Workforce worries over retention

Posted on June 29, 2018 by John Howson

Yesterday, this blog took its first look at the School Workforce Census data for 2017. Jack Worth at NfER, their authority on the school workforce, has also written a much more extensive blog about the same data. This can be found at https://www.nfer.ac.uk/news-events/nfer-blogs/latest-teacher-retention-statistics-paint-a-bleak-picture-for-teacher-supply-in-england/ It is well worth a read.

One interesting dataset in the DfE Tables is that on teacher retention. The DfE has updated the numbers used in their submission to the STRB as part of their discussions on pay and conditions for teachers still covered by the national pay and conditions. The updated data doesn’t make for pleasant reading.

Year	NQT enter-ing service	YEAR 1	YEAR 2	YEAR 3	YEAR 4	YEAR 5	YEAR 6	YEAR 7	YEAR 8	YEAR 9	YEAR 10
1996	18100	16471	15204	14299	13213	12851	12308	12127	11584	11222	10860
1997	18900	17010	15023	14553	13986	13419	13041	12663	12285	11718	11340
1998	17800	15842	14418	13706	13172	12816	12282	11926	11392	11214	11036
1999	18300	16104	15006	14091	13542	12993	12810	12261	11895	11712	11346
2000	17600	15664	14608	13728	13024	12672	12144	11792	11616	11264	10912
2001	18600	16554	15252	14508	13950	13206	12648	12462	12276	11904	11904
2002	20700	18423	17181	16146	15318	14904	14490	14076	13662	13455	13248
2003	23000	20700	19090	17710	17020	16330	15870	15640	15410	14950	14490
2004	25200	22428	20412	19404	18648	17892	17388	17388	16884	16380	15624
2005	25700	22102	20817	19789	19018	18247	18247	17733	16962	16448	15677
2006	24000	20880	19440	18480	17760	17520	17040	16320	15840	14880	14400
2007	24400	21472	20008	19032	18788	18056	17324	16592	15372	15128	14640
2008	24400	21472	20008	19520	18788	18056	17324	16104	15860	15372
2009	22300	19401	18509	17617	17394	16056	15164	15164	14272
2010	24100	20967	19762	18557	17593	16870	15906	15424
2011	20600	18128	17098	15862	15038	14214	13390
2012	23300	20504	18873	17475	16543	15611
2013	23800	20706	19040	17612	16660
2014	25100	21837	19829	17374
2015	26100	22707	20358
2016	24900	21165
2017	23300

Abstracted from DfE Table 8 School Workforce Census June 2018

Although the number of NQTs fluctuates from year to year and is uprated as new entrants arrive in the profession as deferred entrants, either for the first time or from another sector, the loss of teachers is concerning. It is probably worth ignoring the 2011 data where the NQT number looks somewhat out of line for the period since 2006.

The DfE notes that numbers also underestimate teachers in part-time service, but, if the underestimate is consistent, this is only an issue where part-time working among this group of teachers is changing significantly.

The table does show how quickly teacher recruitment and retention can become an issue, especially where school rolls are on the increase, if the profession doesn’t hold on to its teachers.

The real concern must be with retention from years 6-10, where the next generation of middle leaders should start to be emerging. Assuming the 2007 cohort is split equally between primary and secondary sectors, this would mean a cohort of around 7,400 primary teachers. As the primary sector currently needs more than 1,000 new head teachers each year, the likelihood is that approaching 15% of the cohort may need to become head teachers at some point in their careers. Adding in deputy posts means that the percentage of the cohort needed for leadership positions probably exceeds 25%.

If you factor in specific demands, such as the need to be a Roman Catholic to lead an RC primary school, future leadership issues can already be predicted if the workforce isn’t prepared for leadership.

There are no regional breakdowns for retention in the tables. Such breakdowns would be helpful in predicating the pressures on future leadership appointments at a sub-national level and identifying the areas where there is the need to take early action. Perhaps, the Select Committee might ask for that data next time they talk to the Secretary of State for Education.

Teacher Recruitment; nationalised service or private enterprise?

