers, some degree of integration with others less skilled in these areas should be the norm.

Since intellectual ability isn’t fully developed at eleven, the grounds for grammar schools seem more social than educational, even when cloaked in the guise of meritocracy. Scare resources are best employed developing better education for all, not in keeping a few Tory voters in the fold.

Before any decision is taken, and this wasn’t a manifesto pledge, the government should undertake some polling on the effect of the introduction of new selective schools across the country on both the current teacher workforce as well as the views of those that might want to become a teacher.

For existing secondary school teachers, the question is simple: If your school were to lose 30% of its most able pupils, would you continue to teach here?

For potential teachers the question is: would you be willing to teach in a school where 30% of the age range didn’t attend?

For primary school teachers, the question has to be whether they would prepare children for the selection process?

Making a teacher supply crisis worse won’t help the education of those not selected for a grammar school place.

To introduce grammar schools without a comprehensive education plan for every child the State has been entrusted with educating is unbelievably short-sighted: something only a narrow-minded government would contemplate. To cloak the introduction of grammar schools in the social mobility agenda without offering any evidence that such schools create more mobility than the alternative is to pander to the views of the few and to disregard the needs of the many.

What plans do the government have for those left out of a grammar school in a bulge year because grammar school places cannot be turned on an off? Will the government create a system to cope with 30% of the peak pupil numbers in the mid-2020s and allow either a less rigorous selection procedure until then or will it leave places empty? The alternative seems to me to be that it will set the limit on places now and see more parents denied places as pupil numbers increase?

What is certain is that the present per pupil funding formula cannot work within a two-tier system as the redundancies in Kent have already shown. Perhaps this is the real reason why the National Funding Formula consultation has been delayed, to allow for the incorporation of a different method of funding of grammar schools to non-selective schools within the new system?

Will Council taxpayers in areas that don’t want selective education be forced to pay the transport costs of pupils attending such schools and will the government reimburse them or expect them to take the cash away from other hard pressed services?

I am all in favour of local democracy in education, but not in a government sponsored free-for-all.

TeachVac’s intelligence reports

Posted on June 13, 2022 by John Howson

TeachVac has created a new suite of reports on the labour market for teachers. These report on the current state of play in the market for specific areas. However, reports by subjects and phase across wider areas are also available on request to those interested in specific curriculum areas. http://www.teachvac.co.uk

The basic report tracks the vacancies for teachers from classroom to the head’s study across schools in a given area and reports the finding by subjects or the primary phase in three categories:

The reports can be tailored to cover any grouping of schools, although local authorities and dioceses are the most common formats. However, MATs and parliamentary constituency-based report are also possible, along with reports for schools in either Opportunity Areas or the new Education Investment Zones or whatever they are called today.

Academies

Maintained schools

Private Schools

Reports are produced up to the end of the month, with current report for 2022 covering the period from January to the end of May 2022.

The reports are currently useful for those considering the shape of teacher preparation provision in the future by demonstrating the actual need for teachers in specific parts of the country across both the State and private school markets. The DFE’s own evidence doesn’t take into account the private sector demand for teachers and misses out on some school in the TeachVac pool.

TeachVac’s reports can also be useful for those concerned with professional development by identifying middle and senior leader vacancies where the new postholder may need some professional development.

The basic reports on an individual or group of local authorities costs £250 per primary or secondary sector for a 12-month subscription. Prices for other grouping or for multiple groupings are negotiable depending upon the amount of work required.

Sample reports are available on request from either John Howson at dataforeducation@gmail.com or enquiriies@oxteachserv.com

Reports can be generated for data up to the end of the previous month in a matter of days once an order has been placed.

Elections in School: Use PR

Posted on June 12, 2022 by John Howson

Yesterday, I spoke at the Oxford rally of the Make Votes Matter campaign.

The event was to recognise the Suffrage Movement’s 1913 Great Pilgrimage in support of votes for women. In 1913, the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies (the non-violent section and the majority of supporters of the women’s suffrage campaign) organised a nationwide pilgrimage to demonstrate to the government of the day the widespread support for women’s suffrage. They marched and held meeting along the eight major roads in Britain. As a part of the pilgrimage one route passed through Oxford and included a meeting at the Town Hall. (From notes provided at yesterday’s meeting)

In 2022, the aims of the rally were to celebrate the 100 years since any women in Britain were allowed to vote for the first time and also to campaign for a proportional representation system of voting to replace the First Past the Post system. It was in connection with the second aim that I was asked to speak as a former Chair of Oxfordshire County Council, alongside speakers from other political parties and a historian and an authority on voting systems.

