Tag Archives: head teacher recruiment

Enough potential school leaders?

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When I wrote a blog recently about the significant level of head teacher vacancies recorded by both TeachVac and the DfE vacancy site during August, I promised to look into the possible size of the pool of school leaders able to step up to fill headships in the primary sector. (Feeling the Strain 31st August 2020)

The new arrangement for viewing the DfE Statistics of the School Workforce in November 2019 made this more of a challenge than in the past. Indeed, I have still not fathomed whether it is possible to add in age groupings as a variable in the composite table searchers are allowed to create from the data? This is an important variable in answering the question about leadership pool of talent since deputy and assistant heads in some age groups may be expected to be lacking in experience in post sufficient to consider promotion to a headship.

Even better would be details about age and length of service in post, something provided way back in the 1990s, but not seemingly available now without a specific data request. Perhaps the teacher associations might like to consider this issue in their next evidence to the Pay Review Body the STRB).

Historically, most head teachers are appointed from the ranks of deputy head teachers, although, as some small primary schools don’t have a deputy, a number of assistant heads or even teachers with a TRL have been appointed to headships in the past. More recently, deputy heads in secondary schools have been moved across to primary schools in the same Academy Trust in order to fill vacancies for primary head teacher posts.

Looking at the data for the last four years from the School Workforce Census, the number of full-time deputy heads in the primary sector has declined from 11,563 in 2017/18, to 10,729 in 2019/20. The number of part-time deputy heads during the same period has, however, increased from 1,062 to 1,236. Nevertheless, the size of the pool has not grown. This is despite the number of schools remaining almost constant during the same period, the total altering only from 17,191 to 17,178.

Assuming some 2,000 primary head teacher vacancies each year, with 25% being taken by existing head teacher changing schools, this would create a demand for 1,500 first time head teachers each year. Assuming ten per cent of the 12,000 deputy heads are too new in post to consider promotion and a further 10% are too old to be still interested in headship, the remaining 10,000 or so leaves a generous margin of possible applicants.

However, other considerations then come into play; type of school – infant, junior or primary; organisation – maintained or academy; religious affiliation or none – Church of England, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Jewish, Greek Orthodox; Sikh, Muslim; size of school – one form entry to four form entry or larger?

All these variables can affect the size of the possible pool of interested applicants. A further wrinkle is the time of year a vacancy is advertised. Historically, 50% of vacancies appear in the January to March period and are the easiest to fill as that is when the majority of applicants are job hunting. TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk has detailed information on how schools advertising for a head teacher fare, and how many have to re-advertise. Each year, a report is published in January.

We shall be watching the current trends with interest.

Feeling the strain?

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After nearly 40 years of following trends in school leadership recruitment, I have rarely had to worry about what was happening during August. Indeed, for many years I used to spend the month compiling a detailed report on the labour market for senior staff during the previous school year for the NAHT.

However, this year, perhaps because of covid-19, there are signs that activity in the market for senior leaders has been a bit different to normal. Using data from TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk admittedly collected this morning, (although I don’t expect many schools in England to add new vacancies on a bank holiday), and not after the end of the month, there seems to have been an increase in advertised vacancies for both primary and secondary headships by schools in England this August.

In the primary sector, vacancies for headteacher posts recorded during August 2020 were 84, up from 57, in 2019, and 54, in 2018. Likewise, in the secondary sector, recorded headship vacancies were 16 in 2020, compared with just six in 2019, and 10 in 2018. Deputy Head vacancies increased, from 10 to 32, between last August and this year in the primary sector, and from just two last year to five vacancies this year in the secondary sector. There were eight assistant head vacancies in the primary sector this August, compared with just three recorded in August 2019.

Promoted posts are rarely seen in vacancies for the primary sector, and none were recorded this August. In the secondary sector, there were 38 this August, compared with 36 in 2019: little change.

For completeness, it is worth noting that classroom teacher vacancies also rose in the primary sector from 96 recorded in August 2019, to 129 recorded in 2020. However, the downward trend in the secondary sector job market continued, with just 223 recorded vacancies for classroom teachers this August, compared with 344 in August 2019.