Posted on January 21, 2018 by John Howson

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 matter of semantics?

Posted on August 16, 2017 by John Howson

Is it headteacher or head teacher? The DfE generally seems to favour the former, as indeed I have always done since I started collecting data about headteacher turnover way back in the early 1980s. However, in an idle summer moment I thought that I would see whether there was any uniformity on the way the term was used? In an on-line search, the Oxford dictionaries and the Collins dictionaries provide a definition using the two words ‘head teacher’ for a school leader, whereas the Cambridge dictionary used the one word headteacher to describe the person in charge of a school. So, no agreement there then. There have been a number of different threads on bulletin boards and other question and answer sites over the years than seem to have come to no definite conclusion. Some now some use terms such as principal instead, and I also wonder if it is generally accepted that headmaster/headmistress seem to belong to a different age?

Whether either to split a word into two in order to describe a position or to use the concatenated version is a relatively trivial issue suitable for discussion in the dog days of summer as we await the deluge of the results season; clearing and the start of the new school term that is fast approaching.

This blog has campaigned, albeit soto voce, for the term teacher, and by extension headteacher, to be a reserved occupation term that can only be used by those accredited by a recognised body such as the General Teaching Councils outside England in the other home nations and the College in England. This could be a morale boost for teachers that would cost the government nothing in relative terms to achieve and would reverse the ‘govian’ notion that anyone can teach as opposed to the fact that anyone can instruct those that want to be taught. Teaching and instruction are not the same occupations, as the Newsom Committee observed more than half a century ago, (in passing it was 64 years last week that Sir John Newsom submitted his report – see blog post – Half our Future) when citing evidence on the issue of teacher preparation from the then Committee charged with discussing the subject. In those days, discussions between civil servants and others with an interest in schooling often took place in advisory committees and were more transparent than today when so much happens behind closed doors.

Anyway, this was a blog about words and not deeds, so to return to the original theme for one last time; should there be a new term for someone responsible for more than one school? I have never liked the term ‘executive headteacher’ especially since it is something of an oxymoron as their role is often strategic and not executive in nature. Historically, the strategic role was that of education officers up to an including chief education officers, but that role became blurred with the creation of Children’s Services under Labour for good, if not always helpful, reasons.

Diocese often still have education officers, perhaps showing how little some have changed despite the revolution in the education world around them. MATs prefer business terms, such as chief executive and, at least like the term education officer, these titles recognise the lack of any teaching in the role. By reminding headteachers of the origin of their role we can hopefully help them to focus on what is still the essential heart of the work of a headteacher: teaching and its leadership in a school.

Why do head teachers leave?

Posted on April 27, 2017 by John Howson

The Daily Telegraph’s education editor rang me to this evening to ask this question ahead of some research to be published by NfER tomorrow. Normally, the most common reason for the departure of a head teacher is retirement, often after about ten years in post. This stands to reason in view of the age at which most heads are appointed. There are rare examples of heads appointed young staying for a quarter of a century or even longer, but that isn’t the norm.

In the primary sector, another key reason for departure is to move from the headship of a small school to a larger one. That happens as well in the secondary sector, but I suspect less often, although a study I did some years ago suggested that the schools with the highest ratings often appointed existing heads when they had a vacancy, preferring experience over other possible qualifications.

The big change since 2010, and the Academies Act, has been the formation of MATs and the creation of many more executive head or CEO posts filled by existing head teachers moving into these newly created roles. That will have created a temporary increase in departures and probably reduced the average length of service of head teachers. However, I suspect that many converter academies didn’t change heads on becoming an academy, other schools may have parted company with their head when joining a MAT, whether forced to do so or not.

Ofsted, and before that HMI, have always played an important role in determining the fate of a head teacher. A poor inspection outcome has almost always seen the departure of the head. Indeed, before inspections became commonplace, I suspect local authorities sometimes triggered an inspection as a means of removing a head they were concerned about.

I would guess that as concerns about workload and morale have increased across the profession there will have been an increase in heads leaving, just as there have been in classroom teachers. But, head shave always had heavy workloads, especially those that also have a substantial teaching load.