I ended my support for voting by proportional representation with a call to arms, suggesting that all school elections, whether the mock elections at the time of a general election or for school council positions should be run using a form of proportional representation. I would also go further and suggest that all elections for school governors should also use such a system as part of any ballot, although I recognise that such ballots are few and far between these days.

England is looking increasingly out of date in retaining the First Past the Post system for elections. No system is entirely perfect, but the present system does create significant unfairness. There are no Conservative Councillors in Oxford at any level, denying their supporters any say in democratic government. In some other local authority areas other parties poll a consistent share of the vote, but never see a candidate elected. Apparently, the only other country in Europe to use this system for elections is Belarus. I am not sure that I want to be associated with that State in this way.

You can find out more at the following website Make Votes Matter – Proportional Representation

Government action on teacher supply crisis

Posted on June 11, 2022 by John Howson

Yesterday, the government made two important announcements. Firstly, they capped the rate of interest on student loans at 7.3%, instead of the projected rate of more than 12% from September. The latter rate was based upon current rates of inflation. As the government press notice helpfully explains:

‘This is the largest scale reduction of student loan interest rates on record and will mean, for example, a borrower with a student loan balance of £45,000 would reduce their accumulating interest by around £180 per month compared to 12% interest rates. This is on the total value of the loan, as monthly repayments do not change.’ Student loan interest rates capped – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

So, the balance doesn’t change and could still be increasing if a graduate’s earnings are not enough to match repayment rates. However, the move must be regarded as at least a step in the right direction. Regular readers know that I don’t think that graduates should need to take out loans to train to teach in state schools.

The other piece of news way a widening of the welcome to teachers trained anywhere in the world by the DfE, and thus no longer limiting QTS to just EU/EEA and Gove approved countries. England opens doors to world’s best teachers – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) There is a section on the Teach in England pages on the DfE website dedicated to helping teachers from overseas teach in England Teach in England if you trained overseas | Get Into Teaching (education.gov.uk)

The site helpfully reminds teachers about the 4-year rule that doesn’t require QTS

Employing overseas teachers without QTS (the 4-year rule)

Overseas teachers can teach in maintained schools and non-maintained special schools in England without qualified teacher status (QTS) for up to 4 years. This is called the 4-year rule.

It is illegal for overseas teachers to continue working as a teacher in a maintained school or non-maintained special school in England for longer than 4 years without QTS unless there is another legal basis to teach.

The 4-year rule applies to overseas teachers who meet all of the following conditions:

they have qualified as a teacher in a country outside of the UK
they have completed a course of teacher training that is recognised by the competent authority of that country
they are employed in maintained schools and non-maintained special schools, but not a pupil referral unit

Bizarrely, the DfE then reintroduce the term ‘instructor’ that disappeared in favour of ‘unqualified teacher’ more than a decade ago. It would, of course, be insulting to call these teachers ‘unqualified’. Here’s what the DfE says

‘There is no definition of special qualifications and experience. These are matters that the local authority or governing body need to be satisfied with. An overseas teacher can only be employed as an instructor if they have the special qualifications or experience needed for the instructor post.’

Overseas teachers can also work as teaching assistants (without QTS) for any period of time.’

Make of that what you will. However, I take it to mean that the four-year time limit can be disregarded on the basis of experience alone due to the judicious use of the word ‘or’.

Of course, all overseas teachers without ‘leave to remain’ will need to meet the demands of the points-based immigration system introduced by the present government. The scheme may limit the numbers actually recruited.

The government as also been putting flesh on the bones of its iQTS scheme for teachers to train overseas.

How all these measures dovetail into the re-accreditation of teacher education to produce a holistic strategy for staffing state schools across England remains a bit of a mystery to me. But no doubt Ministers have a cunning plan to ensure no pupil is taught by a teacher lacking the appropriate skills and qualifications

BEd degrees are best?

Posted on June 10, 2022 by John Howson

According to data published by the DfE yesterday, the undergraduate route into teaching might be the least costly way of entering the profession. Joining a salaried scheme comes next, and taking a postgraduate course is the most expensive route, at least in the short-term. Graduate labour market statistics: 2021 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

According to the DfE report graduates in the 21-30 age group had an average salary of £27,500. Any new teacher from an undergraduate route that can beat that average on entry into teaching is going to be better of that someone starting a postgraduate teaching course where they have to pay a fee to take the course of training. That’s before the still relatively generous teachers’ pension contribution is taken into account.

The average salary for postgraduates in the 21-30 age bracket in the DfE analysis was £32,000, already above the announced £30,000 national starting salary for teachers. By joining Teach First or another salaried scheme, graduates can mitigate against part of the loss of earning in becoming a teacher.

