Tag Archives: overseas teachers

Golden Helloes for overseas nationals

Posted on by
Reply

Yet another scheme has emerged from the portals of Sanctuary Buildings to help stem this years’ teacher supply crisis. The International Relocation Payment Scheme  International relocation payments – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) is designed to attract non-UK nationals to either teach or train to teach languages or physics. Up to £10,000 will be available for successful applicants and the scheme has different rules for non-salaried trainees; salaried trainees, and teachers.

Both fee-paying trainees and salaried trainees should receive the IRP around the end of their first term and teachers will also receive their payment at the same stage of employment subject to them teaching the appropriate subjects.

For teachers the rules include the following:

To be eligible, teachers must meet all 3 of the following requirements.

Firstly, you must have accepted a languages or physics teaching job in a state secondary school in England on a contract lasting at least one academic year.

Teachers of all languages (except English) offered in English state secondary schools are eligible to apply for the IRP. The language or languages can be combined with another subject, but must make up at least 50% of teaching time.

Physics can be combined with another subject, but must make up at least 50% of teaching time. Teachers of general science are also eligible to apply for the IRP if they are teaching the physics elements of general science. It can be combined with another subject, but general science must make up at least 50% of teaching time.

Secondly, any teacher must come to England on one of the following visas:

  • Skilled worker visa
  • Youth Mobility Scheme
  • Family visa
  • UK Ancestry visa
  • British National (Overseas) visa
  • High Potential Individual visa
  • Afghan citizens resettlement scheme
  • Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy
  • Ukraine Family Scheme visa
  • Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme

Thirdly, and teacher must move to England no more than 3 months before the start of the teaching job in September.

How to apply for the IRP

Any teacher applying will need to have started their teaching job in a state secondary school to make your application. Teach in England if you trained outside the UK | Get Into Teaching GOV.UK (education.gov.uk)

Applications will be open from 1 September to 31 October 2023. This is a short window for applications.

The obvious question is what happens if a recipient of the cash quits as soon as the funds have cleared their bank accounts, and returns home? I am sure that vetting will do everything to prevent such an occurrence, but the question is at least worth asking.

It is interesting that the DfE only cite their own job board as a source of vacancies despite the fact that the tes and TeachVac often have a wider  range of job opportunities than the DfE site.

As usual, this new scheme ignores the really serious shortage subjects such as design and technology; business studies and computing.

The DfE will need to ensure schools understand the scheme as they will be receiving applications for these posts almost immediately. They will need to be able to ensure timetables that meet the requirements, especially in the sciences where most vacancies are advertised as for a ‘teacher of science’ and not a teacher of physics.

Will the scheme succeed? It is only for 2023-24 at present, so might be regarded as a trial. Previous schemes, have disappeared. I don’t recall the evaluation of this one from 2016 mentioned in a previous blog post. More on BREXIT | John Howson (wordpress.com)

On a similar topic of recruiting teachers from overseas, in December the DfE issued tender RFX159 – Supply of teachers qualified outside of England. This specified within the terms:

‘The Contractor must work in consultation with the Client Organisation to prepare a Business Brief, which may include, but not be exclusive to, the following: a. scoping of the work required by the business area in respect of; i) single or multiple recruitment campaigns targeting qualified maths and physics teachers primarily from Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and USA. Further high performing countries subject to agreement. Ii) Any other recruitment and supply of teachers to English schools.’

Schemes such as this one will not solve the teacher supply crisis that secondary schools have been experiencing for far too long. After all, the Select Committee was concerned enough in 2015 to mount an inquiry and the situation now is far worse than it was then. We must not fail a generation of young people.

ITT headlines hide a worrying message?

Posted on by
Reply

Has the current wave of strikes in the public sector over pay affected applications to train as a teacher from graduates? On the basis of the data published today by the DfE Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2023 to 2024 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK (apply-for-teacher-training.service.gov.uk) the answer would appear to be in the negative, at least as far as the number of offers made and accepted up to 16th January 2023 are concerned when compared with the similar date in January over previous years.

Of course, January is still early in the annual recruitment cycle, and the trend over the next couple of months will be important in determining the outcome for the year as a whole. Such improvements as there are when compared with previous years do not mean targets will be reached with this level of applications, but that if the trend were to continue this year might not be as disastrous as the present cohort of trainees in many subjects.

