Within this document, I was interested to see a discussion of headteacher turnover by Pupil Premium Decline. This showed that for both primary and secondary schools, but especially for secondary schools, turnover of headteachers was more likely where Pupil Premium levels were higher. Thus, in Band 1, – most deprived – 8.7% of secondary school headteachers changed between November 2024 and November 2025. This compared with just 2.3% of headteacher vacancies in secondary schools in Band 10. The data was taken from the DfE’s own database of teacher records and the School Workforce census.
Interestingly, in September 2002, the then NCSL (National College for School Leadership) published a piece of research on headteacher turnover that I conducted for the College. ‘Staying Power: the relationship between headteachers’ length of service and PANDA grades. (PANDA grades were a measure of a school’s performance and schools were graded from A* to E*).
My research looked at secondary schools with either A* or A grades and compared them with schools with E* or E grades.
The research was based upon an analysis of vacancy advertisements for headteacher posts at these schools.
As with today’s research finding, in 2002, A* schools had the greatest percentage of headteachers with more than six years of service, and E* schools the smallest percentage of headteachers with more than six years f service at that school. There were 785 A*/A schools and 780 E*/E schools in the survey.
There was also an association between the PANDA grade and readvertisement rates. 8% of A* vacancies for a headteacher were re-advertised compared with 14% of E* headteacher vacancies, and 49% of schools rated as E.
As headteachers often move from headship into retirement, the age profile of the teaching profession is a factor affecting turnover. A younger profession means fewer headteachers reaching retirement age.
However, the thesis that the more challenging the school, the shorter the term of office of a headteachers, still seems as credible today as it was half a century ago. Whether the government’s policies as foreshadowed in the White Paper will help to change this pattern of turnover and length of service will be interesting to watch.
The headline number of note is the percentage of applications from outside of the United Kingdom. Last February these applicants totalled just over 6,000, accounting for 24% of all applications. This February, the applicants from outside the United Kingdon now total almost 10,500, and account for 33% of all applications.
The key question that the published data does not reveal, but is of great consequence, is whether these extra 4,000 candidates are applying across the board for all subjects, or are concentrated in just a few subjects?
This question is of real importance, as there is now a split between subjects where ‘offers’ are above last year, and those other subjects where, despite rising unemployment in the wider economy, ‘offers’ in February 2026 are below those from February 2025. Many of these latter subjects will likely miss their target once again this year unless there is a dramatic shift in applications during the second half of the recruitment round, such as last seen in 2020, as a result of the covid pandemic.
Doing better than last year with regard to ‘offers’ are: physics; mathematics; history; design & technology; computing; chemistry, drama, and primary sector courses. English is just about holding its own when compared with February 2025.
Doing less well than in February 2025 are: modern languages; art & design; religious education; physical education; music; geography; classics and biology. Of these subjects, the decline in offers for physical education should be of no concern as the number of ‘offers’ is already more than 900 or more than the combined total of ‘offers’ for art & design; drama; music; religious education and ‘other subjects.
Does this government not care about the arts? I have long campaigned for the return of the music bursary. With music ‘offers’ down at just 110 this February, compared with 139 last February, that is a loss of 29 potential teachers of music, and the gap with last year has widened since the January data were published.
So, are there any other worries? Applications from candidates over the age of 25 appear to be rising faster than from newly graduating students. There are only 128 more applications from the youngest age grouping, compared with 208 from the 45 to 49 age group, and more than 2,000 additional applicants this year from the 25 to 29 age group. It would be helpful to know in which age grouping the additional 4,500 applicants from outside the United Kingdom fall, and which subjects they have applied for this year?
With the increase in applications from men, up from 9,561 to 13,654 being proportionally more than the increase in applications from women, up from 15,735 to 18,224, it would also be informative to know which subjects these additional 4,000 male applicants have applied for, and how many fall into applicants from the ‘rest of the world’ group?
