Tag Archives: Mathematics

The effect of the pandemic on early learning

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The DfE today published the results of the 2022 phonics screening check and key stage 1 attainment statistics. Phonics screening check and key stage 1 assessments: England 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

These are the first phonics screening check and key stage 1 attainment statistics since 2019, after assessments were cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. Regardless of views on the usefulness of these tests they do provide some comparative data from before and after the pandemic.

These statistics cover the attainment of year 1 and year 2 pupils who took these assessments in summer 2022. As the DfE notes, these pupils experienced disruption to their learning during the pandemic. The headline outcome from the data is that attainment in the phonics screening check has decreased compared to 2019

According to the DfE, 75% of pupils met the expected standard in the phonics screening check in year 1, down from 82% in 2019.

87% of pupils met the expected standard in the phonics screening check by the end of year 2, down from 91% in 2019. Suggesting that schools can have an effect on outcomes.

In addition, according to the DfE, attainment at key stage 1 has decreased in all subjects in 2022 compared to 2019.

67% of pupils met the expected standard in reading, down from 75% in 2019.

68% of pupils met the expected standard in maths, down from 76% in 2019.

58% of pupils met the expected standard in writing, down from 69% in 2019.

77% of pupils met the expected standard in science, down from 82% in 2019.

I suppose these results are not a surprise given the turbulence of the past few years. Also, not much of a surprise is that some groups fared worse than others. Although the headline tables only consider single variables, such as gender, ethnicity, geographical region and SEN support, it is clear that while virtually all groups have seen declines in performance across the board, some have seen more than others.  

One striking change is performance on the phonics check for pupils eligible for Free School Meals. Those not meeting the criteria for Free School Meals as opposed to receiving free infant school meals saw the percentage meeting the expected standard fall between 2019 and 2022 from 84% to 80%, while for those eligible for Free School Meals the decrease was from 71% to 62%; down nine percentage points compared with a drop of just four per cent for those not meeting the criteria for Free School Meals.

In the Key State 1 results for the teacher assessment in mathematics, boys overtook girls, with 60% of boys compared with 67% of girls reaching the expected standard. In 2019, 75% of boys, but 77% of girls reached the expected standard.

Writing continues to lag behind reading and mathematics in the outcomes for the Key Stage 1 teacher assessments, with just 52% of boys reaching the expected standard.

These results show that there is much ground to be recovered following the effects of the covid pandemic, even if schools have an uninterrupted autumn and winter this year. Cutting funding for the education of this group may well be to produce life-long disadvantages for many of this group of children.

Grim news on recruitment

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The latest monthly statistics on applications and acceptances for graduate teacher preparation courses starting this autumn were published by the DfE this morning. These numbers mark the end of the first year of the DfE management of the application process for all graduate courses except Teach First.

Regular readers will not be surprised by what follows, as the headline outcome around under-recruitment for the year has been expected for several months, and this blog has commented upon the direction of travel each month in its regular updates.

The total number of applications at 39,288 falls well short of the 43,300 recorded for September 2021 as domiciled in England. More alarming is that the recruited number at 20,170 is just short of 7,000 lower than the 27,100 number of September 2021. The conditions pending number at 3,719 is also below the 2021 number of 5,980, and the remining possible applicants either awaiting a decision or from whom a decision is awaited on an offer are also lower than last year.

Compared with September 2021, there are 111,592 applications in September 2022 against 115,300 last year domiciled in England. Especially worrying has been the reduction in applicants from the youngest age groups of graduates. Those new graduates under age 25 form the bedrock of those recruited into teaching as a career and any serious fall is bad news.

Age Group20212022
21 and under39203833
2238103110
2330002347
2423401698
Total placed1307010988
young graduates not interested in teaching as a career?

These are the groups from where the future leaders of the teaching profession will be drawn. According to the data released today, there are just fewer than 15,000 females placed onto courses this year compared with just over 19,000 last September. For males the numbers are 5,514 this year and 7,550 in September 2021. Unknown or referred not to say increased from 440 in 2021 to 175 with only three not in the ‘prefer not to say category’. Fewer candidates with domiciles in each region have been recruited in 2022 than in 2021. However, more important is the split between primary and secondary sectors.

There are 9,763 applications recruited in the primary sector in September 2022 compared with 12,690 in September 2021. Unsuccessful applications have fallen from 38,800 in 2021 to 35,962 this September. However, the percentage of unsuccessful applications has increased from 72% to 74$. Of course, this may mean applicants being accepted and their other applications being shown as unsuccessful. We will need the ITT Census to determine the exact recruitment into both primary and secondary training.

