Tag Archives: education

Lotteries for teachers not pupils

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This blog has already registered the fact that tomorrow, the 3rd of March, is ‘national admissions day’ when parents in England will hear about whether their offspring have been offered a place at the secondary school of their choice. As has already been revealed by the media, more schools are using lotteries to select pupils where there is over-subscription, often as part of a ‘banding’ system, eroding the number of schools merely using distance as a criteria.

Now the whole issue of lotteries for school places was comprehensively discussed by Conall Boyle in his book ‘Lotteries for Education’, published in 2010 by Imprint Academic. In those days, most academies were parts of chains, and local authorities still had responsibility for admissions to the majority of other schools, so the issues raised in my earlier post about unsuccessful lottery entrants were largely dealt with in theory by Boyle.

One notion that he does discuss in the book is whether it might be cheaper and more efficient to assign teachers to schools by lottery, and place pupils at their local schools. He credits The Guardian article of the 1st April 1998, by Martin Wainwright, who picked up on Boyle’s mention of the idea by a blogger – an early exponent of the art – who had suggested it as a way of saving parents having to shop-around.

Now, where teachers are a scare resource, it might be an interesting way of ensuring some schools don’t hoard say Physics or Mathematics teachers in order to ensure good results throughout their schools. It might also sort out any price competition for these scare resources resulting from the abolition of national pay scales, and the introduction of a market derived free-for-all in wages.

To achieve this end would require a radical ditching of the philosophy of parental choice, and the unfettered use of markets, and the introduction of the notion of a national teaching stock. Is this something already being considered by parts of the DfE since it is not a million miles away from David Laws idea of national leaders of education assignable to particular schools, although he is looking to place these leaders in failing schools rather than randomly.

Taking the concept further might be too radical a step at present, but there does need to be a discussion about the national requirement for higher quality education, and the current use of the market to allocate teaching resources, especially if the winners are teachers able to enhance their earnings because of their scarcity even though they were content to enter teaching and work for a national wage. Allocating teachers by lottery would also be against the philosophy behind the School Direct training route, where schools are encouraged to train and recruit staff. School Direct doesn’t overcome the issue of the allocation of new teachers unless all schools are involved. Even then it may just move the problem to the selection stage from the current end of training job market.

If the emphasis is switching from allowing parents to choose schools to a desire either to create a fairer system or better still to raise the standard of schooling across the country, there is certainly a need to discuss how teachers are distributed through the system. Might a lottery be the answer?

Good, but with some worrying features

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The February data relating to applications for teaching preparation courses looks, on the surface, like good news for the government. Applications rose between January and February, from just over 81,000 to more than 102,000; an increase of about 20%. Not bad in a month. There was a similar percentage increase in the number of applicants, from just less than 30,000 to 36,600, suggesting that many applicants used all three of their possible choices.

Across the UK, acceptances increased from over 7,000 to more than 17,000, although the bulk of these are conditional offers – presumably awaiting the outcome of the skills tests. More worrying is the 12% of applications withdrawn although some may affect only one application since the number of applicants withdrawing from the scheme is only 390, or barely 1%. More worrying might be the 5,100 applicants where no offer was made. This is 14% of applicants. A further 25% of applicants are waiting an offer from a provider, and there are more than 5,000 interviews pending.

Applications are broadly in line with the share of places on the different routes, with HE receiving 58%, down from a 60% share in January, and School Direct 37% up from 36%. SCITT have attracted 5% of applications. (HE has 56% of places, SCITTs 7%, and School Direct 37%). So, what matters is that acceptances in future are in line with applications on all three routes. As there is considerable over-allocation of places in many secondary subjects, there is still the possibility of over-recruitment in some popular subjects, or subjects where the bursary proves especially popular. However, it is too early to tell exactly what is going on in relation to acceptances by subject, not least because the figures are not presented in a very helpful manner.

As might be expected at this time of year, applications grew at a faster rate from the older age groups of career switchers, with the 29+ groups showing the largest percentage increases in applicants, and the under-21s the smallest percentage increase; presumably as they focused on the final examinations rather than worried about course applications.