While apprenticeships have shown good growth in applications, higher education courses have had to deal with the bulk of the additional applicants, with more than 5,000 additional applicants. My guess would be that the bulk of the new overseas applicants are targeting higher education courses.
We now enter that period of the recruitment round where fewer undergraduates will be applying until after the examination season, so further growth between now and the July data are most likely from career changers rather than undergraduates. This fact might push the proportion of ’rest of the world’ applicants to an even higher percentage than the 33% recorded this month. Perhaps it is now time for the DfE to review how the data are published in order to make it more useful to those interested in the labour market for teachers?
When I first started studying the governance of education, way back in 1979, there at that time two popular saying about the school system in England. One was that it was, ‘a partnership between local and national governments’ and the other that it was ‘a national system locally administered.’ A typical examination question was to ask how valid either of these statements were?
That was half a century ago; difficult for me to believe, but true nevertheless. I have witnessed a lot of changes during in the intervening years. Indeed, one of my few academic articles I have published was entitled ‘Variations in local authority provision of education’ and appeared in the Oxford Review of Education way back in the early 1980s. Interestingly, during the Labour government of the period between 1974-79, closing the gap in funding between the best and worst local authorities was a matter of academic interest. Anyone wanting to know more could do worse than read’ Depriving the Deprived’, written by Tunley, Travers and Platt, published in 1979, as it is about the funding of schooling across one London borough over one year.
During the 50 years between local government reorganisation in 1974 and 2024, school funding decisions have been removed from local authorities, and nationalised; Education Committees have been abolished, in favour of cabinet government; teacher training and new schemes to prepare teachers have been taken over by Westminster; schools have been persuaded to become academies outwith local authority control, but still under church control if faith schools – if the white Paper leaks are correct all schools will now have to become an academy or free school; further and higher education were liberated from local authority oversight and funding in the early 1990s; ultimate control over place planning has remained with the DfE as only the DfE can sanction new schools being built.
What’s left for local authorities? SEND for a couple more years; admissions- including in-year admissions once the current Bill becomes law – and transport. Frankly, I cannot see local authorities, especially newly reorgnised upper tier authorities, wanting either of these functions in the future. And why would they, as these services can often be poisoned chalices.
So, are we moving to an NHS style system for schooling in England, with little local democratic oversight, and few routes for parents to complain about the education their child is receiving. I fear so.
Does it matter? That’s a matter of opinion. The world of 2026 is vastly different to that of sixty years ago, and it should be easier to produce a more level playing field with all the levers of funding and control being exercise from Westminster.
But I remain sceptical. Westminster has been unable to control issues such as MAT chief executive’s pay and the level of school reserves. At present it isn’t equipped to be a fully functioning operational department along the lines of the NHS of MoD. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, the White Paper has to say about governance when it is published tomorrow.
Tomorrow, Monday, we will see Labour’s White Paper in full. For now, we have copious leaks and SEND and other matters, such as how to tackle the outcome gaps between the most deprived pupils and their more fortunate fellows either sitting alongside them or in other schools to whet our appetite.
The replacement of Free School Meals as a measure of deprivation has been long overdue, but it will be interesting see, as schooling moves from a local service to a national service, administered in a similar fashion to the NHS, whether the civil service will be any better than local politicians at managing the performance of the school system.
Making all schools academies will be the final nail in local government’s interest in schooling. Once SEND is handled nationally, it will just leave admissions, mainly on-line these days, to be removed from local management.
However, the changes already foreshadowed in the leaks mean that there will be winners and losers. Assuming that H M Treasury might fund some of the SEND changes, there is unlikely to be any new money to support schools to improve.
The present Funding Formula is heavily biased towards pupil numbers. Great when rolls are rising, but bad news for small schools when rolls fall. If the formula is altered to move more money towards schools with significant numbers of pupils not achieving expected standards, where will the cash come from?