Apart from becoming executive heads, there are other roles heads looking for a new challenge can look undertake, including looking to lead an international school or taking on a consultancy role. However, there will be few moving into local authority administration: a popular route in the past.

What is as important as the departure is when it is announced. The key period for head teacher recruitment is January to March. Outside that period schools can often struggle to find a replacement for a departing head teacher. As this blog has noted before, any schools that differs from the norm is likely to find recruiting a new head teacher a challenge. The greater the number of variables where the school differs from the typical, the greater the recruitment challenge as some diocese have found over the decades I have been studying the labour market for head teachers.

Is there a headship crisis?

Posted on December 31, 2016 by John Howson

According to a story in The Times today, one in ten schools is losing its head teacher each year. Reading the headlines of the story, outside the pay wall, there are examples of schools advertising up to seven times to find a replacement and of schools without a permanent head for three years. Local authorities, still seemingly worth talking to about schools, even by this Tory supporting newspaper, tell of high turnover of heads and head teachers of small schools being enticed away to larger schools by promises of more money. All this makes for a crisis.

Between the early 1980s and 2012, I studies the labour market for head teachers on a regular basis. I stopped, partly because I didn’t’ think there was a crisis at that time and partly because I left my long-term database with my former employers. Since the establishment of TeachVac, I have gradually started to rebuild the data on leadership turnover and will report fully this time next year when there is sufficient comparative data.

A turnover of ten per cent isn’t, in historical terms, anything out of the ordinary, especially as some of the total will have been made up from head teachers required for new schools due to increasing pupil numbers and the 14-18 UTCs and studio schools as well as genuine ‘free schools’. Although there probably not as many of these as a previous Secretary of State might have wished.

For most of the early part of this century, re-advertisement rates for secondary heads were in the 20%+ range; for primary schools, the rate exceeded 30% in most years between 1997/98 and 2009/10, so re-advertisements are nothing new in the leadership market. Indeed, recruiters have made a tidy sum from encouraging schools to take ever larger and glossier advertisements on the basis of recruitment challenges. As regular readers know, TeachVac challenges this principle by offering a free service.

Any school seeking a new head teacher for September that advertises in January and runs a sensible recruitment round should have no problems recruiting unless it has one or more of the following characteristics:

It is a faith school,

It is located in London,

It is a small or very large school,

If a secondary school, it is single-sex or selective (or a secondary modern in a selective area).

Two or more factors and it needs to consider carefully how to recruit a new head teacher, especially if outside of the normal recruitment season from January to March where around 50% of vacancies are advertised each year.

Advertising outside the first quarter of the year, when fewer candidates are looking to move schools, is also often a waste of money, as is putting off candidates through the content of the advertisement or taking a long time over the process; candidates often apply for several posts and may be hired by another school if the process is too long.

Being a school in challenging circumstances has become more of a handicap as MATs and governing bodies seem to think the head teacher needs changing if there is a poor Ofsted report or a disappointing set of examination or test results. There are cases where a change of leadership is appropriate, but not, in my view, in every case.

Without a mandatory qualification for headship, it is difficult to know in details the size of the talent pool for future head teachers, something that should worry those responsible for the system at the EFA and NCTL, since a lack of supply will always drive up the price of a good or commodity and headship is no different to any other type of job in that respect.

At least some head teachers can look forward to recognition through the honours system, and I was delighted to see Professor John Furlong honoured in the latest list for his lifetime of work in teacher education. John, your OBE is a well-deserved mark of respect.

A shortage of leaders?