The problem for students is that undergraduate routes into teaching barely exist for secondary school subjects and have been cut back recently for potential primary teachers. It would be a supreme irony if less well qualified eighteen year olds we accepted onto undergraduate degrees to train as a teacher than those accepted onto graduate courses, but ended up earning more than their compatriots that opted for a subject based degree on leaving school rather than vocational training.

I have long argued that if we pay trainee soldiers, including officer cadets at Sandhurst that are graduates, we should also pay trainee teachers. However, The Treasury has always taken fright at the cost of doing so. Now might be a good time to review this policy with the same set of data from the DfE also showing 87% of young postgraduates in employment with almost 73% in high-skilled employment. Although a slight drop from the 2020 data that still doesn’t leave much of a pool to attract to teaching unless the pay and conditions are right. Even more worrying was the increase in employment rate for graduates, both overall and in high-skilled employment. Being a graduate seemed to be a better prospect overall than not taking a degree whatever some people say about too many students going to university.

As expected, being female and from a minority community doesn’t help earning overall. Since starting salaries in teaching should not discriminate on anything except the geographical location of the school, these groups might be expected to benefit from a teaching career in salary terms. Certainly, as the previous post noted, the percentage of females in the teaching workforce has continued to increase.

This data was compiled before the present cost of living crisis that will be a major test for the Secretary of State for Education. In a labour market where teaching is now a global career, and trainee numbers have been insufficient for years, letting pay and conditions deteriorate too far could be a calamity for UK plc and the future economic success of the country.

Worse secondary PTR

Posted on June 9, 2022 by John Howson

The DfE has today published its annual surveys of the workforce and pupils and schools School workforce in England: November 2021 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) and Schools, pupils and their characteristics: January 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

This post contains some headline thoughts about the data in the first of these two reports

The number of classroom teacher vacancies at the census point was at its highest since before 2010/11, at 1,368 compared with around 1,000 in November 2019, before the pandemic changed all our lives. Part of increase may be down to pandemic and recruitment patterns. But it also provided a warning that the recruitment round in 2022 might be challenging, as it has been. Yesterday TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk recorded its 70,000^th vacancy so far in 2022: a record for June, and more than in the whole of 2021.

Secondary PTRs at 16.7 are the highest (worst) since well before 2010/11 when the ratio was just 14.8. This is partly down to demographic bulge going through the secondary sector. 2010/11 was close to the bottom of the demographic cycle for pupil numbers in the secondary sector. I expect ratios to continue to worsen over next couple of years, especially if teachers’ pay increases are not fully funded and schools seek to drawn down reserves to pay inflation matching pay increase.

The retention of early-stage teachers appears to have improved with retention of Year 2 of service teachers up from 80.9% to 82.7%, and Year 3 from 75.8% to 77.0%. Retention also improved in teachers with 4-6 years of service, but worsened among those with 7-9 years of service. Teachers with one year of service also left at a greater rate with just 87.5% remaining, compared to 88.1% the previous year. This is still better than in the period between 2012 and 2018. Might there be a pandemic effect? Will this level of retention continue?

Almost 10% of teachers now come from non-White ethnic backgrounds, with teachers from the Asian community the fasted growing group, but progress is still slow nationally.

There are fewer men in teaching with the percentage down from 25.6% the previous year to 24.5% in November 2021 Men work mostly in secondary schools, with only 35,000 men in primary sector in November 2021.

It looks as if backroom staff numbers have been cut. Whether or not this was to support frontline teachers and TA numbers isn’t clear, but the increase in teachers was not enough to offset worsening of secondary PTR noted above. Whether those PTRs worsened less in schools supported to help ‘levelling up’ isn’t clear from the basic data, but is worth exploring in the context of the looming hard National Funding Formula.

The number of teacher entrants rebounded from the previous years low, but is still not back to the level of the longer-term trend in the high 40,000s. This may partly explain the issues with the labour market in 2022, where schools are often finding recruitment challenging.

The number of leavers also increased, but again has not reached levels seen before the pandemic. There appears to have been no wholesale departure of senior leaders as a result of the pandemic. There appears to be an issue with the data on the number of deaths among teachers, so we cannot fully consider whether the pandemic had an effect on the teaching profession from this data. The pandemic has also led to the DfE not producing data on teacher absence during 2020/21 as part of these statistics.

In November 2021, when schools completed the School Workforce Census for 2020/21 the nation was still struggling with the pandemic, but the Omicron variant had yet to appear. Secondary schools were not better staffed based upon the PTR as a measure than the previous year, but retention did seem to have improved for some groups of early career teachers. Whether this is the start of a trend or just a pause on a downward trend we will need to wait another year to discover.

