‘This blog was founded on the idea that data was important. Had the Labour government of Blair and Brown not abolished the mandatory qualification for headship, this issue of who becomes a head teacher would have been visible much earlier and more widely debated. Sadly, it has been relegated to regular research studies and the data that the DfE collects from the annual census of the workforce. The issue of ethnicity has been ignored for too long.
It may be the Workforce data that has convinced the Secretary of State to pay attention to the fact that of nearly 69,000 teachers recorded as from minority groups -including white minorities – only 1,530 were headteachers. Over the past few years, the number has barely altered.
year
Ethnic minority Head teachers (including white minorities)
2015/16
1,473
2016/17
1,480
2017/18
1,512
2018/19
1,531
2019/2020
1,530
Ethnic Minority Headteacher Numbers- England
Derived from DfE School Workforce Data
Between the 205/16 school-year and the last school -year there were only 57 more headteachers from minority groups across all types of schools. The DfE data does allow evidence of where these headteachers are located.
Looking back at a Report that I wrote for the NAHT in 2001, I find that I said even then that:
‘it is of concern that in such a multi-cultural society as Britain has become, these posts are still so unrepresentative of the groups that make up that society.’
The same view appeared regularly in the future reports written for the NAHT during the remainder of that decade. It is, therefore, of interest that the secretary of State made his remarks to an NAHT Conference.
The data for appointments to headship in the first decade of the century can be found in Table 3 of The leadership aspirations and careers of black and minority ethnic teachers by Olwen Mcnamara, myself, Helen Gunter and Andrew Fryers. The research was conducted for the NASUWT and the then NCTL. The report still remains, along with the reports on entry to the profession conducted for the College, some of the most detailed research into the issues of ethnic minority teachers in England and their careers.
Most headteachers for ethnic minority backgrounds have been located in areas where there are higher concentrations of pupils with similar backgrounds. Thus, there are large areas of rural England where headteachers from ethnic minority backgrounds are rarely to be found, especially the further north and west from London the school is located.
To encourage headteachers from ethnic minority backgrounds there needs to be more teachers to fill the pipeline to leadership. The Secretary of State might like to consider the issue of recruitment into teaching now the DfE has full responsibility for managing the process.
Teaching must be representative of society as a whole. As I wrote in an article nearly 30 years ago, teaching must not become a profession that is ‘young, white and female’.
There are a mass of data in the two publications that will take time to work through. One highlight is that the percentage of teachers retained after one year of service continued its downward decline, but retention rates for those with longer service reversed the downward trend of recent years to register improvements. This may, of course, be due to the lack of opportunities for new jobs, both within and outwith schools that was the result of the covid pandemic. The 2021 census will confirm whether this is a reversal of a trend or just a blip.
It would be necessary to see the actual numbers and not percentages and the balance between the primary sector and secondary schools before commenting in detail on the one-year retention rate decline. The start of the reduction in primary rolls might have meant some temporary posts weren’t replaced, but the data in its present form cannot answer that question.
England is increasingly being divided into two nations in terms of the ethnicity of its teaching force. The North East still has 99% of its primary, and 98% of its secondary teachers classified as White, whereas Inner London has 27% of its primary and 35% of its secondary school teachers classified as from minority groupings. These percentages in Inner London have been increasing steadily over the past five years. There are policy implications behind the percentages, especially when the percentages are disaggregated to local authority levels. What are the consequences for Society as a whole if this uneven distribution continues?
One outcome arising from the pandemic has been the increase in pupils claiming Free School Meals – up from 17.3% in 2020 to20.8% in 2021. This represents some 1.74 million pupils. Over 420,000 pupils have become eligible for free school meals since the first lockdown on 23 March 2020. This compares to 292,000 for the same period (March 2019 to Jan 2020) before the pandemic. However, due to the change in Pupil Premium rules schools will not fully benefit from the funding through the Pupil Premium and Catch-up funds that are linked to Free School Meal numbers. As the Jon Andrews of the Education Policy Institute notes:
“Today’s figures are a further indication that the government’s change to how the pupil premium is allocated means that pupils and schools are now missing out on vital funding. These losses are found not only in the pupil premium itself but in other areas such as catch-up funding for disadvantaged pupils, which is closely linked to it.
“The Department for Education should now publish its analysis of the impact of this decision on pupil premium allocations and clarify whether any savings from this have been redistributed.”
The number of unqualified teachers has remained broadly stable across primary, secondary and special schools for both male and female teachers with a slight downward trend in the primary sector for the number of unqualified female teachers.
There is much more to explore in the detail of the time series, and I hope to write a few more blogs over the coming days.
UCAS has today published the end of cycle data for courses that started last autumn. Regular readers that follow this blog will know that much of what is contained in the data has been commented upon in posts on this blog la the August and October.
However, ‘The End of Cycle’ (EoC) report contains much more information than the regular monthly updates published during the cycle. One area is in that of the ethnicity of applicants and the percentages accepted. Why gender is seen as capable of being revealed each month and ethnicity is not is an interesting question. I assume it is down to the fact that numbers in some categories would be too small to make publication viable or appropriate.
