Bring Back Circular 1 each year?

Posted on August 25, 2022 by John Howson

Recently, I wrote a post about a Schoolsweek’s story about the DfE and the need to manage ‘sufficiency’ ITT review: DfE forms ‘sufficiency’ group amid places fears (schoolsweek.co.uk) by creating a new group than most people either didn’t seem to be aware of or didn’t know who comprised the membership. ITT places need a review: but not behind closed doors | John Howson (wordpress.com)

Anyway, I was thinking about what the Group might consider if its aim is to ensure that as many schools as possible are able to recruit the most appropriately qualified teachers to fill their vacancies.

Of course, apart from cutting the numbers of trainees to keep them in line with the predictions from the Teacher Supply Model, the Group could decide to do nothing, and just let the current market-based system continue with vacancies advertised, and teachers applying and the private sector making £40,000,000 or more per year from recruitment. (n.b. I am Chair at TeachVac, the job board).

At the other end of the intervention spectrum, the DfE could follow the actions of their predecessors in the Ministry of Education and return to publishing circular 1. This told local authorities each year how many new entrants from training they could employ. If they wanted more teachers, then there were either returners or teachers moving schools or unqualified staff that could be employed. This draconian approach no doubt worked well in the total planning economy of the immediate post-World War Two years, but probably wouldn’t work now, especially with the disparate system of school governance and the lack of a coherent middle tier in schooling that currently exists across England.

However, a variation on that theme would be to create all teachers as government employees and assign them to schools, as happens in some other countries. My guess is that model won’t work with a government pledged to reduce the civil service by some 90,000 employees. Creating teachers as civil servants might seem to send out the wrong message about the power of the state.

So how else might the government manage the distribution of the ‘sufficient’ new teachers they are aiming to train to help reduce the inequalities currently in the system? Two possible solutions are, either tighten up on QTS by first making it a requirement for academies to ‘normally’ only hire teachers with QTS, and then segment QTS so it is aligned with the preparation course a person undertakes. This would mean those on primary sector courses would not have QTS to teach in the secondary sector, and visa versa. At present, any teacher with QTS can teach anything to any child at any level. In the secondary sector, QTS might become subject specific.

To deal with ‘shortages’ emergency certification could be provided for a limited period, with CPD to allow for full certification if the teachers was going to be employed teaching in that area permanently. This would also show where shortages were affecting schools and make effective use of the CPD budget.

The other alternative is to expand the Opportunity Area scheme by providing certain schools with additional cash to compete in the market to hire teachers in shortage subjects. However, without caping the spending of other schools, this approach just risks developing a race to see who can pay the most for their teachers. Good news for teachers, especially in shortage subjects, but possibly not the best use of resources.

With a significant number of career changers thinking of teaching as a career, a training salary might be a useful tool ensure these would-be teachers can make the switch into teaching. At the same time, ensuring a job for every successful trainee in the September after their course ends is worth considering. At present, those teachers needed to fill January appointment can find themselves without a job during the autumn term; a waste of talent and a loss of skills. Taking such teachers on as supernumeraries, paid from central funds, on the understanding that they are applying for posts would be worth considering.

Of course, none of these initiatives may be necessary if the recession throws up lots more returners to teaching that are the right mix of skills and in the right locations.

To make decisions about any such scheme to consider needs high quality up to the minute knowledge of the labour market for teachers and school leaders, as well as the ability to understand the data and its implications. Fortunately, in NfER and our higher education sector, the government has the skills available to it to help answer these questions.

But it could abandon levelling up and just leave it to the market for teachers that is now not local, nor national, but global, in its reach for the high-quality teachers produced through the current teacher preparation system in England.

Batten down the hatches

Posted on August 23, 2022 by John Howson

The DfE has finally provided the August data on ITT applications. Flagged for the 22^nd August publication, the data are now in the public domain. As expected, they make grim reading for anyone at all interested in teacher supply.

At this stage of the year there are two numbers that matter; the absolute number offered a place on a postgraduate ITT course, and how that number relates to the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model (TSM) and its calculation of how many teachers are needed to be trained each year.

First the good news, there are more offers in design and technology than in August last year; nearly 100 more. However, nowhere near enough to meet the probable TSM number, based upon past levels.

