Tag Archives: GTTR

Fewer salaried entrants to teaching?

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Ever since Kenneth Baker introduced the Licensed and Articled Teacher Schemes, wat back in the last century, when he was Secretary of State for Education, there have been possibilities to earn and learn to become a teacher.

Since 2000, the main schemes have been the Graduate and Registered Teacher Schemes; Teach First/High Achievers route/School Direct Salaried route/Postgraduate apprenticeship route and a few specialist routes such as troops to Techers and Teach next. The government has recently proposed a new undergraduate apprenticeship route (see Bring back King’s Scholarships? | John Howson (wordpress.com) on this blog).

Over the years numbers on these employment-based routes have fluctuated. The table is my best estimate of numbers each September starting such courses. The total should be treated as indicative rather than absolute for two reasons: some routes, numbers from some routes such as Fast Track and troops for Teachers aren’t included, and the numbers published often changed between the original ITT census and later published data containing both late registrations and early departures.

YearEBR ITT
20004120
20014810
20026810
20037676
20047417
20057403
20067635
20077282
20086963
20095699
20105842
20116890
20126057
20133701
20144146
20154750
20164485
20174115
20183969
20194246
20204078
20213197
20222850
Source: Various government publications

From the turn of the century up to 2012, the GTTP was the main source of employment-based entry, after the Fast Track Scheme ended. Whether that latter scheme really qualified as an employment-based route is anyway debatable, although the management of their careers did ensure some sort of control not present in other routes.

After the Gove revolution, the School Direct Salaried route took over as the main employment-based route into teaching, alongside Teach First (High Achievers route) that had been steadily growing in numbers since its inception as a short-service route for those prepared to teach for a couple of years.

Even allowing for the caution about the data, it seems that since the Market Review of ITT by the DfE numbers on employment-based routes have dropped to their lowest levels this century. At their peak, the various routes were recruiting more than twice as many new teachers through employment-based routes as in 2022. Indeed, Teach First is, seemingly, now the main route for those wanting an employment-based route into the teaching profession. Is this what the DfE intended when it set up the Market Review?

School-based preparation exists in other forms, through the SCITTS and School Direct Fee routes, but neither are as attractive to those that want to earn while teaching.

Does the DfE think that there should be an employment-based route for career changers, as opposed to new or recent graduates, and if so, how is it prepared to fund such a scheme?

The proposed school leaver apprenticeship model seems to want to tap into a market that may not exist, while the government doesn’t seem to have a plan for career changes that need to earn and learn. This seems like an odd approach driven more by the spare cash from the Apprenticeship Levy sloshing around the system than any sensible approach to market planning.

Hopefully, someone will correct my thinking and tell me of the DfE’s grand plan for career changers wanting to become a teacher. After all, this was the fastest growing segment of those showing interest in teaching as a career this year.

Do we need to attract an increased number of older entrants into teaching?

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Yesterday, I commented on one aspect of the new Secretary of State’s interview with The Times newspaper. Today, I would like to look at another area he talked about; recruiting older people into teaching. Although recruits into teaching have largely been thought of in the context of young new graduates, there have always been a stream of older entrants into the profession. These older entrants probably fell into two main groups: staff working in schools, either as volunteers or paid staff and those changing careers. The former were probably more numerous in the primary sector, in the past they often consisted of those entering through access courses and a first degree in teaching. Most career changers will have entered either through the PGCE route or via the various employment based routes that once recruited outside the main recruitment envelope, much as Teach First and Troops for teachers still do today. In 2006, there was also the Open University PGCE course that didn’t recruit through UCAS, but was entirely comprised of mature entrants to teaching.

The multiplicity of routes into teaching makes exact comparison over a period of time something of a challenge, as does the fact that UCAS reports the age profile of applicants to the current scheme in a different way to the predecessor GTTR scheme run by the same organisation.

Nevertheless, it is possible to make some broad comparison between say, the 2006 entry onto the GTTR Scheme; a year when applications to train as a teacher were still healthy, and before the crash of 2008, and 2017 applicant numbers for September via the UCAS ITT Scheme. These are not the final figures for 2017, but close enough to be possible to use for comparison purposes, based upon past trends.

Applicants to postgraduate centrally administered courses – actual numbers

UCAS/GTTR applicants
2017 2006
20-22 11080 15798
23-24 8570 12699
25-29 9900 15454
30-39 6750 9848
40+ 5400 5095
41700 58894

Sources: GTTR Annual Report 2006, Table A4 and UCAS Report A, Applicants September 2017.

