Tag Archives: government

One in five trade unionists works in the education sector

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One of the advantages of the DfE moving its statistical output to the central government web site is that it allows those looking for data about education to browse much more easily a much wider field than before. Now there is no longer any need to consult a range of web sites in the hope that there might be some data about education buried there.

Thus it was that I discovered in the figures on Trade Union membership issued earlier today that the education sector is now the most unionised of any occupational group covered by the government’s classification system. Those who want to delve into the data can find it at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/trade-union-statistics-2012

Trade Union membership in the education sector includes not only teachers but also all other staff classified as working in the sector. In 2012, the education sector employed 11.7% of those covered by the survey, but accounted for 23.8% of trade union membership.

Across the education sector, although the percentage of employees in trade unions has declined from 55% in 1995 to 52% in 2012, the percentage of women in the sector in trade unions increased from 50.5% to 52.6% during the same period; the only sector to record an increase in female participation in trade unions during the whole period. This was a time in history when overall membership of trade unions declined, from 32.4% to 26% of workers, and more than halved in the financial and insurance activities sector, from 37.3% in 1995 to 15.9% in 2012.

In the education sector there were just over 1,000,000 trade union members in 1995; by 2012, membership numbers had increased to more than 1.5 million, no doubt partly due to the increase in teaching assistants and other support staff employed in the sector during the past decade. Union membership is strongest amongst full-time, and female workers, and those with permanent posts, although the education sector has the second highest degree of union membership among part-time workers.

England has the lowest percentage trade union membership in the education sector, at 50.3%; compared with 58.8% in Wales; 61.1% in Scotland; and 68.1% in Northern Ireland. Sadly, there is no table to show whether the present Secretary of State in England has inspired an increase in membership across England since 2010. However, there are regional differences across England, with Yorkshire and the Humber having the highest level of membership at 62.4% overall, including more than 69% of full-time staff, and the South East the lowest, at 44.7%. Apart from London, where the percentage membership is 50.7%, membership percentages are higher in the northern regions and lower in the midlands and south of England.

In England, at least among teachers, there will be a big test for trade unions this year with the introduction of what amounts to pay bargaining at a local level for the first time in almost a hundred years for many teachers. Whether it is largely ignored by schools who stick to national ‘guidelines’ or becomes a real bone of contention will become apparent over the next twelve months.

What is clear is that the public sector unions, and those representing workers at all levels in the education sector, now account for a significant proportion of trade unionists. At an earlier piece on this blog showed, a survey last year didn’t always find the teacher members as in favour of action as their leaders.

Applications good: acceptances better

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How good do you have to be to become a teacher? Should it be as hard to enter the teaching profession as say to become a doctor, dentist or vet? Or does the need for such large numbers of new teachers, around 35,000 enter training each year, mean the focus must be on quantity over quality?

The government released data today that showed around 20,000 applicants had made more than 64,000 applications to become a teacher through the new School Direct route. That’s around seven applications per place, and well above the ratio for the university teacher preparation courses, where applications through GTTR for postgraduate courses rarely hit the level of four applications per place except in very popular subjects such as History, Physical Education, the Social Sciences and Drama. However, since GTTR measure applicants rather than gross applications so on that basis School Direct is probably doing little better than GTTR in terms of applicants per places available. But, without a breakdown or applicants as well as applications by subject and phase to School Direct it is impossible to be sure.

With so many applications to choose from you might expect School Direct to have filled all its places by now, just as Teach First has already closed its door to applicants for this year. But, you would be wrong, if data from the DfE web site is correct. Over the Easter weekend only between 7% and 45% of the salaried places were filled, depending upon the subject, and there was a similar percentage range of places filled on the non-salaried training route. With so many applicants, this means that only between two and nine per cent of applicants appear to have been offered places on School Direct so far. This is a much lower proportion than for the courses offered by universities through GTTR.

The obvious questions that arise are whether there are better applicants for the GTTR courses than School Direct or are perhaps admissions tutors in universities being more generous in making offers than their colleagues in schools? Take Chemistry as an example, on the School Direct Salaried route 11% of the places were filled by Easter, and that represented just four per cent of applicants being offered places. On the School Direct Training Route nine per cent of places were filled, and just three per cent of applicants had been offered a place. By comparison on the GTTR courses 46% of the applicants had been offered a place although this was down on the 51% accepted at the same time last year. Given that it is unlikely anyone without the basic academic degree class bothers to apply, it seems odd that so many applicants have yet to be offered a place through the School Direct programme, especially as applications have been arriving since the autumn.