Regardless of the reason, the EoC report contains some interesting data.
Accepted percentages 2020 from UCAS PG ITT data
Male
Female
All
Black
37%
53%
48%
Other
41%
51%
48%
Asian
50%
61%
58%
Not Stated
55%
57%
56%
Mixed [sic]
58%
62%
61%
Total
63%
70%
68%
White
67%
74%
72%
Source: UCAS
Black male applicants had less than a four in ten chance of being accepted on to a course compared with 74% of white females that were accepted. It would be interesting to drill down into these figures to see whether there are regional and subject/phase differences within the categories.
My assumption would be that London courses perform well in terms of acceptance of ethnic minority candidates and those courses in regions furthest from the capital may attract few applicants from ethnic groups other than the White group. This can pose another issue if a few courses receive the bulk of say Black African Male applicants. The policy should be to take the most suitable applicants.
I don’t know how much effort the DfE puts into monitoring these statistics and how they respond to the outcomes? Are civil servants content with the disparity between the different groups or should more work be undertaken to reduce the differences across gender and ethnicity?
Male applicants domiciled in London had one of the lowest acceptance rates overall for me of just 50% of applicants. It would be interesting to cross-tab the domicile by region with ethnicity. By contrast, 86% of women applicants domiciled in the north east appear to have been accepted That seems like a high figure to me and it would be interesting to see how many of these were accepted before say, Christmas. Providers that fill courses quickly can save time and money but such a practice begs the question about whether there should be a closing date for applications to allow more equal chances not determined by how quickly you decide upon teaching as a career.
The data released by the DfE last week, on the School Workforce at Census day in November 2019, updated the information on the ethnicity of the teaching workforce. Although some progress has been made in creating a teaching force that reflects society as a whole, progress is still not good enough, especially at the headteacher level.
Taking two geographical areas at random: Brent in North West London and Cornwall, it is possible to review the changes in the ethnic make-up of the teaching force over the period between November 2014 and November 2019; a period of five years.
Brent
Cornwall
2014/15
2019/20
014/15
2019/20
Any other ethnic group
82
118
5
5
Any other mixed background
74
99
14
20
Asian or Asian British
401
477
7
5
Black or black British
337
328
6
5
Information not yet obtained
170
275
117
211
Refused
196
64
21
21
White
1,698
1,548
4,525
4,198
Now, admittedly, over this five year period the number of teachers in both authorities hasn’t altered very much, but it is depressing to see that the quality of the data has declined. The number of teachers where information has not yet been obtained increased, while the number refusing to provide the information declined in Brent quite significantly.
The best that can be said is that there was increases in Brent in the non-Black groups with the BAME community and the Black group remained relatively stable in numbers. In Cornwall, the numbers of BAME remained staggeringly low; increasing from 32 to 35 over the five years.
As I have been interested in Leadership data for nearly 40 years i thought it helpful to look at the number of headteachers in the categories classified as black or black British. This information is buried in the School Workforce data for anyone interested.
All ‘Black or Black British’
2010/11
2011/12
2015/16
2016/17
2017/18
2018/19
2019/20
All Headteachers
169
169
225
219
217
213
219
Secondary Headteachers
32
27
42
39
40
37
44
I have excluded some years to make the table more manageable. The disappointment is the stagnation in the totals over the past five years. Probably, less than two per cent of headteachers in all state-funded schools are defined as from the Black ethnic group. As the definitions of ethnicity expand, there will be some that should be added to this group, but using the Black or Black British definition, the headteachers constitute less than two per cent of state schools in England.
When the qualification for headship was mandatory, it was possible to track the progress of specific groups and to identify under-represented groups and how they might be attracted to headships. Abolishing the requirement for headteachers to possess an NPQH was not one of the Labour government’s finest moves. As a result, we now have to rely upon the market, and a profession with little in the way of career development for individuals.
Surely, it is time for action, since school leaders can be powerful role models for their communities and can help inspire future generations.
Readers of this blog will know that in April I revisited an article I first wrote in 1996 about Equal Opportunities in Education.
In the 1996 article, I wrote that:
“It is clear that members of some ethnic groups are less likely to find places on PGCE courses than white applicants.” I added that “These figures are alarming” and that “If graduates with appropriate degrees are being denied places on teacher training courses in such numbers, much more needs to be known about the reasons why.” During the period 2008-2011, I was asked to conduct two, unpublished, studies for the government agency responsible for training teachers. Sadly, the conclusion of both studies was that little had changed in this respect.
In the April article that also considered the issue of gender and ageism in the training of graduates to become teachers I made the following points.
Fortunately, it seems as if more graduates from ethnic minority groups are now entering teaching. Data from the government’s annual census of teacher training reveals that between 2014/15 and 2018/19 the percentage of trainees from a minority ethnic group increased from 13% to 19% of the total cohort.
