Tag Archives: learning

£200 million SEND teacher training: what’s missing?

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One should never look a gift horse in the mouth, and today’s DfE announcement of CPD worth £200 million for:

“new courses available to all teaching staff will deepen knowledge of how to adapt their teaching to meet a wide range of needs in the classroom, including visual impairments and speech and language needs.

Teachers will learn about the things we know can transform how children access education, such as using assistive technology like speech to text dictation tools and building awareness of additional needs amongst all pupils, so every child can go on to succeed. “ £200 million landmark SEND teacher training programme – GOV.UK

Is clearly to be welcomed.

If the aim by the DfE is to reach half the teaching force, plus a percentage of non-teaching staff, such as teaching assistants, the figure of £200 million might work out at around £1,000 per person per course.

Now, I guess you can get a lot of on-line self-assessed delivery for that price, but add in face-to-face tuition, with travel and ‘cover’ costs to be taken into consideration, and £1,000 per person doesn’t seem as useful a sum. So, perhaps the government only want to reach say, a quarter of the profession? The news release is silent on such matters.

I am always sceptical when a news item is released on a Friday; a good day for burying news with awkward questions attached. Unless, the White Paper on SEND, when it appears, mandates a qualification necessary to work with SEND, and an advance qualification to work in a special school or unit, these schools may still have a disproportional number of under-qualified teachers.

Is it better either to create a programme to upgrade all teachers (as in this announcement) or to focus on the training needs of those teaching children and young people in special settings, along with upgrading the diagnostic tools to identify as early as possible children that will need additional support.

As with all policies, it is a judgement call. This government has opted for the ‘spread it thin’ approach, with an eye-catching headline amount. Incidentally, is the £200mn for one year or spread over several years? I am sure a journalist will ask.

So, thanks for something, but where is the cash coming from? Will other CPD be cut, or is this new money from HM Treasury: an unlikely proposition in the current cash-strapped climate faced by government.

The other question still to be addressed is around who will deliver the programme, and how will procurement ensure that the DfE obtains best value for the money?

DfE Vacancy site: fit for purpose?

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When the Public Accounts Committee effectively told the DfE to create a vacancy website some eight years ago Teacher Recruitment | John Howson and Why is the DfE spending millions inventing a teacher vacancy service? | John Howson the present site, in its original form, was the outcome.

At the time, I pointed out to the DfE that TeachVac was already doing most of what was required, and for free. As my post above shows, the editor of the TES at the time also had something to say.

Sadly, and probably because of procurement rules – although the DfE could have sanctioned a trial of TeachVac to understand the requirements of any vacancy site – the DfE spent public money procuring a site that wasn’t fit for purpose. At least with the browser I use, the site still has significant shortcomings from the point of view of jobhunters.

Although free to use, it is not mandatory for state schools to use the DfE site, so, some do, and some don’t. This leaves jobseekers with the need to search more than one site to check for all vacancies: not a good idea at the best of times, and certainly not when falling rolls make jobs harder to come by.

The DfE site also has its idiosyncrasies. Although it tells users that jobs appear with the most recent first, that isn’t always the case.  Page two of a list may well start with a duplication of some jobs from page one, and new jobs, not recorded earlier may pop up almost anywhere in a listing.

Perhaps.it might be better to lists jobs by closing dates, as that is what matters to many jobseekers: do I have time to apply for this job?

Some vacancies appear with either very short – is there an internal candidate – or very long periods between advert and closing date. The latter schools risk losing candidates to schools that are fleeter of foot in the recruitment process, and being left with only candidates that they wouldn’t want to appoint, except in those areas where there is an over-supply of teachers.

As job hunting is such a key part of their members’ work-life, I have always been surprised that the teacher associations haven’t been more vocal with the DfE in demanding a cheap and purposeful job board, using the best of modern technology at the lowest cost to schools. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, as when I tried to sell the idea of TeachVac in 2013, there was no interest.

Now I am once again researching vacancies, I can cheerfully say, mixing up TLA, technicians and other non-teaching jobs with teaching vacancies, and including random jobs like a drama post or TV and film vacancy in the music vacancy list strikes me as irritating, but perhaps it is good to persuade teachers to look beyond their original search criteria?