Now the bad news. Several subjects are at their lowest level for offers for any year since before the 2013/14 recruitment round. These include:

Languages

Religious Education

Physics

Music

Mathematics

English

Computing

Biology

None of these subjects will recruit enough trainees to meet the likely TSM number.

Physical Education

History

Drama

Will probably recruit enough trainees to meet targets, as should the primary sector, where there are around 12,000 offers. Much depends upon the numbers made offers that fail to turn up when courses commence.

In total, around 24,000 candidates have been recruited, and have either fulfilled all requirements or have ‘conditions pending’. The 13,850 of the 24,000 in the latter category are a worry. There should not be that many at this stage in the cycle. Perhaps course administrators haven’t updated the records during July and August. But it cannot be because candidates are awaiting degree results, so presumably it is either DBS checks or some other administrative issue.

24,000 is still an impressive number, and it should hammer home to Ministers in the new government how important teaching is as a career. With approaching a decade of under-recruitment to training, parts of the school system are now facing serious issues with staffing.

So, how serious is the present situation? In August 2021 there were 46,830 applicants to courses. This August, the number is 38,062. New graduate numbers have dropped from around 14% of the total to 13%, but the decline is greater in percentage terms than the nine per cent overall decline. Teaching is becoming more reliant upon career changers once again.

There have been 5,000 fewer female applicants this year compared with August 2021, and 2,500 fewer men, although the level of applications from men is still higher than it was 30 years ago when applicant numbers struggled to reach the 10,000 level.

While there has been a slight increase in applications for the PG Teaching apprenticeship route into teaching, some other routes are below last year. HE is down from 55,000 to less than 53,000 but SCITT are only marginally down from 15,000 to just over 14,600. The School Direct Salaried route has attracted less than 6,000 applications, compared with some 9,000 last year. With just 760 offers, this route is no longer of any more than passing interest in supplying new teachers to the profession.

If there is another spark of good news it is that applications to courses in London at 27,460 this August are only marginally below the 27,600 recorded last August. Might this be where a significant number of career changers are seeking to enter teaching. Should more ITT places be allocated to the providers with courses in the capital?

This is the last set of data because courses commence in September, and whoever is Secretary of State in September would be well advised to seek an early briefing from the newly appointed SRO for the ITT Reform Project as to how he will ensure sufficient high-quality teachers for all our state-funded schools. The current recruitment campaign isn’t working, and relying upon a recession to make teaching more attractive as a career is akin to crossing your fingers and hoping.

Then end of this cycle of recruitment marks my 35^th year of studying trends in teacher recruitment, ever since I was appointed to the leadership team at Oxford Brookes then newly formed School of Education.

The next number that really matters will be the ITT Census, to be published late in the autumn, when the whole reality of the 2023 recruitment round will become apparent to schools.

My advice to schools, don’t wait until then, start planning now for a challenging recruitment round in 2023, whether for January or September appointments.

ITT places need a review: but not behind closed doors

Posted on August 17, 2022 by John Howson

A quarter of a century ago I had a job at the then Teacher Training Agency. My post was titled as ‘the Chief Professional Adviser on Teacher Supply’. The job title was an oxymoron since I wasn’t a chief and I had no professional qualification for the job. However, I did have experience in researching teacher supply and I have continued to do so after my departure from the TTA, after only one year, and up to the present day.

The re-accreditation of teacher education providers, started after the Market Review, was set fair to become a case-study in how not to manage change even before today’s Schoolsweek story about the need to manage ‘sufficiency’ ITT review: DfE forms ‘sufficiency’ group amid places fears (schoolsweek.co.uk) Interestingly, today, the DfE also published the terms of reference of the civil servant responsible for ITT reform as the Senior Responsible Officer. DfE major projects: appointment letters for Senior Responsible Owners – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Schoolsweek in their story concentrate on the fact that the government has launched a teacher training “sufficiency steering group” amid fears its ITT market review will slash provider numbers by a third and leave England with a shortage of places.

As I remarked in my previous blog post about the re-accreditation process, the battle between quality and sufficiency of places across the country has always been settled in favour of quality providers with scant regard to geography. End ITT deserts | John Howson (wordpress.com) I argued that was a mistake.