However, computing is an exception, registering its worst ever January number of offers and acceptances. Interestingly, history is in a similar situation, but I assume that is due to greater control over offers than a real slump in applications. Interestingly, 55% of computing applicants, compared with 52% of history applicants, are recorded as ‘unsuccessful’, so there may be some more questions to be asked about how different subjects handle knowledge levels among applicants?

Overall, applicant numbers at 17.012 are just over 2,000 more than in January 2022. This means that applications are up from the 39,000 of January 2022 to nearly 45,000 in January 2023. Assuming the increase isn’t just down to faster processing of applicants, this must be considered as a glimmer of good news for the government. Even better news for the government, is that the bulk of the additional applications are for secondary subjects. Overall applications for the secondary sector are up from 20,254 last year to 25,063 this year, whereas applications for primary phase courses are only up from 18,300 to 18,824.

The bulk of the additional applications seems to have headed towards the higher educations sector, where applications are up from 18,000 to 22,00. Apprenticeship numbers are stable at just below 1,700, and applications to SCITT courses have increased from 5,400 to 5,800. School Direct fee courses are the other area with a large gain in applications; up from 11,429 to 12,761. Applications for the salaried route barely increased, up from 2,394 to 2,639.

Interestingly, the increase in the number of male candidates in January was larger than the number of women. Male numbers increased from 4,115 in January 2022 to 5,256 January 2023 whereas female applicants only increased from 10,754 to 11,581; still many more, but worth watching to see if there is a trend?

As one might expect with the interest in secondary courses, and the increase in men applying to train as a teacher, applications rose faster from those likely to be career changers than from new graduates. Indeed, the number of applications from those age 22 actually fell, from 2,098 in January 2022 to 2,064 this January. The number of those aged 60 or over applying increased from 34 last January to 72 this January; up by more than 100%.

However, all this good news has to be qualified by the fact that the biggest increase in applicants by geography is from the ‘Rest of the world’ category – up from 1,061 to 2,676. Applications from London and the Home counties regions have fallen: less good news.

Still the overseas applicants do seem to be applying to providers in London, so that may help.

The fact that the good news in the headlines is largely supported by the increase in overseas applicants must be a matter for concern on several counts. If offered a place, will these students turn up, and how long will they stay; will the Home Office grant them visas to teach in England; will places that could be offered to new graduates later in the recruitment round have been filled by these overseas applicants, and what might be the implications for how the recruitment round is managed? All interesting questions for the sector and the government to ponder.

Stick a thumb up in the air?

Posted on by
Reply

In a recent post I discussed the extension of QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) by the DfE to teachers from more countries. Of course, academies don’t need to employ people with QTS as ‘teachers’. However, most choose to do so as it can reassure parents and colleagues that those responsibly for teaching and learning and pastoral activities have undertaken approved training.

This week the DfE has published a short paper discussing how many additional teachers might be added to the stock with QTS each financial year as a result of the extension of eligibility for QTS to teachers from more countries. Forecasts of overseas trained teachers awarded qualified teacher status (QTS) – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

There is no established methodology for identifying how many additional teachers might by awarded QTS under the new scheme. The DfE provide three projections: high; central and low for a financial year. These projections are calculated by taking the most recent published data of QTS awards from currently eligible countries, and estimating the number that would be awarded from newly eligible countries. As the DfE does not hold data on the potential demand for QTS from newly eligible countries, DfE officials have derived the estimate using the relative split between ITT trainees that come from eligible and ineligible countries.

According to the DfE paper, in 2018-19, out of 28,949 total postgraduate trainees there were 1,496 final-year trainees taking ITT in England from countries that are currently eligible to apply for QTS through the TRA, and 550 from countries that are ineligible.

This means that for every one ITT trainee from a currently ineligible country, there were approximately 2.7 trainees from eligible countries. The central estimate of these projections is calculated by dividing the current baseline of Teacher Regulation Agency QTS awards by this ratio. Given the 1,684 awarded QTS in 2021-22, the additional number of QTS awards from previously ineligible countries is 619.

