Should the NHS pay more to support children with SEND?

Posted on October 30, 2025 by John Howson

The new index of deprivation, published today by the government, contains an important message about affluent areas such as Oxfordshire. English indices of deprivation 2025: statistical release – GOV.UK

Oxfordshire ranks highly on three of the four areas I looked at, and especially so on Health and Employment, where the lowest rankings are 65/296 in health and 36/296 in employment, and the highest 8/296 in health and 4/296 in employment.

District Council	Education	Health	Crime	Employment
South Oxfordshire	258	288	287	292
Vale of White Horse	235	284	283	275
West Oxfordshire	233	279	285	263
Cherwell	155	252	231	260
City of Oxford	156	231	123	262

District Council	Education	Health	Crime	Employment
South Oxfordshire	38	8	9	4
Vale of White Horse	61	12	13	21
West Oxfordshire	63	17	11	33
Cherwell	141	44	65	36
City of Oxford	140	65	173	34

However, the ranking for both Cherwell and City of Oxford districts for education, at 141 and 140/296 compare badly with the ranking elsewhere in the county. Overall, the education ranks are still the lowest ranking scores for all districts, except for the City of Oxford, where the ranking for crime is 173/296, over a hundred places lower than any other district in the county.

The comparison between the education rankings and the health rankings raises an interesting question. Why is education doing so badly in Oxfordshire, especially in the urban areas of Oxford and Banbury? It is difficult to blame the local authority, as all but one of the secondary schools and many primary schools are academies and part of MATs.

Perhaps the formula for education funding is so linked to the county’s rank across all indices that the current funding formula for schools cannot compensate for the needs of Oxfordshire children living in its most deprived communities.

It is clear that there are issues nationally with the formula for the High Needs Block that funds SEND, but again does Oxfordshire lose out more than other areas? After all, it schools are generally highly regarded by ofsted; it has two world class universities, and leading science and technology companies driving the economy.

On the SEND issues, one question is whether the NHS is pulling its weight on supporting children with SEND? Assuming that the overall ranking for the county is not going to see any government be more generous to Oxfordshire with regard to funding, however the present county may be configured post local government reorganisation, then there must be a strong case to require the NHS to spend more resources on supporting children with special needs even if its overall ranking slips a few places as a result. This would reduce the need for the county, and the schools within the county, having to prop up spending on SEND that should really come from the health budget.

There is no doubt Oxfordshire is not a county with a high degree of deprivation, but what deprivation there is can be concentrated in a few wards in the urban areas abut also spread out across the rural parts of the county. The former is easy to identify, the latter more of a challenge. Both need more funding for education.

Extend education free travel to 16-18 year olds

Posted on August 25, 2023 by John Howson

One of the irrational features of our education system in England is that although the ‘learning leaving age’ has effectively been raised from 16 to 18 by the government, although no legislation has been passed enforcing the change,, the provision of free transport for those that are able to access such a service during their education up to age 16 hasn’t been extended by the government to include such travel for the time when they are 16 to 18 year olds. There is no free right to transport to education for this age group. This is an anomaly that has consequences, especially in a time when there is a cost-of-living crisis that is hitting the least well off much harder than the more affluent families in our society.

One way this anomaly may manifest itself is in the percentage of 16-18 year olds classified as NEETs (not in Education, Employment or training). The Office for National Statistics (ONS) published an update for this group this week, showing a rise on the quarter. All data related to Young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), UK: August 2023 – Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

The publication of the ONS data prompted me to look at the DfE data published earlier this year NEET and participation: local authority figures – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) What especially interested me was whether there was a difference between rural and urban areas in the percentages of NEETS. A simple crude measure is to compare the London boroughs – where TfL has supported travel for this age group – with the remaining non-unitary council ‘shire’ counties that have large tracts of rural areas where young people receive free transport up to school up to the age 16.

A quick check of the NEET data revealed that there were more than three times as many ‘shire’ counties in the worst 50 local upper-tier authority areas compared with the number in the best 50 authorities. By comparison, 31 of the London boroughs appeared in the top 50 local authorities, and the remaining boroughs only just fell outside of the top 50. All London boroughs were in a better position in terms of NEETS than Oxfordshire. On this basis there is at least a discussion to be had about whether providing transport post-16 enhances education opportunities and thus life chances?