I am sure the DfE could make money by inviting private schools to use their site. I have seen a couple of vacancies for such schools on the DfE site, but it is overwhelmingly state schools.

Perhaps it is time for a rethink of the most cost-effective way for schools to recruit teachers and candidates to find the vacancies?

Primary schools extend their age ranges

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Primary schools are no longer the 5-11 schools of yesteryear. Even before the present cycle of falling rolls started affecting schools, especially in London, schools across the primary sector had been extending their age range downwards into what has traditionally been seen as the province of state nursery schools and the private sector.

During our survey of headteacher vacancies for the autumn term of 2025, reported in the post   Recruiting headteachers in 2025 – a mixed picture | John Howson The age range of the school was one of the variables collected as part of the evidence base.

The data from autumn 2025 vacancies has been analysed from some 254 primary schools covering the age range up to age eleven and starting at the age of five or below that age – thus, not including infant schools, as they don’t go up to age eleven.

The table below shows the results

Age range of schoolnumberPercentage of total 
2-113614% 
3-119538% 
4-1110541% 
5-11187% 

 3-11 or 4-11 schools dominated the schools that advertised for a headteacher during autumn 2025, accounting for 80% of the total. Interestingly, there were more adverts for 2-11 schools than for the traditional 5-11 primary schools. Such downward extension of age ranges should help to answer the question, what do primary schools do with children not toilet trained? The answer, as you extend the age range downwards, and the likelihood of such an occurrence increases, must be to put in place expertise to deal with the situation as well as to seek government measures to help parents understand the importance of children being able to cope in social settings such as schools.

As more primary schools face falling rolls, and hence the probability of unused space within the school site, will these schools also extend their age range downwards to become 2-11 schools? If so, and I see no real reason why they wouldn’t do so, what will this do to the private nursery and childminder markets?

Fewer children, more competition, and the ability for families to drop all their children aged between 5-11 in the same place must be a powerful selling point for state primary schools, especially if the additional children recruited to the school roll replace revenue lost to schools from falling rolls, especially at a time when the school funding formula is heavily predicated upon pupil numbers.

Are 2-11 schools evenly distributed across England? The sample of 36 such schools from the autumn term is too small to yet make a definitive judgement. To do so one would need to interrogate the DfE’s database of schools, but the results are interesting. In the 2025 survey, two regions, the North West (10) and the West Midlands (8) account for half of the 2-11 schools that advertised for a new headteacher during the autumn of 2025.

While there was no region without   any adverts from such schools, three regions, London, the East Midlands and the North East only had one school of 2-11 recorded in the survey. The East of England had two schools in the survey, and the South East, three schools. Yorkshire and the Humber and the South West regions each had five schools in the survey from the 2-11 age range.

Might extending their age range downwards be a solution to some schools in London facing possible closure from falling rolls? It is certainly a question worth asking if it can increase the schools’ income to a point where it remains financially viable and able to service its community.  

Ethnic minority trainee teachers: still huge regional differences in trainee numbers

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1n the autumn of 1997, Baroness Estelle Morris, at that time a junior minister in the DfE, in the new Labour government of Tony Blair, opened a conference about recruiting more ethnic minority students to become a teacher. The conference was organised by the then Teacher Training Agency. That conference was held in East London, and was followed by two more in Leeds and Birmingham.

Fast forward to the ITT census produced by the DfE today, and ask the question: how successful has the campaign to recruit certain ethnic groups into teaching been since that first conference nearly 30 years ago? Initial teacher training: trainee number census 2025 to 2026 – GOV.UK

Looking at the group that has found most difficultly in becoming a teacher over the years – Black African/Black Caribbean – there still seem to be big challenges looking at today’s data. Whether these are because students from this ethnic grouping aren’t attracted to parts of the country where there are few of their compatriots or whether there are other reasons cannot be determined just from the numbers.

However, over 500 courses have no candidates recorded from this group in the data published in Table 12 today. Just over 900 courses have between one and four candidates from the ethnic group. A further 83 courses have the number suppressed as being too low, as it might allow an individual to be identified.

A quick review of courses with the highest percentage (over 50% of each course code) shows that 24 are courses run by providers in London; just three are from outside London, and for three the name does not provide a clue to the location.