However, the maintaining the current number of courses at a time when pupil numbers are falling in the primary sector, and will stop increasing soon in the secondary sector may not be sensible, and does need a re-think. If that re-think provides a better geographical balance, all well and good. However, does it also need to provide for a range of different type of provider; from higher education to school-based routes, as well as salaried trainees to courses funded through the student loan route?

These ground rules really should have been settled before the re-accreditation process commenced. Worrying about sufficiency half-way through could make a mockery of the whole process.

There is also the issue of how to handle shortfalls in recruitment, should they arise. Will providers be paid to stay in business even if they fail to recruit sufficient trainees to cover their costs?

An open discussion at the time off the Market Review about how and where we train teachers and how many we need to train would have prevented the current atmosphere of suspicion surrounding the whole process of re-accreditation.

With teaching now having become a global profession, we cannot afford to make a mess of the management of the process of preparing the next generation of teachers. However, it has to be recalled that the present policy of quality taking precedence over location has led to an uneven distribution of courses across the country. Schools, and even universities, don’t have to train teachers, and it is well worth remembering that fact.

I hope the next Secretary of State will want to work with the sector on ensuring high quality teacher preparation provision spread across the country to meet the needs of schools. However, I am not holding my breath.

Success in ITT, but at what price?

Posted on August 3, 2022 by John Howson

In my previous post about the July postgraduate ITT numbers, I concentrated just on the headlines, and the potentially dire implications for the 2023 teacher recruitment round if the collapse of the economy doesn’t both stem departures from teaching and encourage more returners back into the profession.

In this post, I want to look in more detail at the data in the July numbers, now published by the DfE. Monthly statistics on initial teacher training (ITT) recruitment – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) The total number of candidates applying has reached 35,633, but this compares badly with the 44,970 of July 2021. More alarming is the fact that the ‘recruited’ total is down from 8,620 in July 2021 to 3,911 this July. That’s the number in the bag, so to say, and most likely to turn up when courses commence. Even more worrying that the number with ‘conditions pending’ is down from 23,030 to 18,699. The number of withdrawn candidates has increased from 1,281 last July to 2,010 this July. These are not good numbers for the health of the profession.

Comparing the ‘other’ column against ‘all applications’ in the July 2021 data and the ‘unsuccessful’ against ‘all applications’ in the July 2022 data shows that across all subjects more applications have been successful.

Subject	2021 Successful	2022 Successful	Difference
Languages	na	29%	na
Computer Studies	21%	28%	7%
D&T	27%	34%	7%
Physics	23%	30%	7%
Music	28%	34%	6%
Art	26%	32%	6%
Business Studies	20%	26%	6%
Biology	23%	29%	6%
Mathematics	23%	28%	5%
PE	22%	27%	5%
RE	27%	32%	5%
English	25%	30%	5%
Drama	29%	33%	4%
Chemistry	27%	31%	4%
Geography	27%	31%	4%
History	26%	30%	4%
Classics	23%	25%	2%

Source UCAS and DfE data

Whether the increase in the level of success is due to similar numbers of acceptable candidates against a smaller overall pool or providers accepting candidates that they might not have accepted before cannot be determined from the data. Perhaps it is a bit of both strategies that is taking place.

Applications are lower across all age groups this round, with the key new graduate ‘21 and under’ group down from 5,650 to 4,591 candidates this July. Those who gender is recorded as male candidate has fallen from 13,350 to 10,591. This is despite the number not recorded as either men or women falling from 1,240 to 351 this July.

Applications have fallen for both primary and secondary phase courses. Down from 51,310 to 43,242 for the former and from 65,990 to 53,532 for the latter.

While numbers applying for postgraduate teaching apprenticeships increased from 3,610 to 4,427 applications; a modest increase, but, nevertheless an increase: all other routes had witnessed a decline in applications.

Hopefully, at least in the context of teacher preparation courses, this will be as bad as it will be, and next year the changes in the broader economy will once again swing the pendulum back towards the desirability of teaching as a career, perhaps aided by a recognition of the necessary rewards required to attract and retain teachers. If not, then the government will have set a record in terms of the length of the period of under-recruitment into teacher preparation courses.

Muck up or conspiracy?

Posted on August 2, 2022 by John Howson

In August 2013, when this blog was in its infancy, I incurred the wrath of the DfE by suggesting that there was going to be a teacher supply crisis.