Might small rural primary schools with good attendance and excellent results see their funding cut in real terms? If so, what are the consequences likely to be? Trusts will be reluctant to keep schools that cost more to run than they bring in through funding open, and will have no incentive to do so. Afterall, any travel costs will be paid for from the local authority under present arrangements.
I can see the local government organisations saying that if local authorities don’t run schools, then they shouldn’t have to pay any transport costs. Taking £46 million off Oxfordshire County Council’s budget would pay for an awful lot of pothole repairs, not to mention bolstering other services.
For those local authorities currently receiving little funding from central government, removing schooling entirely from local government would be an unexpected bonus. On the other hand, there would, as with the NHS, be no local democratic accountability. Education rarely features during general elections.
One bonus of a national school system is that the government might feel able to create a universal system for secondary schools, some 61 years after Circular 10/65 and on the 50th Anniversary of the 1976 Education Act.
Without democratic oversigh,t ignoring the 2006 rules about closing small rural primary schools will be much easier. Small one form entry faith schools in urban areas with good results have even less protection. It is worth studying the results for primary schools in Haringey to see the parts of the borough that might be winners and those that might be losers if funding doesn’t increase overall.
As someone that started teaching in Tottenham in 1971, when we had ‘areas of exceptional difficulty’ payments introduced into ‘Education Priority Areas’ it is interesting to see how stark the divide between schools on opposite sides of the railway line north from Kings Cross still remains.
So, will the government close that divide? But will it be at a cost to rural primary schools in Oxfordshire, my current home?
Following on from my last blog post about an incidence of knife crime in a school in Wales, I thought that I would look again at the latest statistics regarding youth custody for uder18s in England and Wales. Youth justice statistics: 2024 to 2025 – GOV.UK
The table below is abstracted from Table 7.2: Youth custody population, year on year monthly trends (under 18s only), years ending March 2001 to 2025 omitting the data for the years before 2014/15
Financial Year
Apr
Jul
Oct
Jan
Feb
Mar
Average monthly population
2014/15
1,078
1,111
1,033
976
988
1,002
1,031
2015/16
999
1,003
997
921
877
881
946
2016/17
906
857
872
862
863
858
870
2017/18
910
914
898
874
865
922
897
2018/19
938
882
853
806
827
832
856
2019/20
795
811
791
751
770
737
776
2020/21
664
563
535
532
536
516
558
2021/22
493
479
449
426
414
422
447
2022/23
432
457
434
437
467
452
447
2023/24
457
443
429
397
411
410
425
2024/25
427
437
400
406
398
402
412
The decline in custody numbers even during the period between 2-014/15 and 2024/25 is significant, especially taking into account the growth in the number of young people in the older age groups 11-18 during the period under review.
In April 2014, there were 1,078 under-18s in custody. In March 2024 that number had reduced to 402. This was just five above the lowest number in recent history, recorded in January 2024.
For girls, the average number in custody in 2025 was just 10, compared with 42 in 2015. So, the girl convicted of stabbing teachers in Wales really does join a very small number of other girls in custody.
The most worrying number within the 402 is the number on remand. This number stood at 183 in March 2025, some 44% of the total. This compared with just 23% in March 2015. The backlog of trails post-Covid is well known. There is surely a case for fast tracking cases for those under-18s on remand. No child of school-age should be locked up a day longer than necessary. A backlog of trials is not a good enough reason to leave a young person languishing in custody.
Violence against the person offences, offences that would include attempted murder – the offence the girl in Wales was sentenced to custody for – now account for 68% of the primary offences for young people under-18 in custody, compared to just 31% of those in custody in 2015. One should always be wary of using percentages, since the absolute numbers have declined from 317 in March 2014 to 284 in March 2025. It is just that custody for other offences, especially for both domestic burglary and robbery producing custodial sentences have declined even faster than custody for offences of violence against the person.
One concern about the decline in custody is that under-18s in Young Offenders Institutions may now be serving sentences or on remand further from home than in the past, as the number of institutions in use reduces with the reduction in the custody population. This is an issue that policymakers may wish to address. When Cabinet Member in Oxfordshire, I did my best to keep young offenders out of Feltham YOI, but acknowledged that the alternative YOIs were further away., should there have been no alternative to that form of custody.