However, there is still about three months to go, so all is not yet lost, but the government will need to keep a close eye on whether schools are being slow at interviewing applicants that applied sometime ago or whether schools have decided the quality of the applicants are not good enough. There is certainly no guarantee that a flood of high quality applicants will turn up at the last minute, and too many empty places could cause staffing problems for some schools next summer. A teacher supply crisis in the year before a general election would be embarrassing for the government that made much of the large number of applicants to the School Direct programme in its announcement today. No doubt the lack of a similar announcement about the numbers accepted was an oversight that will be quickly rectified.

Are heads salaries on the rise: What are the consequences for taxpayers?

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How come secondary heads cannot fill in forms about their salary correctly? Figures issued yesterday by the DfE show around 300 misreported leadership salaries in the primary sector, but some 400 misreported salaries in the numerically much smaller secondary sector where the misreported figures were split evenly between academies and other maintained secondary schools. According to a footnote in the government tables the misreporting includes any salary above £200,000 per annum.

Now it may be that the census form that collects data on teachers and school leaders and their salaries does not deal well with issues such as executive heads and those head teachers leading federations of schools where others have the courtesy title of head when in fact they are just a head of a school site. If this is the case, then the form needs revision after three years in use. However, if it is heads, and they are responsible for their schools return of the form, fudging their salary and those of others on the leadership team then the schools should be identified and required to provide a correct return.

At the start of this parliament the Prime Minister was keen than no public servants should earn more in salary than he does, but of course he has a rent free house in London and a large country mansion for the weekends in addition to his salary. Nevertheless, one side effect of Michael Gove’s freeing up of teachers’ salary regulations could be that the salaries of heads rise even further and faster in the coming years while those of classroom teachers are held down because of their relative bargaining power.

After more than a quarter of a century of studying the pay of heads, I am aware that the job is a challenging one, and with Ofsted breathing down their necks it can be very like that of a football manager seeking either a place in Europe for their team or striving to avoid relegation. Either way, their job is at risk if they fail to perform well. The tragic case of the Worcestershire primary head reported at her inquest earlier this week shows just how much pressure Ofsted can exert of school leaders. As a result a risk premium is increasingly necessary for many headships. How large that premium should be must be determined by governing bodies, and they need guidelines for what is appropriate.

However, letting the market be responsible for the calculation of salaries in education has another and wider impact on taxpayers in general. At present, many heads are still retiring on a final salary pension, although this will be replaced by an average salary pension for those who retire in the future. As the Teachers’ Pension Fund doesn’t actually exist, and any pension is paid out of  taxation, the burden of the large pensions of up to half the final salary falls onto general taxation. A pension of £50,000 would require the contributions from around 20 NQTs, so if there are now more than say 500 pensioners in the Teachers’ Pension Scheme with pensions of over £50,000 they might require the contributions of 10,000 Newly Qualified Teachers just to cover their pensions. As this number increases so will its share of the income from the Pension Fund necessary to cover the payout even if it is offset by the higher pension payments from those receiving the high salaries.

Teacher compensation regimes are complicated affairs, and the government should be wary of tackling some areas of pay without considering the consequences as a whole. At present governing bodies have the power to set salaries, but without the responsibilities for all the consequences. That said I quite understand why heads want to achieve the highest salary possible in an environment where the ethos of public service seems to reside solely with a Prime Minister who can afford to take such a stance.

Youth numbers in custody halve in a decade

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One of the more impressive statistics of the past few years has been the reduction in the number of young people held in custody. For much of the first decade of this century the average number of children and young people held in custody (including 18 year-olds) averaged around the 3,000 mark for England and Wales. The peak year was 2002/03 when the average was 3,451. With a month to go in the 2012/13 financial year the latest figures show that the average number in custody is now down to 1,755 almost exactly half the average in the peak year a decade ago.

Even more impressive is the decline in the 10-14 age group held in custody, down from a peak of 236 in July 2005 to 54 in February 2013. The decline in the 14-17 age-groups in custody has been from a peak of 2,885 in June 2008 to 1,266 this February. These figures can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/youth-custody-data along with other useful data for those interested in the topic of youth custody. For instance, only 52 of those held in secure institutions are females compared with 1,268 young males. Some 765 of the young population are classified as ‘White’ compared with 506 from the BME and ‘other’ classifications. The reduction in the ‘White’ population in youth custody from a peak of over 2,000 has been much steeper than for the BME and ’other’ group where the peak was less than 800. There are clearly questions to be asked about the differential rate of decline in the custody population by ethnic group. One explanation may be geographic since 389 of the custody population come from London, the most racially mixed part of the country with the other urban areas outside of the North East also over-represented. One disappointing statistics is that 281 of the young people in custody were on remand. However, if the census was taken on a Friday it may be a proportion of these were on ‘warrants’ awaiting an appearance at a Saturday remand court. However, even this number is well down on the peak of almost 700 recorded in June 2008.

Hopefully, keeping these young people out of custody will also reduce the revolving door where one custodial sentence invariably leads on to another, especially for those handed down sentences of six months or less where support after custody is often insufficient if not non-existent.

