Tag Archives: recruitment

The Labour market for Teachers in England – some thoughts for 2022

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The following piece first appeared in a recent SSAT Sunday Supplement piece

As recently as a decade ago, the process of advertising for teachers was simple. A school advised with its local authority HR department’s bulletin and paid for an advert in the TES. This ritual hadn’t altered much since the early 1990s when schools gained control of their budgets for the first time. However, much has changed in the past few years: tes is on its fourth set of owners, and now most schools pay a subscription fee; the DfE has entered the market with a job board; local authority job boards mostly don’t handle vacancies in academies, and recruitment agencies along with a plethora of new entrants on-line are seeking custom from schools with ever more eye catching products that are handling advertising and selection as a package.

After a lifetime in education, and forty years studying the labour market for teachers, I set up TeachVac to demonstrate what a low-cost model for advertising teacher vacancies, and indeed all vacancies in schools, would cost. Eight years on, TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk handled 64,000 teaching vacancies in 2021, with more than 1,000,000 matches of interested teachers with schools.

As a spin-off to its main service, TeachVac provides significant data about the labour market for teachers. The remainder of this piece is about my predictions for the 2022 recruitment round for teachers in England. Necessarily, the comments will be general, but TeachVac has much more data that it can share with schools about local trends and matches being made.

Any current analysis of the labour market starts with the publication of the DfE’s latest ITT census of numbers on preparation courses to become a teacher (This appeared in December 2021). For the secondary sector, these trainees are mostly on course lasting one academic year. So, registrations for 2021 will be a major source of recruits for September 2022 vacancies. The other source of teachers are returners, whether from a career break or employed elsewhere, including teaching overseas and finally there are those teachers that are either switching jobs or seeking promotion.

Demand is led by an increase in pupil numbers, as in the secondary sector at present; departures, with any increase in departure boosting demand. At present, the growing international school sector is an important source of demand. One UK private school is to open its sevenths overseas campus in Tokyo. Another key source of demand is from teachers taking a career break. Finally, there are those leaving state schools for other employment in the private sector; further education or careers outside of education.

With a strong finish to 2021, and 8,000 recorded vacancies in January 2022, schools will need to pay attention to market trends if they are going to have a need to hire teachers in 2022. As the primary sector market for classroom teacher is well served with candidates, schools should not face issues at the national level, the secondary sector market is more complex and divides into three subject groupings.

Schools seeking to recruit teachers in subjects such as history, physical education, art and drama should face no issues at the national level, even for January 2023 appointments. At the other end of the scale are physics, design and technology, business studies and some of the specialist subjects such as law and psychology where recruitment is already challenging for some schools and all schools will face issues trying to recruit as 2022 progresses, and certainly for January 2023 appointments. All other subjects lie somewhere along this continuum, with some parts of the county experiencing more challenges that others, and some facing challenges earlier in the recruitment round, but all likely to face some difficulty for January 2023 appointments.

Schools that are better placed than others to deal with recruitment issues are those fortunate enough to be able to recruit trainees through school-based preparation programmes or Teach First. Next in line are those schools working with other training providers, such as universities, where they have access to links to students via mentors and school placements. Finally, those schools needing to trawl entirely on the open market are most in need of up-to-date information on the working of the labour market. MATs and MACs grouped close together geographically may be able to swop staff and certainly offer promotions to staff.

The ability to manage staff development is becoming increasingly important, as the DfE now realise, since several years of missed training targets are now affecting the market for middle leaders in some subjects and parts of the primary sector. The middle leader market is under-researched, but vital to the levelling-up agenda.

Finally, the market for headteachers in the secondary sector remains, as ever it was. Schools advertising at a sensible time of year and without specific demands usually manage to recruit. Recruitment of headteachers in the primary sector is more of a challenge, especially for faith schools in an increasingly secular society, and for specific types of school, such as infant or junior schools. Succession planning within MAT/MACs seems like a good policy at all levels, but especially for headships.

John Howson

Chair, TeachVac

Happy Birthday

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Today is the ninth birthday of this blog! A birthday is a good time to look back at what was written in the past on the blog. One of the interesting posts came early in the life of the blog, in July 2013, when I called for action by the government and suggested that “ministers must take urgent action if we are not to see a re-run of the crisis in teacher recruitment that occurred in the early days of the Blair government.” The full quote is reproduced below and can be seen on the blog by searching the July 2013 posts.