The use of custody for undr-18s has come a long way since the bleak days of the Blair government and police targets, when August 2006 saw more than 3,000 under-18s in custody. Even with this massive reduction, I think we are less violent society, despite some headlines in the press and on social media.
Regular readers will know that I have been pursuing a return of the ITT bursary for postgraduates enrolling to train as a music teacher on courses starting in the autumn of 2026. This is a very small -U- turn for the government, but a necessary one for the subject, and its future in our schools and universities.
Previous posts on this blog have demonstrated that the removal of the bursary has already affected ‘offers’ to music courses, with a reduction of around 20 ‘offers’ in January 2026 compared with January 2025. Traditionally, any reduction in early-bird offers is not recovered later in the annual application cycle. Music ITT will miss its target: my reasoning | John Howson
This post looks at competition for teachers of music. There are three main areas for teachers to seek work as a teacher of music in a school: the state sector- including sixth form colleges; independent schools in England; private schools across the globe that seek to employ teachers trained in England.
Our starting point this year is the 367 trainees in music identified by the DfE’s annual census taken in December 2025. Add in Teach First and any late arrivals, and the overall total might be 380 – being generous.
Take of 10% for non-completes and those not choosing teaching as a career, and the labour market might have a supply of 342 trainees seeking work.
By mid-February, there had been 100 advertised vacancies by state schools for teachers of music without a TLR – i.e. classroom teacher posts. A well-used job board recorded 15 classroom teacher vacancies from independent schools in England on a single day in mid-February.
On the same date, the same job board, recorded 99 vacancies for teachers of music from schools across the world. This was made up of 40 vacancies in The Gulf, primarily in Dubai and the other Emirates, but there were 13 vacancies from schools in China, and 46 from schools elsewhere in the world.
Now I don’t expect nearly qualified teachers to apply for these vacancies, but to the extent that these posts are not filled by teachers already working overseas, then these vacancies will take teachers away from schools in England, and create new vacancies.
Assuming only a third of these vacancies are filled by teachers leaving schools in England, and the rest filled in other ways that would be an extra 33 vacancies at present.
Adding together the 100 state school vacancies so far in 2026 to the 15 already recorded private schools in England plus the 33 overseas schools currently seeking a new teacher that might recruit from schools in England that produces a total of 148 vacancies by mid-February, or 43% of the available total of trainees. Increase the take by overseas schools to half of their current vacancies, and not far off half the available pool for September and January could have been offered a job.
Now, some of the vacancies in Egland will be filled by existing teachers changing jobs or returners to the profession, but most experienced teachers will probably be looking for a post with a TLR if seeking a move to another school.
With three months to go to the summer resignation date, and six months until terms start, the pool of available teachers already looks stretched, and this is with trainees that have enjoyed the bursary.
If the lack of a bursary shrinks the 2027 pool, because there are fewer trainees, is removing the bursary a sensible move? In my opinion, it is not, and the government should reintroduce the bursary for trainees starting preparation courses in autumn 2026 to be a teacher of music.
We will continue to monitor the situation and report back through future blogs as the recruitment round unfolds.
Previous posts in this blog have drawn attention to the removal of the bursary for trainee teachers of music starting courses in September 2026. Music is a subject that is short of qualified teachers. As a result, removing the bursary is not going to increase interest in teaching as a career, especially while the current debate about student loans and repayment issues is raging. As trainee teachers mostly pay fees, this could become an issue for intending teachers.
A previous post has shown that the number of ‘offers’ made in January 2026 to applicants for music teacher preparation courses was down from 91 in January 2025, to just 70 in January 2026 Why Music Teacher Bursaries Matter for Education | John Howson
Now, those teachers recruited for September 2026 courses will enter the teacher labour market in time for appointment as a teacher in September 2027. What is happening in the labour market for teachers now?