Schools have a part to play in reducing exclusions since a large proportion of those in custody were as some point excluded from school. It may be no accident that youth custody rates were at their highest when secondary schools in urban areas were struggling to recruit sufficient numbers of teachers. If there is a relationship between sufficient teachers and a reduction in youth crime then the DfE would do well to ensure we don’t slide towards another teacher supply crisis in the next couple of years.

Is School Direct working?

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How much of a mess is teacher supply in at the moment? And are we heading for another teacher shortage? Might such a shortage pit Michael Gove against the Home Secretary in demanding more immigration to allow those teachers from America and the Commonwealth that he granted QTS last year and the ability to take up vacancies not filled by UK trained teachers?

There are certainly straws in the wind pointing to challenges that might be looming. A head contacting Canada to source teachers; concern from the media in Kent that the county is having difficulty recruiting enough teachers; a rise of around 16% in vacancies for secondary school teachers advertised during the first two months of 2013 when compared to 2012. These all point to, at the very least, a tightening of the labour market. Add to this the fact that I haven’t heard as many stories about last year’s crop of NQTs being reduced to stacking shelves in supermarkets because they couldn’t find work as teachers, and we have the situation were the pointer is certainly swinging away from ‘over supply’ and towards ‘in balance’, even if it has yet to cross into the ‘shortage’ zone.

For all these reasons it is vital that the 2013 training round works both efficiently and effectively. Data from the Graduate Teacher Training Registry that manages applications to graduate teacher preparation courses in universities shows that apart from Modern Languages many subjects are experiencing a lower level of applications in the current round compared with the same time last year. Some of this may be because would-be applicants have diverted to apply for the new School Direct scheme that not only replaced the former employment based schemes, such as the Graduate Teacher Programme, but also took some of the training numbers formerly allocated to universities in previous rounds. With more than half of the application period before courses start now passed, it is interesting to review how School Direct is faring?

For the purposes of this blog I reviewed the data provided on the DfE web site regarding the total number of places, and how many remained available at the middle of March in two subjects. Physics was chosen because it has traditionally been a ‘shortage’ subject, and even those not offered a salary can claim relatively generous bursaries. By contrast, history has not been regarded as a shortage subject, and those not on the salaried scheme may find little by way of financial support to help them through their training.

The results when I looked on the 15th March were that only 4% of the ‘salaried’ School Direct places for Physics were shown as ‘unavailable’, as were just 6% of the ‘non-salaried’ Physics ‘Training’ places. That’s a total of 29 places out of 572 on offer for Physics shown as ‘unavailable’, and presumably, therefore, filled. In history, the position was better, with a quarter of the 336 places shown as ‘unavailable’, and presumably filled.

Now it is too early to be sounding alarm bells but, with the Easter holiday fast approaching, schools probably won’t be holding many more interviews until sometime in April. By the end of that month there will be just four months before the new school year when the School Direct candidates will be expected to start their training. By now Teach First has usually closed its book to new applicants, but this year even that programme is still accepting applications in the sciences, mathematics, computer science/ICT and English.

Taken together, the fact that the three leading routes used for preparing teachers are finding this a challenging recruitment round means that the government must take notice, and, if necessary, action.

Now it may be that School Direct partners are just slow in notifying the DfE that they have accepted candidates. It may also be that they are used to recruiting teachers for September largely between March and May and don’t appreciate the fact that training places have generally been organised earlier in the year than that. Schools may also be expecting a higher standard from potential applicants than higher education has sometimes been able to demand. Whatever the reasons, we will not produce a world-class education system unless we have enough teachers.

Perhaps Mr Gove ought to send David Laws, his Minister of State, to open preliminary negotiations with Mrs May about visas for teachers in the future. He also needs to ensure that the Teaching Agency is managing the situation effectively. And with fees around the £9,000 level it may be time to review how we fund those who want to train as teachers before we reach crisis levels.

Mr Gove and the Triple A rating

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Mr Gove and the Triple A rating

Accident or design? That’s the question the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be asking the Secretary of State for Education about the £3 billion or so currently sitting in school’s bank accounts. A figure that has been steadily rising since the coalition came to power in 2010 with the promise that schools would largely protected from the current round of economic hardship facing the rest of the public sector.

Data published by the DfE earlier this year showed that by the end of the last financial year schools had reserves in excess of seven per cent of their annual revenue incomes. With a government fighting recession, and keen to find ways of spending more without raising taxes, urging schools to spend some the taxpayers cash held in their accounts might help unlock some local economic paralysis if the cash went to local projects employing local workers.