For secondary courses the situation is more complicated because of the different subjects and the different sizes of their graduate pools. The good news is that both geography and design and technology are likely to recruit more trainees than in 2021. The bad news is that the increase, if confirmed by the ITT Census won’t be enough to meet targets set by the DfE. In other subjects, there will be sufficient history and physical education trainees and a large surge in applications for IT and computing may make the total in that subject ore respectable, if these trainees turn up and stay the course.

Overall, the assessment for the secondary sector is that for 2023 to be anything other than a grim labour market for schools and a great time for teachers, there needs to be more returners and fewer departure overseas. I am not sure that either of those conditions will be in place by the time schools start recruiting in January 2023 for September.

TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk will be monitoring the job market and is the ideal site to find a teaching post.

With the concerns over the shape of teacher recruitment following the DfE’s actions the next few months will be an interesting time in the labour market for teachers and likely outcomes even as far ahead as 2024. While the primary sector will probably not be too badly affected, the issue of selective schools now looms over the secondary sector to add to the other recruitment concerns.

Who wants to be a teacher?

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In this time when history had gained a new relevance in our lives, I thought I would use the time available to me to look back at teacher recruitment in the 1990s. it would be interesting to look at recruitment in 1952, but the world of education has changed so much since then that the numbers really wouldn’t mean a great deal. In those days most teachers that were trained did so through the Certificate route and most only studies for two years. Graduate teachers were mostly untrained and in selective and independent schools. However, I was lucky to attend a state primary school where the headteachers was a physics graduate. How rare was that. W. W. Ashton an interesting character and a rarity in the primary sector of the 1950s.

The following data is taken from the pay review body Report of February 1996 (5th Report of STRB Table 27) I have selected 1994-95 to put alongside 2021-22, as that year marked the high point in recruitment during the five-year period between 1991-92 and 1995-96.

A couple of caveats. The 1994-95 numbers included recruitment in Wales, and the 2021-22 numbers don’t include Teach First and are based on August offers. The table can be updated once the ITT census appears at the end of 2022 as there will be late acceptances and some offered places earlier in the year might not actually start the course. Even with these caveats, there seems to be a story to tell.

SECONDAY SECTOR SUBJECTS19945-95 Number recruited2021-22 August offers excludes Teach FirstChange 2021-2022 on 1994-1995
MOD LANGS1915770-1145.00
DESIGN/TECHNOLOGY1951806-1145.00
SCIENCES29501922-1028.00
MUSIC586286-300.00
GEOGRAPHY744596-148.00
RELIGIOUS ED511388-123.00
MATHEMATICS18881857-31.00
ENGLISH & DRAMA19941969-25.00
PHYSICAL ED13791535156.00
HISTORY9351127192.00
TOTAL1485311256-3597.00
Source STRB 5th Report Table 27 and author’s analysis of DfE data for 2022

Even taking off a number for the recruitment in Wales and adding in possible Teach First recruitment, the comparison shows the decline in interest in teaching in the secondary sector. The numbers are not matched against perceived need as defined in the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model but are nevertheless useful in showing the changing interest in teaching. Physical Education and history teaching are more attractive than in 1994-95, although there may have been a more rigorous cap on applications at that time than currently, so there may have been interested applicants that could not be offered places. For that analysis, the percentage of offer to total applicants will need to be investigated.

Maths and English are at similar levels with offer this year to recruitment in 1994-95 and with swap between the removal of Wales recruits and the addition of Teach First to the totals may well be ahead this year of the 1994-95 total.

For the other six subjects in the table, the picture is very different with savage reductions across the languages and for the design, technology and IT areas. Even if Art as a subject was added to the design/technology total that would still leave a significant shortfall this year.

The number for the sciences is an interesting case. In 1994-95 recruitment was to ‘science’ courses. Nowadays, there are separate totals for each science. This shift while welcome in some respects has meant the opportunity to over-recruit in some sciences is more difficult than previously where there are likely to be shortfalls in other science subjects. The move was a good idea but the need for flexibility of recruitment as the year progresses may still be important.

In 1994-95, the employment-based routes were still in their infancy, and university-based courses were the main route into secondary school teaching.

The question for the new government still remains as to how to reverse the trend in recruitment in so many subjects and once again make teaching a career of choice?