The problem is complex in the rural areas partly because, post-16, some students opt to move to a further education centre that offers the course they want, but may be further away from the school that they attended.

The answer to the question of providing free transport is dependent on how much the accident of geography – whether you live in a rural area or a conurbation or town – should affect you chances of an education to age 18?

Perhaps the DfE could survey its own civil servants to see how many experienced this problem as teenager, and how they overcame it?

ITT outcomes: reflections on employment

Posted on July 27, 2023 by John Howson

The DfE has today published the ITT profiles for 2021/2022 Initial teacher training performance profiles, Academic year 2021/22 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk) There has bene a change in methodology this year, and only completing postgraduate trainees are now counted. In addition, the data may have been affected by completers with extension from 2020/21 and had been affected by starting their courses during the height of the covid pandemic.

Even with these caveats, there are some interesting issues for policymakers to ponder

Provisional employment rates were 81% for those on a school-led route compared to 69% for those on a Higher Education Institution (HEI) route, with the highest rates seen for those on the High Potential ITT (90%), School Direct Salaried (84%), and Postgraduate Teaching Apprenticeship (83%) routes These three routes have had the three highest employment rates since the Postgraduate Teaching Apprenticeship was introduced in 2018/19, with High Potential ITT having the highest employment rate every year since 2017/18 (joint highest in 2019/20).

Salaried routes seem to do better in terms of immediate employment in teaching. However, does employment in this context only mean employment in a state-funded schools and not a sixth form college, other further education setting or an independent school?

As elsewhere it states that ‘We provisionally estimate that within sixteen months of the end of the 2021/22 academic year, 22,276 postgraduate trainees awarded QTS in 2021/22 will be employed as a teacher in a state-funded school in England, up from 21,889 in 2020/21. This represents 75% of postgraduate trainees awarded QTS, reversing a downward trend from 80% in 2017/18 to 73% in 2020/21,’ it might be sensible to infer that the data on employment only refers to employment in state-funded schools.

It seems logical that those employed in a state-funded school during training would remain there. However, higher education providers also offer many places in subjects such as physics where competition from the private school sector for teachers might well mean that the percentage entering the state-funded school sector would be lower, even if those working in the further education sector are discounted.

The headline statistics don’t break the data down into trainees on primary and secondary sector courses. As a result, it isn’t possible from the headlines to understand why both the percentage awarded QTS dropped to 93% (methodology changes may have been part of the cause) and ‘of these postgraduate trainees with course outcomes, 29,511 were awarded qualified teacher status (QTS), down from 30,101 in 2020/21. This decrease follows year-on-year increases from 2017/18.’

Trainee qualified teacher status and employment outcomes by subject’

Subject	Total Trainees	Awarded QTS	Working in state sector school
Classics	66	97%	56%
Physical Education	1,670	97%	70%
Business Studies	309	90%	73%
Computing	575	86%	73%
Primary	15,098	94%	73%
Drama	473	95%	74%
Other	528	94%	74%
Physics	561	87%	74%
Total	31,747	93%	75%
Art & Design	809	94%	76%
Modern Foreign Languages	1,101	94%	77%
Secondary	16,649	92%	77%
Chemistry	1,088	90%	78%
History	1,531	93%	78%
Mathematics	2,647	92%	78%
Biology	1,059	88%	79%
Religious Education	476	92%	79%
Music	388	93%	81%
English	2,350	92%	82%
Geography	660	94%	82%
Design & Technology	358	94%	83%

Initial teacher training performance profiles, Academic year 2021/22

Perhaps it is not surprising that only just over half of trainees in classics were working in state-funded schools. For physical education and primary, the low percentages may relate more to a lack of opportunity than to a desire not to work in a state-funded school.

More worrying is the ranking of subjects by the percentage awarded QTS

Subject	Total Trainees	Awarded QTS	Working in state sector school
Physics	561	87%	74%
Biology	1,059	88%	79%
Business Studies	309	90%	73%
Chemistry	1,088	90%	78%
Secondary	16,649	92%	77%
Mathematics	2,647	92%	78%
Religious Education	476	92%	79%
English	2,350	92%	82%
Total	31,747	93%	75%
History	1,531	93%	78%
Music	388	93%	81%
Primary	15,098	94%	73%
Other	528	94%	74%
Art & Design	809	94%	76%
Modern Foreign Languages	1,101	94%	77%
Geography	660	94%	82%
Design & Technology	358	94%	83%
Drama	473	95%	74%
Classics	66	97%	56%
Physical Education	1,670	97%	70%

Initial teacher training performance profiles, Academic year 2021/22

Subjects with significant percentages of trainees in higher education have some of the highest completion rate, so higher education per se cannot be faulted for having an overall lower rate of employment than school-based provision.