What might account for this upward trend in headship vacancies? Well, TeachVac might be better at collecting vacancies form the smaller primary Multi Academy Trusts that last year. That might account for some of the difference. However, might some primary heads be feeling the strain of running a school during the exceptional period we have experienced since March 2020, and the start of the pandemic?

If this is the case, then the actions of government over the summer bode ill for the future. Could we see a growth in heads tendering their resignations for January or will they be prepared to carry on despite the requirements imposed upon them by government?

Vacancies advertised during September 2019 for headships were, 102 in the primary sector, and 44 in the secondary sector. These totals provide a benchmark by which to judge the number of vacancies in 2020.

It is also worth considering, at least in the primary sector, what the pool of potential new heads is like, and I may come back to that issue in another post. The key number is of deputy heads with perhaps at least five years of experience and, perhaps, under the age of fifty five.

A question for the Cardinals

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Why do Roman Catholic schools find more difficulty in recruiting a new headteacher than do other schools? I first posed this question more than thirty years ago, soon after I started looking at trends in vacancies for school leaders in the early 1980s.

After a break of five years, I returned to the subject of vacancies for school leaders in a report published last January. I have just completed the first draft of the 2018 survey into leadership vacancies. The full report will be available from TeachVac at enquiries@oxteachserv.com early in the New Year. You can reserve a copy now.

Once again, in 2018, Roman Catholic schools, and especially those in some diocese, weren’t able to appoint a headteacher after the first advertisement by the school. The data comes from TeachVac, the free job board that costs schools and teachers nothing to use.

(As an aside, I wonder why the DfE didn’t contract with an existing provider such as TeachVac, eteach or even the US owned TES to provide a comprehensive free job site rather than building their own site. Perhaps there are different rules for Brexit and hiring ships from companies still to start their service than for designing government web sites for far more money than it would have cost to buy in the service.)

Anyway, back to the matter in hand, TeachVac recorded that some 57 of the 124 Roman Catholic schools that were recorded as advertising for a primary headteacher during the 2017-18 school year needed to re-advertise the post: a re-advertisement rate of 46%. Other schools had re-advertisement rates for vacancies first advertised during this period in the low 30%s.

Now, some diocese, have reduced re-advertisement rates by appointing deputy heads from secondary schools to run primary schools. I was once sceptical of this as a solution, but can now see that just as a secondary school headteacher isn’t an expert in all subjects taught in the schools, so a primary headteacher needs leadership qualities, backed by experienced middle leaders that understand the different stages of learning and development in the primary sector.

Using a different measure of total re-advertisements to schools advertising a vacancy for a headteacher reveals that a small number of schools have extreme difficulty in recruiting a new headteacher. Some of these schools just start at the wrong time of year.

Overall, almost every primary school of any type that advertised a headship in December 2017 re-advertised the post at some point during 2018. Unless, these schools used a subscription model that allowed for as many advertisements are required to fill the post, the governors were just wasting the school’s money if they used a paid for publication or job board for the December advert. Those that used TeachVac would have not faced that problem, because it wouldn’t have cost them anything.

As Britain becomes a more secular society, all faiths will need to address the question of how to find the next generation of leaders for their schools. With the approach the 150th anniversary of the 1870 Education Act, such schools seem likely to remain a part of the landscape, whatever the feelings and views of those that would prefer an entirely secular state school system.

 

 

Update on head teacher recruitment

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Way back at the beginning of May this year, I reported on trends in primary leadership recruitment. The data came from TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk the free to use recruitment site that costs both schools and teachers nothing to use, and where I am chair of the company.

With a miserably wet day yesterday, I thought I would take a second look at the data for 2018 in the area of primary head teacher recruitment. So far, it I seems to be turning out to be a pretty average year. TeachVac has records of more than 1,200 advertisements for a head teacher, placed by primary schools. Of these, around 22% are re-advertisements placed more than a month after the original advert appeared. In May, I reported some 175 schools had been forced to re-advertise a headship; by last week that number had risen to close to 225.