Table 5: Minority Ethnic Groups as a Percentage of Postgraduate Trainees
Postgraduate new entrants
Postgraduate percentages
Trainee Cohort
Total
Minority ethnic group
Non-minority ethnic group
Minority ethnic group
Non-minority ethnic group
2014/15
24893
3178
21715
13%
87%
2015/16
26957
3873
23084
14%
86%
2016/17
25733
3753
21980
15%
85%
2017/18
26401
4113
22288
16%
84%
2018/19
27742
4917
22825
18%
82%
2019/20p
27675
5168
22507
19%
81%
Source: DfE Initial Teacher Training Censuses
In numeric terms, this mean an increase of some 2,000 trainees from ethnic minority backgrounds during this period.
Although UCAS no longer provides in-year data about ethnicity of applicants, there is some data in their end of year reporting about the level of acceptances for different ethnic groups.
In the 1996 article, there was a Table showing the percentage of unplaced applicants to PGCE courses by ethnic groups in the three recruitment rounds from 1993 to 1995. What is striking about both that table, and the table below for the four years between 2014-2017 that presents the data on the percentages of ethnic groups accepted rather than unplaced, is that in both of the tables, graduates from the Black ethnic group fare less well than do White or Asian applicants. Indeed, the overwhelmingly large White group of applicants had the lowest percentage of unplaced applicants in the 1990s, and the highest rate of placed applicants in the four years from 2014-2017.
In the original article I noted that “39% of the Black Caribbean group [of applicants] accepted were offered places at three of the 85 institutions that received applications form members of this ethnic group. Thirty-nine out of the 85 institutions accepted none of the applicants from this group that applied to them.” Although we no longer have the fine grain detail of sub-groups within this ethnic grouping, nothing seems to have significantly changed during the intervening period.
Table 6: Percentage Rate of Acceptances for Postgraduate trainee Teachers
2014
2015
2016
2017
Asian
39
47
44
48
Black
27
34
30
35
Mixed
49
56
51
55
White
56
64
61
64
Other
31
38
37
39
Unknown
46
53
48
52
Source: UCAS End of Cycle reports.
Using the data from the government performance tables for postgraduate trainees, it seems that a smaller percentage of trainees from ethnic minorities received QTS at the standard time when compared to those from the non-minority community, with the percentages of those trainees both not awarded or not yet completing being greater for the trainees from the minority ethnic groups.
Table 7: Success of Postgraduate Trainee Teachers by Ethnicity
2017/18
Trainees
Percentage awarded QTS
Percentage yet to complete
Percentage not awarded QTS
Teaching in a state school
Percentage of those awarded QTS teaching in a state school
Ethnicity
Minority
4,311
88%
6%
6%
3,014
80%
Non-minority
22,861
92%
3%
4%
17,022
81%
Unknown
706
90%
4%
6%
503
79%
Source: DfE database of trainee teachers and providers and school Workforce Census
However, the percentage reported as working in a state school was similar at 80% for ethnic minority trainees and 81% for non-ethnic minority trainees. As there are no data for trainees working in either the independent sector or further education institutions including most Sixth Form Colleges, it isn’t clear whether the overall percentage in teaching is the same of whether or not there is a greater difference?
So what has changed in the profile of graduates training to be a teacher during the twenty years or so between 1997 and 2019? The percentage of trainees from minority ethnic groups within the cohort has increased. However we know their chances of becoming a teacher are still lower than for applicants from the large group of applicants classified as White as their ethnic group.
Ethnicity and Leadership
For some twenty years I compiled an annual report on the labour market for senior staff in schools. At the turn of the century questions about the ethnicity of candidates were included. In the report on the 2005-06 school year I wrote:
‘Two other issues we have highlighted over the past few years, where we believe urgent steps need to be taken are the recruitment of senior staff from ethnic minorities and for faith schools. We are especially concerned about the almost complete absence of appointments in the Special school Sector of any staff from amongst the ethnic minorities. … although the position seems to be a little better in the Primary and Secondary School Sectors, we are not convinced that enough is being done to recruit senior staff from amongst these groups.’
12th Report Labour Market for Senior Staff in schools 2005-06 prepared for NAHT and ASCL.
That was a typical comment of the period.
The NASUWT also commissioned a report into Black and Ethnic Minority Teachers from a team at the University of Manchester that was published as The Leadership Aspirations and Careers of Black and Minority Ethnic Teachers in January 2009. The text is available on Researchgate at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242575423_The_Leadership_Aspirations_and_Careers_of_Black_and_Minority_Ethnic_Teachers The key message from that study was that at that time ethnic minority staff did not perceive the teaching profession to be inclusive. It would be interesting to know whether such feeling were still prevalent today.
The is no doubt that progress differs across the country, with some areas more forward in both understanding and tackling the issues that other areas where they have been seen of as less concern. Hopefully, the issue will once again see discussion and action to ensure all teachers are treated equally. However, that begs the question of what is meant by equally?
John Howson 