However, if the government wants to keep trainees in the state-school system, offering salaried courses base din schools seems like a good idea. Wasn’t that what the School Direct salaried route was designed to do? As I pointed out in an earlier blog, the numbers on employment-based routes are now fewer than in the latter years of the last Labour government. Possibly time for a rethink?

Interesting government dashboard

Posted on July 7, 2023 by John Howson

Government statisticians at the DfE and across the civil service have been undertaking some interesting analysis of where graduates work – by sector and academic qualification level– and how the numbers change over time. The basic source is tax returns, so the data is obviously subject to a time lag and backward looking. Nevertheless, there is some interesting data to discuss in relation to the education classification. LEO Graduate and Postgraduate Outcomes, Tax year 2020-21 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk)

Now, I assume that ‘Education’ as a grouping will include both state and private schools plus further education. The dashboards contain a wealth of data about those working in many sectors, including education; one, three, five and ten years after graduation. Data is provided for different academic levels, of which Frist Degree and Level 7 qualifications (taught and research) are probably the most useful.

Education is also one of the sectors where the number of graduates decreased between one and three years after graduation, but increased again between three and five years; presumably because of the influx of career changers outweighing the numbers leaving. By ten years, the overall number has fallen, as would be expected. How Education compares with other sectors might be worth considering, to see the extent to which retention is not just an issue for the Education sector.

As the time period for the ten years covered in the analysis includes the years when there was either a public sector pay-freeze or wage levels in some parts of the country lagged parts of the private sector it is possible to see that the Education sector in London is at the lower end of reported median earnings for the different sectors, whereas in the North East median earnings after ten years for the education sector appear more competitive. This may well be because the opportunities for graduates in the North East are less than in London and the South East, and the lack of demand has an effect on salary levels.

The Sankey charts of regional flows show how relatively little movement between regions there is for those with Level 7 qualifications on entry into the Education sector. However, ‘abroad’ does feature in the table, showing that teaching as this blog has said, is now a global profession and those with Level 7 qualifications in education are moving overseas by the ten year point from graduation.

When the STRB Report is finally released by the government, it will be interesting to see the extent to which this type of data has been used in the discussions about the pay of teachers compared with that of other graduate professions.

Pay may not be the only factor persuading graduates to work in education, but it must have some effect on numbers choosing the profession when the economy is able to offer other opportunities for graduates.

Indeed, as the wider economy hires more graduates, the need to keep teaching competitive in pay and conditions terms will become even more important. As this blog has pointed out before, the porter of the nineteen-century became the forklift truck driver of the twentieth century and is now the warehouse software engineer of the twenty first century. Neither of the first two were likely to be drawn from the ranks of those that could be teachers: the modern group of software engineers most certainly are graduates that could have become a teacher.

Four-day week for teachers?

Posted on May 15, 2023 by John Howson

A Labour MP has called for a four-day working week to be introduced across the public sector.

Lib Dem-run South Cambridgeshire District Council’s cabinet will meet today to approve the continuation of the trial for all desk-based staff as well as extending it to cover caretakers and binmen.

These are just two of the headlines from an article that I read this morning. What would be the implications for teachers of the introduction of a four-day week? The answer depends upon whether the same amount of face-to-face contact with pupils was maintained as at present and whether that was contact time spread over four or five days? What effect would four longer school days have on pupils, especially younger pupils? After all, some early years settings already offer wrap around care that is much longer than the traditional school-day.

What would the psychologists and those that study brain development in children have to say about putting five days of work into four? Perhaps a model would develop of four days of taught time and the fifth for ‘homework’ or supplementary activities.

On the plus side, parents also working a four-day week would have an extra day with their children: on the downside, parents whose working week did not coincide with the school four-day week would have to deal with the need for extra childcare.

Any change would come with a cost both to individuals and to the State. If there wasn’t sufficient funding, schools might be tempted to cram the teaching into four days and use the fifth day to generate income from their school sites and playing fields.