Not only might the effect of schools spending £500 million a year on job creation schemes across the country, targeted at the either the low paid and long-term unemployed or alternatively new graduates yet to find a job make good political sense, but it might also actually help the economy. However, Mr Gove has been strangely silent on this key issue of the moment, preferring to fiddle around with school structures and the curriculum which, whatever their value, are longer-term issues in the current economic crisis.

Ministers who are apparently not alert to the bigger picture in cabinet, and the contributions their department can make to solve it, either aren’t up to the job or want a quiet life. There is a third alternative; they recognise that economic failure might help their own career prospects. Now nobody would accuse Mr Gove of such a cynical approach to politics and he can claim to have limited authority over the primary sector, although with some many secondary schools now academies he has much more room for intervention with that group of schools.

Before the Labour Party starts calling for Mr Gove’s head over this issue, they will need to see what steps the local authorities controlled by them, and the many Labour Party members serving as school governors, have taken to challenge the strategy of local schools building up reserves for a rainy day. The recent Ofsted report on the pupil premium, and their earlier interim findings, should have alerted the DfE to this issue even if Mr Gove ignored the Statistical Bulletin when it appeared in his ministerial box.

Perhaps it is time for that the guardian of public expenditure, the Public Accounts Committee, to intervene. After all, its chairman isn’t exactly unfamiliar with education. It may also be time for David Laws to stamp his foot about school spending. After all, it won’t help the Lib Dems if all that pupil premium and catch-up cash they have secured for schools has just made its way straight into the school’s saving account. As a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, albeit briefly, he cannot be blind to the financial figures that cross his desk and that of his even more economically literate adviser.

The inclination by schools to save is laudable, but surely if there was ever a time to for schools to spend, it is now.

Onward Christian Soldiers

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Onward Christian Soldiers
John Howson

July 2012 was a significant month in the battle over who should run state-funded
schools. During the month that the Secretary of State announced another tranche
of new so-called ‘free’ schools under his 2010 Education Act arrangements and
there were three other potentially significant developments relating to schools.
In an apparent policy about turn the Methodist Church in England announced
during its annual Conference that it wanted to open new state-funded schools.
http://www.methodist.org.uk/news-and-events/news-releases/methodistchurch-
plans-to-build-schools-in-deprived-areas The new schools would be in
addition to the 65 across England and Wales it has run for many years,
sometimes alone, and sometimes jointly with the Church of England. With an
existing infrastructure, and rising primary school rolls, the Methodist Church
seems ideally placed to help the Government achieve its aim of dismantling the
local authority community school sector, especially as the Church has pledged to
focus on deprived inner-city areas rather than the mainly rural areas where many
of their existing primary schools are located.

At the same time that the Methodists meeting in Conference in Plymouth were
seeking to re-enter the schooling arena, and also strengthen their presence in
other sectors of education, the Labour Party were reported by the BBC as
endorsing the idea of a new chain of schools with a military ethos to be operated
by former members of the armed services, and presumably to be established
under the same 2010 legislation that the Methodist Church is seeking to exploit.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18770387

Seemingly, these schools would also serve deprived communities by embedding
military standards and ethos into these communities through these so-called
‘service schools’. What Methodist members of the Labour Party think of the idea
isn’t known. Bizarrely, at the same time, the proposed Phoenix Free School in
Oldham that was to be run entirely by ex-troops did not make it into the list of
102 new schools approved by the DfE in the July 2012 list.
http://www.cps.org.uk/blog/q/date/2012/07/13/troops-to-teachers-phoenixfree-
school-rejected-by-department-of-education/ The apparent reason, that not
enough qualified teachers were to be recruited seems, on the face of it frankly
bizarre after Mr Gove allowed academies to employ individuals without QTS in
any teaching role, making his announcement just after parliament broke for its
summer recess.

Some of the proposals launched during July seemingly have the benefit of
recognising the need for schools to be backed by a strong organisation that can
manage oversight of the day to day operations, rather as democratically elected
local authorities once saw their responsibility. If the rejection of the Phoenix
proposal signals that stand-alone schools are less favoured than applications from
chains of schools then a new structure similar to that of the health service may be
set to emerge within the school system.

That the leaders of all three political parties with current or recent government
experience at Westminster seem determined to remove democratically elected
local authorities from any day to day involvement in schooling poses a dilemma
for many hard working councillors and other activists across the country
whichever of these three parties they support. Personally, I still favour the need
for a strong role for local authorities in schooling, and especially primary
schooling, an essentially locally delivered activity set within a national framework.

John Howson is Vice President of the LDEA. An earlier version of this piece appeared in his opinion column in Children’s Services Weekly. A collection of those pieces has been published as an ebook on Amazon under the title. Please miss. “Can pigs fly”?

At a price of less than £2 it can be bought at http://www.amazon.com/Please-Miss-can-pigsebook/dp/B008QBJZ4W/ref=sr_1_2_title_0_mains=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343725980&sr=1-2