End ITT deserts

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Whatever else the re-accreditation process being undertaken by the DfE across the ITT sector achieves, it must end the ITT deserts so that schools across England can rely upon a flow of new entrants into teaching across the whole gamut of secondary curriculum subjects and the differential needs of the primary sector. Attention should also be paid to the needs of the special school sector and pupils with SEND in mainstream schools. The lack of a genuine plan for the training of teachers for pupils with special needs is a scandal than needs highlighting.

However, the needs of the secondary school sector are just as pressing. TeachVac, as well as the DfE and even the tes have built up extensive databases of teacher vacancies that should inform the discussions about where provision needs to be located.

Ever since the cull of providers in the late 1970s and early 1980s there has been a policy of rewarding quality of provision regardless of where that provision was located. The thinking presumably was that ‘trainees will move to the jobs’, so location of the preparation is less important than quality of the preparation. There may also have been a thought that providers of training could partner with schools in localities where there was no training provider.

With the coming of school-based training and employment-based routes, there might also have been an assumption that schools finding recruitment challenging could enter the market and train their own teachers. This produced a confused approach that tried to marry up a top-down model of place allocations based on quality with a ‘bottom-up’ approach on need for teachers that led to a disorganised picture.

In 2013, Chris Waterman joined me in producing a book of maps showing the locations of the various providers, and the routes into teaching that they offered. I have always been surprised that the DfE website on teaching as a career doesn’t offer such a map alongside its rudimentary search facility that only indicates whether a provider has places for a specific course in a manner unhelpful to applicants. The DfE did better in 2013 with its original School Direct application process.

The re-accreditation process provides an opportunity to look in detail at the national picture based upon actual needs for teachers that has been lost since the decision in the 1960s to take teacher preparation away from the employing local authorities and faith communities and transfer preparation into higher education. Wise though that move was in many respects, once the DfE started to let a thousand flowers bloom in the teacher preparation market this ended any national coherence around the provision in relation to the needs of schools.

The situation has become worse in areas where state schools are competing with private schools for the same pool of teachers and trainees. Turning a blind eye to that fact doesn’t help state schools, especially when there is a shortage of new entrants into the profession.

Whatever else the re-accreditation process achieves, if it doesn’t take into account the needs of schools across the whole of England for a reliable flow of new entrants across all subjects and phases it will have failed in what should be one if its major purposes.

More bad news on ITT

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Yesterday, The DfE published the ITT applications and acceptances data for the period up to the 20th June thus year. In this post I look at the acceptances for June 2020 compared with those in June 2019, the last year before the pandemic struck. By 2019, there was already concern about the decline in interest in teaching as a career. The pandemic to some extent reversed that trend and provided teaching with a recruitment boost. But, was it a false dawn?

The following table compares the June 2019 UCAS data on ‘offer’ with that from the DfE data issued yesterday.

Subjects2018/192021/22Difference in offers
Biology1430524-906
Science24301531-899
English22901418-872
Geography1010519-491
History11801000-180
Computing410290-120
Religious Education400304-96
Design and technology450355-95
Mathematics15901511-79
Music240228-12
Chemistry600597-3
Physics4004000
Business studies15019747
Art and design41046858
Physical education12901469179
Dramana334na
Classicsna64na
Otherna429na
Sources: UCAS and DfE

On this basis, as I warned in my previous post, 2023 will be another challenging labour market for schools. Only in the same three subjects where there is least concern in 2022: history, art and physical education, is there likely to be anywhere near sufficient supply of new entrants unless there is a sudden rush over the next two months that frankly looks unlikely at this point in time.

The science number is based on an aggregation of totals from the three sciences and doesn’t represent whole new category of potential trainees. The most significant declines in the number of offers since 2019 are English, geography and computing. However, at these levels most subjects won’t reach their Teacher Supply Model number unless there is a significant input from other sources such as Teach First. I am not sure how likely that will be as they don’t publish their data in the same way to the general public whatever they share with the DfE. There are currently more ‘offers’ in mathematics than there are in English and at this level, English departments may struggle with recruitment in 2023.

Overall, there have been 32,609 applicants by 20th June. This compares with 37,790 applicants domiciled in England that had applied through UCAS by June 21st 2021. There are 2,229 ‘recruited’ applicants in 2022, when there were ,5830 ‘placed’ according to the UCAS data in June 2021. The conditional placed or conditions pending groups are 18,363 this year compared with 23,620 in June 2021. Many of these will be awaiting degree results, and this number will reduce next month just as the ‘recruited’ number’ will show an increase. Interestingly, the number that have declined an offer this year is shown as 760 compared with 370 in June last year. Another straw in the wind of how challenging recruitment has become.  However, withdrawn applications are down from 1,520 to just 1,002.

