Tag Archives: politics

Is Mr Gove a chauvinist?

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I suspect that Mr Gove doesn’t much like the Human Rights Act, but until his speech yesterday I wasn’t aware of his lack of feeling for equal opportunities. Addressing 700 school leaders on what the DfE seemed to think was a speech about training schools, the Secretary of State indulged in a spot of ‘hero’ worship.  After praising those he has appointed to lead both the Training Agency and Ofsted, both men, he dug deep into his own education to select a Scottish philosopher from the Victorian era; a Roman emperor; and the obligatory Greek for classical balance, as heroes for his audience to learn from. Throughout the whole of his 24 minute oration that was more peroration that speech about training schools he didn’t explicitly mention a heroine at any point. But, perhaps that’s not entirely surprising since, apart from Cleopatra and Helen of Troy, women don’t feature largely in much of classical literature. No doubt his comment would be that the praise he heaped on his talented audience of school leaders, included those women who were present.

In speaking to his audience of freedom and innovation Mr Gove best resembled the Roman God Janus, offering freedom to schools, including freedom to fail, but castigating higher education for straight jacketing how we train teachers. He curiously forgot to mention that it was one of his former colleagues who required all trainee primary teachers to be taught phonics as the mechanism for learning to read; with their compliance rigorously enforced by frequent Ofsted inspections.  Mr Gove also seemed to forget that the Graduate Teacher Scheme he abolished in favour of School Direct required no university involvement, so perhaps he was offering to make a rather veiled –U- turn despite the House of Commons Select Committee last year making it clear training schools could benefit from links to universities. Here’s what they said on the subject:

13. We welcome the creation of Teaching Schools, and note that they will be expected to work with universities, which we strongly support: we believe that a diminution of universities’ role in teacher training could bring considerable demerits, and would caution against it. We have seen substantial evidence in favour of universities’ continuing role in ITT, and recommend that school-centred and employment-based providers continue to work closely with universities, just as universities should make real efforts to involve schools in the design and content of their own courses. The evidence has left us in little doubt that partnership between schools and universities is likely to provide the highest-quality initial teacher education, the content of which will involve significant school experience but include theoretical and research elements as well, as in the best systems internationally and in much provision here. (Paragraph 78)      http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmeduc/524/52404.htm 

On School Direct, and the comments he made during his speech, it wasn’t clear where he obtained his numbers from, and how robust the data about applications to the programme actually are. What was clear is that either the DfE isn’t keeping their web site up to date or schools aren’t yet filling the places in the scheme despite little more than 14 weeks of schooling left to the end of the summer term. If they really need to fill 94% of Physics places in that time, then that is likely to be a challenge for some of them, especially as Teach First and higher education are also still recruiting.

Had he been speaking to a predominantly primary sector audience his lack of heroines might not have passed unchallenged. However, after praising the Chief inspector, Mr Gove must have been pleased to find an Ofsted press notice released a day later suitably critical of higher education and teacher training. The fact that it covered only four institutions training school teachers, all post-1992 universities, one of whom was linked with a school-based programme identified as outstanding, did seem to undermine the credibility of the announcement. Whether it was up to the standard of evidence acceptable to one of Mr Gove’s modern day heroes isn’t certain, but as an academic I would hesitate to make any sort of claims on such a small sample, especially when he inspector’s overall comments on the university programmes included the following remarks:

Liverpool Hope – Report issued 25th December 2012 (sic)

The partnership produces high-quality secondary school teachers, particularly in English and modern foreign languages. The majority of primary trainees become good or better teachers but the teaching skills of a minority require improvement

Bedford – Report issued 14th March 2013

The key strengths of the primary partnership are:

  • The good progress leaders have made since the last inspection in:

– removing previous weaknesses

– improving outcomes for trainees so they are now good

– setting the right priorities to improve training further.

  • The good quality mentoring in schools that:

– identifies well the progress trainees are making

– sets targets for trainees that is securing better outcomes for both trainees and the pupils they teach.

  • The good training in phonics and early reading and mathematics that is:

– identifying well where gaps or strengths in subject knowledge exist

– enabling trainees to teach these areas increasingly well.

  • The commitment of trainees to their chosen profession as demonstrated by their:

– high employment rates

– attention to meeting the different needs of pupils in their classes

– promotion of good behaviour and positive attitudes with the pupils they teach

– ability to reflect on their own teaching to being about improvement both to their own teaching and the learning of their pupils.

University of East London – Report issued January 2013

Key findings

The partnership is successful in supplying good teachers, from a diverse range of backgrounds, who demonstrate an unwavering commitment to raising standards and aspirations in the communities in which they work.

Trainees have good skills in facilitating a positive climate for learning and good behaviour and in ensuring that pupils and students make good progress in their lessons.

The teacher training team is skilled and experienced and provides very effective support for trainees, ensuring that they develop good practice as a result.