The number of schools placing multiple re-advertisements, each at least four week apart, had also increased; from 25 recorded in May, to a current number of around 40 schools. This includes one school with an original advert plus four re-advertisements. I do hope each one didn’t come with a separate bill for advertising.

As in the past, schools associated with the various faiths seem to be more likely to have to re-advertise than non-faith schools.  Of course, it might not be the faith aspect that is causing the re-advertisement, although I think that may be part of the issue. Size, geography and type of schools, whether or not it is an academy, for instance, can all play a part.

In the past Roman Catholic run schools in the North West rarely featured in the list of schools challenged when seeking a new head teacher. This year they account for more than 40% of such schools that have re-advertised.

TeachVac could also investigate the effects of other variables such as size of school; ofsted grades and timing of any inspection report along with output measures such as Key Stage results and progress of pupils over time. However, we don’t have the research funds for such analysis at this point in time. Nearly a decade ago, the then National College sponsored an investigation into ‘hard to fill headships’. I am not sure it was ever published, and assume that it is now buried somewhere deep in the archives of Sanctuary Buildings, if it hasn’t already been consigned to the National Archives at Kew.

Overall, the message to chairs of governors, and governing bodies as a whole, remains the same as it always has been. If your head teacher announces that they are leaving, either to retire or to take on a new challenge, the two most likely reasons for a change of headship, then ask three questions; is their someone in the school we could appoint either directly or after some professional development; are there likely to be candidates from within travelling distance of the school; if neither of these can be answered in the affirmative, how are we going to ensure a smooth succession that doesn’t affect the pupils and staff at the school?

There is plenty of good advice out there along with lots of high quality candidates. Hopefully, schools will experience a great term recruiting heads to their vacancies: good luck.

Vacancy war breaks out

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The DfE’s rather muddled announcement earlier today of a service to clampdown on agencies charging schools “excessive” fees to recruit staff and advertise vacancies https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-free-website-for-schools-to-advertise-vacancies was clearly written by a press officer that didn’t understand what was being said. Either that or the government is in more of a mess than I thought. Muddled up in the announcement posted on the DfE’s web page today are two separate and different services.

In one, the DfE announced that:

Mr Hinds will launch a new nationwide deal for headteachers from September 2018 – developed with Crown Commercial Service – providing them with a list of supply agencies that do not charge fees when making supply staff permanent after 12 weeks.

The preferred suppliers on the list will also be required to clearly set out how much they are charging on top of the wages for staff. This will make it easier for schools to avoid being charged excessive fees and reduce the cost burden on schools of recruiting supply teachers through agencies.

Such a service might backfire if it drove some agencies out of business and then allowed the remainder to actually increase their prices to schools.

However, it is the other service, starting now for a limited trial just after the end of the main recruitment round for September vacancies that is of more interest, as it directly competes with TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk the free national service for vacancies that has been running successfully for the past four years. TeachVac was set up to do exactly what the DfE say they are now trying to do:

 To help combat these costs, the Secretary of State has announced a free website has been launched to advertise vacancies, which currently costs schools up to £75 million a year. This website will include part-time roles and job shares.

Well, TeachVac does all of that. Regular readers will know that I am chair of the company that owns and operate TeachVac and its international site Teachval Global. Why should the government want to destroy an already successful free service? Perhaps the teacher associations can tell me what see that will be better in the DfE’s offering? Certainly, the DfE won’t have access to the same level of real time job data as TeachVac that has already allowed us to comment on the problems facing schools in London and the Home Counties that have been trying to recruit teachers for September.

TeachVac will continue, as it is backed by its successful TeachVac Global arm that provides a similar paid service for international schools around the globe. http://www.teachvacglobal.com as well as its extensive data and associated businesses.

In the meantime, paid for vacancy services, such as the TES – also a player in the supply agency marketplace- eteach, SchoolsWeek and The Guardian must explain to their investors how they will combat another free service displaying teaching vacancies. Local authorities, don’t have investors to explain to, but could see their job boards affected by the DfE move, especially for posts in primary schools where they are often a key player in the local market.