An analysis of some 57 vacancies advertised nationally in either the TES or on the DfE job board with a closing date between the 1st January 2026 and the 2nd February 2026, by state secondary schools, revealed a total of 57 posts advertised. Most were for ‘teachers of music’, with a few promoted posts either titled as head/director of music or some similar phraseology. By the 5th February, seven of these posts has already re-appeared with a new closing date: basically, if they were genuine vacancies, then they had not been filled, and were being re-advertised.
Should we be surprised that 14% of vacancies advertised in January were not filled. Perhaps not as it is really too early for most trainees to have commenced their search for a teaching post. However, it also suggests that there is not a pool of ‘returners’ waiting to pounce on a job as soon as it was advertised: at least in some parts of the country.
Perhaps even more disturbing, is that two of the vacancies are for Easter appointment: normally, a rare occurrence. There are also some other vacancies with April 2026 start dates still to reach their closing dates. The presence of these vacancies surprises me, as in the past such advertisements would have been a rare sight.
The data on vacancies, albeit from a small sample so far, suggests a market where some schools are struggling to recruit a teacher of music
This analysis of advertisements doesn’t tell the full picture, as it excludes advertisements by the independent sector schools, special schools and those larger primary schools seeking to appoint a music specialist. Add those in and the number of vacancies already advertised this year is probably in excess of 100.
Then there are the posts for teachers of music in international schools that will take teachers out of schools in England. I am not sure whether anyone is keeping track of those numbers, but with the Labour government sanctioning a State School to open branches in India and The Gulf, in support of UK plc’s export drive, that factor will need to be taken into consideration when surveying the labour market as a whole.
In my view, there is now more than enough evidence to persuade any rational government to reinstate bursary for trainee teachers of music. But, does this government take rational decisions? Answers please, on a postcard or in the comment section.
In November 2010, the Conservative Government, and Michael Gove, as Secretary of State for Education, set out their vision for state education in a document entitled ‘The Case for Change’.
The concluding paragraph said:
“Reform should seek to strengthen the recruitment, selection and development of school teachers and leaders. It should strengthen and simplify the curriculum and qualifications, to set high standards, create curriculum coherence and avoid prescription about how to teach. It should increase both autonomy and accountability of schools, and ensure that resources are distributed and used fairy and effectively to incentivise improvement and improve equity.” The Case for Change, DfE, November 2010
Bold claims.
Looking at them in more detail, here are a few thoughts. Other suggestions welcome in the comments
Reform should seek to strengthen the recruitment, selection and development of school teachers and leaders: The move from a higher education led system of ITT to a school-based system failed. There are probably fewer trainees on employment-based routes now, as opposed to SCITTS or higher education routes, than during the Blair government era.
Between 2013 and 2023, the Conservative government presided over the longest period of under-recruitment to ITT, against their own targets for training. This failure to train enough teachers has had a profound effect on schools, ad has not been solved by the present government
should strengthen and simplify the curriculum and qualifications: Decoupling of A/S and A levels in 2015 substantially changed the post-16 landscape. The introduction of the English Baccalaureate weighted the curriculum in favour of traditional academic subjects. The change was never enforced on schools, although it was reported in the data about schools.
set high standards: I am never quite sure what these are. Examination results improved to a point where exam board were required to change grade boundaries, so fewer entrants received the top grades.
avoid prescription about how to teach: Phonics was the prescribed method of teaching reading. The ITT curriculum was made even more prescriptive
increase both autonomy and accountability of schools: Local authority schools had almost complete autonomy, as their budgets were sacrosanct. Academies were fine if stand alone, but as part of a MAT, their autonomy could be seriously reduced, but their accountability may have increased, although there was no accountability for MATs as they weren’t subject to inspection.
ensure that resources are distributed and used fairy and effectively to incentivise improvement and improve equity: The National Pupil Funding Formula was introduced during a period of rising school rolls, with no consideration as to what would happen when rolls started to fall. A study of PTRs by the author shows London schools with generally better staffing ratios than schools in the north of England throughout the period of the conservative government. The Lib Dem Pupil Premium may have help provide extra resources for pupils on Free School Meals, but the staffing crisis often meant that schools with large number so FSM pupils found recruitment of staff an issue.