Posted on November 13, 2016 by John Howson

Is there a shortage of school leaders that will become even worse over the next few years? This was the gloomy message from the report issued on Friday jointly by Teach First, Teaching Leaders and the Future Leaders Trust. https://www.teachfirst.org.uk/sites/default/files/The%20School%20Leadership%20Challenge%202022.pdf

As someone that has spent more than thirty years looking at leadership turnover, I have read the report, whose analytical support was provided by McKinsey, with interest. The report calls for a range of different interventions under four main headings:

Develop a new generation of school leaders
Expand the pool of candidates for executive roles
Drive system change to support leaders more effectively and provide clear career pathways
Build the brand of school leadership

These required interventions reflect the lack of government action ever since the Labour government abolished the mandatory NPQH qualification for headship and the coalition created many new leadership posts with the development of MATs and executive headships. The latter issue has been dealt with by this blog in previous posts, most notably in July this year with the post headed ‘Can we afford 2,000 MATs?’

The figures in Friday’s report, if accurate, are challenging with, it is suggested, a possible shortfall of more than 20,000 leaders in the coming decade. Now that may be the case, but it depends upon all the factors identified by the compilers of the report coming true. As noted, the greatest risk is the uncontrolled expansion of MATs creating a significant number of new posts.

While in the school sector, the growth in pupil numbers may lead to a development of more assistant head roles to recreate those abolished when roles were falling the likelihood of that happening is probably going to be governed by the degree of finance available to schools; a point largely ignored by the writers of the report. The report also misses the extent to which assistant head numbers have been inflated by what are essentially difficult to fill middle leadership posts such as head of mathematics and science departments being paid as assistant headship in order to be able to recruit to those positions.

Where I am with the writers of the report is in the need for creating not so much clear career pathways, they already exist, but in helping young teachers and especially returners develop the necessary skills to be appointed to a leadership post. With teaching increasingly a profession for women in both primary and secondary schools, someone, and it may be the three groups that commissioned this research, has to develop a strategy that allows the very large number of young women now in the profession to take up leadership roles both before and after any career breaks. If the profession doesn’t do that then we truly will have a crisis in a few years’ time.

One solution suggested by the report is to recruit outsiders to senior posts. I doubt that will work for most headships. In the past when asked my view of this solution by journalists, I have always asked if I could become their editor with no knowledge of journalism. You can image their answers.

Where I do think there is a possible direction of travel is for larger MATs. After all, there are example of CEOs of MATs currently without either any or any recent school experience. The larger the organisation the more leadership requires general not specific knowledge. Teaching and learning can be the responsibility of a second tier officer, whereas overall strategy remains the responsibility of the CEO. In effect, CEOs of MATS become very similar to Superintendents of US School districts, some of whom are recruited from the worlds of business and commerce.

Where you cannot recruit easily from outside the profession is where the leadership role requires hands-on experience of teaching and learning. Despite the comments in the report, the majority of problems in recruitment in the past has been in the primary sector where the ratio of deputies to heads is much smaller than in the secondary sector. Filling a faith school headship in an inner-city schools seeking a new head teacher in April has always been a challenge. This report doesn’t show whether it as actually any harder than it was twenty-five years ago.

In summary, the report is helpful in reminding everyone of the need for sufficient good leaders for all our schools and some of the risks ahead. The need for action over preparation is also vital, but the report doesn’t deal with who should take on the task? Presumably, the three organisations that put their names to the report would all like to play a part.

Was there a baby boom in 1953?

Posted on May 17, 2013 by John Howson

Figures published by the TES from the database I created over 25 years ago, and left with the TES when I retired in 2011, suggest that the highest percentage of primary schools for thirteen years failed to recruit a new head teacher at their first attempt during January 2013. Give that January is the month that witnesses the largest number of new recruitment adverts for heads, a 26% re-advertisement ratio, rising to over 40% for schools within the Greater London area, must be a matter for concern.

Perhaps it was unsurprising that the government spokesperson when asked to comment on the figures said according to a BBC report that, “we have always been aware that as the baby-boomer generation started to retire we were likely to see a rise in the number of vacancies.” Well now that comment begs two questions. Firstly, has there been a rise in vacancies, and secondly is it fair to still be citing the baby boom for a rise in vacancies and the subsequent challenges in filling these vacancies?

According to a spokesperson for Education Data Surveys that compiled the TES Report, there were 261 vacancies for new primary head teachers advertised for the first time during January 2013. In January 2009, there were 416 advertisements for head teachers of all types of schools, so the 216 primary vacancies this January doesn’t look like out of line with previous years.