But, for everyone the key question is, after two failures in this field, will the DfE be successful this time around? Judging by the quality of the announcement, there must be a measure of doubt, especially at the costs involved. Let me know what you think. Is this a service the DfE should provide and do you think that they can for a credible cost?

 

 

Teacher Recruitment; nationalised service or private enterprise?

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So the unacceptable face of capitalism has raised its head again, with a Conservative Prime Minister once again facing questions about excesses in the private sector, much as Edward Heath, who coined the phrase,  did in 1973. The other parallels with 1972 are also interesting a rocketing stock market and a decision to be made about Britain’s relationship with Europe. Happily, the other scourge of the 1970s, high inflation, isn’t currently the same worry, although it has been replaced by the high price of housing, where the market has failed to produce enough homes of the right types in the right places to satisfy demand.

In an interesting side line on the debate about the role of the State in the provision of services, last week the DfE talked to an invited audience about the plans for their new vacancy service for schools. Although I wasn’t at the meeting, the idea of such a service has been discussed in a number of the previous posts on this blog ever since it first emerged as a suggestion in the White Paper of 2016. Following the meeting, the whole situation has left me more than a little confused. What the teacher associations make of the DfE’s actions must also be an interesting question.

Held at the same time as PMQ was taking place in the House of Commons chamber, where the demise of Carillion was fresh in the minds of MPs, the DfE meeting saw a Labour peer representing a commercial company at the same time that his leader was expressing views more sympathetic to the State running industries rather than the private sector. And if that weren’t curious enough, the education lead at the right leaning thinktank Policy Exchange must surely be wondering why the DfE is further empire building by moving into devising a recruitment service on top of the growing staff numbers supporting both the EFSC and the offices of the Regional School Commissioners. Better procurement, rather than a replacement state run service, would be what I would expect from John Blake’s analysis of the cost of recruitment to schools and the need to find ways of reducing it.

To some extent, I am not a dis-interested player, as TeachVac, the free national recruitment service for schools and teachers already does what the DfE is seemingly trying to provide for schools and at no cost to the public purse.

TeachVac also collects data about the labour market. TeachVac will publish its first report of 2018 on Wednesday of this week. This report will discuss the labour market for primary leadership posts during 2017. That report won’t be free, but if you want a copy email enquiries@oxteachserv.com For details of the vacancy service visit: www.teachvac.co.uk

A National Vacancy Service

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Tomorrow, the DfE is holding a meeting to brief recruiters about its plans around a service publishing vacancies for teachers and school leaders. In the light of the demise of Carillion, is this new service a move based upon foresight by officials of the need to protect services from private sector enterprises or a belief that State operated services can do the job cheaper than private companies?  This is an important issue, since there are many in the government and among its supporters that see nationally operated services, of the type a vacancy service would presumably offer, as little more than a return to recreating nationalised industries.

At this point I must declare an interest for new readers of this blog. Some years ago, I helped form TeachVac to provide a free national vacancy service for teachers and for schools to save money on recruitment advertising, through the use of modern technology to bring together schools with vacancies and those looking to apply for such posts. TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk and its offshoot for international schools, TeachVac Global, www.teachvacglobal.com are now the largest since source for teaching posts in England and can help to attract teachers back to work in England. All at no cost to the public purse.

TeachVac also had the added bonus, of providing real time information on the labour market: something the DfE will no doubt also want to play up about their service. This week, TeachVac will have already a recorded record number new vacancies for teachers and school leaders since schools returned from holiday just over a week ago.

As I pointed out recently in the blog post about business studies teacher recruitment – blink and they are gone – a large proportion of vacancies recorded so far in 2018 are in and around London. As of yesterday, 58% of recorded vacancies in 2018 were from schools in London; the East of England or the South East with just 32% located in the other six regions. The percentage was the same for both vacancies in the primary and secondary sectors.