Looking at the courses with more than 100 candidates from the Black ethnic group: four are located in London – two each from UCL and Teach First – and the fifth is a national SCITT.  

As might be expected, the University of East London, and several other London post 1992 universities, feature in the list of providers with between 25% and 50% of course numbers from the Black group, each with several courses in this percentage range. Most other pre-1992 universities and other post-1992 universities and the SCITTs in London have many of their courses in the 15%-25% group of providers. Few, if any, London providers feature in the list with zero percentage from the black group.

While it is good that courses in London do seem to be attracting applications from the Black ethnic group, there are still many courses in large parts of the country where that seems not to be the case. Does this matter? Would a ‘token’ representative on a single course in an institution be anything more than a token. Should we encourage such students to be trailblazers r should we accept that outside of the conurbations and a few university towns, graduates from the black ethnic group are still relatively rare.

I went to school in the 1960s with one of the few Black pupils in the school. He went on to become a teacher when Black teachers were even thinner on the ground than now, even in London.

So, there has been some progress, but not enough.

Teaching a global profession? What do the physics ITT numbers tell us?

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My previous post contained the good news for the government in the headline data about their annual census of those on teacher preparation courses. Digging down into the details of the census, there is at least one worrying trend. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/initial-teacher-training-trainee-number-census-2025-to-2026

The percentage of accepted ITT candidates within each nationality group for selected subjects for 2024/25 and 2025/26

Percentage of accepted candidates
UK and Irish nationalEEA nationalOther nationality
2024/252025/262024/252025/262024/252025/26
Total88%86%5%5%8%9%
Primary94%94%2%3%4%3%
Secondary84%82%6%6%10%13%
STEM Subjects76%74%5%5%19%22%
Physics43%32%3%2%54%66%
English93%93%3%2%4%5%
Mathematics81%81%5%5%13%14%
  1. High Potential ITT (HPITT) route and undergraduate routes are not included in this data.
  2. Subject-level candidate totals will not sum to the total candidate number due to duplication caused by candidates applying for multiple subjects.

The footnote about undergraduate routes should not be of concern as there are relatively few such courses for secondary subjects, and the numbers on primary undergraduate courses have been declining over the longer-term.

Of much more concern is the decline in percentage of accepted candidates for physics from the UK and Ireland, down from 43% last year to 32% this year. This has been balanced by and increase from 54% to 66% for candidates from outside the UK and EEA areas.

As there has bene a dramatic increase in the numbers of trainees in physics, does this matter?

On these percentages, the increase in UK and Irish trainees has been from only around 185 last year to 220 this year. That seems like a very small number and worth investigating to see if I am correct?

If I am correct, then the key issue is, where will the trainees from the rest of the world be able to teach? Will the present government’s stricter policies on immigration mean that they won’t be able to teach in England, or as graduates earning a good salary will they be given visas?

Of course, they may choose to teach in the new British state sponsored selective school being established in both India and the UAE that was recently approved by the Labour government.

British Education is a global export, regardless of the PISA scores of home students, and the destination of trainees, both within the state and private systems, as well as overseas, is an important piece of information Minister should pay more attention to than they do at present.

The number of Uk trainees is likely to be boosted in physics by those training through the High Potential route (Formerly known as Teach First), However, the data for those candidates is not included in the census this year.

No doubt there is room for some interesting parliamentary questions about trainee teachers and where they come from and where they go on to teach, especially for those that receive bursaries and other financial support from the State.

Too many teachers?

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Earlier today the DfE published their Annual Census of ITT trainees. Published each December, the census identifies the numbers on the various teacher perpetration routes and some background information about their gender, ethnicity, degree class and routes into teaching. Initial teacher training: trainee number census 2025 to 2026 – GOV.UK

The census provides a helpful indication to schools about the labour market for the following September recruitment. In this case, September 2026.

In recent years, apart for during 2020 and the response to the pandemic, trainees number in many secondary subjects have been lees than the DfE predicted numbers needed to fill vacancies. In the primary sector, falling rolls and erratic recruitment numbers have meant there has been less of a coherent pattern about the balance between supply and likely demand for teachers. Of course, much depends upon assumptions about the turnover in the labour market, and the behaviour of possible ‘returners’ to teaching when reviewing recruitment patterns.