By next month there should be a much clearer picture about acceptances, since many of the 25,000 or so applicants to courses in England noted in January should have been processed by then. At that point, and certainly by the May 1st data, it should be possible to see what is happening across the different subjects sufficiently clearly to make some predictions. Hopefully, it will be good news for the government, and eventually for schools looking to employ these would-be teachers in September 2015.

Working for success: planning for failure

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The news that an academy chain has lost responsibility for 10 schools raises a number of interesting questions. The most obvious is who has the responsibility to find these children an appropriate education? In the present instance, the DfE seems to be doing that by looking for a replacement sponsor or sponsors. How long should they be allowed if it is a question of teaching and learning standards?

No doubt the Laws’ Leaders, as David Laws’ new national leaders are likely to be dubbed, could be sent in to lead individual schools during any interim while new sponsors are brought on board, but what about the ownership of the assets? The situation becomes even more interesting if it were, say, a church group of academies. Would the solution be to change diocese, but who would own the assets if the schools had previously been voluntary aided? Suppose the Trustees decided that they didn’t want anyone else running the school, and just effectively closed it down. Who finds the pupils new schools? Generally, when a private school goes bust, which is often at short notice, and frequently just before a term starts or ends, and the local authority steps in to help find places for the pupils that need them. However, where it is no longer the admissions authority for most schools in a locality, how will it do this if the other academies refuse to cooperate because the in-coming pupils might affect their examination results or their balanced admissions policy?

As with the problem highlighted in my previous post, what happens if any closure affects the transport budget for the local authority? Will the DfE pick up the extra costs or establish some form of insurance scheme?

Presumably, when a new sponsor takes over the running of part of an existing chain there will have to be a financial reckoning as well, especially as academy budgets run to a different cycle than that of local authorities and central government. Will any existing service contracts with the academy chain be automatically continued or regarded as up for renewal as a result of the loss of responsibility?

Hopefully, these issues will be rare occurrences, but new developments in any field often come with associated failures, so they must not have been unexpected. When a whole local authority is judged unacceptable, it is clear what happens, as it is when a single school fails. However, the failure of a group or part of a group of schools brings these fresh challenges, especially, potentially, in relation to the assets.

All these questions highlight the desperate need for an effective middle tier for state education in England operating within an overall framework that clearly delineates areas of responsibility. The relative functions of the national government at Westminster, local authorities, the churches and other faith groups, and the non-aligned academy chains, plus the large number of independent sponsor academies, all need to be able to operate within some form of secure and understandable framework. At present, especially for the primary sector, the fastest growing area for academy development at present, the rules are still unclear. Approaching four years since the 2010 Academy Act became law this is not an acceptable position of schooling across England to find itself in.

Playing the school place lottery

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In the 1970s, when I started teaching, the issue of banding was seen as contentious by many educationalists as it felt like social engineering. Nowadays, some academies, and other schools, have not only adopted the practice but have also, in some cases, gone further and turned admission into a straightforward lottery. In a few cases they have combined the two approaches and created lotteries for each group. For parents in those rural areas where there is in reality only one school their children can attend this must seem like some form of fantasy world.

When lotteries were first mooted local authorities still managed the admissions process for almost all schools. Now over half of secondary schools are their own admissions authorities. That probably doesn’t pose a problem at present as we are close to the bottom of the demographic cycle and pressure on secondary school places is not yet intense across mush of England. However, in five years time things will be different. Imagine a world where all secondary schools are their own admissions authorities, and use a banded lottery system. You are a parent of a child in the middle band – an average kind of Jo(e) – What happens if your first choice school is over-subscribed and you lose the lottery? Suppose the same is true of your second and third schools. No problem, the local authority must find you a school for Jo(e), and if it is more than the statutory walking distance they must pick up the travel bill as well under present arrangements.

So, the middle class parent that once might have bid up the price of houses in the catchment area of a local school they wanted their child to attend could now become a burden on the taxpayer as the taxi arrives every morning for the school-run to a distant school. Now that won’t happen in London because there is free travel across the Capital for secondary school pupils, so parents wouldn’t have to pay as they would elsewhere.