The DfE note in the paper that as a result of the uncertainty involved in these projections, these projections also include a high and low estimate. To calculate these different estimates, the eligible to ineligible ratio has been adjusted by increasing or decreasing the ratio by 50%.

For the low estimate, the ratio has been increased by 50%, to approximately 4.1 trainees from eligible countries to every 1 trainee from currently ineligible countries. At this value, 413 additional awards are projected.

For the high estimate, the ratio has been decreased by 50%, to approximately 1.4. At this value, 1,238 additional awards are projected.

At any estimate, these teachers would be a welcome addition to the supply of teachers in England, but there is neither a split between primary and secondary sectors nor any indication of the possible subject mix of such new teachers in the discussion about the potential new teachers. I assume that the Home Office will control the granting of visas in such a manner as to not allow more teachers in subjects where there is already sufficient supply.

However, there may well be teachers eligible for settled status due to familial ties that could result in an influx of new QTS teachers wanting to work in the primary sector in parts of the country where there are no current teacher shortages. However, these teachers will help improve the balance of teachers with QTS from different backgrounds, and that is to be welcomed. The fact that the DfE is prepared to extend the QTS scheme to more countries reveals the current state of play in the labour market for teachers in England at the start of recruitment for September 2023.

Government action on teacher supply crisis

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday, the government made two important announcements. Firstly, they capped the rate of interest on student loans at 7.3%, instead of the projected rate of more than 12% from September. The latter rate was based upon current rates of inflation. As the government press notice helpfully explains:

‘This is the largest scale reduction of student loan interest rates on record and will mean, for example, a borrower with a student loan balance of £45,000 would reduce their accumulating interest by around £180 per month compared to 12% interest rates. This is on the total value of the loan, as monthly repayments do not change.’ Student loan interest rates capped – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

So, the balance doesn’t change and could still be increasing if a graduate’s earnings are not enough to match repayment rates. However, the move must be regarded as at least a step in the right direction. Regular readers know that I don’t think that graduates should need to take out loans to train to teach in state schools.

The other piece of news way a widening of the welcome to teachers trained anywhere in the world by the DfE, and thus no longer limiting QTS to just EU/EEA and Gove approved countries. England opens doors to world’s best teachers – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) There is a section on the Teach in England pages on the DfE website dedicated to helping teachers from overseas teach in England Teach in England if you trained overseas | Get Into Teaching (education.gov.uk)

The site helpfully reminds teachers about the 4-year rule that doesn’t require QTS

Employing overseas teachers without QTS (the 4-year rule)

Overseas teachers can teach in maintained schools and non-maintained special schools in England without qualified teacher status (QTS) for up to 4 years. This is called the 4-year rule.

It is illegal for overseas teachers to continue working as a teacher in a maintained school or non-maintained special school in England for longer than 4 years without QTS unless there is another legal basis to teach.

The 4-year rule applies to overseas teachers who meet all of the following conditions:

  • they have qualified as a teacher in a country outside of the UK
  • they have completed a course of teacher training that is recognised by the competent authority of that country
  • they are employed in maintained schools and non-maintained special schools, but not a pupil referral unit

Bizarrely, the DfE then reintroduce the term ‘instructor’ that disappeared in favour of ‘unqualified teacher’ more than a decade ago. It would, of course, be insulting to call these teachers ‘unqualified’. Here’s what the DfE says

 ‘There is no definition of special qualifications and experience. These are matters that the local authority or governing body need to be satisfied with. An overseas teacher can only be employed as an instructor if they have the special qualifications or experience needed for the instructor post.’

Overseas teachers can also work as teaching assistants (without QTS) for any period of time.’

Make of that what you will. However, I take it to mean that the four-year time limit can be disregarded on the basis of experience alone due to the judicious use of the word ‘or’.

Of course, all overseas teachers without ‘leave to remain’ will need to meet the demands of the points-based immigration system introduced by the present government. The scheme may limit the numbers actually recruited.

The government as also been putting flesh on the bones of its iQTS scheme for teachers to train overseas.

How all these measures dovetail into the re-accreditation of teacher education to produce a holistic strategy for staffing state schools across England remains a bit of a mystery to me. But no doubt Ministers have a cunning plan to ensure no pupil is taught by a teacher lacking the appropriate skills and qualifications

Most frightening part of the White Paper?

