Tag Archives: new graduates

Warning signs on ITT recruitment

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The DfE is holding a webinar for teachers looking for a job this afternoon. I suspect that it may well be full or primary teachers and trainees, plus some history and PE teachers. Anyone else still looking for a teaching post for September either has only just started or may need more than a webinar to help them find a job. TeachVac www.teachvac.couk along with other services does offer one to one advice sessions.

However, based upon the applications data for 2023 postgraduate courses released today, the DfE might be better advised chasing up more applicants for next year. April can be a tricky month to assess the status of the applications round for any year because of Easter and other faith festivals. However, some trends are becoming clear.

The increase in applications, as reported previously, is being driven by an increase from those recorded as from the ‘rest of the world’. Thus, of the 2,601 recorded increase in applicants compared with April last year, some 2,014 are shown as from ‘rest of the world’.

The danger is that this increase is masking some worrying trends. The number of applicants under the age of 25 continues to be below the number recorded last year by around 400 applicants, or more than 2%.

More concerning are the nine secondary subjects where offers are at their worst level since before 2016/17. Of the other secondary subjects, most are still below the offers at April in the 2020/21 cycle. Only geography and design and technology are back to offer levels in earlier years. For geography it is the best April since 2018/19, and for design and technology, the best since 2016/17, although even at the current level the target won’t be met for this year.

The sciences and modern foreign languages are the subjects where the greatest improvements in offers can be identified. So, perhaps the bursary and scholarships are making a difference. However, there is not the data to see the extent to which these extra offers are being made to ‘home students’ or those from overseas.

The increase in applicants is significantly affecting universities, faced with nearly 8,000 more applications so far this round: a 20% increase in workload. The total number of applicants rejected has increased from 3,727 in April last year to 5,612 this April. Nearly 300 more applicants have also withdrawn their applications.

Another worrying sign is the decline in applicants domiciled in London and the South East regions where demand for teachers is always the highest.

Unless there is an increase in home applicants over the next couple of months this round is beginning to look as if the outcome will be grim for providers trying to fund courses with limited numbers of students, and for schools seeking teachers in September 2024 and January 2025.

Hopefully, the resolution, when it comes, of the pay and conditions dispute between the teaching associations and the government will include provisions to encourage more graduates to choose teaching as a career. Paying their fees might be a useful concession.

Teaching not attracting new graduates

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Might history become a ‘shortage subject’ in the teacher labour market? Such a question seems fanciful in the extreme. However, the latest batch of data about applications for 2023 postgraduate courses for ITT where the trainees will supply the 2024 labour market shows the lowest March number for ‘offers’ since before the 2013/14 recruitment round. I am sure that providers are being cautious about making offers, but there does seem to be a trend developing, with non-bursary and arts subjects faring worse than the science and other bursary subjects and the primary sector applications still continuing at a low rate.

Art, religious education, music drama, classics and ‘other’ are subjects where the offers made by the March reporting date were below the March 2022 number. Most other subjects were reporting higher offer levels than in March 2022 – a disastrous month – but below previous years. Design and technology is an exception. The recovery from the low point of March 2020 in that subject continues. However, the number of offers is not yet such as to inspire confidence that the target for 2023 will be met. Offers in art and design in March 2023 were less than half of the number in March 2020.

So, what of overall progress in attracting graduates into teacher at the half-way point in the recruitment cycle? This March, there were 25,163 candidates compared with 23,264 in March 2022. However, the overall increase of just under 2,000 more applicants is fully accounted for by the 2,600 more candidates shown as applying from outside of the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. London has nearly 400 fewer candidates this March compared with March 2022 as measured by the location of the candidate’s application address, and the East of England, down from 2,213 in March 2022 to 1,955 this March.

Applications are being sustained by an increase in career changers. Candidate numbers in the age groups below 25 continue to fall, with just 4,027 candidates in the 21 or under age grouping. By contrast, this year there are already 600 candidates in the 50-54 age grouping compared with 449 in March 2022. The number of candidates recorded as over the age of 65 has increased from 12 in March 2022 to 25 this March! The bulk of the career changers seem likely to be men. The number in this group has increased from 6,525 in the March 2022 data to 8,037 this March. However, the number recruited has fallen from 562 to 419, perhaps indicating that many of these older men are in the group applying from overseas?

All the increase is in applications for secondary courses. Those applying for primary courses has fallen from 28,391 in March 2022 to 27,874 this March. By comparison the secondary applications have increased from 32,551 in March 2022 to 40,193 this March.

The increase in applications from outside of the United Kingdom may well be the reason that every route into teaching has registered an increase in unsuccessful applications compared with the figure for March 2022. It would be interesting to know whether or not Teach First has seen a similar increase in applications from outside the United Kingdom.

Once the overseas applicants have been removed, the picture for March 2023 is mixed, with bursary subjects generally doing slightly better than other subjects. However, the real concern must be the loss of interest in teaching among young home graduates. Such a decline is very worrying.

Who wants to be a teacher: changes over time

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As we approach the end of the current recruitment round for entry to postgraduate teacher preparation courses, I thought it might be worth looking back at some of the data on the gender of applicants that I have collected over the years.

In 1996, I wrote an article for the then NUT journal, Education Review, in its special number on re-asserting equal opportunities. This coincided with celebration for the 125 years of the NUT. For anyone with access to a library, it was Volume 10 Issue Number 1 of Summer 1996.

It is interesting to see the data about the gender of applicants to postgraduate courses. In 1983, men made up 43% of applicants to PGCE courses. By 1986, the figure had fallen to 36% ,and was also at that level in 1996. By 2018, the UCAS end of year data shows that male applicants accounted for 32% of applicants. This August, in the most recent monthly data available, men accounted for 31% of applicants. By the end of the round it seems likely that the percentage will be similar to that of last year, since men have more of a tendency, at least in many years, to apply towards the end of the recruitment round than do women.

As men have formed a smaller proportion of the applicant pool, so their chance of being offered a place has increased. In 1989, 53% of male applicants were offered a place. By 2018, this had increased to some 62% of male applicants and by August this year the figure for the current recruitment round was standing at 66%. This percentage may drop by the final analysis of the recruitment round as it might include a small proportion of applicants holding or having been ‘offered’ a place by more than one course provider. Still, it shows an interesting trend.

In the days when I wrote the 1996 article, there was considerable data in the public domain about both the ethnicity of applicants and their ages, as well as their gender. Sadly, little is now in the public domain about ethnicity, so we don’t know if some ethnic groups are still being rejected in greater numbers than those from other groups?

We do still know about the age profile of applicants. It is interesting to look at the age profile of applicants in 1993, and the age profile of those applying 25 years later in the 2018 round. (The 1993 data are for England and Wales and the 2018 are for England alone.)

1993                       2018

Under 22             9598                       8060

23-24                     7396                       5510

25-29                     9387                       6050

30-39                     5778                       4640

40+                         2929                       3660

It would appear that teaching still holds attractions as a career for those straight from university, and also those older career switchers in the second half of their working lives. But, teaching seems less attractive to those in their mid to late-20s, now settled into working life. Of course, picking a different year to 1993 might have produced a different result, but this data does provide some food for thought.