There must be a concern that applications – as opposed to applicants – in the South East provider region are down from 14,390 to 10,795. This is the region with the largest proportion of vacancies each year, and where the private sector vies most strongly with state schools of all types for teachers. An analysis of acceptances by subject by provider region would help schools identify the seriousness of this decline, and whether it is in both the primary and secondary sectors?

Applications overall are down for both sectors, with primary down from 48,520 last June to 39,712 this June, and secondary down from 61,480 to 48,047, a very worrying reduction. School Direct salaried continues to be replaced by the PG apprenticeship route that has had 3,864 applications this year compared to 5,315 for the School Direct Salaried route. However, similar numbers have been placed on both routes, at around 500 trainees on each route.

With some schools ceasing recruitment as term comes towards its end, it will be up to higher education to recruit most of the additional applicants over the summer. Will those providers threatened with not being re-accredited show the same appetite to recruit as they would if their future was secure in teacher education? The DfE must surely how so as every extra trainee is a welcome bonus for schools in 2023 struggling to recruit teachers.

Imperial Measures

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The announcement of a consultation into the use of imperial measures either alongside or in place of metric measures – too European – timed to commence during the Jubilee weekend remind me of the following post that appeared on this blog in August 2019 which discussed the possibility of such an announcement.

That 2019 post also discussed the curriculum, another live topic with the Schools Bill that is currently wending its way through parliament and was based upon the decision to spend more on increasing the size of the prison estate rather than on preventing re-offending.  

Rods, poles and perches

Posted on August 11, 2019

The announcement of 10,000 new prison places and increased use of stop and search by the Prime Minister made me think about what he might announce for our schools and colleges once he goes beyond the financial carrot necessary to shore up our under-financed education system.

With such an ardent Brexiter in charge, could he direct that the curriculum changes on 1st November to throw out any reference to the decimal system and witness a return to imperial weights and measures? Could the government mandate that temperature again be expressed in degrees Fahrenheit rather than Centigrade, and kilometres be banished from the language once again? Any other summer and these might seem silly season stories, but not in 2019.

I have no doubt that schools would rather that spend the £2 billion to build new prison places that this cash was spent on youth services, more cash for special schools and strategies to reduce exclusions and off-rolling by schools. This could include better provision of professional development courses to help teachers educate challenging pupils, rather than exclude them. Such measures might obviate the need for building new prisons.

I do not want to return to the dark days of the Labour government, just over a decade ago, when, at any one time, around 4,000 young people were being locked up: the number now is closer to 1,000 despite the issues with knife crime that like drugs issues is now seeping across the country at the very time when it seems to have plateaued in London.

More police and other public service staff are necessary for society to function effectively, but the aim must be focused on prevention and deterrents not on punitive action and punishment. Criminals that know they are likely to be caught may well think twice: those that know detection rates are abysmal will consider the opportunity worth the risk.

The State also needs to spend money on the education and training of prisoners as well as the rehabilitation of offenders after the end of their sentence; especially young offenders. The recent report from the Inspector of Prisons makes as depressing reading as the study highlighted in a previous post of the background of many young people that are incarcerated for committing crimes. If we cannot even work to prevent the smaller number of young people imprisoned these days from re-offending, what hope is there if society starts to lock up more young people again?

A recurrent theme of this blog has been about the design of the curriculum for the half of our young people not destined for higher education. Here the new government could do something sensible by recognising that schools have accepted that the EBacc offers too narrow a curriculum to offer to every pupil and to encourage a post-14 offering that provides for the needs of all pupils. This might be achieved by encouraging schools and further education to work together.

A start might be made by increasing the funding for the 16-18 sector and identifying what was good about the idea of University Technical Colleges and Studio Schools and why the experiment has not worked as its promoters had hoped.

Find a teacher

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As the 26th May and ‘Thank a Teacher’ Day draws nearer I have looked at TeachVac statistics for vacancies in 2022 up to the 10th May compared with the vacancy number for the whole of 2019, the last full year before the pandemic. The statistics make for grim reading.

In seven areas, the total vacancies recorded so far in 2022 exceed the total recorded for the whole of 2019.