In a sector struggling to recruit enough teachers at present, would a four-day week make the profession more or less attractive to potential teachers. Certainly, if the bulk of graduate careers moved to a four-day week, teaching, already operating an employer-driven form of flexi-time, might be unattractive without some other boost to conditions of work.

A four-day working week might be a real challenge to the private school sector, where the additional costs would most likely have to be passed on to parents through increased fees. An increase of this magnitude might drive more parents back into the state sector, upping the cost of state education to the government. Add VAT on to the costs, and such numbers switching might increase still further.

During the Corbyn era, Labour proposed four additional bank holidays for workers; all during school holidays, so teachers would have seen no benefit from them. The implications for the teaching profession and others working in schools of the widespread introduction of a four-day working week do need to be considered.

However, I don’t think that the present model of schooling will continue as it has for the past 150 years. The AI revolution may well turn out to be as profound for society as the microchip revolution that started in the 1970s and transformed the world of work beyond recognition in many areas, but only to a limited degree in schools.

Technology and its interaction with the process of schooling has further to go in the future. Perhaps the pressure for a four-day working week for humans might be the catalyst for major changes in schooling?

Compelling case for paying teachers more

Posted on March 22, 2023 by John Howson

The DfE has produced some interesting statistics about the labour market looking forward to 2035, and how the need for workers might change during that period. Labour market and skills projections: 2020 to 2035 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) Two key impressions are that the demands of the labour market will be for ever more skilled and educated workers, and that teaching faces a massive replacement issue during the period between now and 2035, mainly of women if based upon the present structure of the labour force in education.

The growth period in employment in the education sector between 2015 and 2020 that resulted from both the raising of the learning leaving age to 18 and an increase in the school population that was a consequence of an upturn in the birth-rate will largely have been absorbed by the labour market by the mid-2020s, with only higher education still to see the effects of the demographic upturn. Higher education might well find those extra home based undergraduates balance any loss of earnings from a decline in overseas students if governments fail to realise the economic, social and political importance of overseas students to both the economy and society.

A period of growth in the public sector always makes it harder for The Treasury to accommodate wage demands from public sector workers such as teachers. This is especially the case where governments aim for a low taxation economy. However, going forward, the pressure for the education sector will come from competition from other sectors of the economy for highly qualified workers also need ed to become teachers.

As I see it, the government has two alternatives, either reward teachers at a level of pay and conditions that attract and retain sufficient staff to maintain an output from the school system that is sufficiently well-educated as to provide for the needs of the economy going forward or let our national competitiveness slip, with consequent effects on the standard of living for future generations.

Governments can try to extract a price for rewarding teachers with bigger class sizes, but that approach may make teaching less attractive as a career. More likely, and the Oak Academy may be a harbinger of change, the relationship between labour and capital in teaching – in the form of technology – may change significantly going forward. This may also be accompanied by structural change in how schooling is managed for change.

However, unless there is some forward thinking across education, not just in thinktanks and groups such as FED, the risk is one of drift and a pulling apart of our education system to create an under-educated group and inflationary pressures in the labour market due to a smaller than required pool of new entrants to the highly skilled workforce.

Today’s discussions about the significant increase in unauthorised absence and the pool of pupils missing up to half their schooling is a warning sign that should not be ignored. A national revival plan for education based on sufficient teachers and engagement with parents to encourage a return to schooling for the absentee pupils should be a major consideration.

Sadly, I fear the present government hasn’t the wherewithal to start such a task, let alone achieve it in the present parliament, despite the many government MPs that won seats in 2019 where this is a critical issue for the future wealth of their local economies.

New NfER dashboard

Posted on December 7, 2022 by John Howson

It is always interesting when large organisations validate comments made on this blog. The new NfER dashboard of historic data about teacher shortages certainly support the view of this blog that schools with high Free School Meals percentages may have more teacher turnover in recent years. Explore by school type – NFER

Interestingly, they also support the higher teacher turnover in London, noted by this blog from time to time. This dashboard is a useful addition to the data about teacher supply, but it does fall into the category of statistical information and not up to the minute management information. TeachVac, the job board for teacher vacancies that I help found has concentrated on the position here and now and linked it to data such as the ITT census and applications for training.