Is this because these areas are seeing the fastest growth in pupil numbers and are already adding new vacancies in expectation of their growing rolls? Is it because teachers in these areas are leaving in larger numbers. TeachVac Global is certainly seeing interest from teachers wanting to consider working overseas. Is it because these schools feel the new National Funding Formula doesn’t hurt as much as it could have done and they now feel more confident on their spending for 2018/19? There are other ways of answering these questions: TeachVac at least points out what to ask.

TeachVac will shortly be publishing two reports on aspects of the teacher labour market during 2017. One reviews primary school leadership and the other considers main scale vacancies in the secondary sector across England. Details of the cost and how to obtain them will be available on the TeachVac web site. As a free service, TeachVac is happy to discuss data provision for teacher trainers, schools, MATs, diocese, local authorities or indeed anyone interested in labour market real time data on teacher vacancies.

 

Blink and they are gone

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Be quick if you want a business studies teacher for September 2018. As this blog pointed out when the ITT census for 2017 was published, there weren’t a vast number of trainees in this subject. Now in the first nine working days of 2018, TeachVac has already listed enough vacancies to attract 20% of the ITT census total of trainees. Interestingly, the vast majority of the 2018 vacancies recorded have been posted by schools in and around London. Only seven jobs have been posted so far in 2018 for business studies teachers by schools in the remainder of England.

Unless the current rate of vacancies starts slowing down, then TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk will be issuing an amber warning of shortages in this subject by early February and the trainee pool will become exhausted well before the end of the current recruitment round for September. Since recruitment doesn’t meet the DfE’s target number it is perhaps not fair to complain that the Teacher Supply model seems to underestimate demand for teachers of business studies every year, just as it over-estimates the need for teachers of physical education.

London schools have certainly been quick of the mark in posting vacancies for September. Whether this is their relatively better financial situation; the result of anticipated growing school rolls; greater loss of teaching staff to other posts or a combination of all these factors isn’t obvious from the raw data. If schools were willing to post a reason for the vacancy, they would provide useful data to all sides in the teacher supply debate.

TeachVac will shortly be publishing two reports on the labour market for teachers in 2017. One will deal with the turnover of leaders in the primary sector and the other will consider the main scale vacancies in different secondary subjects.

The senior staff turnover report will restart the time series about senior staff appointments that went through 27 annual reports written by myself between the early 1980s and 2012. There are some illuminating facts in both reports. The secondary sector reports illuminates why some schools may find both the 2018 and 2019 recruitment rounds challenging, not only for business studies teachers but also for teachers in several other subjects. Schools would be well advised to arrange ‘keep in touch’ schemes for teachers taking career break whether for maternity leave or other reasons. Schools should also look at possible arrangements for teachers that want to work part-time.

TeachVac has now started a site for international schools and will be using this to also encourage teachers to return to teach in England by linking the site with vacancies in England across both state-funded and private schools.

The DfE are holding a meeting next week to update recruiters on progress with their embryonic vacancy service. With TeachVac already providing a free national service, it is difficult to see why the DfE wants to spend public money on something that already exists, especially given that apparently it cost the DfE £700,000 to revamp  the static Edubase site last year.

Not a rural idyll?

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Once Again the DfE has categorised four primary schools within London boroughs as meeting their definition of a rural school. Two are in Enfield and the other two, an infant and junior school with the same name, are in Hillingdon.

I am sure the residents of Theobalds Park Road in Enfield will be delighted to know that they live in a ‘rural village’ according to the DfE. Their school was founded in 1858 as a National School, but it is moot point whether it is really a village school or a small school in in a relatively isolated locality on the fringe of London. On the other hand, Forty Hill Primary School, the other rural school in Enfield is genuinely in an area of isolated dwellings with little in the immediate vicinity other than the church and a few houses. Realistically, these four schools are a statistical anomaly on the fringes of our capital city.

Nationally, the DfE lists 3,806 rural primary schools in this year’s database. This list doesn’t include any rural academies as it only lists local authority schools but, it still contains 1,553 community schools; 2,079 voluntary schools, both aided and controlled, and 174 foundation schools. I don’t see why a full list of state-funded rural primary schools, including academies should not be published by the DfE..