Posted on by
2

We will embed tutoring in every school

101. Government has invested £1 billion to establish the National Tutoring Programme. We will deliver up to 6 million tutoring packages by 2024, which when combined with our programmes to deliver tutoring for young people aged 16-19 equates to around 100 million hours of tutoring. Small group tuition has an average impact of an additional four months in primary schools and two months in secondary school, 63 and it is our vision that tutoring no longer be the preserve of families who can afford to pay for private tuition, but the right of any child in need of additional support.

102. We will continue to financially incentivise schools to provide tutoring – and we expect every school to make tutoring available to children who need it. Schools have the flexibility to use their own staff, bring in dedicated new staff or use external tutors from accredited organisations to provide high-quality tuition that best meets the needs of their pupils. Tutoring will be a core ‘academic’ option in the Pupil Premium menu. 63 Education Endowment Foundation. Teaching and Learning Toolkit. 40

103. From 2024, we will have cultivated a vibrant tutoring market, serving schools right across England. We will expect tutoring to continue to be a staple offer from schools, with schools using their core budgets – including Pupil Premium – to fund targeted support for those children who will benefit.

Opportunity for all – Strong schools with great teachers for your child (publishing.service.gov.uk)

Great idea, what’s wrong with it and why do you call it frightening?

My concern is that the consequences of this scheme might not have been thought through.

‘From 2024, we will have cultivated a vibrant tutoring market’. Not only do markets cost money to operate but there is also the question of where will these tutors come from? Will they come from the existing teacher workforce with teachers switching to tutoring from full-time teaching and, if so, where will their replacements come from?

The government does have an answer, but whether or not it has been agreed by the Home Office is another matter.

Paragraph 40 of the White Paper reads: ‘To make teaching here even more attractive to the best teachers from around the world, we will introduce a new relocation premium to help with visas and other expenses. This will be complemented by bursaries for international trainees with the potential to be brilliant teachers in priority subjects. By bringing forward legislative changes and introducing a new digital service, we will recognise high-quality teaching qualifications from all over the world in this country.’

Will the relocation premium be available to teachers returning to England after teaching in international schools or only to foreign nationals?

Fear not, there are other measures to boost teacher supply

 ‘We will therefore incentivise new teachers to work in places where they are needed most through our Levelling Up Premium. This will be worth up to £3,000 tax-free for eligible maths, physics, chemistry and computing teachers, in years one to five of their careers, who choose to work in disadvantaged schools, including in the new Education Investment Areas.’ (Paragraph 38).

Nothing about how to create more business studies, design and technology and geography teachers despite severe shortages in these subjects. Still there will be initiative to help engineers teach physics, and to improve the supply of languages teachers, although of which languages is not specified. The pledge for many teachers of Mandarin sees like something from a different age.

ITT will have more frequent ofsted visits, but seems to have escaped relatively lightly compared with some predictions.

A White Paper for an economic crisis. Reminds me of Education for All: A Framework for Expansion that was Mrs Thatcher’s attempt when Secretary of State for Education. That was scuppered by an oil price crisis.

Recruiting teachers from overseas post BREXIT

Posted on by
Reply

The time left to complete the Migration Advisory Committee’s (MAC) survey on shortage occupations is fast running out. The time limit was extended until the 14th January. The MAC is the government’s advisory body that can determine whether vacancies are sufficiently difficult to fill that in the teaching profession they should be regarded as a shortage subject and eligible for working visa arrangements.

Since the MAC’s last report on the teaching profession, published two years ago in January 2017, the outlook for the labour market for the secondary sector, where pupil rolls are on the increase, has deteriorated markedly. The MAC needs to be persuaded to look at a wider range of subjects than they accepted for their 2017 study. The MAC also needs to confront the issue of regional shortages within a national picture of sufficient supply. Is it realistic to accept shortages in London and the Home Counties just because there are no shortages in the North East or South West?

In the private sector, it can be argued that wages can be altered to encourage movement between regions. Such an argument is more difficult to sustain when there is a national pay review body setting national wage structures, as in the teaching profession. Although academies can pay whatever they like, and other schools can use recruitment incentives, it seems logical that the Treasury will use national pay norms when calculating the funding for schooling allocated to the DfE. The fact that private schools can set fees only makes matters worse, since 50% of such schools are located in and around London, just adding to the demand for teachers in that part of England.