Subject 20192022Percentage +/- (The nearest whole %)
Teaching and Learning(Pastoral)50271542%
SEN61084539%
Social Sciences888107721%
RE1127132818%
Design & Technology252426646%
Leadership470850036%
IT182618461%
Business16571599-4%
Languages29322793-5%
Vocational432408-6%
Geography18121702-6%
Music11801031-13%
History13651190-13%
Total6456954453-16%
PE19831575-21%
Primary1664612964-22%
Science80596066-25%
Mathematics68485017-27%
Art1337952-29%
English63874253-33%
Source: TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk

These include subject areas such as religious education and design and technology where there have already been more vacancies posted in the first four and a bit months of 2022 than during the whole of 2019. Grim news for any school looking for a September appointment and possibly a catastrophe for schools that will need to make an appointment for January 2023.

Interestingly, it is still the EBacc subjects where recruitment is less buoyant. In the case of maths, English and the sciences, vacancies are still adrift of the 2019 total by some margin. That doesn’t mean everything is great, even in these subjects because the vacancies are still close to the total for the pool of new entrants, especially once those trainees already committed to schools are excluded from the calculations.

So, ‘Thank a Teacher’ Day must also be ‘recruit a trainee into teaching’ day, week and month if we are going to continue to improve the education for all children wherever they live and whatever school they attend.

At TeachVac, we monitor trends at every level from geographical to phase and subject and career grade. Our reports provide invaluable intelligence to schools, MATs, dioceses, local authorities and others interested in the labour market for teachers. The reports are also the most comprehensive daily reports available.

There are still a couple of weeks to go to the resignation date at the end of May and so far, this week, TeachVac has recorded more than 2,800 new vacancies in the course of just two days. By the end of this week, the total for 2022 could be in excess of 55,00 or less than 9,000 behind the total for the whole of 2019.

The teaching workforce crisis doesn’t receive the same attention as the NHS crisis, but its effects are just as key to the nation’s health, welfare and economic prosperity. Sadly, there was no recognition in the Queen’s speech of the issues facing teacher supply. Rearranging the organisational structure of schooling by making all schools academies may be a solution, but don’t bet on it.

Opportunity for All?

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The government published it Education White Paper today. They didn’t make it easy to find the whole document, but it can be accessed at Opportunity for all – Strong schools with great teachers for your child (publishing.service.gov.uk) For younger readers, it is called a White Paper because when such documents first appeared they had white covers. Later when documents with suggestions and not proposals appeared they were called Green Papers as they had a green cover.

Enough of the history, although it is worth looking back to the last education White Paper. It promised to look at returning in-year admissions to local authorities, but nothing happened. This time on page 53 there is a graphic that just says LAs will ‘manage’ in-year admissions. It is not clear where the management role will have sanctions to back it up. I hope so.  If local authorities are provided with ‘backstop’ powers to direct in-year admissions that will be a step forward and should be put into place as soon as possible. The intention is summarised in paragraph 163. As a final safety net to cover rare circumstances where collaborative working breaks down, we will consult on a new backstop power for local authorities to direct trusts to admit children. Trusts would have the right to appeal this to the Schools Adjudicator. Please start the consultation as soon as possible – Time for Jacob’s Law | John Howson (wordpress.com)

The news in the White Paper that local authorities can run academy trusts is to be welcomed as correcting one of the wrongs of Mr Gove’s original 2010 Academies Act. However, in the spirit of strong schools, will schools in existing academy chains be able to make a transfer either to another chain or to a local authority trust, and will local authorities be able to include schools outside their boundaries in a Trust, such as Swindon schools in a Wiltshire trust or Blackpool schools in a Lancashire Trust? Will there need to be Chinese walls between an LA Trust officers and other officers with powers to direct Trust, as over admissions?

The White Paper downgrades Regional School Commissioners to Regional Directors, a less threatening title to local democracy. However, the amount of power local authorities can wield will depend upon funding. At least local trusts should have the same financial powers as the present trusts to manage central costs.

Perhaps the biggest change in policy terms in the White Paper is the ending of the freedom of parents to control the education of their children as paragraph 77 make clear, the government will also introduce legislation to establish a register for children not in school, exploring how this data should be used by local authorities and multi-agency teams to undertake their duties and support children’s education. The 1870 Act required parents to educate their children. The 2022 White Paper now also requires them to tell the authorities how they are doing that education. Will the next step be to ensure that all children receive high quality education of id the white Paper’s real time ‘Opportunity for all in state funded schools?

Overall, the White Paper is not as dramatic as it was thought it might be.