So, what of the current 2025/26 cohort?

subject2024/252025/26
Percentage of Target at census date%%
Physical Education213202
Biology116151
Art & Design64128
Primary88126
History116125
Chemistry62118
Mathematics72113
Geography91111
English99106
Modern Languages4493
All Secondary6188
Computing3780
Physics3077
Classics24573
Design & Technology4070
Music4065
Religious Education7962
Drama4741
Business Studies1530
Other1514

The government can be pleased with some of the best recruitment levels to their targets in almost a generation – covid years excepted – but challenges still remain. Nine secondary subjects didn’t meet their target number, with business studies still recruiting poorly to teaching, along with drama and religious studies where the target was missed by a larger percentage than last year.

On the good news side, mathematic exceeded its target for the first time in a long while, and the increase to 77% of target in physics teachers is very welcome news.

There will be too many primary school teachers looking for jobs come September, and although course providers will be happy to have recruited 202% of the target for physical education trainees, this over-recruitment does beg the question as to whether recruitment controls should be once again considered as a deterrent to such significant over-recruitment?

Taken with the news, highlighted in my previous post, about attitudes to pay by serving teachers, the government can probably stop worrying abut teacher recruitment for the first time since 2012.

However, all is not good news, if the Curriculum Review is to be implemented in full, attention to recruitment in some subjects will be needed. In that respect, as already suggested by this blog in a previous post, removing the bursary from music seems like a daft idea. Yes, there was a 25% increase in outcome against target, but that still left a third of places unfilled. Music departments in schools are often small and cannot be easily covered by non-specialists, such as the spare PE teachers. Time to think again on the basis of these figures.

Teachers still need more holidays

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The DfE recently released the results of the latest study into teacher workload and attitudes to teaching as a career. Working lives of teachers and leaders – wave 4 summary report

There is some good news for the government in the report, not least on pay, where teachers seem slightly more content about pay than a few years ago. It makes the possibility of industrial action less likely than before the recent pay awards.

This improvement in attitude may also partly be down to the fact that hours worked, as reported in the survey, have been reducing. Primary teachers were working 1.8 hours less per week in the 2025 survey than in the 2022 survey, and secondary school teachers, 1.9 hours less. Leaders work longer hours than teachers, but have also seen a slight fall in recorded hours worked.

Phase2022202320242025
Primary Teachers53.253.952.551.4
Primary Leaders57.257.957.656.5
Secondary Teachers51.251.450.349.3
Secondary Leaders54.755.554.852.8

Source Table 3.2 Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders Working lives of teachers and leaders – wave 4 summary report

My blog about ‘how much holiday do teachers have?’ that appeared on 20th May 2022 has received more views than any other post on this blog; notching up over 6,000 views.

As a result, I thought that it would be interesting to see what the latest figures mean for teachers’ holidays. Assuming a normal week of 40 hours – yes on the high side, but stay with the calculations – this produces an average overtime of between 9.3 hours for a secondary school teacher and 17.3 for a secondary school leader.

phasenotionalactualDifference in 202538 weeksweeks hours/40
PT4051.411.443311
PL4056.516.562716
ST4049.39.33539
SL4057.317.365716

Now, multiply that overtime by 38 weeks, on the assumption that similar amount of time is spent working each week during the time pupils are in school (the use of 40 hours provides some leeway for lighter and heavier weeks. This provides a gross number of hours which when if divided by 40 produces unpaid overtime in weeks. The outcomes are

Primary Teachers 11 weeks

Secondary Teachers 9 weeks

Primary and secondary leaders 16 weeks.

Now, using the 38 weeks worked, and ignoring the 5 CPD days, that leaves 14 weeks for holidays and compensation for term-time working. On these calculations, school leaders receive no compensation, and thus no holiday under these calculations, while primary teachers have 3 weeks holiday and secondary teachers 5 weeks holiday.

Of course, pay may compensate for the additional workload, even if not paid as overtime. Personally, I doubt, except for the most well paid headteachers that the time teachers work is well fully compensated, if these numbers are correct.