“Coming, as this outcome does, after several years when recruitment to teacher training has largely not been an issue, the present situation is a wake-up call for all concerned, and ministers must take urgent action if we are not to see a re-run of the crisis in teacher recruitment that occurred in the early days of the Blair government.  There are two months left before the training courses start, so all is not yet lost. However, if my predictions prove accurate, some schools are going to struggle to recruit teachers next summer: good news for recruitment agencies, but probably not for some pupils. And, as I have said before, this is no way to create a world-class education system.”

Extract from

Has Michael Gove failed to learn the lessons of history?

Posted on July 2, 2013

There was a fairly swift response from Sanctuary Buildings that sparked something of a spat and the first Statistical Bulletin on the Teacher Supply Model for a while. Regular readers can make their own minds up about the extent to which I was “scaremongering” or a prophet ‘crying in the wilderness’. I wrote in August 2013 the following:

“So now I know I am officially a scaremonger. 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.’

Well, the first thing to note is that I haven’t said that there is a teacher shortage, just that training places are not being filled: not the same thing. Indeed, I have said a teacher shortage is less likely than in the past in the near future because Mr Gove has mandated that qualified teachers from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the whole of the USA can teach here as qualified teachers with no need to retrain. With an oversupply of teachers in parts of both Canada and Australia that should prevent any short-term problem developing even though another part of the government isn’t very keen on importing workers from abroad, presumably including from within the Commonwealth and a onetime colony.”

Extract from

Scaremongering!

Posted on August 14, 2013

I suspect anyone interested in the supply of teachers of physics, design and technology and business studies may have a different view about these quotes from those interested in the supply of PE and history teachers.

The DfE now controls the whole teacher supply pipeline from applications to train as a teacher to offering a job board as somewhere for schools in the state sector to place vacancies. To talk or write of a local education service these days would be as much of a misnomer as the write of a local health service rather than of the NHS.

Understanding and controlling teacher supply is important in the national interest and it is worth speculating what the landscape of teacher supply might look like in another nine years if the DfE became seriously involved in the ‘levelling up’ agenda?

Directing new teachers where to work and directing the management of promotions by specifying how MATs ought to deploy their staff might just be two of the ‘innovations’ to look forward to in the next decade if market forces are abandoned in favour of a more interventionist approach.

I am not sure that this blog will be there to chronicle those changes, but I hope to make it to its tenth birthday next year, if that isn’t tempting fate too much.

Start Recruiting now

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This is the stark warning to schools across much of Southern England that may need staff this September and especially to secondary schools. TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk data has shown that the first three weeks of January have witnessed a continuation of the trend at the end of 2021 with a considerable increase in vacancies recorded.

TeachVac hasn’t changed its vacancy collection methods since 2020 but it has seen vacancies listed in the first 19 days of the month in 2022 increase by 14% over the recorded numbers recorded in early January 2020 pre-pandemic, and by a whopping 135% over the depressed level of last January.

As reported in a previous post, design and technology staff will be especially hard to recruit in 2022. Already in 2022, vacancies recorded are 48% up on the same period in 2020. Vacancies for teachers of music are up by an eyewatering 73% on 2020 vacancies in early January.

All these vacancies mean that the pool of new entrants will be reducing at a faster rate than in previous years. High quality trainees will be offered vacancies by schools that understand these trends and are aware of the state of the pool of trainees, either because they run school-based programmes or because their mentors have told them what higher education providers are saying.

TeachVac’s low-cost service can keep school up to date with trends for as little as £100 and a maximum of £1,000 per year that includes listing and matching all the school’s teaching vacancies with TeachVac’s growing pool of register users.

Registration also provides access to far better data than on the DfE site and also intelligence on the state of the recruitment round for trainees for September 2022 and hence the labour market in 2023.

Signing up today at www.teachvac.co.uk and the tab matching service will also bring a free copy of TeachVac report.  Message me if you want more information or use the comment box.

Design and Technology: End of a road?