Were the claims met? In many cases not, and the funding for schools in real terms declined during much the period the Conservative were in government making improvements harder to achieve. The failure to address the staffing crisis was, perhaps, the most important failure of the vision set out in 2010.
Earlier today, when I was turning out some old papers about teacher supply issues, I came across a draft for a paper I wrote more than 30 years ago on the subject of failing to meet the demand for music teachers.
Interestingly, in the notes, I compared the data for the shortage subject receiving a bursary in 1990 and 1991, with music that wasn’t a bursary subject.
As you might expect, music stood out, even in the early 1990s as an anomaly.
Take Table 31 from the Interim Advisory Committee report of January 1991. This table lists the percentage of unfilled teacher vacancies recorded in a joint union survey. Music ranked 6th worst in the list. In the DES Press notice on vacancies, issued on 25th August 1991, music was third worst as a percentage of teachers in post, with a vacancy rate of 2.4%. This placed music behind only, ‘other languages’ at 7.2% and German, at 2.5%.
In a DFES document ‘Projecting the Supply and Demand of Techers’, published in December 1990, the Department accepted that projections suggested a shortfall of teachers of music. Interestingly, music was the only subject with a shortfall across all four scenarios modelled in the document. Even so, music did not at that time join the list of subjects entitled to a bursary.
Another DES press notice, of 27th November 1990 (382/90), probably associated with the census of ITT trainees, normally published about that time of year, also showed a deterioration in ITT places filled from 88.9% in 1889, to 71.0% in 1990, although the actual number of trainees had increased from 282 to 340. In 1990, only mathematics, at 63.3% of places filled had a lower percentage of filled places than music.
So, what do I deduce from the data about both recruitment into ITT, and teacher vacancies, from nearly 40 years ago? Perhaps that attitudes in the civil service towards certain subjects in the curriculum don’t change very much.
Maybe the turnover of civil servants with responsibility for ITT bursaries is so frequent that it doesn’t allow for them to start afresh each year in considering the data and trends in each subject.
However, even that approach doesn’t really explain the dropping of the bursary from music for 2026 entry. I think the profession needs an explanation. Otherwise, the axing of the bursary for music can be seen as a cynical ploy to say money in a subject Ministers don’t fully appreciate in terms of its contribution to both society and the growth agenda.
I think that the Arts Council, DCMS, and the music lobby have a right to know why music lost its bursary, and to ask that it be replaced.
However, having seen how both the DfE and DCMS have recently handled the physical education grants, I am not holing out much hope unless there is a real campaign to reinstate the bursary for music, perhaps with some scholarships provided by private funders. Don’t let us lose music from our state secondary schools.
What is the point of bursaries for trainee teachers not on routes into teaching that pay a salary? The assumption must be that an inducement, such as a bursary would help recruit more trainees, or at least keep those that want to be a teacher on their teacher preparation programme.
Each year, the Department for Education decides which subjects will be allocated bursaries. In some subjects, the DfE also works with other bodies, such as subject associations, to offer alternative higher amounts of funding through scholarships. Both bursaries and scholarships have the advantage of being tax free to the recipients.
In the days when the Conservative government championed the Baccalaureate subjects above all others, it was understandable that subjects not included in the Baccalaureate might be regarded of less concern than those that made up the Baccalaureate, and thus that these subjects did not need bursaries, even if an insufficient number of trainees were recruited.
However, for courses operating in 2024/25 and 2025/26, the DfE did pay a bursary of £10,000 to those training to become teachers of music.
The bursary for music was not included within the list of eligible subjects for the courses operating in 2026/27. No reason was provided by the DfE for the removal of the bursary.