The Data from the DfE in the ITT census of 2018, Table 10, also shows a decline back to the levels of 2012/13 in QTS awards to teachers trained in other EEA countries, with a decline of more than 300 awards to teachers from Spain, a country that has supplied nearly 2,000 teachers each year awarded QTS since 2010/11.

The MAC does need to consider the evidence they use of the demand for teachers. I will declare an interest here as chair of TeachVac. The use of data from an American company, Burning Glass, in the 2017 MAC report may have produced a slightly distorted picture, as Burning Glass seem to have counted not just ‘real’ vacancies, but also apparent vacancies. It is difficult otherwise to explain figure 4.4 of the MAC’s 2017 Report that identified several thousand vacancies being advertised in August of each year from 2014-2016. Any detailed analysis of the labour market for teachers would reveal much lower ‘real’ advertisements during that month, but lots of placed by agencies for ‘a teacher of’ not related to a specific post in a specific school. Since TeachVac only counts jobs attached to a specific school, the evidence is of a better quality. The same will be the case for the DfE’s new site and for publications such as the TES.

Better quality data might reveal a different profile of shortage subjects to those identified by the MAC in 2017, including both design and technology and business studies. The MAC will also have to discuss the fact that schools generally advertise for a teacher of science and the supply of biologists means there is not a shortage of science teachers per se, but of teachers of physics and to some extent chemistry as well.

I look forward to the MAC review and I hope that they will consider the ‘real’ evidence about teacher shortages when conducting their new analysis.

Psst …Want a physics teacher?

Posted on by
4

It is only somewhat ironic that the government chose the day the House of Commons was discussing Brexit legislation to invite schools to recruit from their newly minted stock of overseas teachers.

  1. Trained teachers ready to teach in England – international recruitment

NCTL has access to a pool of fully qualified mathematics, physics and Spanish teachers recruited internationally; further subject specialisms are in the pipeline. Every teacher has been recruited using a thorough sifting and interview process and meets the high standards required to teach in England. Schools will also have the opportunity to interview candidates.

All teachers will receive an extensive acclimatisation package, inclusive of continuing professional development that will both support their transition into life in England and increase their knowledge of the national curriculum.

The recruitment and acclimatisation service is free to schools; we recommend that schools assign a teacher buddy or mentor to support faster integration.

If your school has a vacancy for a mathematics, physics or Spanish teacher and you’d like to access this opportunity to recruit, please contact us at international.teacherrecruitment@education.gov.uk with a name, school name, telephone number and vacancy details.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-recruitment-bulletin/teacher-recruitment-bulletin-16-february-2017

If the NCTL contact TeachVac, they can identify the schools currently recruiting, so that the government can offer these teachers directly and save schools the cost of recruiting. However, it seem a little late in the year for this exercise to be really effective. Hopefully, if allowed to continue as part of permitted migration post 2019, the timing will fit better to the annual recruitment round in future years. If it doesn’t, then there is the risk of a lot of disillusion teachers from parts of Continental Europe that signed on only to be told there was no job despite the shortages everyone knows about.

I am not sure how certain the government is about a shortage of teachers of Spanish say, compared with German or Mandarin? TeachVac is looking in depth at what schools are seeking in both languages and design and technology to better understand the market as Teachvac already does for Science and some other subjects.

For those that want to see the new 2017/18 TV advertising campaign to attract people into teaching as a career, it is apparently airing during the Educating Manchester TV series. I assume that the thinking is that those that watch aren’t ghouls, but potential teachers that can be persuaded to take the first step on the recruitment ladder. Not, of course, that they can apply until November when UCAS opens the application process for next year. If the government keeps to its timetable at least the allocations for autumn 2018 ITT places will have been published by then at the end of October, along with the latest version of the Teacher Supply Model.

Perhaps the new Select Committee might like to review the progress to a fully staffed education service as part of its work once the full membership is finally announced.

 

 

 

Unqualified ‘teachers’

Posted on by
Reply

Let me start by stating my position on this important issue raised today by the opposition. In my view, the term teacher should be a reserved occupation term only allowed to be used by those appropriately qualified. Those on an approved training programme aimed at achieving licensed status could be designated as trainee teachers. Everyone else should use terms such as instructor; tutor; lecturer or any other similar term, but not be able to call themselves a teacher.