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The end of the second week in January is usually a bit early to be making predictions about the state of the teacher labour market for September. However, in the case of design and technology, the signs of a really difficult job market for schools have been there for some time, and certainly since the publication of the DfE’s Census of Trainees in December 2021. Those signs are now backed up by early data on jobs being advertised.

Using exclusive data from TeachVac, based upon an analysis of recorded job adverts in the first two weeks of January 2022, there are sign of an early increase in demand for such teachers.

Datejobs 2015jobs 2016jobs 2017jobs 2018jobs 2019jobs 2020jobs 2021jobs 2022
Week 110251916792958
Week 220525047417167164
Week 320877787103156123
Week 440110120105183244183

Source: TeachVac

Now, this may just be prudence on the part of schools in bringing forward vacancies, rather than a growth in real demand for such teachers. We won’t know the answer to that question until at least the end of January, and possibly not until even the end of February.

However, with this level of vacancies it is possible to demonstrate by matching vacancy levels to the potential supply of new entrants into the profession for September 2022 that schools may have to rely upon sources of supply other than new entrants much earlier in the recruitment round for September than they might either expect to or like the idea of doing.

TeachVac’s exclusive formula suggest that the ‘free’ pool of new entrants is already lower than at any point at the end of Week 2 of the year since at least 2015.

Date 20152016 2017 201820192020 2021 2022
Week 1368412.5371217219343580231
Week 2363399356201202312561178
Week 3363381.5342181191270533
Week 4353370321172131226503
Vacancy index – lower the number the more challenging filling vacancies will be

Source: TeachVac

The data also shows that compared with 2020 and 2021 the pool is lower than at the end of January by last Friday and week 2. Should the end of January 2022 number be lower than the end of 2019 number, then the remaining recruitment round may be grim for schools looking to recruit a design and technology teacher of any description.  January 2023 vacancies don’t even bear thinking about.

Schools that have signed up for TeachVac’s new matching service at  TeachVac Reports – The National Vacancy Service for Teachers and Schools can have access to this type of data for a range of subjects.

What are the implications for schools unable to recruit qualified design and technology teachers? Staffing the curriculum is the obvious problem. What are the longer-term effects of young people not studying this subject? That’s for others to say, and the DfE to act as it sees fit.

‘A drop in the ocean’

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Much has been made of the government’s campaign to recruit ex-teachers back into the classroom as supply teachers to help out during the latest phase of the covid pandemic.

Here is the actual wording from the DfE about the success of the campaign by early January 2022:

Findings

• There were at least 585 ex-teachers coming forward to either Teach First, or 47 of the estimated 400-500 teacher supply agencies, between the 20th December 2021 and 7th January 2022.

• Of this total, over 100 expressions of interest have been reported by Teach First.

• A further 485 sign-ups of ex-teachers were reported by the 47 supply agencies who responded to the DfE survey.

• Given this survey response only covers a small number of agencies, this will not reflect the true total as other agencies not surveyed, or which did not respond, are likely to also have had sign-ups, and the call for ex-teachers to return is still ongoing. The true number of sign-ups since the call was launched will be larger.

Number of ex-teachers coming forward to join the school workforce (publishing.service.gov.uk) 12th January 2022

Interestingly the government doesn’t so far seem to have spent much money on the campaign. In answer to a written Parliamentary Question Robin Walker, the DfE Minister replied that:

As of 5 January, the spend relating to marketing and communications in support of the national appeal for former teachers to return to the profession is £3,882.69. This amount consists of:

  • Design work for a toolkit of assets to be used by partners of the department: £2,227.80.
  • Paid Search Advertising: £1,654.89.

Written questions and answers – Written questions, answers and statements – UK Parliament

To their credit, the government recognises that the 485 sign-ups don’t account for the whole total. Now assuming the 10% response rate can be grossed up, the national figure might be around 5,000. (The DfE footnote to editors said that ‘We estimate this number of responses represents around 10% of the agencies operating in the market. This figure is based on estimates provided by trade bodies. Agencies will vary in size and so this figure should not be taken as an indication of market share.’)

Now, we don’t know the geographical spread of these new supply teachers. We don’t know whether they are willing to work in both primary and secondary schools. We don’t know whether they will work five days a week or just for a couple of days.