The recruitment and selection procedures are rigorous and effective in attracting trainees who become good teachers.

University of Cumbria – Report issued March 2013

Key findings January 2013

  • Schools and settings display strong commitment to the partnership and play a leading role in the training. This means trainees gain an effective range of experience which helps prepare them for teaching in schools.
  • Both primary and secondary trainees promote literacy very effectively. Primary trainees’ confidence and competence in teaching phonics (the linking of letters and the sounds they make) has improved. Secondary trainees promote accurate use of written and spoken language and focus on subject-specific vocabulary.
  • Trainees in both phases benefit from training that helps them promote good behaviour in pupils. Trainees understand the links between good behaviour and good learning.
  • Leaders in both phases have been successful in bringing about improvements that are reaping rewards in ensuring trainees are successfully prepared to teach.

Mr Gove may not like higher education’s involvement in training teachers, and here he follows in the path trodden by many of his predecessors, but this is hardly damming evidence from Ofsted. Now is the time for those who support the Select Committee in believing in the effectiveness of a partnership between schools and universities in training teachers to stand up and be counted.

Planning School Places: More than just about the numbers

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On Friday 15th March the National Audit Office issued what can be seen as a critical report about capital funding for primary school places in England http://media.nao.org.uk/uploads/2013/03/10089-001_Capital-funding-for-new-school-places.pdf

The media, as might be expected, latched on to the fact that 250,000 extra places will be needed by September 2014, with a further 400,000 required by 2018, rather than the more technical discussion about the manner in which places are funded, and the value for money associated with the process. The figures for pupil places required are not new, although the shortfall still remains too large, and until recently hasn’t been treated with any degree of urgency at Westminster.

More important than the numbers is what can be read into the Report about the two competing ideologies in British politics – on the one hand, the market as a mechanism for solving all problems; and on the other some form of state planning. The post-war period has been marked in many parts of the public sector by a shift from a planning-based approach to public policy to a more market-based approach. The current generation of think-tank and policy research probably don’t realise that in September 1939 when DORA was introduced overnight (Defence of the Realm Act), using the experiences gained during the first World War, Britain became one of the most controlled and planned societies in the world: today planning is a concept that often seems to have a bad name in public sector policy, especially in education. However, the NAO Report ought to mark a reappraisal if not a turning point in the debate.

In the private sector, future planning is an integral part of every successful business. Just consider the fate of either those retailers that didn’t plan for the effect of the internet on their customers or the train operators who have failed to cope with a record growth in passenger numbers. Without planning comes not just chaos, but also inefficiency and public disappointment that eventually can lead to a sense of dissatisfaction with politicians. Now of course, planning isn’t an exact science, and bad planning can result is poor outcomes for society. But, planning for school places ought to be a basic part of the management of our education service.

Part of the reason for the failure in dealing with provision for the current upswing in the birth rate is undoubtedly the breakdown of the arrangements for controlling schools that stared a quarter of a century ago with the Education Reform Act, and site-level  management of schools. When the Labour Government invented sponsored academies to take over failing schools they destroyed many of the remaining education planning frameworks without making clear what would replace them. With Westminster and Town Hall both either unable or unwilling to take on the responsibility, there has been a sense of drift and ‘passing the buck’ rather than of co-ordinated planning: hence the NAO’s concerns about both numbers and value for money.

One outcome will be that parents in many areas are now faced with Hobson’s choice over what school they can send their child to, and the notion of parental choice will become, like the red squirrel population, restricted to ever smaller areas of the country, at least for the next decade.

Those parents whose children are starting school in locations where selective education still divides children at eleven might also want to consider how their secondary school system will cope with the increased numbers, and whether a system designed in the Nineteenth century for the few fits the educational needs of the many in the Twenty First century, one where all students will be expected to remain in learning until they are eighteen, irrespective of parental income or status.

From my perspective, however we procure the school places, and that might be through a market based approach, the State has a duty to ensure all pupils have a school place available to them that is not an unreasonable distance away from their home and doesn’t demand they attend a school that has an ideology or teaching methodology objectionable to their parents. To fail in planning for this basic task, while still requiring parents to send children to school, if not educated elsewhere, under pain of the criminal law, is a basic failure of government that is unlikely to go unpunished at the ballot box; although whether the right tier of government will shoulder the blame only time will tell.

If the provision of school places isn’t at the top of Minister’s agendas at present then it ought to be. There may be more fun tasks, but concentrating on the basics must now be top of both Ministers and officials ‘to do’ lists. History will judge a Secretary of State harshly if he or she as steward of our state education system fails to provide enough school places during the next decade.

Good quality preparation equals good teachers equals good schools

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The Lib Dems are discussing a motion at their spring conference on Saturday that recognises the need for trained teachers and for continuing professional development once in the profession. Although not called to speak in the debate here is a draft of what I would have said to the conference:

There was a report in The Times this week that trainee teachers were to be required to spend time in top independent schools. In doing so they may help the UK export industry, and would no doubt come into contact with the children of Tory voters, but let me tell you that they won’t learn anything about teaching they could not find out just as easily by working in state schools.