Indeed, the concern over the freedom schools have to impose financial burdens on local authorities through their admissions policies is no doubt behind the rapid move to a ‘nearest school’ transport policy by many local authorities. In Oxfordshire that has not gone down well with some parents whose school will be altered as a result of the new policy.

In the end the question for the Treasury may well be whether it is cheaper to let schools picks pupils on a basis or ‘fairness’ or for parents to exercise parental choice regardless of their child’s ability. What may not be acceptable will be each individual school creating a burden on local authorities through admissions policies that push up transport bills paid for from Council Tax just so that they can say they have a fair spread of pupils.

Shanghaied but not qualified: the fate of too many maths teachers?

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In their recent evidence to the School Teachers’ Review body (STRB) the government admitted that it would need an extra 5,000 or so qualified mathematics teachers for every child in a secondary school to be taught be a ‘specialist’ mathematics teacher as defined by the Department for Education. It will, therefore, be interesting to see whether the ministerial led delegation going to Shanghai to study maths teaching asks the question how many of the teachers in Shanghai are fully qualified?

With nearly one in six teachers not fully qualified in England, what gain in the OECD’s PISA tests could be achieved just by improving the quality of the teaching even to the standard where the percentage of pupils achieving the expected progress between Key Stages 2 and 4 reached the same level as for English as a subject. Of course, if the government delegation comes back clambering for more hours of mathematics teaching to match the 138 hours of teaching common across much of South East Asia, then each class will need an extra 20-22 hours of teaching per week; and that will need yet more mathematics teachers. Add in an increase required for post-16 maths teaching if all students had to study maths to eighteen and the number of extra teachers required rises still further.

On the back of this demand, the 30 schools funded to act as mathematics hubs looks like small beer given the size of the problem. The ratio is something like 100 secondary schools and 600 primary schools per hub. At that rate any individual teacher might have as much chance of attending a hub as a flood victim had of seeing the army arriving bearing a supply of sandbags. In the 1970s, almost all of the 150 or so local authorities had a dedicated professional development centre with trained maths staff, including advisers and advisory teachers. The dismantling of this infrastructure by successive governments no doubt ensured the quality of maths teaching would suffer, as it probably did in other subjects as well. If not, why are the hubs being established?

If the delegation returns from Shanghai with the message that improving maths teaching is more important that establishing free schools and wasting money on brokers trying to persuade primary schools to become an academy it will have been taxpayers money well spent.

Tackling the primary sector teaching of maths to children of all abilities is an even more challenging task than dealing with the teaching of maths in secondary schools, and I doubt whether the hub secondary schools will have the necessary expertise to tackle the challenge. However, the teaching of maths in the primary sector is part of a much larger issue in relation to how teachers for that sector are prepared.

Overall, it would help parents to know who was teaching their offspring if Qualified Teacher Status was not a universal qualification, but was limited to those subjects and phases where a teacher had been appropriately prepared. But, since the Secretary of State doesn’t believe preparation is necessary for teaching there is little chance of that happening this side of the general election.

Progress, but not enough where it really matters

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How much difference is the Pupil Premium cash making for secondary school pupils? Not a lot so far if the latest DfE Statistics on GCSE outcomes are right. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/280689/SFR05_2014_Text_FINAL.pdf  On the wider measure, the attainment gap for the percentage achieving 5 or more GCSEs at grade A* to C or equivalent has narrowed by 8.0 percentage points between 2008/09 and 2012/13, with 69.3 per cent of pupils eligible for FSM achieving this indicator in 2012/13, compared with 85.3 per cent of all other pupils. However, the attainment gap between the percentage achieving 5 or more GCSEs at grade A* to C or equivalent including English and mathematics has narrowed by only 1.0 percentage point between 2008/09 and 2012/13 with 37.9 per cent of pupils known to be eligible for FSM achieving this indicator compared with 64.6 per cent of all other pupils. White boys are still faring badly, with just27.9% gaining the key 5A*-Cs measure including English and Mathematics. This compares with 43.1 of Black boys with similar characteristics, and 39.6% of black Caribbean boys with FSM.