We can assume that like other teachers the normal stock of supply teachers are affected by covid in the same way as the rest of the population. The 2020 School Workforce Census identified that there were 11,574 ‘occasional teachers’ in schools at the time of the census. So, and additional 5,000 to the stock is clearly a useful number. But, with a teaching force of 461,000 it only takes just over one per cent of the workforce to be absent due to covid to use up the whole of the possible new recruits to supply teaching.

Could the government have done more. Certainly, the cash spend seems low compared to other campaigns. What of unemployed history and PE teachers that completed training last summer, but couldn’t find a teaching post. Has the government worked with training providers to identify those still wanting to enter teaching and offered some support to help them do so even on a temporary basis?

No doubt as this term unfolds more information will become available about how successful the government was at helping schools to stay open, and the part the national campaign played in achieving that end compared with the actions taken locally by schools, Trusts and Local Authorities.

Recruitment 2022: a rough ride to come

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Can you tell anything about the 2022 recruitment round for teachers in England based upon just four days of vacancy data? One of the advantages of a job board such as TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk is the it has sufficient cumulative data on vacancies that can be allied with data about the numbers of teachers on preparation courses to be able to provide some helpful comments on the labour market, even after just four days of data.

For those that are sceptical of such a claim, consider sampling theory. A simple example is to assume a bowl of soup. A small spoonful will tell you whether or not the bowl if full of hot soup. Now scale up to a vat size container. Will a small sample tell you the same answer for the whole? Now purists might maintain that the bottom of the vat could be hotter than the top; I would agree. Taking that comment to vacancy data means that the comments for England as a whole might well include differences across the regions. Such an objection is true, and that is why each month TeachVac produces regional data for most secondary subjects and the primary sector. But it doesn’t invalidate sampling as a useful tool.

Anyway, back to our sample of 2022, and what I think it tells schools about the recruitment round this year. The first point is that it confirms what was being said at the end of 2021, appointments for September 2022 will be more of a challenge almost across the board as the 2020 bounce in interest in teaching as a career drops out of the supply side.

How bad will 2022 be? Well, nothing of concern in art, PE and history. Indeed, schools might well be starting to consider whether they can make use of an extra history teacher and perhaps an extra PE teacher to make use of the best of the trainees with second subject expertise in the pool of jobseekers.

At the other end of the scale, the usual suspects of design and technology where there will be real issues with recruitment have been joined this year by geography, modern languages and English. In the case of the latter two subjects this is partly because of the number of trainees on courses that will either already have placed them in the classroom or make it likely that they won’t be looking on the open market for a teaching post. Independent schools should take especial note of this fact when considering how easy it will be to recruit a teacher.

Most of the other subjects have seen the size of their ‘free pool’ decline this year compared with 2021, and that will have implications for January 2023 appointments. Such vacancies may be hard to fill in many subjects in those parts of England where recruitment is a challenge; namely London and the Home Counties.

Schools that have signed up to TeachVac’s £1,000 maximum annual recruitment package will receive regular updates on the state of the labour market, including local knowledge. On registration, and at no cost, schools receive a detailed report on the labour market.

Recruiters tell me that TeachVac is ‘too cheap’ to succeed because nothing that cheap could be any good. My principle in founding the job board was to show that recruitment advertising need not cost a lot of money. I still believe that to be true. Do you?

TeachVac welcomes new tes owners

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This is an interesting way to start 2022. Just three years since the tes last changed hands, its ownership looks to be on the move again. This would make the third set of owners of the tes since TeachVac was set up in 2013 to challenge the high cost of teacher recruitment in a changing world, where technology should have been driving down costs and thus reducing prices to schools. www.teachvac.co.uk According to the press release 86c854e3-7a1d-4402-9f20-32868488d2c6 (gcs-web.com) dated the 7th December the new owners should be the current management team at the tes and ONEX, a Canadian Venture Capital Group. My best wishes to them.

When the Providence Group bought the tes in 2018, I expressed surprise at the purchase, so I am not now surprised that after slimming down the business by: exiting the supply teacher market; ending coverage of the further education sector; shifting its office functions out of London and axing the print edition among other changes, Providence finally put the business up for sale.

