England has a teacher supply crisis in its secondary schools. Not, please note in most areas in its primary schools. Years of missed targets for trainee numbers must have an effect on the labour market unless other sources of teacher supply can be found.
From today the effect of missed targets on examination results will also start to become clear. Will those young people most likely to stay in the local economy have fared less well than those that will disappear off to a university, and then who knows where (likely London in many cases) after graduation, rather returning to their local area where they were brought up. If so, what are the consequences for those local economies?
As the latest in my series on the what happened in the labour market for teachers, as measured by advertisements tracked by TeachVac between January and the end of July 2023, I have managed a quick calculation of number of advertisements for teachers by the Free School Meal percentage of schools. This measurement might suggest whether schools with higher percentages of FSM pupils have more staff turnover?
This is a crude measure because it doesn’t standardise for school size. A better measure is for turnover measured after taking pupil numbers into account and matching the resultant outcome against the percentage of FSM pupils. I haven’t yet had time to do that calculation.
| Adverts by school | >10 | 10-20 | 21-30 | 31-40 | 41+ | Total schools |
| FSM | ||||||
| 0-10 | 201 | 162 | 56 | 28 | 13 | 460 |
| 11-20 | 415 | 323 | 160 | 36 | 55 | 989 |
| 21-30 | 310 | 255 | 120 | 63 | 60 | 808 |
| 31-40 | 162 | 150 | 80 | 34 | 37 | 463 |
| 41-50 | 97 | 89 | 50 | 27 | 15 | 278 |
| 51-60 | 34 | 32 | 14 | 4 | 5 | 89 |
| 60+ | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 11 |
| total | 1224 | 1015 | 481 | 192 | 186 | 3098 |
| 40+ | 136 | 125 | 65 | 31 | 21 | 378 |
| Adverts by school | >10 | 10-20 | 21-30 | 31-40 | 41+ | |
| FSM | ||||||
| 0-10 | 44% | 35% | 12% | 6% | 3% | 100% |
| 11-20 | 42% | 33% | 16% | 4% | 6% | 100% |
| 21-30 | 38% | 32% | 15% | 8% | 7% | 100% |
| 31-40 | 35% | 32% | 17% | 7% | 8% | 100% |
| 41-50 | 35% | 32% | 18% | 10% | 5% | 100% |
| 51-60 | 38% | 36% | 16% | 4% | 6% | 100% |
| 60+ | 45% | 36% | 9% | 0% | 9% | 100% |
| total | 40% | 33% | 16% | 6% | 6% | 100% |
| 40+ | 36% | 33% | 17% | 8% | 6% | 100% |
There is some evidence from the tables that schools with lower percentages of pupils on Free School Meals do have a lower turnover of staff, and that schools with a higher percentage of such pupil do experience did experience high numbers of advertisements for teaching staff during the January to July 2023 period.
This type of analysis is important because too often the focus is on the student: attendance rates; previous history of examination taking and other factor such as free school meals, but these are not linked to school factors.
Thus, today, BBC Radio 4 has been worrying about the performance of students in the North East compared to students in London. Nick Gibb, The Minister, on the world at One on Radio 4, (I don’t often agree with him), but I do in this instance, suggested it was more a London and the rest of the country difference. However, The Minister didn’t say that there are more independent schools in the south than the north, and that the ability to recruit staff might be a factor in the widening gap in outcomes between those regarded as ‘disadvantaged’ and other pupils.
To ignore staff turnover, is to miss an important component in a system that has failed to train sufficient teachers in many subjects for nearly a decade now. Such shortfall in a market-based recruitment system must surely have consequences?
John Howson 