A glance at figures from Mr Cameron’s own Oxfordshire constituency show it is the less advantaged that our education system is failing in large numbers –  in one school in West Oxfordshire, according to Ofsted, only 13% of disadvantaged pupils made the expected progress in 2012.

By all means show new teachers how to stretch the children of the richest in society; but that’s not the problem we need to solve in most of our schools.

Trainees tell us they need better behaviour management skills; again, not an issue in most private schools – so that can’t be the reason for sending trainees there. Ministers, you should read the evidence from Ofsted before trying to reorganise teacher preparation programmes yet again.

This motion supports our teachers, and recognises that one silly scheme after another emanating from Sanctuary Buildings won’t improve teaching one iota. Last year, Mr Gove said teachers didn’t need training at all. That would put them on a par with MPs – who some might say are just a bunch of mostly amateurs fumbling around at law making. Ofsted wants training for governors, is that a more demanding role than teaching? I doubt it.

This motion recognises the value of our teachers and what needs to be done to make them even more effective in the future.

And I warn ministers that unless they sort out the funding for trainees there won’t be any new teachers to send into Eton, Rugby or Roedean. Those who attend such schools may be able to repay more than £70,000 in student loans, but those who teach them, and especially those who dedicate their lives to teaching our most challenging children, certainly cannot. We should push for equal funding for all who are prepared to train as teachers.

Finally, let me end by saying to the Secretary of State, ‘Saranoya’, although no doubt he would prefer it if I had said ‘Ave atque vale’.

Who is in charge of our schools?

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A slightly amended version of this article appeared in the Oxford Times on 31st January 2013

Who is responsible for schools in Oxfordshire? This innocuous question reaches to the heart of the current debate about publicly funded schooling in England. Historically, there were three levels of responsibility: individual schools; local authorities, in our case Oxfordshire County Council; and the government at Westminster. Interestingly, this year, sees the 25th anniversary of the passing of the Education Reform Act. That legislation, by introducing local management of schools, started the process of delivering autonomy to individual schools while at the same time reserving power over the curriculum to the government at Westminster. During the following 25 years local authorities have steadily lost control of their local education service. New types of schools have been developed, ranging from Kenneth Baker’s City Technology Colleges through the grant maintained schools of the 1990s to the more recent sponsored academies of the Labour government, and finally the new converter academies, free schools and university technology colleges all managed from Westminster.

Of course, a range of different bodies running schools is not a new concept. The major churches have been a part of the education landscape since compulsory elementary education was introduced in 1870, and more recently these schools have been joined by those from other faiths. What needs to be resolved now is the chain of responsibility and accountability for publicly funded schools, and whether, as I believe they should, elected local authorities still have a central place in the organisation of schooling?

Since the funding for schools is now largely determined at Westminster, with little room for local political discretion, as is when and where new schools may open, councils have been left with responsibilities, but often no funds or powers to implement them.

The rhetoric from Whitehall has been that chains of academies are the way forward. Local authorities are nowadays pale shadows of such chains, without many of the powers conferred on these private sector chains by the Labour government that invented them. One solution is that councils become just a watch dog, with questions about school performance solved by Whitehall mandarins. This might work for the secondary sector, but with more than 18,000 primary schools across England the chain of command between each school and Whitehall is just too long. Last summer the RSA suggested unelected School Commissioners, along the lines of the Police & Crime Commissioners. That is a possible solution, but it takes away democratic control from a key publicly funded institution, and would create a system for schooling more akin to the NHS.

While the debate about who is responsible for our schools remains unresolved, the present system, especially for the primary sector, risks heading towards a complete collapse. Already, professional development services for schools, effective planning of school places, admission arrangements, and provision of services to children with special educational needs are either under threat or have been severely curtailed.

There is a ray of hope locally in the way that both the County and Oxford City responded when I revealed in November 2011 that KS1 results in the City were the worst for any district council in England. But, it shouldn’t have been up to me to start that debate.

I support local democratic responsibility for schools, directly so for the publically funded primary sector, regardless of who actually operates the schools, and as a watchdog for both the secondary and further education sectors where performance can be the key to the success of local communities. However, what really matters is that the government takes swift action to deal with the present lack of a viable control structure for our school system.

Professor John Howson is the director of dataforeducation.info and holds a visiting professorship at Oxford Brookes University and a visiting senior research fellowship at Oxford University’s Department of Education and has lived in Oxford for more than 30 years. He is a lifelong Liberal Democrat, and Vice President of the Liberal Democrat Education Association. These are his personal views

The curriculum for the primary (elementary) school

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The primary school curriculum

Earlier this week I was asked what I thought should be the essence of the curriculum for the primary school? In one way, defining the early stages of the primary curriculum is an easy process. Moving from gross to ever finer motor skills, developing competence in reading, writing, speaking and listening; learning the basics of numeracy; acquiring the ability to socialise and work with others; an understanding of the need for physical effort related to health; a sense of time, space and identity within a democratic society; an understanding that there is more than one language, and how others communicate using different languages; the basics or art, music and other cultural activities;  science and its approach to the problems of the world; faith and reasoning; the developing technological environment and how it works. And above all, perhaps as sense of wonder, awe and a desire to achieve.