The second question relates to how fair is it to attribute the present problem to the retirements by baby boomers? Heads retiring at 60 this summer would have been born in 1953, Coronation Year. Those retiring at 65 would certainly have been part of the immediate post-war baby bulge, but as the DfE 2012 Workforce Survey only found around 1,000 primary heads over the age of 60 in November 2012, it would require virtually all of them to decide to retire this year to have any impact on the figures. Since the number of vacancies doesn’t seem out of line with recent years, any retirement boom among the over-60s will probably have been counter—balanced by a reduction in the retirement rate among the approximately 3,700 primary head teachers in the 55-59 age group last November.

So was there a baby boom in 1953: apparently not according to the Office of National Statistics

Live births in the United Kingdom

1959	878,561
1958	870,497
1957	851,466
1956	825,137
1955	789,315
1954	794,769
1953	804,269
1952	792,917
1951	796,645
1950	818,421
1949	855,298
1948	905,182
1947	1,025,427
1946	955,266
1945	795,868

Although higher by around 10,000 than in the years either side of the Coronation, and perhaps that event had some effect on the figures, the number of live births in 1953 across the United Kingdom was around 200,000 below the really baby boomer year of 1947 when I entered this world (Office for National Statistics, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/taxonomy/index.html?nscl=Live+Births+and+Stillbirths#tab-data-tables).

Indeed, the DfE might now park the baby boomer excuse until at least 2017 when it might again be worth using as an excuse based upon these figures. Even then, I would approach the task with some caution.

So, are the NAHT right in suggesting rising targets and negative rhetoric from ministers as the cause of deputies shunning the top job? They may have a point, as the recent tragic death of a Worcestershire primary head teacher pointed up, the job is not without considerable stresses and strains and the lack of a credible middle-tier of support since local authorities had their budgets slashed probably doesn’t make the job any more attractive.

However, there may be other structural reasons for the rise in re-advertisements, especially in London. The asymmetric nature of house prices that allows Londoners to move out of the capital and trade-up to a better property, but means those outside the capital cannot afford to move in may be one issue restricting supply. However, a bigger issue may be the lack of deputy heads in the age-group one would expect to be seeking headships. I will return to analyse this point and the type of schools that may be suffering unduly in the contest for a new head teacher in a future blog. But, let me end with what I said about headship recruitment last summer in the report that I wrote for the Pearson Think Tank.

The market for head teachers in London is always complicated by the fact that the price of housing in many parts of the capital restricts the likelihood of inward movement by senior staff working in schools outside London. The increase in salary is often not enough to compensate for any such move, despite the average recorded salary in the 2010 School Workforce Survey being £99,000 for a secondary head teacher and almost £72,000 for a primary school head teacher – both some £15,000 more than the recorded average for a head teacher working outside of London

In general, it seems that the larger the number of different factors affecting a school seeking a new head teacher, the greater the risk of disappointment at first advertisement. Thus, a small school that is a faith school and also has relatively poor results may find the search for a new head teacher more of a challenge than a larger community school with results slightly above average located in an area with average housing prices that advertises at a point in the year, specifically between January and March, when the majority of candidates are looking for headship vacancies for September.

http://thepearsonthinktank.com/2012/are-we-running-out-of-teachers/ page 31

Year

NQT enter-ing service

YEAR 1

YEAR 2

YEAR 3

YEAR 4

YEAR 5

YEAR 6

YEAR 7

YEAR 8

YEAR 9

YEAR 10

1996

18100

16471

15204

14299

13213

12851

12308

12127

11584

11222

10860

1997

18900

17010

15023

14553

13986

13419

13041

12663

12285

11718

11340

1998

17800

15842

14418

13706

13172

12816

12282

11926

11392

11214

11036

1999

18300

16104

15006

14091

13542

12993

12810

12261

11895

11712

11346

2000

17600

15664

14608

13728

13024

12672

12144

11792

11616

11264

10912

2001

18600

16554

15252

14508

13950

13206

12648