Girls continue to outperform boys at all the main attainment indicators at key stage 4. The gap between the percentage of girls and boys making expected progress in English is 12.4 percentage points. This gap has narrowed slightly by 0.6 percentage points since 2011/12. The gap between the percentage of girls and boys making expected progress in mathematics is narrower than for expected progress in English at 4.7 percentage points, which has remained broadly the same since 2011/12.

All ethnic groups have made progress between 2008/98 and 2012/13in terms of the percentage of pupils obtaining 5A*-Cs including English and mathematics, although the Traveller of Irish Heritage, gypsy and Roma group still remain a long way adrift of other groups despite the small improvement in their performance on this measure. Pupils from a black background remain among the lowest performing groups, although they have shown the largest improvement. The percentage of black pupils achieving 5 or more GCSEs at grade A* to C or equivalent including English and mathematics GCSEs or iGCSEs is 2.5 percentage points below the national average. This gap has narrowed by 1.7 percentage points since 2011/12 but over the longer term has narrowed by 3.7 percentage points since 2008/09.

Outcomes for pupils with SEN remain disappointing. The attainment gap between the percentage of pupils with and without any identified SEN achieving 5 or more GCSEs at grade A* to C or equivalent including English and mathematics GCSEs or iGCSEs is 47.0 percentage points – 70.4 per cent of pupils with no identified SEN achieved this compared with 23.4 per cent of pupils with SEN. This gap has widened by 2.1 percentage points since 2008/09 but has remained broadly unchanged since 2011/12. A lower percentage of pupils with SEN made expected progress in both English and mathematics. The gap is wider for mathematics at 37.0 percentage points, compared to a gap of 30.9 percentage points for English. Both gaps have widened slightly between 2011/12 and 2012/13 (by 0.6 percentage points for mathematics and 0.7 percentage points for English).

On these measures there is still much to be achieved with the target groups. It is to be hoped that by increasing the level of the Pupil Premium more for primary pupils than their secondary compatriots fewer children will enter the secondary phase of schooling unable to access the teaching made available to them through a lack of the basic skills.

Should women teachers wear trousers?

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Is Ofsted’s latest desire to remove scruffy teachers exhibiting poor standards of behaviour real or just another part of the inter-nicene battle currently being fought within Whitehall? I mentioned in my last post that the revised Ofsted framework would consider issues of dress among trainees and new teachers. Interestingly, I have yet to see any evidence from Ofsted to justify this change in the inspection regime. Given that inspectors carry out more than 9,000 visits to schools each year that are regarded as inspections they probably already know what dress standards are like. Backing the need for change with evidence would have provided more credibility for the decision as well as perhaps identifying what is acceptable. Can women still wear trousers or do the fashion inspectors want a return to either dresses or jumpers and A-line skirts? Must men wear ties along with jackets? Will exceptions be made in both cases on the sports fields and in the gym, workshops, and kitchens?

Based upon views from TV documentaries, and not just of the main characters, is how teachers dress really an issue in secondary schools. So, is it the primary sector Ofsted has in mind? Does the HMCI of Schools want formal dress for those teaching five-year olds, and will it extend beyond the teachers to classroom assistants? Is the policy really about distinguishing teachers from others working with children so that they stand out in a crowded assembly hall as the formally dressed adults? Trainee teachers need to know the standards they will be expected to be judged against. What does ‘neat and tidy’ mean, and is it different in West London to say Northumberland?

I went back and reviewed the findings of a survey I conducted for ATL in 1996 that included a question about spending on clothing by trainee teachers. 80% of trainee teachers that completed the survey claimed to have had to buy suitable clothes for the school environment during their training. I observed at the time that perhaps the expenditure was necessary because the casual attire worn by many students on campus wasn’t acceptable elsewhere, presumably including in the classroom.

Personally, I have always taken a relaxed view of these issues, as I always did when discussing whether pupils should stand up when an adult enters the classroom. There are occasions when it is appropriate, and times when it isn’t. Now both fashions and times change, but whether Ofsted monitors or sets the standards is a key question? We have a profession where around half of teachers are below the age of 35, so how does that age gap between many classroom teachers and those that inspect them affect attitudes between the generations over these issues?