In-year admissions matter

Posted on June 8, 2022 by John Howson

Each year thousands of children move to a different school. In some cases, it is because either a parent has a new job or has been relocated by an employer to a new location. Information in many parts of the country about schools with places available is still as sketchy as when I first started advising relocation firms some forty years ago.

Finding a house is easy, plug in a price band and see what comes up on the search engines. But, what’s the point of buying a house where there are no school places? Children may face either a long period out of school or a long journey to the nearest school with an available place.

So, here’s an idea. A traffic light system to tell parents about the state of schools on local authority web sites and linked to a page on the DfE site.

Here’s how it might work.

Green – places available in-year for all or most year groups

Amber – some places in some year groups

Red – few places or even no places and not worth joining the ‘waiting list’ unless you live very near the school.

Of course, it leaves the system open to gaming – as if the present system was free of such tactics – by naming a full school and expecting transport to be paid for if the nearest school with a place is more than three miles away. But, the risk of that approach is that you get the school nobody else wants to go to.

The situation is especially acute for children with an EHCP and needing a place in a special school. Managing those moves for often severely challenged young people can be especially difficult mid-year. I would encourage employers to take that into account when arranging start dates for the parent.

The issue of in-year admissions is especially challenging in some areas at present because of the influx of children and their mothers from the Ukraine. Often host families live in areas of over-subscribed schools and that can put pressure for local authorities, especially where most of the secondary schools are academies. Hence my traffic light idea. After all, parents don’t understand that local authorities cannot just tell an academy to admit a child.

As the current Schools Bill is wending its way through parliament it might be worth the government either bringing forth the secondary legislation to return control of in-year admissions to local authorities that was mentioned in the last two White Papers or adding a clause to the Bill agreeing to do so within six months of the commencement date of the Act.

As regular readers of this blog know, another group that could benefit from this change are children taken into care and moved away from their local area, usually for very good reasons. This almost always means a change of school. If you want to know why I feel so strongly abut this, search for the post about Jacob on this blog.

Administrative changes need champions, and this is one that I hope many will champion.

May 2022 – a month to remember

Posted on June 1, 2022 by John Howson

May 2022 was a record month for advertised teacher vacancies in England. TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk the job board I helped create eight years ago reached the milestone of one million hits on its website in a single month for the first time. Overall, in the secondary sector, TeachVac recorded details of more than 14,000 classroom teacher vacancies, including those with TLRs attached during May 2022. There were also almost six and a half thousand primary vacancies during the month.

In the light of what will be a challenging period between now and early 2023, when the next influx of jobseekers enters the market, TeachVac launched its Premium Service of No match: No fee to put subscribing schools at the head of the daily match list. Take up of the service that costs only £1 per match, with a maximum annual charge per school of £1,000 for secondary schools and £250 for primary schools, has already exceeded expectations, and more schools and MATS are on the way.

Schools in the South East should be especially interested in accessing TeachVac’s pool of job seekers. In the South East region, TeachVac recorded more than 3,000 vacancies during May, nearly 1,000 more vacancies than last year. Finding candidates in many subjects for any late September vacancies, and especially for unplanned January 2023 vacancies, will be tough in many different subject areas.

Combining history with Religious Education; PE with science and art with design and technology and wording vacancies advertising appropriately might just be a cheaper strategy for schools than spending lots of money on advertising. Using no find no fee agencies can also pay dividends, but can be expensive

Schools shouldn’t forget teachers returning for service overseas. Southern Hemisphere schools end their school year in December, so staff can be available for a January start and certainly a spring half-term arrival after allowing for time to relocate.

The government’s announcements on a new graduate visa scheme may also prove useful to schools, especially if the Migration Advisory Committee were to accept that there were now teacher shortages in more subjects than at their last review of the market.

As I wrote in my previous post, the closure of the civil service Fast Track Scheme for 2023 might attract some of those aiming for the civil service into teaching instead. This could be good news for Teach First next year.

Pressures in the primary sector may be more regional than in the secondary sector, with parts of the north of England unlikely to experience significant shortages, except in some rural areas and in schools in challenging circumstances.

The present re-accreditation of ITT providers and the new overarching framework for ITT, a framework that reminds me of the Area Training Organisational structure of the post-war period, must not create parts of the country where too few teachers are being trained for the needs of the local schools.

Finally, someone should ensure that career changers unable to move to a job anywhere outside their local area are not ignored as too expensive by schools. We cannot afford to waste any talent.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: education