TeachVac monitors published data on the level of applications to train as a teacher. This monitoring is in addition to its teacher job matching system at www.teachvac.co.uk.
Each month there is a post on this blog about ‘offers’ to would-be trainees and how numbers compare with the previous year. In 2020, there was a covid bounce in applications, as teaching looked like a safe career if the labour market was about to implode. Thanks to the furlough scheme and changes in working practices, graduate unemployment didn’t take off. As a result, 2021 was a more challenging year for teacher training than was 2020, and, from the ‘offers’ perspective, 2022 looks to be no better and potentially even worse in some subjects than 2021.
Another method of measuring the health of the trainee teacher market is to look at how quickly courses fill up with trainees. The DfE site that has replaced UCAS this year has the number of courses with vacancies by subject and sector and the total number of courses listed. It is, therefore, relatively easy to calculate the percentage of courses that no longer have vacancies. Now there may be reasons other than that the course is full for why the ‘no vacancies’ sign has been raised, but as a quick and crude measure it works. The number of courses can also vary from month to month, as providers either devise new routes or withdraw others.
Anyway, with those provisos, what is the state of play at the end of the first week of April 2022? Not good, is probably the best that can be said of the current situation. Overall, there has been little change in the percentage of course with no vacancies since a month ago, especially in the main subjects. The good news is that 58% of psychology ITE courses don’t have vacancies; the bad news is that 93% of physics courses do have vacancies. This is only 2% less than the figure at the start of March. Apart from in physical education, where only two thirds of courses still have vacancies, and that seems a high percentage for this time of year, most secondary subjects still have around four out of five courses showing vacancies.
Perhaps even more worrying is the fact that 84% of courses for intending primary school teachers still have vacancies. In part, this might be due to the plethora of such course on offer from multiple providers. However, in the past it would be expected that most courses would be full before April.
Of course, one drawback with this analysis is that it isn’t apparent as to whether courses have either just one vacancy that has been kept for a really well-qualified applicant or many vacancies. Such information would no doubt be useful to applicants.
The next two months are likely to see few final year students applying for courses as they focus on the completion of their degree courses, and the majority of applicants will come from career switchers or older graduates that have taken time out of the labour market.
New graduates remain a vital source of trainees, and it is to be hoped that after the degree results are announced there will be an uptake of interest in teaching as a career from that group. If not, this could be a really challenging year for providers: 2023 would then be a difficult labour market for schools.
John Howson 