The data on unqualified teachers that has fuelled today’s discussions comes from the school level information collected through the School Workforce Census (SWC) by the DfE. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2016 There are two sets of tables in the regional dataset of the SWC for 2016 that are of interest; the percentage of teachers with Qualified Teacher Status and the percentage of unqualified teachers on a route to QTS: presumably either Teach First or School Direct Salaried route, plus a small number of overseas trained teachers or those on other accreditation only routes to QTS.

REGION Teachers with Qualified Teacher Status (%) Unqualified Teachers on a QTS Route as a Proportion of the Total Number of Unqualified Teachers (%)
 
North East 97.6 15.3
North West 97.4 10.3
South West 96.9 10.3
Yorkshire and the Humber 96.0 9.3
West Midlands 96.0 10.1
East Midlands 95.0 4.4
South East 94.8 14.1
East of England 93.9 9.9
Outer London 92.5 19.0
Inner London 92.4 18.1
 
ENGLAND 95.3 12.6

The SWC data show as strong correlation between the percentages of unqualified teachers employed by a schools in a region and the difficulty of recruiting teachers in that region. There is a 5.2% difference between schools in Inner London and schools in the North East in terms of the percentage of unqualified teachers employed. If one buys the argument that such staff are employed because of their special skills, then presumably their distribution would be similar across the country rather than showing this marked difference between regions. In London around 6-7% of teachers, and presumably more in terms of classroom teachers, don’t have QTS.

Part of the difference can be explained by the percentage of trainee teachers employed in schools. The range is between 4.4% of unqualified teachers on a QTS route in the East Midlands and 19% in the Outer London boroughs. This goes some way to explain why, in the SWC, 66 secondary schools in London revealed a measurable percentage of unqualified teachers on routes to QTS compared with just 98 in the rest of England. However, these figures obviously underestimate the number of schools involved in QTS preparation. This is due to the suppression of the data in many schools where such trainees were present, but not in sufficient numbers to be reported publically. There are also a number of secondary schools where the data was not reported.

Clearly, with recruitment being an issue, it is always going to be a challenge to recruit enough qualified teachers to staff schools, especially where the school population is growing fast. I am sure that parents expect pupils to be taught by those who understand the job at hand and have been prepared for it by achieving QTS.

There is, of course, a much larger issue that isn’t being addressed by the discussion about qualified teachers and that relates to the degree of subject knowledge required to teach any particular subject. This blog has raised that issue as matter for concern on several occasions. In some subjects, such as mathematics, steps are now being taken by the DfE to ensure post-entry subject knowledge enhancement for those teaching the subject. This may offer a better way forward than just trying to achieve sufficient subject knowledge from all entrants. However, ensuring all entrants are properly trained in the skills associated with teaching and learning should not be negotiable whatever their role in the process might be.

 

 

Counting Jobs

Posted on by
Reply

The recent report from the Migration Advisory Committee was full of lots of useful data.  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migration-advisory-committee-mac-report-teacher-shortages-in-the-uk One area of especial interest to me was the analysis the Committee undertook into how the labour market for teachers was functioning. As the Committee has a remit that covers the whole of the United Kingdom and also has to pay especial attention to Scotland, as a result of devolution, it was not a surprise that they commissioned a company that looks at the labour market across all four home nations.

As a result, they used a Boston based company called Burning Glass that studies labour markets across the world. One approach that Burning Glass use is to study the output of job boards as a means of counting vacancies. The results of this for the teacher job market in the United Kingdom can be seen in Figure 4.4 of the Migration Advisory Committee’s report (pages 66 & 67). As the figure notes in the heading, these are figures for teacher job postings.

Now job postings may not be the same as real jobs. There is certainly a possibility that at least some job postings are  actually more of a recruitment tool to attract teachers to sign up to a recruitment agency than the listing of an real vacancy in an actual school, especially when no school is mentioned in the listing. This might be one reason for the apparent uncovering by Burning Glass of what looks like some 4-6,000 job listings in the secondary sector during the August months in both 2015 and 2016, with possibly even higher numbers in the primary sector. I seriously doubt, even across the four nations, whether there were that level of real jobs available in either August 2015 or August 2016.

TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk the recruitment matching service I helped found only counts vacancies that can be attached to an actual school. Our numbers for both July and August 2015 and 2016, albeit only for England, but covering both state-funded and private schools, are very much lower than the Burning Glass totals.

As I have said before on this blog, creating a unique job number for every vacancy that was then attached to the vacancy wherever it appeared until the job was filled and allowed identification of whether the vacancy was removed before being filled or filled by a new entrant, a returner, a teacher changing school (part of the churn), a supply teacher or an unqualified person would provide much needed on-going data to improve the discussion about teacher supply. In this day and age it wouldn’t take very long for any school to keep the records up to date. Indeed, TeachVac could already produce lists of vacancies by school that are able to be annotated with the background of the person that filled the vacancy very quickly and easily.

In the Migration Advisory Committee report it is interesting to note that appendix B provides a detailed conversion factor to change the Burning Glass job listing outcomes into to Office of National Statistics equivalent vacancy rates through a two stage process. At TeachVac we measure the flow of real vacancies posted by schools and our only conversion factor is for re-advertisement rates.

Finally, looking through the Migration Advisory Committee report, I note that in Annex D the number of returners in each subject has been estimated. The total for the three subjects used in Annex D comes to 4,800 returners whereas the total for the whole profession, primary, secondary and special is only shown as 14,000 in the preceding Annex C. So, either these three subjects take up nearly a third of the returner totals or one of the sets of numbers may be less than 100% accurate.

At TeachVac we will continue to develop reporting that aims to provide the highest quality data to help understand the workings of the labour market for teachers in England. With sufficient resources we could, like Burning Glass do the same for the whole of the United Kingdom.

 

More on BREXIT

Posted on by
1

Tomorrow, the Home Office’s Migration Advisory Committee reports on its review of teaching. This follows a consultation that closed in September. At present, mathematics and some science teachers are covered by the current Tier2 visa scheme. It will be interesting to see what the report says tomorrow. Although physics is a shortage subject and the ITT targets have been missed ever since science was dis-aggregated into the three subject areas, the issue is less clear cut in mathematics, especially if vacancies are related to the number of trainees. TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk submitted evidence to the consultation.

As I have noted before, there is the matter of design and technology and possibly business studies. Both are subjects where training targets have been missed in recent years and the supply of teachers doesn’t seem able to keep up with the demand. This was even in the years when the subjects were unfashionable with Ministers. Presumably, that isn’t the case now the government has an Industrial Strategy. It will be interesting to see if these subjects are mentioned in the MAC’s Report.

On a similar topic of recruiting teachers from overseas, in December the DfE issued tender RFX159 – Supply of teachers qualified outside of England. This specified within the terms:

‘The Contractor must work in consultation with the Client Organisation to prepare a Business Brief, which may include, but not be exclusive to, the following: a. scoping of the work required by the business area in respect of; i) single or multiple recruitment campaigns targeting qualified maths and physics teachers primarily from Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and USA. Further high performing countries subject to agreement. Ii) Any other recruitment and supply of teachers to English schools.’

Now I thought we were about to trigger Article 50 to leave the EU, so it is rather surprising to see the government offering to fund a recruitment campaign in these EU countries. One wonders what France, The Netherlands, Spain and probably several other EU countries may think about not being specifically mentioned. I am sure it isn’t because of any view of the quality of their teachers. Perhaps the DfE just thought there might be a pool of unemployed teachers of these subjects in say the Czech Republic, but not in neighbouring Slovakia or Austria or even Hungary.

The inclusion of the USA is interesting as, unless they have a right to work here, they will need Tier 2 visas.  Presumably, the DfE either knew what the MAC was going to say or assumed the MAC would still be including these two subjects in the Tier 2 scheme. We will know tomorrow. The USA was a country where the qualified teachers were granted the right to QTS by Mr Gove during his period as Secretary of State. In recent years, several hundred teachers from the USA have been granted QTS on the basis of their qualifications according to NCTL data.

Finally, it is worth noting the contractor can be paid ‘for any other recruitment and supply of teachers to English schools.’ This is a very wide brief and can be open to lots of different interpretations.