Private schools: important sector of job market for teachers

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Nearly one in five vacancies for teachers of mathematics that were advertised during the first two months of 2022 placed by schools in England came from private schools responsible for educating children of secondary school age. This included both senior and preparatory schools across England. However, the vast majority of posts from private schools were advertised by located by schools in London and the South East of England. There were relatively few vacancies from schools across the north of England.

The data produced by TeachVac, the national vacancy service for teachers, shows that the private sectors share of the job market for teachers so far in 2022 has increased from, around 12% of vacancies in the first two months of 2021, to 14% across the first two months of 2022.

Other subjects, apart from mathematics, where the private sector dominate the job market for teachers include, perhaps not surprisingly, classics, but also some posts for teachers of specific languages, including Russian, where there have been three recorded vacancies so far in 2022.

Schools in the state sector usually advertise for teachers of modern languages rather than for teachers of specific languages. The same balance between advertising for teachers of specific subjects and a generic vacancy is often also seen in vacancies for science teachers. Private schools favour vacancies for teachers of specific subjects, whereas state schools advertise for teachers of science, at least at the classroom teacher grade.

As with the state sector, there has been less demand for teachers of arts and humanities so far in 2022 by private schools. At least in England, this is not a part of the curriculum likely to absorb the over-supply of such teachers being trained at the public expense.

The next three months will cover the period between March and May when the majority of vacancies for teachers will appear. Nationally, across both state and private schools, and the primary and secondary sectors, nearly 20,000 vacancies for teachers have already been advertised in 2022 according to TeachVac’s records. 2022 might well see a total for the year of close to 70,000 unless demand falls away later in the year.

Should some universities decide to withdraw form government funded teacher preparation courses then they may well still be able to maintain initial teacher education by providing recruits for the private school sector. As academies don’t need to employ qualified teachers, any universities outside the government scheme can also provide new recruits for that sector, providing that a funding route can be found for trainees, perhaps based upon a greater use of a salaried scheme funded by schools. It would be interesting to speculate what such a divergence of public and private training might do for the levelling up agenda?

Not much of a Christmas Present

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There is a need to be cautious about making too much of the latest DfE data on applications to start graduate training as a teacher in Autumn 2022. The newly published data covers the period up to mid-January 2022. However, this included both the Christmas break and the omicron infection surge of covid cases plus the first Christmas break for the new DfE application process.

Any one of these factors might have been a reason for treating comparisons with previous years cautiously. Taken as a whole, there must be a view that it won’t be until the February data – the half-way point in recruitment – that a clear picture will emerge, especially because of the large number of applications awaiting a decision from a provider.

Nevertheless, some comments are possible. In the primary sector, applications are close to the level of January two years ago at 18,300. In reality, this is the lowest January number for many years for applications, but should not be a cause for concern. In the secondary sector, the 20,254 applications are some 2,000 below the 2020 figure for January and 8,000 down on the admittedly high 2021 number. Comparison with 2020 is probably more helpful. In terms of applicants, there were about 750 more than at this point two years ago, but some may be making fewer choices.

Translating the overall number of ‘offers’ into issues for individual subjects produces four different groups. Firstly, those subjects where ‘offers’ – note ‘offers’, not applicants as that data aren’t available – are up and the expected recruitment level should be met. Amongst the subjects tracked, there are no subjects in this grouping. Secondly there are subjects where there are more offers, but the recruitment level won’t be reached on present levels. Physics, design and technology and chemistry fall into this group.

The third group is where there are either similar offer levels to two years ago or fewer offers than at this point in the cycle two years ago, but recruitment targets should be met. History, physical education, biology and art fall into this group.

Finally, there are subjects such as languages, religious education, music, mathematics, geography, English, computing and business studies where ‘offers’ are below the same point two years ago and unless the number of ‘offers’ made picks up, recruitment target may well not be met. As noted earlier, this list should be treated with some caution for the three reasons stated earlier.

Slightly worryingly, the largest increase in applicants seems to be amongst those in the oldest age groupings, with 140 more applicants aged over 55 at the point that they made their application than two years ago. New graduates still form the bulk of the applicants, but the 2,989 age 21 or under compares with 2,830 two years ago from this age grouping: an increase, but not a massive endorsement of teaching as a career. For the 22-year-olds the increase is from 2,080 to 2,098: hardly noticeable. London and The South East account for around a third of applications. This is good news if there are sufficient places on courses and the applications are spread across all subjects, as these are the two regions where demand for teachers is at the highest levels.

In summary, there is a degree of caution about the data in this monthly release, but there is almost certainly work still to be done to avoid another year of under-recruitment and a tight labour market for schools in 2023.