I am sure there is even more. The task for governments is, how much to define and how much to leave to professionals, but to still monitor the outcomes through the political process. As a society we are impoverished in the modern world if children are not literate, numerate, technologically aware and able to appreciate the consequences of living together in society that is complex and based upon many different ideas, ideologies and faiths.

Politicians, on behalf of the learners they fund through schooling and their parents, have a right to expect educators to teach children, using whatever methods are appropriate, providing they meet ethical and moral standards, and achieve expected outcomes, without undue interference. Educators have a right to expect politicians to provide adequate resources for them to achieve these goals.

Universities, government, and the private sector must all play a part in helping develop new approaches to the curriculum, and its delivery, and also in appropriate assessment and recording mechanisms that are not overburdening but do allow the effective measurement of progress to be recorded and effectively disseminated to both the learner and their parents.

Of course, the school is no longer the only source of learning, and never was, but the school must be capable of ensuring that the curriculum for the gifted and talented can stretch beyond the school gates to ensure interests and abilities are not restricted by the need to teach large groups of children. Schools must also ensure that those who have special needs are recognised and treated accordingly and in a manner that doesn’t hinder their learning.

Robert Fulghum probably summed the curriculum up best in 1986 when he wrote ‘All I really need to know I learnt in kindergarten‘. Some things we can learn at any time of life; others we need to know from an early age. 

Mr Gove and the Triple A rating

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Mr Gove and the Triple A rating

Accident or design? That’s the question the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be asking the Secretary of State for Education about the £3 billion or so currently sitting in school’s bank accounts. A figure that has been steadily rising since the coalition came to power in 2010 with the promise that schools would largely protected from the current round of economic hardship facing the rest of the public sector.

Data published by the DfE earlier this year showed that by the end of the last financial year schools had reserves in excess of seven per cent of their annual revenue incomes. With a government fighting recession, and keen to find ways of spending more without raising taxes, urging schools to spend some the taxpayers cash held in their accounts might help unlock some local economic paralysis if the cash went to local projects employing local workers.

Not only might the effect of schools spending £500 million a year on job creation schemes across the country, targeted at the either the low paid and long-term unemployed or alternatively new graduates yet to find a job make good political sense, but it might also actually help the economy. However, Mr Gove has been strangely silent on this key issue of the moment, preferring to fiddle around with school structures and the curriculum which, whatever their value, are longer-term issues in the current economic crisis.

Ministers who are apparently not alert to the bigger picture in cabinet, and the contributions their department can make to solve it, either aren’t up to the job or want a quiet life. There is a third alternative; they recognise that economic failure might help their own career prospects. Now nobody would accuse Mr Gove of such a cynical approach to politics and he can claim to have limited authority over the primary sector, although with some many secondary schools now academies he has much more room for intervention with that group of schools.

Before the Labour Party starts calling for Mr Gove’s head over this issue, they will need to see what steps the local authorities controlled by them, and the many Labour Party members serving as school governors, have taken to challenge the strategy of local schools building up reserves for a rainy day. The recent Ofsted report on the pupil premium, and their earlier interim findings, should have alerted the DfE to this issue even if Mr Gove ignored the Statistical Bulletin when it appeared in his ministerial box.

Perhaps it is time for that the guardian of public expenditure, the Public Accounts Committee, to intervene. After all, its chairman isn’t exactly unfamiliar with education. It may also be time for David Laws to stamp his foot about school spending. After all, it won’t help the Lib Dems if all that pupil premium and catch-up cash they have secured for schools has just made its way straight into the school’s saving account. As a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, albeit briefly, he cannot be blind to the financial figures that cross his desk and that of his even more economically literate adviser.

The inclination by schools to save is laudable, but surely if there was ever a time to for schools to spend, it is now.

An Education Quiz

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A Quiz about education policy in England created for the Liberal Democrat Education Association’s Annual Conference in Nottingham – February 2012                              (answers can be supplied by email)

1. Name the Ministers solely in the DfE who left during the re-shuffle and those who replaced them?

(Bonus – which departing minister initially didn’t feature in the list of those leaving?)

2. Who led the recent RSA/Pearson Commission on Academies?

3. By how much do the DfE expect the primary school population to grow between 2011 and 2017?  500,000, 700,000 or 900,000?

4. Admissions to more than half the training places for new teachers of English will be outside the HE sector in 2013 – True or False?