Is the issue of dress among trainees in the classroom really a chimera created by Ofsted for its own purposes or does the HMCI have the evidence to justify the change to the framework? How strict will inspectors be, and will it deter some creative and divergent thinkers from becoming teachers if applied too rigidly? Without the evidence we shall never know.

Never mind the quality, feel the width

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The announcement today by Ofsted that it proposes to change the inspection framework for ITE partnerships from May, effectively immediately after the 13 week consultation period ends, http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/proposed-revisions-framework-for-inspecting-initial-teacher-education-consultation-document suggests there is still no answer to the basic question; who is in overall charge of teacher supply policy?

In a year where there are already insufficient trainee teachers in some subjects, making it harder to enter and then to pass the preparation period risks making that situation worse. If that happens, who will teach the children in those schools that cannot recruit a teacher; and will these schools be in the leafy suburbs or the inner cities?

It is now time someone took overall control of how we train and then offer employment to teachers. Are schools and higher education departments of education agents of central government or independent operators in market-based environment working within a regulatory framework?

For design and technology students, a subject area of key importance where the government had difficulty securing enough training places for 2014, presumably because recruitment had been so poor in 2013, the notion of changing the ‘standard of professional dress’ needed in the kitchen or workshop might be open to debate. Will such teachers now need one set of clothes for when they are with their tutor group, and another when they are actually teaching? Will this promote a return to the use of academic gowns as cover-ups for shabby suits, patched elbows, and no doubt the ties that male teachers will be required to wear at all times.

More seriously, providers have no control over where their former trainees find a teaching job. Many years ago I questioned the problem of trainees that learnt their craft skills in a cathedral city, but ended up working in an inner city. The cultural and other shocks for the successes of our education system learning to work as teachers with the whole range of learners have been brought home very clearly in the two recent TV series. Preparing teachers for the ‘real world’ in its many manifestations is a key part of training, but at present using their skills and qualities to best effect as they emerge during training isn’t part of the deal.

Are Ofsted really pointing to a disconnect in the profession between training and employment that has affected the primary sector ever since training was taken away from the employers and moved to higher education, where training for selective schools and the independent sector already mostly took place to the extent that there was any training at all.

Ofsted, do at least seem to be on the side of the need for a training requirement; otherwise what’s the point of the framework? However it isn’t clear whether they support the notion of any school-based trainees teaching from day or accept the need for some initial input such as the 30 days offered by Teach First. What may be more important is how trainees in schools with few behaviour-management issues are prepared for more challenging situations where they might eventually want or be required to work? Is training entirely in one school a good idea, or does a period in more than one school enhance and deepen the experience of learning how to become a teacher?

It seems to me that changing the framework for inspection without clear ministerial guidance on the training process, and its link to employment, is like putting the mobile phone before the mast to update the cart before the horse analogy.

You cannot penalise a provider that has no control over where a trainee takes a job unless you make it an absolute requirement as to what needs to be covered during the training period, and make that the same for all providers.

Ofsted, the NCTL through the DfE, and the employers of teachers, all need to sort out a framework for producing both enough teachers, and teachers of high quality so that we can move the school system forward. At present, what is emerging is a muddle that might have serious consequences for teacher supply at a time when the school population is rising rapidly.

Am I a blob revisited

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At the end of March last year Mr Gove attacked those who opposed his views as being ‘blobs’. I wrote a blog about whether or not I fell into that category on the 25th March in case anyone is interested in seeing how the debate has moved on during the past year.

I was at one with the Secretary of State in believing in high standards of education for all, and still am. State schools cannot, and generally do not, aspire to produce second class citizens. Although, in the era of secondary modern schools, before the abolition of selection at eleven became the norm, around two thirds of secondary age pupils were in a system that wasn’t especially interested in their abilities. That should have changed, but we still see the greatest under-achievement among our less able pupils. If the message from Mr Gove is ‘educate these pupils’ and stop them disrupting your school then, so long as he recognises the key role of the classroom teacher in achieving this end, he may have the right idea.

If a focus on quality stops the time-wasting, and indeed, money-wasting, emphasis among Conservative, and some Labour politicians at Westminster seemingly determined on creating a nationalised and centralised school system, and recognises the need for local involvement in education, especially primary schooling, the present debate might even achieve a new understanding about how schools should be led: but I doubt it.