Based on the cost structure of TeachVac, there is a profitable company lurking inside the tes, but not while it is saddled with a large slug of overhanging debt that needs to be serviced. The terms of the expected change of ownership are not revealed in the press release, but too much debt will cripple the success of the new venture. Still, it is good to see the management team taking a share of the risk, and bringing at least a part of the ownership back into the UK from North America.

Today’s Sunday Telegraph business section has an article by Matt Oliver discussing the problems the tes faces when government tries to do the same job through its own free web site for vacancies. This blog discussed such an issue in relation to both TeachVac and the TES in April 2019 DfE backs free vacancy sites | John Howson (wordpress.com) I am sorry that Matt Oliver didn’t either mention TeachVac or try to speak with me about the way the market operates, as other journalists have done on a regular basis.

Perhaps either the Education Select Committee or the Public Accounts Committee at Westminster will use Matt Oliver’s article as a reason to mount an inquiry into the teacher recruitment market. After all, the later, using National Audit Office data, called for the DfE to reduce the cost of teacher recruitment: the very reason that TeachVac was established and has flourished. Does Nationalisation always work? | John Howson (wordpress.com)

This blog has always asserted that schools have been paying too much for recruitment advertising and has been prepared to back that judgement with the development of the successful TeachVac job board. The apparent lack of interest on the part of professional associations and others connected with education to address the means of removing unnecessary expenditure from schools by slashing recruitment advertising costs has been an enduring disappointment to me. Perhaps 2022 with be the year that all this changes?

Half of secondary ITT applicants in just 3 subjects

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The latest data on ITT applications, published by the DfE before the holiday break, revealed that just three subjects accounted for 49% of applicants to secondary ITT courses. Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2022 to 2023 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK (apply-for-teacher-training.service.gov.uk) The data are for applicants up to the 3rd December 2021.

SubjectTotalPercentage
Art and design3783%
Biology5525%
Business studies2832%
Chemistry5094%
Classics621%
Computing3093%
Design and technology2432%
Drama3523%
English153713%
Geography3853%
History10579%
Mathematics138512%
Modern foreign languages5685%
Music1912%
Other5645%
Physical education283224%
Physics3073%
Religious education2312%
11745100%

Source: DfE

English (13%); Mathematics (12%) and Physical Education (24%) together accounted for 49% of applicants, with PE accounting for nearly a quarter of the overall total!

So far, the TV advert being aired on one of the Freeview Channels doesn’t seem to be making a big impact in drawing in applicants in many subject areas, with most subjects recording in the region of 1-3% of the total.

The good news is that Physics applicants accounted for three percent of the total, but that is a third of the percentage of applicants for history. So, there is a long way to go to reach the totals needed to fill vacancies in September 2023 and January 2024 when these applicants will be job hunting.

Visit http://www.teachvac.co.uk for teaching posts across England in both State & private schools

In the run up to Christmas, the BBC ran a story about the likelihood of ex-teachers helping out in the classroom if the covid pandemic lays low large numbers of teachers in January. Covid: Doubts that ex-teachers will return by January – BBC News REC The Recruitment and Employment Confederation expressed the view that a backlog of DBS checks might hamper any return to the classroom even if ex-teachers were willing to do so.

The BBC story didn’t consider the many PE and history teachers that graduated from ITT in the summer and are already BDS checked and have not found a teaching job. An emergency scheme to offer them temporary employment ought to have been put in place already to ensure time wasn’t wasted, but the DFE doesn’t seem to be able to manage the market in such a manner. Of course, in former times, local authorities would have taken such action, but they have neither the cash nor the motivation to do so these days.   

Boom in Teaching Vacancies this December

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Are schools starting the recruitment process for teachers required for September 2022 early this school year? Data from TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk would certainly seem to suggest that something is happening that is different to usual.

A look at recorded vacancies for December 2021, up to yesterday, the 17th, compared with the same period in 2019 – the last year before the covid outbreak distorted the labour market for teachers – does suggest some schools might be bringing forward their recruitment process, possibly in case of any lockdown in the New Year? Talk in social media about the leading paid for recruitment platform putting up subscription rates, if correct, might also have had some influence on behaviour.