5. How many non-academy schools have balances in excess of £1 million in March 2012

6. Excluding the City of London and the Isles of Scilly, name the smallest local authority with responsibility for schooling?

7. What celebrates its 25th anniversary this year?

8. Can a US teacher from Dakota obtain Qualified Teacher Status in England without any re-training?

9. In a 2011 survey, what percentage of primary school children walked to school? Was it 40%, 50% or 60%?

10. What percentage of teachers of ICT as it then was at the time of the 2011 Workforce Census didn’t have a post ‘A’ level qualification in the subject, and may not even have had an ‘A’ level.

11. What is the amount set for the Pupil Premium in 2013/14, and for the Service Children Premium?

12. Who said: Local Government has a massive and crucial role to play in delivering education.  It does now. It will in the future. I want us to stay closely in touch, for two reasons. Firstly, because I want to hear from you about any problems or issues at “ground level”, so that we can deal with these together. Secondly, because we need to work together if we are to secure the best outcomes for young people in this country. The Department isn’t able to deliver our ambitions without your support and participation.

13. And who said ‘How can it be that, despite all the promise on a four or five year old’s first day at school, despite the passion and dedication of their teachers, too often you can plot a child’s path just be asking how much their parents earn.’ and when?

14. How much will a teacher who borrowed £27,000 in fees for a degree and £9,000 in fees for a PGCE repay according to the DirectGov calculator?

15. Women classroom teachers in the primary sector earn more than their male colleagues? True or False?

16. Who is the current Chief Schools Adjudicator ?

17. What went from London to Manchester and then back to London, losing a letter return journey?

18. The current benchmark for KS2 English & Maths is 79%? True or false?

19. Last year was an anniversary year for Dickens – the bi-centenary of his birth – name his teacher in Our Mutual Friend?

20. Who is the Liberal Democrat on the Education Select Committee? And who did they replace?

Onward Christian Soldiers

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Onward Christian Soldiers
John Howson

July 2012 was a significant month in the battle over who should run state-funded
schools. During the month that the Secretary of State announced another tranche
of new so-called ‘free’ schools under his 2010 Education Act arrangements and
there were three other potentially significant developments relating to schools.
In an apparent policy about turn the Methodist Church in England announced
during its annual Conference that it wanted to open new state-funded schools.
http://www.methodist.org.uk/news-and-events/news-releases/methodistchurch-
plans-to-build-schools-in-deprived-areas The new schools would be in
addition to the 65 across England and Wales it has run for many years,
sometimes alone, and sometimes jointly with the Church of England. With an
existing infrastructure, and rising primary school rolls, the Methodist Church
seems ideally placed to help the Government achieve its aim of dismantling the
local authority community school sector, especially as the Church has pledged to
focus on deprived inner-city areas rather than the mainly rural areas where many
of their existing primary schools are located.

At the same time that the Methodists meeting in Conference in Plymouth were
seeking to re-enter the schooling arena, and also strengthen their presence in
other sectors of education, the Labour Party were reported by the BBC as
endorsing the idea of a new chain of schools with a military ethos to be operated
by former members of the armed services, and presumably to be established
under the same 2010 legislation that the Methodist Church is seeking to exploit.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18770387

Seemingly, these schools would also serve deprived communities by embedding
military standards and ethos into these communities through these so-called
‘service schools’. What Methodist members of the Labour Party think of the idea
isn’t known. Bizarrely, at the same time, the proposed Phoenix Free School in
Oldham that was to be run entirely by ex-troops did not make it into the list of
102 new schools approved by the DfE in the July 2012 list.
http://www.cps.org.uk/blog/q/date/2012/07/13/troops-to-teachers-phoenixfree-
school-rejected-by-department-of-education/ The apparent reason, that not
enough qualified teachers were to be recruited seems, on the face of it frankly
bizarre after Mr Gove allowed academies to employ individuals without QTS in
any teaching role, making his announcement just after parliament broke for its
summer recess.

Some of the proposals launched during July seemingly have the benefit of
recognising the need for schools to be backed by a strong organisation that can
manage oversight of the day to day operations, rather as democratically elected
local authorities once saw their responsibility. If the rejection of the Phoenix
proposal signals that stand-alone schools are less favoured than applications from
chains of schools then a new structure similar to that of the health service may be
set to emerge within the school system.

That the leaders of all three political parties with current or recent government
experience at Westminster seem determined to remove democratically elected
local authorities from any day to day involvement in schooling poses a dilemma
for many hard working councillors and other activists across the country
whichever of these three parties they support. Personally, I still favour the need
for a strong role for local authorities in schooling, and especially primary
schooling, an essentially locally delivered activity set within a national framework.

John Howson is Vice President of the LDEA. An earlier version of this piece appeared in his opinion column in Children’s Services Weekly. A collection of those pieces has been published as an ebook on Amazon under the title. Please miss. “Can pigs fly”?