On the issue of the day, I might have more respect for David Laws position on Baroness Morgan’s contract as Ofsted chair if I wasn’t aware that alongside Theodore Agnew on the DfE Board sits Paul Marshall as the lead non-executive member. Now Paul helped set up ARK, and has both written books about education, and helped sponsor the Lib Dem leaning think tank CenteForum, as well as once being a researcher for an SDP MP. He was also involved with David Laws in the publication of the controversial Orange Book that upset some Lib Dems a few years ago. I am sure as a financier he and Theodore Agnew each brings financial discipline to a government department often in need of such skills. But, I doubt if he has suddenly become politically neutral. So, perhaps David Laws really wanted a Lib Dem in the job of chair of Ofsted. There are a number of possible candidates in the House of Lords that would fit the bill nicely as a replacement for Baroness Morgan. But, the row is now so political that I am sure it will be the Prime Minister that will make the decision helped by the independent commission on appointments.

Any way the row won’t have done the Lib Dems any harm among teachers and educationalists that Gove sees as blobs, even if it hasn’t fundamentally changed any Lib Dem policy on education. In the short-term it may have enhanced David Laws’ credibility, but, longer-term, his reputation may rest on ensuring there isn’t a teacher supply crisis between now and the general election.

Where have all the flowers gone

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Pete Seeger, who died earlier this week, was a constant presence on the record player during my university days in the 1960s. Interestingly, one of the songs he recorded in 1963, ‘Little boxes’, formed the background to a student project undertaken by my first group of trainee teachers at the University of Worcester during the early 1980s. Persuading the external examiner that group work was a good idea, and that the outcome could be a tape-slide presentation, and not just an essay, was an interesting challenge: now it might be impossible.

I was reminded of Pete Seeger’s ‘Where have all the flowers gone’ when I saw the figures produced by UCAS earlier today about applications up to the 20th January this year for the unified teacher training application scheme. Now, it is a new process, and there are still seven months to recruit and still leave time for taking the Skill Tests before courses start, so today’s figures are really only straws in the wind.

However, the headlines show that while younger applicants appear to be applying in good, if not yet sufficient numbers,applications from those between the ages of 25 and 40 seem below the numbers that might be expected, especially since all career changer routes now go through the unified admissions process.

What could be especially worrying is the apparent decline in applications for primary courses.  In January 2011, some 21,300 applicants had applied for primary PGCE courses, and an unknown number had applied for employment-based routes into teaching. Last year, the primary PGCE number was just over 17,000. This year, when applicants can make up to three applications to different courses at this stage of the process it is impossible to know the actual number of applicants from the published figures. However, if applicants made, on average, 2.5 course choices per applicant, the number of applicants would be just less than 15,000 or 6,000 fewer than in 2011 despite the inclusion of the employment-based places. The position for secondary subjects is even more confusing, partly because of the possibility of candidates making applications to different subject areas amongst their three choices. However, Chemistry, languages, music, Religious Education and Physics look to be ones to watch for potential problems; and both art and drama may be less attractive this year than in the past.

Whether Educating Yorkshire, and the TV series about Teach First currently being shown on BBC, are helpful to recruiting probably hasn’t been tested yet. But, unlike the army, teaching currently isn’t running any recruitment adverts on television. This is despite the need for around 40,000 trainees this year, roughly half the size of the British land army after its latest cutbacks. Spending a bit of cash on recruitment advertising might be a wise move for the government because it cannot afford to under-recruit on primary preparation courses given the increase in pupil numbers over the next few years. A more radical move would be to reassess either the bursary levels or the need for trainees to pay fees. After all, the government could either just pay the fees or even say to schools that they should pay to participate in School Direct rather than be paid by the trainees or the government.

The longer the government leaves any reaction to these numbers, the more they risk compounding the shortfall in recruitment they witnessed last year and that won’t play well in the run up to the 2015 general election. The government has the luxury of weekly data, whereas the rest of us will have to wait until the end of February for the next set of figures.  By then, the recruitment round will have reached the half-way point, and in previous years the trends across the whole cycle will be readily apparent: the clock is already ticking.