As reported by this blog on 14^th August 2013 “A DfE spokesperson, helpfully anonymous, is quoted by the Daily Mail today as saying of my delving into the current teacher training position that there was no teacher shortage, adding: ‘This is scaremongering and based on incomplete evidence.’”

Regular readers know whose view of the situation was correct.

Why am I reprising this quote for nine years ago? Well, normally around the middle of the month the DfE, following the time-honoured tradition set by first the GTTR and then UCAS, publishes the monthly update on applications and offer to postgraduate ITT.

The DfE duly created the data on the 25^th of July this year, but at least as far as my browser is concerned, the data didn’t appear on their web site. June’s data remained the latest in the public domain as I write this blog. Monthly statistics on initial teacher training (ITT) recruitment – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) hopefully, by the time you read this the July data will be fully in the public domain. (The DfE updated their website with the July data sometime the same day that this post was published – thank you DfE.)

Now comes the key question: is this lack of transparency due to a processing fault within the DfE or is it due to not wanting the data widely known? Truly, the data on ‘offers’ so far this year is shocking.

Looking back at the period between the 2012/13 round of application for postgraduate ITT courses, and the 2021/22 round, it is clear that the total of ‘Recruited’ plus ‘Conditions Pending’ plus ‘Deferrals’ plus ‘Received and Offer’ are disastrously low in many secondary subjects this year. Leaving aside, Modern Foreign Languages, where the methodology is different this year, we see

Art, history, geography, chemistry and business studies no longer recording new records or offers and, in most cases, recording insufficient numbers to meet the expected Teacher Supply Model number. Only in history and art will there be sufficient numbers, and even in history the over-recruitment is likely to be less than in the past couple of years.

However, it is in

Religious Education

Physics

Music

English

Computing

Biology

Where the numbers of ‘offers’ look most worrying.

Jack Worth of NfER predicted earlier this year that fewer than 20% of the physics places might be filled this year in a presentation to the APPG on the Teaching Profession. His prediction now looks like it might well come about. All of the subjects in this list are hitting new lows for ‘offers’ since that 2012/13 recruitment round. The implications for recruitment of teachers, assuming the schools have the funds to recruit in 2023, look bleak.

Design and technology remain one of the few relatively better performing subjects, with more offers than last year. But, sadly, not enough to meet the required target.

With less than two months to go before courses start, and some providers closed down for the summer, there is unlikely to be a significant upturn in these numbers.

The DfE might well want to ask about conversion levels between application and offers and whether more risk might be taken with some marginal applications. The DfE will also need to ensure that they don’t de-accredit successful providers, as there is no guarantee potential applicants would choose another provider.

I do wonder whether the two contenders for Prime Minister will have anything to say about this issue, and whether anyone will even ask them?

London schools still teacher hunting

Posted on August 1, 2022 by John Howson

49% of the vacancies for secondary school teachers advertised during July 2022 were placed by schools in London and the South East. The percentage increases to 60% if the East of England region is added-in.

The percentage across these three regions increases to 60% of languages vacancies; 66% of geography teacher vacancies and 71%, or not far short of three quarters, of music teacher vacances.

This means that while most schools in the north of England are probably enjoying a relatively less stressful summer period in terms of ensuring their school is full staffed for September, some schools in London and the Home Counties are still working hard at making sure that there will be a teacher for every class of pupils, come the start of term.

TeachVac has today published a detailed report on the extraordinary recruitment round between January and July 2022. For a free copy go to Labour Market Report – January to July 2022 (teachvac.co.uk) Specific tailored reports are available on request for a small fee. These can be useful to Teaching School Hubs; ITT providers and any other group interested in the operation of the teacher labour market.

TeachVac is also currently offering schools a special deal on its teacher to job matching service of £250 for an annual subscription that unlocks priority matching for schools with its ever-growing database of teachers that are job hunting. The regular service with no upfront payment is also still available, and will cost a school no more than £1,000 for an annual subscription.

The £250 offer during August can save schools as much as £750 per year.

All the evidence is that classroom teacher vacancies for January 2023 are going to be very challenging to fill in many secondary school subjects, according to TeachVac’s analysis of labour market trends.