The first obvious point to make is that despite the school-based routes (except Teach First and Troops to Teachers) now being included and the Open University no longer offering a PGCE, there has been a drop of just over 17,000 in applicants wanting to train as a teacher. This decline is across all age groupings.

Applicants to postgraduate centrally administered courses – percentages

Percentages
UCAS/GTTR applicants
2017 2006
20-22 27% 27%
23-24 21% 22%
25-29 24% 26%
30-39 16% 17%
40+ 13% 9%
100% 100%

Sources: GTTR Annual Report 2006, Table A4 and UCAS Report A, Applicants September 2017.

The other interesting point to make is that with UCAS being responsible for entry to a greater part of the training market in 2017 than in 2006 and especially the part most likely to attract older applicants their share of the total made up of applicants over 40 has increased from 9% in 2006 13% in 2017. The percentage of those in their 30s has remained broadly the same. Teaching has lost more than 9,000 new graduates in their early 20s wanting to be teachers. In a previous post, I commented that so far this year teaching appeared to be seeing fewer young women applying to be primary school teachers. The loss of that group could have serious implications for teaching in future years, especially as younger teachers usually go on to provide the bulk of the leadership candidates in fifteen to twenty years’ time.

So, Mr Hinds, you many well want to attract older candidates to Teach Next and to the core programmes, but you must not neglect what is happening among new graduates saddled with more than £27,000 of possible debt, even before they enter training. In the case of primary teachers there is little chance of support during training and the debt on another £9,000+ to fund when they start teaching. This is not an attractive deal.

If the UCAS data, to be published next Thursday, shows a dismal January for applications then, now your predecessors have decided to take teacher supply fully into the DfE from April, the buck will stop at your desk. Spending £14 million by the NCTL on publicity and advertising didn’t work last year, so looking for older applicants could be a good idea, because you do need to find something that works.

GTTR: The Final Report

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UCAS have now published the final statistical report on the 2013 applications for the GTTR teacher preparation scheme. This was the scheme that operated for nearly two decades across England, Wales and Scotland. As from the 2014 entry, the GTTR scheme has been replaced by the new, and in England, vastly more complex scheme designed to allow more choice to applicants.

The GTTR Report allows us to put some flesh on the bare bones of the DfE’s ITT November 2013 census, especially in the secondary sector where there are relatively few undergraduate places and most providers’ applications, except the lamented OU course , were handled by GTTR. The first point to note is the confirmation of the continued decline in applications that peaked at more than 67,000 for the 2010 entry. By the 2013 round, applications were down to 52,254; below the pre-recession figure of 53,931, achieved in the 2007 round. Both the number of men and of women applying was below the 2007 levels in 2013, although applications from men to primary courses seemed to have held up better than for applications to secondary courses.

Because of changes in allocations, the ratio of acceptances to applications actually fell by one point to 44% in 2013. This is still some way below the 49% acceptance rate of 2008, achieved in the run up to the recession. If allocations have reached their nadir, then it seems likely that the acceptance ratio will move higher unless either more applicants can be attracted to teaching or places are left unfilled. Much will depend upon the attitude of schools in the School Direct programme to marginal candidates, and whether they sense that enough progress can be made during the preparation to make it worth trying to help them become acceptable teachers.

Within the data are some worrying figures. Some 49% of women, but 56% of men that applied were not accepted. Sadly, the report doesn’t make clear how many could not find a course because they left their application too late, and how many were considered not good enough. Even more worrying is the data on ethnicity. While 40,897 of the more than 52,000 applicants classified themselves as White, leaving around 10,000 from a defined ethnic group other than White, the percentages accepted differ sharply between the groups. Some 46.7% of White applicants were accepted, compared with just 17.2% of Black African applicants, and 28.7 of Black Caribbean applicants. At the subject level the figures are even starker. In history, curiously seen as an Arts subject by GTTR rather than a social science or humanity subject, perhaps no more than three Black African or Black Caribbean applicant or those shown as White and Black Caribbean were accepted anywhere in the country out of the 30 or so that applied compared with a better than one in four chance for the White group. As in the past this may reflect the relatively narrow range of institutions applicants from some ethnic groups apply to, and the issues that this causes. For instance of the 4,708 applications generated by the 1,510 Black African applicants, some 1,664 were made to just six providers in the London area. In one case, 344 applications yielded 23 acceptances.

One other trend worthy of note was that applicants over the age of 30, the classic career changers, declined as a proportion of all applicants from 22% in 2012 to 19% in 2013. This makes the current attitudes of new graduates towards teaching as a career even more important than during the recession. At least, the number of mature applicants is holding up so far for the 2014 entry, accounting for 22% of those that had applied by February.