North Yorkshire has the largest number of designated rural primary schools, with just over 200 such schools. Cumbria is second with 168; Devon and Lancashire are in joint third place with 157 each. Overall, 92 of the local authorities in England have at least one designated rural primary school within their boundaries.

648 of these primary schools are designated as in isolated hamlets or hamlets and sparse dwellings whereas 1,786 are located in or around rural villages, with a further 1,310 in a rural town or on its fringe. The remaining schools are close enough to rural towns to be regarded as in a sparse setting near the town.

These schools represent both the history of education in England and the country’s complex geography. Whether all will survive the new National Funding Formula is a moot point. Many are small, often one form entry or less schools. Although they all will probably receive more cash under the new settlement it is unlikely that the increase will be enough to meet the ever growing expenditure pressures faced by schools, especially when the pay cap is finally removed.

If these schools are going to be expected to meet pay pressures from a national funding settlement then many may find themselves unable to make ends meet. Such a situation is not one where it is easy to recruit a new head teachers, so it may be alright while the present incumbent remains in post, but finding a successor could be more of a challenge.

We know relatively little about how difficult this type of school finds it to recruit classroom teachers. Are there still a cadre of teacher willing to work in such schools? I suspect that the answer is in the affirmative for the school that is rural, but not isolated, as are many in the south of England, but not as much the case where such schools are really isolated. There was a story recently from Scotland of a school in the Highlands that has had to close because both teachers were leaving at Christmas and no replacements could be found for January.

I do hope that these schools survive, but they won’t without some serious campaigning. With the present weak state of the government there has never been a better time to put pressure on MPs with such schools in their constituency.

 

Requiem Collegium

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So the long journey for teacher recruitment, training and development has finally come full circle. From the establishment of CATE (the Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education) and creation of the TASC unit (originally, Teaching as a Second Career- Lucy Kellaway please note this is not a new idea) in the 1980s, to the brave new world of the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) as an NDPB or Quango in the 1990s and then its successor the TDA, through to the NCTL and the return to being an executive agency of the Department in 2012 (with a Chair but no board), to the final announcement of the re-absorption of teacher responsibilities, except regulation, back into what I assume will be the Teacher’s Branch or Unit of the DfE, the  journey has led us finally back where we started.

In practice, the latest change probably won’t really make much of a difference and, even at its height, the TTA didn’t manage all teacher recruitment programmes. For many years, employment-based routes and the short-lived Fast Track Scheme were outside their remint. Teach First has always operated on a different set of governance rules in relation to the DfE. Ministers will now be directly accountable for the success or otherwise of the annual teacher recruitment campaign and the presentation of data about recruitment. Once the writing was on the wall for the General Teaching Council in England, the return of all teacher matters into the Department was probably only a matter of time.

As a one time employee of the Teacher Training Agency, and a long-time monitor of the working of teacher supply, will I shed any tears over the latest announcement: probably not. There are fashions in government delivery mechanisms, as in so many other areas of life, and the trend has been for simpler and more direct reporting arrangements over the past few years.

If I have a concern about the announcement, it is over the responsibility for professional development and the articulation of what a teacher can expect in developing their careers during a working life of 40 years. It is general knowledge that preparation courses of all types in no way cover everything a teacher needs to know to undertake the basic work of a professional successfully.

To move to new levels and different responsibilities needs more development, alongside the general changes caused by both research outcomes and the march of technology, let alone changes in society. The College of Teaching, when it is fully successful will play an important role, but the Department, with its access to the purse strings, must create policy. It could start with ensuring there is adequate preparation for primary leadership across the country. The dual academy and local authority system of governance, complicated as it is by the extra layer in the primary sector of diocesan schools, needs much more careful monitoring and attention than it has generally received over the past few years in respect of this key development priority.

So long as civil servants continue to take advice and discuss with others the approach to the recruitment, training and development of the teaching profession this move won’t harm the profession. But, it is worth reflecting why the journey was commenced more than 30 years ago.