Middle leadership posts in some subject where there has been several years of reduced training numbers will also pose problems for some schools.

Regular readers ill know that I am chair of TeachVac and founded it as a low cost matching service in 2014.

Fewer than 400 physics teachers join state schools in 2021

Posted on July 29, 2022 by John Howson

If you train too many teachers in some subjects, then then a higher percentage won’t find jobs. That’s the message for government from the latest ITT completer profiles. Initial teacher training performance profiles, Academic Year 2020/21 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk)

Final year postgraduate trainee outcomes by subject for the 2020/21 academic year

Subject	Total trainees	Percentage awarded QTS	Percentage yet to complete	Percentage not awarded QTS	Percentage of those awarded QTS teaching in a state-funded school
Design & Technology	666	91%	6%	3%	82%
Biology	2,122	86%	8%	6%	78%
Music	478	92%	3%	5%	78%
English	3,229	90%	6%	4%	77%
Mathematics	2,812	87%	7%	5%	77%
Geography	1,203	92%	4%	3%	76%
Business Studies	381	87%	7%	6%	75%
Religious Education	651	88%	7%	6%	75%
Chemistry	899	86%	8%	6%	74%
Secondary	20,365	89%	6%	5%	74%
Physics	543	83%	9%	9%	73%
Total	35,371	87%	8%	5%	73%
Modern Foreign Languages	1,650	91%	5%	4%	72%
Other	398	91%	5%	4%	71%
Primary	15,006	85%	11%	4%	71%
History	1,676	90%	6%	4%	70%
Art & Design	919	90%	7%	3%	69%
Computing	624	82%	11%	7%	68%
Drama	455	92%	4%	4%	67%
Physical Education	1,590	95%	3%	2%	64%
Classics	69	90%	9%	1%	52%

Source DfE

Of those awarded QTS, and not shown teaching in a state-funded school, this does not always mean that they have abandoned teaching as a profession, as they may still be in teaching either in a Sixth Form or FE college or in the private sector, either in England or elsewhere in the world.

However, it seems highly unlikely that 576 PE teachers are doing so, while just 108 design and technology teachers took the same route. However, it does seem possible and indeed likely that almost half the 69 Classics teachers trained at the public expense are teaching outside the state-funded sector. Apart from computing and classics, all the subjects in from Primary to the foot of the table are subjects where recruitment into training might have been close to or exceeded the DfE training number presumption from the Teacher Supply Model.

Training teachers for the private sector may be a cheap price to pay if it relieves the State of the need to fund the education of pupils whose parents are prepared to pay for their education. Although there are other arguments against private education.

However, if the trainees that moved into the private school sector are either used to teach pupils from overseas or even more, now teaching is a global profession, they move to a school overseas to teach that is a net loss to the Exchequer. This is a point Mr Sunak might like to ponder following his reference to selective schools in the debate with Conservative Party members last evening.

Private schools may also account for the reason why physics had only 73% of the 500 or so potential completers working in state-funded schools. That’s less than 400 new teachers of physics for the state-school sector in 2020/21.

Disturbing profile data on new teachers

Posted on July 29, 2022 by John Howson

Yesterday, the DfE published its annual survey of ITT providers, through an analysis of their outcomes

Initial teacher training performance profiles: 2020 to 2021 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

One of the most revealing tables in the report is reproduced below.

Summary of final year postgraduate trainee outcomes for the 2020/21 academic year

		Percentage awarded QTS	Percentage of those awarded QTS teaching in a state school
Age	Under 25	90	72
	25 and Over	86	73
Disability	Declared	81	68
	None declared	88	73
Ethnic group	Asian	81	64
	Black	78	65
	Mixed ethnicity	86	72
	Other	82	66
	White	89	74
Gender	Male	84	71
	Female	89	73

Source DfE

For every one of the groupings in the table, the minority group or groups seem to have fared less well than the majority group in terms of their percentage awarded QTS. Whether it is older trainees, trainees with a declared disability, males or those from a declared non-white background, the percentages gaining QTS are lower than for the comparator group. Interestingly, in most case the percentage of each group teaching in a state school is also lower, although older qualifiers marginally outperformed younger new teachers in terms of the percentage teaching in a state school at 73% compared with 72%

The disturbingly low percentage of ‘Black’ teachers gaining QTS continues. Only 78% of ‘Black’ trainees were awarded QTS, the lowest percentage in the table, and 11% points below the White trainee outcome for that much larger group of trainees. The government really should investigate why this discrepancy in outcome continues each year, especially as only 65% of ‘Black’ trainees awarded QTS were teaching in a state school at the time of the data collection.