At a price of less than £2 it can be bought at http://www.amazon.com/Please-Miss-can-pigsebook/dp/B008QBJZ4W/ref=sr_1_2_title_0_mains=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343725980&sr=1-2

 

FROM STATE PLANNING TO THE MARKET PRINCIPLE – CONFUSION WITHIN THE TEACHER PREPARATION MARKET

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FROM STATE PLANNING TO THE MARKET PRINCIPLE – CONFUSION WITHIN THE TEACHER PREPARATION MARKET

By Professor John Howson  (note not all tables and graphs appear in this version of the article)

For much of the past half century teacher preparation has been founded on the principles espoused in the Robbins Report (1963) and further refined in the James Report (1972). The central government department responsible for schools, whatever was its set of initials at the time, set a target each year for numbers of trainees it was willing to fund and then, in an increasingly robust and autocratic manner, dictated how the training numbers should be deployed, mostly across the higher education sector.

The position was different after the completion of their training when new teachers, and indeed any teacher contemplating changing their job, has been faced with a labour market that operated on a ‘free market’ principle with one key exception; historically, wage rates were regulated. However, as schools could employ anyone to teach anything, and in extremity did not even need to employ qualified teachers, being able to fall back on the use of what for most of the period were known as ‘instructors’, teachers were in theory in a weak bargaining position.  The fact that for most of the last half century, at least until the advent of the economic turmoil of 2008, there were teacher shortages meant that the risks of training to be a teacher was limited for individuals. Since the advent of the coalition government in May 2010 fundamental changes have started to take place within the landscape of teacher training and employment.

The coalition government of 2010 was a product of an electoral outcome that should have been predicable in view of the polling data available ahead of the general election, but seemingly caught politicians unprepared. Although education had been a significant part of Liberal Democrat policy during the first part of the decade up to 2010, after the advent of Nick Clegg as leader of the Party it seemed to focus around a small number of policy objectives such as the abolition of tuition fees, an awareness of the importance of early years education, and the introduction of a Pupil Premium in schools. These policies relating to schools were effectively translated into the Coalition Agreement (Cabinet Office, 2010) that formed the basis of the key thinking when the coalition was formed. Despite the Liberal Democrat manifesto of 2005 (Liberal Party , 2005) mentioning a need for teachers to be qualified when teaching key subjects they were teaching this did not appear in the Agreement.

The appointment of a Secretary of State for Education with little sympathy for the status quo, and a willingness to take decisive action, has fundamentally changed the education landscape since 2010. The Academy Act of 2010 was the first major piece of legislation put through parliament by the coalition government and as such in its philosophy of change follows in the footsteps of the 1979 Education Act that was one of the first pieces of legislation of the Thatcher government; although it must be said that the 1979 Act was considerably less complex than the 2010 Act. The response of the Liberal Democrats was to pass a motion effectively opposing the philosophy behind the 2010 Act at their Liverpool Conference in September 2010 proposed by Cllr Peter Downes, a Liberal Democrat county councillor in Cambridgeshire, and a former secondary head teacher and sometime President of the then Secondary Heads Association (now ASCL) and seconded by the author of this paper (Guardian, 2010). It is probably fair to say that the government and the leadership of the Liberal Democrats ignored the feelings expressed at Liverpool; and Sarah Teather, the then Liberal Democrat minister in the Education Department, actually spoke against the motion during the debate after having previously tried to persuade the movers of the motion to accept a Westminster crafted amendment that would have negated the basic principles behind the motion under the guise of providing additional clarity.

At that time, the organisation of schools, and especially the advent of ‘additional’ schools or ‘free’ schools as they have come to be known formed the main focus of debate. In November 2010, the White Paper, The Importance of Teaching (DfE, 2010) appeared; followed in the summer of 2011 by the document ‘Training our next generation of outstanding teachers An improvement strategy for discussion’ (2011), effectively a Green Paper, and this was then followed by the subsequent implementation plan (DfE, 2011a). Normally, the process of government would have been the other way around; but the Secretary of State has not apparently been known for the niceties of normal government procedure.

By 2012, the teacher preparation landscape had been radically re-shaped into the pathways shown in Table One.

Table One: Routes into teaching – not shown

Of course, the Table does not include the fact that the Secretary of State has apparently approved the use of those with no professional teaching qualifications to work as teachers in academies and ‘free’ schools.

The most significant changes to teacher preparation routes over the past fifty years have generally come as a result of government using mechanisms devised to deal with teacher shortages through school-based programmes, of which the Graduate Teacher Programme and Teach First are the most obvious and recent. The history of these programmes, from the early days of the Licensed and Articled teacher programmes of the late 1980s through to the crisis of the period between 2000 and 2003, can be read in a report for Policy Exchange written in 2008 (Howson, 2008).