However, recruitment targets for music have been missed in six of the last seven years including for the current trainee group (2019/20–2025/26).
The failure to recruit to target has meant fewer music teachers in schools, and a drop in entries to public examinations. Between 2010/11, and the start of the coalition government, and 2022/23, entries for A Level music declined from 8,709 to 4,910. Interestingly, the percentage of A* and A grades increased from 24.3% to 41.6%. This might suggest that it was State schools, with their wider range of pupil abilities that saw the biggest fall in entries, as schools struggling to recruit music teachers axed examination courses that they could no longer staff.
Interestingly, a by-produce of the break-up of schools into many academy trusts might have meant that opportunities for collaboration between schools also declined after 2010, and the Academies Act.
How bad has the challenge of recruiting teachers of music been over the past few years? Were the ITT targets set by the DfE, and based upon the DfE’s own Teacher Supply Model accurate or over-optimistic in the need for teachers of music in state schools?
Pool
Music
Jan
Feb
March
April
May
June
Sept
Oct
Nov
Dec
251
2019
227
185
116
55
-57
-104
-253
-172
-196
-215
256
2020
205
146
77
24
-59
-86
-117
-144
-162
-171
416
2021
390
358
303
243
161
117
78
45
14
-9
315
2022
256
208
119
12
-128
-214
-305
-352
-395
-422
228
2023
156
81
-3
-126
-278
-356
2024
2025
330
2026
265
Data from TeachVac and dataforeducation
The table starts with the ‘pool’ of music trainees likely to be available to state schools that year and reduces it by one for every vacancy recorded during the year. The minus number is the excess of vacancies over the ‘pool ‘number
Between 2018 and 2023, only the cohort of trainees recruited during Covid, and entering the labour market in 2021, provided sufficient trainee numbers to have allowed schools to be secure in filling vacancies for September.
Of course, in addition to new entrants to teaching there are those returning to teaching or entering from other sectors, such as further education or independent schools.
As a rule of thumb, perhaps half of vacancies might be filled by new entrants, and the other half from other sources. The data in the table would suggest that in most years, if demand from private schools was also taken into account, the labour market would need to have ensured a steady supply of ‘returners’ to fill all the advertised vacancies for music teacher posts.
Each year, for January appointments, returners would have been critical for schools seeking to make an appointment, including those teachers returning to England from teaching in schools in the southern hemisphere, with a December year-end. Normally, somewhere around 100 vacancies for a January start were advertised each year between 2019 and 2022.
So, why, if there is a shortage of teachers, and the Teacher Supply Model did not seem to have been overestimated demand, was the bursary axed? Could it have been the age-old HM Treasury view that if there is a base number that would enter teacher training under any circumstances, then why pay them a bursary?
In the absence of any other explanation, it is difficult to think of any other reason than this cynical approach for the axing of the bursary for music. Put another way, Ministers just didn’t care enough about music, and weren’t aware of the contribution of all forms of music to the national wealth and our export drive to keep the bursary when it was suggested it be axed.
Sadly, the music lobby hasn’t yet changed the government’s mind. However, there is still time to do so for this recruitment round. The data showing the difference in ‘offers’ for ITT courses, between the January 2025 and January 2026 data points should, by itself, be enough to force a rethink, or a -U- turn, if you prefer it.
2026 ENTRY TO PG ITT
MUSIC
2025 TARGET
565
OFFERS JANUARY 2026
70
OFFERS JANUARY 2025
91
TOTAL OFFERS 2025
416
DIFFERENCE 2025 TOTAL AND 2025 January OFFERS
325
PROJECTION for 2026
395
ESTIMATED SHORTFALL
170
A decline in ‘offers’ from 91 to 70 is of serious concern, as these are the group most likely to be prepared to become a music teacher at whatever cost. My advice to Ministers: announce the bursary for music has been added to the list for entry in 2026 or watch the subject decline even further.
John Howson 