Elsewhere, the demise of the undergraduate route is such that only 4,737 final year trainees were recorded, compared with 35,371 postgraduate trainees of whom nearly 19,00 were on school-led courses, with just over 16,500 on higher education led courses. What this balance will look like after the end of the current re-accreditation process is completed is an interesting question. With falling pupil numbers in the primary sector, it seems likely that the 40,000 trainees with QTS in these profiles will mark something of a high point.

The covid pandemic affected these data in two ways. Firstly, the pandemic created a one-year increase in registrations to train as a teacher, boosting the 2020-21 cohort of postgraduate trainees, and secondly, more trainees than usual may have extended their course and will have qualified later than normal due to the effects of the pandemic. Those late qualifications will have redcued some of the outcome percentages.

Although Teach First still uses that name for its band of training, the DfE has re-named its trainees as the ‘High Potential ITT trainees’. It would be interesting to understand the thinking behind this insult to other trainees and their providers. whether universities or schools?

Finally, there is some evidence to support the thesis that the distribution of training places may not be ideal. Only 62% of those awarded QTS in both the North East and North West were employed in state schools, compared with 76% that trained in London; 78% in the South East and 82% of those trained in the East of England. Since these three regions also contain a high percentage of the national total of private schools, this is an interesting outcome, and raises a key question about the use of resources across England.

STRB misses the point?

Posted on July 20, 2022 by John Howson

There is a lot of good data in the STRB Report published yesterday. School Teachers’ Review Body 32nd report: 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Sadly, most of it, as far as the teacher labour market is concerned, is based upon data collected by the DfE in November 2020 in the School Workforce Census, and thus relates to the labour market cycle of two years ago. Even if, when compiling the Report, the data from the November 2021 Census was used that was still from a previous labour market. As regular readers of this blog will know, the 2021-22 labour market for teachers has been anything other than normal in terms of demand for teachers.

The STRB has at least been able to use the ITT Census of 2021 that provided the data about the supply of new teachers for September 2022. Readers will find little in the STRB Report that hasn’t already been covered in this blog in relation to that data.

However, the Table on pages 49 and 50 of the STRB Report tells the story of this labour market in two simple charts regarding ITT recruitment; with history, PE and Art being the only secondary subjects where the supply of new entrants has been anything like at the level required to meet demand.

Interestingly, TeachVac today added art as a subject with a ‘red’ warning of shortages possible anywhere in England for January 2023 appointments. That just leaves PE and history as the two subjects where supply is still not yet at a level for a ‘red’ warning. PE might reach that level in the autumn: history, even with a contribution to humanities posts, almost certainly won’t. In view of the fact that almost double the number of trainees was recruited compared with the TSM figure that isn’t really a surprise. There is little problem with the primary sector labour market across most of the country.

The STRB Report is an interesting analysis of how the labour market responded to the sudden appearance of the pandemic just at the time when vacancies for September appointments were reaching their peak. Essentially, the market seems to have paused in 2021, and, as we know in 2022, there has been this surge of vacancies. As the end of term approaches, TeachVac has recorded not far short of 80,000 teaching vacancies across England so far in 2022, and more than 95,000 across the school-year as a whole.

The STRB has some interesting observations about leadership vacances, and the problems of recording trends when some posts in MATs are ‘out of scope’ to use the STRB terminology. However, as TeachVac has reported, there does not seem to have been any mass exodus of school leaders. This is despite the massive burdens placed on headteachers and other school leaders as a result of the pandemic, and the need to keep schools open at all times.

On pay, make of the Report what you will. I personally doubt that their recommendations for 2023/24 will last the test of time, especially if inflation continues to remain close to current levels and interest rates increase. With little new cash around for schools, it might be worth looking at the history books for how schools coped with the economic crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s to see what might happen over the next few years. Although, back then, there was no spending on computers and other IT equipment.

End ITT deserts

Posted on July 1, 2022 by John Howson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: recruitment