In the next few weeks, I will be putting together the reports on vacancy trends during 2022 for classroom teachers and school leaders after what has been a record-breaking year for vacancies. These annual reports should be available early in January 2023.

I hope as NfER update their dashboard that they will take into account the effects of the covid pandemic on the labour market for teachers.

If I have a quibble, the recent NfER document that cited the North East as an area of teacher shortage doesn’t seem to be borne out by the maps at district level. Only a handful of North East authorities recorded over 10% turnover of secondary teachers where as most inner London authorities breached that level. That outcome is what I would have expected from the TeachVac data on vacancies.

The only authorities where primary sector turnover exceeded 10% in 2020 were in Yorkshire and the Humber region, and not in the North East. Still, perhaps the survey returns for the earlier study could not be compared with this dashboard.

The subjects with the lowest leaving rates according to the dashboard as physical education and history: no surprises there. However, among early career teachers, physics was the subject with the third lowest departure rate after those two subjects. Perhaps when numbers entering ITT are low, those that do enter are the most committed to teaching as a career?

The presence of modern languages teachers and IT teachers at the top of the table is also probably not much of a surprise given their opportunities to use their skills elsewhere.

Those interested in the topic can thank NfER for producing data that the DfE really should provide as part of open government. Hopefully, this week the DfE will provide the data about applications to ITT in November. Last year, the data appeared on the 8^th December.

Success in ITT, but at what price?

Posted on August 3, 2022 by John Howson

In my previous post about the July postgraduate ITT numbers, I concentrated just on the headlines, and the potentially dire implications for the 2023 teacher recruitment round if the collapse of the economy doesn’t both stem departures from teaching and encourage more returners back into the profession.

In this post, I want to look in more detail at the data in the July numbers, now published by the DfE. Monthly statistics on initial teacher training (ITT) recruitment – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) The total number of candidates applying has reached 35,633, but this compares badly with the 44,970 of July 2021. More alarming is the fact that the ‘recruited’ total is down from 8,620 in July 2021 to 3,911 this July. That’s the number in the bag, so to say, and most likely to turn up when courses commence. Even more worrying that the number with ‘conditions pending’ is down from 23,030 to 18,699. The number of withdrawn candidates has increased from 1,281 last July to 2,010 this July. These are not good numbers for the health of the profession.

Comparing the ‘other’ column against ‘all applications’ in the July 2021 data and the ‘unsuccessful’ against ‘all applications’ in the July 2022 data shows that across all subjects more applications have been successful.

Subject	2021 Successful	2022 Successful	Difference
Languages	na	29%	na
Computer Studies	21%	28%	7%
D&T	27%	34%	7%
Physics	23%	30%	7%
Music	28%	34%	6%
Art	26%	32%	6%
Business Studies	20%	26%	6%
Biology	23%	29%	6%
Mathematics	23%	28%	5%
PE	22%	27%	5%
RE	27%	32%	5%
English	25%	30%	5%
Drama	29%	33%	4%
Chemistry	27%	31%	4%
Geography	27%	31%	4%
History	26%	30%	4%
Classics	23%	25%	2%

Source UCAS and DfE data

Whether the increase in the level of success is due to similar numbers of acceptable candidates against a smaller overall pool or providers accepting candidates that they might not have accepted before cannot be determined from the data. Perhaps it is a bit of both strategies that is taking place.

Applications are lower across all age groups this round, with the key new graduate ‘21 and under’ group down from 5,650 to 4,591 candidates this July. Those who gender is recorded as male candidate has fallen from 13,350 to 10,591. This is despite the number not recorded as either men or women falling from 1,240 to 351 this July.

Applications have fallen for both primary and secondary phase courses. Down from 51,310 to 43,242 for the former and from 65,990 to 53,532 for the latter.

While numbers applying for postgraduate teaching apprenticeships increased from 3,610 to 4,427 applications; a modest increase, but, nevertheless an increase: all other routes had witnessed a decline in applications.

Hopefully, at least in the context of teacher preparation courses, this will be as bad as it will be, and next year the changes in the broader economy will once again swing the pendulum back towards the desirability of teaching as a career, perhaps aided by a recognition of the necessary rewards required to attract and retain teachers. If not, then the government will have set a record in terms of the length of the period of under-recruitment into teacher preparation courses.

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.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: employment