The teachers’ contract is not radically different to the one I signed in 1971 with regard to holidays. My graduate colleagues outside of teaching have seen significant improvements in their holiday entitlements over the years since 1971 – many will not be working for two weeks over Christmas and the New Year, and if they are, they will receive time off in lieu.

Hopefully, as school rolls fall, the working week of teachers will also continue to reduce, especially with more sensible approaches to tasks such as marking and preparation. However, there is still a long way to go for teachers to feel that they genuinely have the same of holidays entitlement as most other graduates.

Gatsby Survey confirms importance of pay and working conditions for would-be teachers

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A Gatsby funded study by a team at London’s UCL has researched assumptions about why people do -or do not- choose to become a teacher in the UK and the US. The findings were that extrinsic rewards drive career choices. The report found that in both countries, extrinsic factors such as salary, working hours and paid leave were the most powerful drivers of career choice. Altruistic motives did play a role – participants were willing to accept lower pay for roles with higher social impact – but these were consistently smaller than the influence of pay and workload.’ New research reveals what really attracts graduates to teaching  | Gatsby Education

These factors were even seen among those undergraduates who already said they were already considering becoming a teacher.

Replies to the UCL study suggested that increasing working hours beyond 40 per week to that of a typical teacher reduced attractiveness of teaching by 15%, and that teachers holiday entitlement increased attractiveness by 11%. Increased salary raised job attractiveness by 9%.

How do these findings compare with previous research? In May 1997, almost 20 years ago, and during another period of challenges in recruiting graduates into teaching, The School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) commissioned the agency BMRB to investigate what factors influenced the attitudes towards teaching shortage subjects/ This was a small-scale study involving only 82 graduates compared with the 2,000 undergraduates, in both the UK and the US, surveyed by the UCL team.

BMRB students said that

  • Teaching should be a vocation
  • Those sampled felt not all were suited to be a teacher
  • There were serious concerns about both working conditions and stress levels
  • Pay was acknowledged to be a significant factor – although not a deterrent to those determined to teach, a better pay structure would make teaching more attractive to those considering other options.

The views BMRB found ‘were not specific to those studying the shortage subjects … but were common across the different subject areas. ‘

So, the common message from both studies, nearly twenty years apart, and of different participant sizes and survey methods, is that teaching must be competitive in regard to pay and working conditions to attract graduates in a competitive labour market.

Another study, in 2000, for the Office of Manpower Economic (OME), by Whitmuir Research, reported similar finding to the BMRB list, but added, disruptive pupils; lack of parental support and the cost of tuition feed to the list.

A large-scale study of 1,880 final year undergradues across 26 HEIs for the TTA in 1999, distributed through careers services, found more interest amongst women than men in teaching as a career, and amongst those in post-1992 higher education institutions.

A review of where applicants to teaching come from, based on DfE data through the common application process would be a sensible annual outcome in order to see if there are changes in the key undergraduate market with regard to teaching as a career.

It seems likely that the STRB knows the issue around recruiting into the teaching profession. The question every year is – will the STRB stand up to government on behalf of the children of this country and ensure that teaching is an attractive career for graduates across all subjects?

Skills Issue: right issue, wrong solution?

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A study also backed by former Tory education secretary Gillian Keegan and Liberal Democrat education spokesman Lord Storey has called for an expansion of University Technical Colleges (UTCs), which are schools where local employers often help deliver lessons to ensure children are trained for available jobs.

They supported a study by Policy Exchange, the think tank, which also called for University Technical College departments to be added to existing secondary schools. The report from Policy Exchange is called From School to the Skilled Workforce. Policy Exchange – From School To The Skilled Workforce

In a joint foreword to the report, the three politicians said: “Businesses consistently report that a lack of access to skilled labour is impeding their growth, with the shortages particularly acute in sectors including construction, technology and healthcare.

Let employers help run schools to end youth unemployment crisis, says David Blunkett

Now I agree with the premiss behind this report: a need for many more technicians to support our industrial and commercial base to the economy. However, I am dubious about the recommended way forward.

Kenneth Baker created City Technology Colleges when he was Secretary of State in the 1980s, and supported the creation of the present University Technology Colleges. These colleges have had a chequered history, not least because they were only open to pupils from Year 10 onwards. All too often that allowed existing schools to move pupils sideways, and schools rarely suggest that pupils doing well change school at the end of Key State 3.