The key question for the future is whether or not the new emerging landscape of teacher preparation is likely to be any more robust in providing the number of teachers required by schools, and with the appropriate skills necessary, than the previous framework? Will a shift from national training led by higher education to a more school-based approach make it easier to articulate problems with possible shortages of supply at an earlier stage than before, and will an essentially secondary driven system provide for the needs of the primary sector? Finally, if a goal of the coalition’s education policy is to improve the performance of the school system, however measured, to ensure future national economic competitiveness, are the measures being taken in relation to teacher preparation likely to help or hinder than aim?

In some respects the coalition has been fortunate in the area of secondary education in that it entered government at a time when rolls in the secondary sector were falling, and the demand for teachers, although high due to above average retirement numbers probably wasn’t being boosted by large scale leakage into other sectors of the economy. Indeed, the cuts affecting local government saw the number of centrally employed teachers fall by around 10,000 between November 2011 and November 2011 (DfE, 2011b, 2012) reducing the number of new opportunities for teachers already working in schools elsewhere in the sector.

Computer Science, as ICT is now known, makes an interesting case study case study of what can happen. In January 2012 the Secretary of State made a speech at the BETT exhibition (DfE, 2012a) the day before the Royal Society published a report on the state of computer science in schools. (The Royal Society, 2012). Whether it was the uncertainty about the future of computing in schools, the relative strength of the computer industry, or the introduction of £9,000 maximum tuition fees for 2012 but applications to train as an ICT teacher declined, with the bulk of the decline coming in the period after the Secretary of State’s speech in January 2012.

The ITT census for 2011 recorded a total of 805 actual and expected registrations to train during that year: this compared with a total of 500 in the November 2012 census (DfE, 2012b). The figures for mainstream registrations were 440 in November 2012 compared with 633 in November 2011 and 984 in November 2010, a decline of more than 500 trainees in just two years. The 500 registrations totalled just 63% of the permitted maximum allocation in the subject area for 2012. As the permitted allocation might realistically be regarded as a target and was by far the worst outcome for any secondary subject area this may pose some problems for the teaching of the subject in the future.

Graph one: Applications through GTTR to train as an ICT teacher – not shown

The early indications for 2013 entry are that applications are below the corresponding period in 2012 despite the elevation in bursary status of Computer Science and the renaming of some courses.

In some subjects the advent of the School Direct replacement for the former employment-based programmes might mean that recruitment through higher education was of less importance than previously. However, the Teaching Agency data suggests that just over 80% of available training places for Computer Science remained in core for 2013, with less than 10% in the salaried School Direct scheme. This was one of the highest percentages remaining within the core allocation – mostly to higher education providers – with only subjects such as classics and citizenship having smaller percentages outside the core allocations. Whether this was because schools did not see any reason to recruit in this area or because schools did not feel their staff were sufficiently well trained to provide for the education of new entrants to the profession is an issue worth exploring further. As noted, there is a further complication in that some courses remain with their former titles whereas others have switched to a new title of computer science. This confusion has made recording the level of applications even more of a challenge. However, even taking the data for all possible courses in HE, applications still seem below the numbers recorded at the same point last year.

Whatever the reasons for the decline, it will be a test of the coalition’s views on teacher preparation. If Ministers take no action, as might have been the case in the past when policy reactions to declines in trainee numbers were often sluggish as best (Howson, 2008) and, with the exception of the training bursary of 2000, rarely of great success, then it will be clear that Ministers are more interested in headlines than in outcomes. This is especially the case considering the importance of computer science to the national economy, both now and in the future.

However, if ICT/Computer Science is an example of how a situation may change within just a couple of years, there is a further and much larger issue looming on the horizon. This involves tuition fees, the nightmare topic in national electoral terms for Liberal Democrats ever since the general election. Regardless of whether Ministers were hoodwinked by Vice Chancellors into accepting a higher than necessary overall level of £9,000 after the Review instigated by the Labour government was published in the autumn of 2010, it was always likely that in a market where demand outstripped supply to such an extent that market forces were always likely to keep fee levels towards the top of the range until at least 2015. The fact that post-graduate teacher preparation courses are caught within the fees regime can have significant implications for the cost of higher education based teacher preparation courses.

Take two candidates; the first one is on the Teach First programme in London and has borrowed just £27,000 to finance their undergraduate degree programme when they start work in a school in the autumn of 2015. Use of the government’s own ready reckoner on the directgov web site suggests that they will repay somewhere over £50,000 in repayments for the amount borrowed for their fees. A second PGCE student who joins then in an adjacent classroom will potentially have borrowed £36,000 in fees if the teacher preparation course costs a further £9,000. As interest at a rate of RPI + 3% is calculated from the moment of drawdown, this student, who may not be eligible for any bursary will, according to directgov, expect to have to pay back in excess of £90,000 at current interest rates (gov.uk, 2013).

In my view this is an unsustainable amount, and is the greatest challenge facing teacher education at the present time. The different percentages of places available through School Direct and the core allocations make outcomes in different subject and phase areas challenging to determine, but if the graduate labour market improves by 2015 then it is likely that a number of potential teachers may opt for other careers or try to avail themselves of the right of academies to appoint candidates without training.