This new report overcomes that difficulty by suggesting ‘sleeve schools’ within existing schools -effectively a technology pathway.  Now, I really don’t believe that a conservative leaning think tank really wants to create 4,000 new headteacher posts to run these sleeve schools – think of the cost and bureaucracy involved – not to mention the need to sack teachers to employ those with the right skills to teach.

Fortunately, the report has a solution to both of these issues. A pilot of 10 sleeve schools, and give QTS to those in senior positions with relevant industrial experience. Not a surprising idea when you notice that the author spent two years in the classroom on the Teach First programme. He should know that teaching is not just about subject knowledge alone.

My advice is readers is to read to page 10 of the report in order to understand the issue that after all isn’t new. After all, as far back as the 1960s, The Dainton Report Dainton Report – Wikipedia worried about encouraging science and engineering as a career for those interested in going to university and both the Crowther and Newsom Reports were concerned about the futures of the upper age groups in education.

My view is that the, much neglected, Further Education sector, removed from local authorities and many links to local labour market needs in the 1990s, should be a more effective route to solving the skills gap. There would also need to be better career advice in schools that encouraged consideration of the value of training for these areas of skill shortages. This is especially the case as the Policy Exchange report has little to say about whether the expansion of the UTC concept should be for pupils across the whole ability range or just not likely to be on pathways leading to higher education.

6500 new teachers: wasn’t that a manifesto pledge?

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The DfE has today published the annual Education and Training Statistics for the whole of the United Kingdom.  Education and training statistics for the UK, Reporting year 2025 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UKAs ever, there is a wealth of material and the devil is in the details.

The full-time equitant number of teachers in England increased between 2023/24 and 2024/25. The data for schools in England isn’t new, as it was first reported in June 2025 School workforce in England, Reporting year 2024 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

However, it is worth discussing the data again, as it will provide the basis against which any claims about increased teacher numbers will be judged.

Phase201920202021202122202223202324202425
Non-maintained mainstreamTotal769757731071695732557524074100
NurseryTotal119511601100106510751060
PrimaryTotal219960221365221230220265217460214575
SecondaryTotal204715209835213630216075217565219000
SpecialTotal242802502526005271402824029150
TotalTotal530800538415537285541690543930542355
Total maintainedTotal453820461105465590468435468690468260

The changes over one year and the whole of the time period are shown in this table

Totalchange on 202324change on 201920
Non-maintained mainstreamTotal-1140-2875
NurseryTotal-15-135
PrimaryTotal-2885-5385
SecondaryTotal143514285
SpecialTotal9104870
TotalTotal-157511555
Total maintainedTotal-43014440

It is worth noting that as the school population increased, so did the number of teachers in state-maintained schools. Thus, between 2019/2020 and 2024/2025 teacher numbers increased by 14,440, although the decline in teachers in the nursery and primary schools had already started.

However, by 2024/25 the total teacher workforce was some 14,440 FTEs larger than it had been in 2019/2020 as a result of the increase in the number of secondary and special school teachers.

Between 2023/24 and 2024/25, teacher numbers in England continued to increase across both the secondary and special school sectors, but the decline in the primary sector teacher numbers continued. The nursey sector showed little change, but employs few teachers in state nursery schools as opposed to nursery classes in primary schools.

There is a message here for anyone considering a career as a primary school teacher. Before accepting a place on a teacher peroration course; do some homework on job possibilities in the area of the country where you would like to teach, especially if it is not where you are training.

I doubt that we have yet seen the end of the decline in teacher numbers in the primary sector, and it will be a buyer’s market, even in 2027 when those applying for courses starting next September will enter the labour market in large numbers.

In the past, under such conditions, schools have preferred to employ experienced teachers leaving new entrants to look for posts in schools for which they may not have been trained. Often the jobs will either be in schools with a higher deprivation index score or small schools with mixed age classes. Neither of these teaching situations may have been encountered during a one-year teacher preparation course, and can be challenging for new teachers if not adequately supported.   

Don’t be afraid to ask about job prospects at interview, especially if you are paying your own tuition fees.