There is evidence from the period after the original introduction of tuition fees in the late 1990s that the number of applications to train as a teacher fell in the shortage subjects until the training bursary was introduced suddenly in March 2000.

Table two Applications to train as a teacher through GTTR – late 1990s (selected subjects)

                                     93/94    94/95   95/96   96/97    97/98   98/99

Mathematics             2,613     2,374    2,186    1,873    1,579    1,288   -1,325

English & Drama       3,000     2,964    3,158    3,197    3,104    3,141  +  141

Sciences                      4,186     4,204    4,020    3,698    3,625    2,878   -1,308

All Secondary           20,976   20,713 20,996  20,654  20,074 18,904  -2,072

Source (GTTR,  n.d

The late 1990s were a period when the labour market was recovering from the recession of the early part of that decade and secondary school pupil numbers were at the start of a decade long rise. Interestingly, both these characteristics may once again be present in the second half of this current decade.

Graph two Changes to pupil numbers – including projections to 2020  – not show

Source DfE 2012d

Of course, as Table One makes clear, any shortfall can be dealt with either by encouraging those with further education training to seek employment in schools or through overseas recruitment in those parts of the world where automatic certification is available to qualified teachers.

The situation in the primary sector, where postgraduate training is now the dominant route into teaching, is potentially of even more concern than in the secondary sector. The rise in the birth rate means that nearly 12,000 trainees are needed at present, and even more are likely to be required in 2015 when the new fee regime will really make a difference.

There is one final issue that adds a further degree of complexity to the situation. As has been already acknowledged, trainees are not guaranteed a teaching post on successful completion of a teacher preparation course. Two recent developments will affect this situation. In a speech in July 2012 the Secretary of State made it clear that School Direct students should be offered a post by the school training them (DfE, 2012c). If enforced, this rule will significantly affect the number of vacancies available to those who enter teaching through other routes. Additionally, the suggestion from the School Teacher Review Body (STRB, 2012) that teachers seeking to return to work might be eligible to return to employment at a lower point on the salary scale than where they left employment, something not possible under the current rules, might tip the balance for schools when deciding between the employment of newly qualified teachers and those with experience in favour of the latter, further making teacher preparation courses with no job at the end of them an activity with a high degree of risk in an expanding labour market.

An apparent indifference from the Liberal Democrat part of the coalition to a Conservative Secretary of State determined to transfer teacher preparation away from higher education and towards schools has been possible because one of the outcomes of the 2008 recession has been an over-supply of teachers, and the potential for an adequate supply of new teachers in most subjects. Whether the policy will survive the changes ahead, and indeed whether policymakers fully appreciate the effects of the policies they have set in train, whether deliberately or as a consequence of other actions, is not year clear.

For higher education there may be new opportunities ahead for those prepared create new alliances and design new approaches. But, just as the undergraduate route has all but disappeared from secondary teacher preparation over the past half century since universal higher education became the norm, it is likely that the present arrangements for postgraduate training will not survive the end of the present decade unless there is a significant change in the direction of policy. Whether the labour market will remain in its present form or there will be a move to a more European civil service style of employment is a whole other area of debate.

Coda

Since writing the main part of this paper it has become clear that the DfE are not interesting in retaining a national focus on teacher supply. At the recent North of England Conference the head of the newly merged Training Agency and National College said:

In the future I would like to see local areas deciding on the numbers of teachers they will need each year rather than a fairly arbitrary figure passed down from the Department for Education. I have asked my officials at the TA to work with schools, academy chains and local authorities to help them to devise their own local teacher supply model. I don’t think Whitehall should be deciding that nationally we need 843 geography teachers, when a more accurate figure can be worked out locally.

(DfE, 2103)

While this may work in the secondary sector, it is unclear how it might work in the primary sector where academy chains are currently barely represented, most schools are too small to become training hubs and local authorities have generally neither the resources nor the inclination to undertake the responsibility except perhaps where they have established SCITT schemes. It is also unclear who will provide the funding if government doesn’t operate a national scheme to determine the numbers required. The absence of dioceses from the list will alarm some in view of the importance of Church schools in the primary education scene.

Mr Taylor’s comments will not come as a surprise to connoisseurs of government education legislation who will have noted that within a Schedule of the 2011 Education Act Section 11A of the 1996 Education Act was repealed. This was the section, originally enacted in the 1944 Education Act that created a duty requiring that:

The Secretary of State shall, in particular, make such arrangements as he considers expedient for securing that sufficient facilities are available for the training of teachers to serve in schools maintained by local education authorities, grant-maintained schools, institutions within the further education sector and institutions which are maintained by such authorities and provide higher education or further education (or both).”                                                                      Education Act 1996

It would appear that Whitehall no longer considers the training or education of teacher important enough in the development of a world-class school system to want to be involved.

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