December recorded vacancies by TeachVac
Subject20192021Percentage +/- (The nearest whole %)
SEN244692%
Primary46577366%
Business437165%
Humanities203260%
Design & Technology8413156%
RE385955%
Leadership20230350%
Music385647%
History426043%
PE628435%
Total2192287631%
Art364319%
Languages10112019%
Geography62678%
Science2913096%
IT79813%
Mathematics273271-1%
English241225-7%
Total2192287631%
Source: TeachVac

Interestingly, the two big departments in secondary schools of English and Mathematics have not followed the general pattern of increases of, on average, about a third. Both of these subjects have recorded falls when compared with December 2019. Might it be that with a greater proportion of trainees on school-based courses, schools feel that they can recruit for the trainee pool without the need to advertise in the open market? Such an approach may say money, but not on a fixed cost subscription package.

The increase in primary vacancies, against a scenario where the sector is facing falling pupil numbers at the entry age group in many parts of the country merits further investigation. However, it is no surprise to see both business studies and design and technology so close to the top of the table. The recent DfE ITT Census contained grim news for schools wanting to recruit teachers in these subjects for September 2022. Wise schools will start recruiting as soon as possible. No doubt any surplus teachers in these subjects can be hired out to other schools within a MAT for a fee.

The growth in posts on the Leadership Scales is interesting. Does it herald the start of a boom in such vacancies, as the pressures of the last two years finally take their toll on headteachers who have told their governing bodies that they will be leaving in the summer?

I will be starting compiling the TeachVac Annual Reviews for the whole labour market and for Leadership posts during 2021 next week, with a view to publication early in 2022.

TeachVac continues to break records in recruiting new applicants; in matches made and in hits on the web site. TeachVac should record some 64,000 vacancies for teachers in 2021; far more than the DfE site. www.teachvac.co.uk

Schools are now signing up to the TeachVac 2022 package that costs £100 to register and £1 per match against a school’s vacancies with a ceiling of £1,000 plus VAT including the registration package, after which all further matches in 2022 are free. Full details of how to registration interest can be found at TeachVac Reports – The National Vacancy Service for Teachers and Schools and registration comes with a free report.

More on November 2021 ITT applications

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November is only the start of the cycle of applications for September 2022, so it is important not to read too much into the data published recently by the DfE. However, traditionally heavy recruiting subjects such as history and PE appear to be doing well as usual. English also did well in the first month. There were also good early outcomes in art; music; mathematics; design and technology and business studies. Physics; geography and computing might be seen to be at the number expected, whereas religious education; biology and chemistry had a weak start to the round. Even allowing for the different method of recording the data for applications for modern languages courses, it may well be that these are not as healthy as might be hoped. The loss of data about individual subjects means little can be said about the subject than that bald fact. Drama, a subject not previously covered on this blog, appears to have had a good level of applications and offers.

As to the geographical breakdown of applicants, we now have data for The Channel Islands – 5 applicants-, – the European Economic Zone – 78 applicants, and the Rest of the World – 589 applicants, of whom 92 were already unsuccessful – about 20% of all unsuccessful applicants so far.

If the numbers from the regions not included in the UCAS count are removed, the total looks very similar to the November 2020 total, after allowing for the extra time period this year. Applications are significantly up from the Eastern Region and The South West, but little different after allowing for the longer time period in the other regions of England.

Applications for primary courses are above the figure for November 2020, but applications overall for secondary courses are the same as last year (UCAS Table B8). In effect, with the extra few days included this year compared with 2020, this might be a real decline, but it is very early days.

School Direct salaried courses continue to attract fewer applications. These may have switched to Apprenticeships, where significant growth over 2020 has been recorded.  Higher Education has recorded virtually the same number of applications as last year, and there were modest increases in School Direct Fees route applications and good growth in SCITT applications. However, all these are not measured against any changes in places on offer. There is also no breakdown by sector: an unhelpful omission.

Overall, there seems little difference from the same point last year. It is to be hoped that the remainder of the recruitment round does not progress as last year, since the 2021 ITT census has some alarmingly low numbers of trainees currently on course to enter the labour market in September 2022. There is now nowhere for the DfE to hide. As they control the application process, they cannot be unaware of progress towards the number of places they want filled, both regionally and in the different phases and subjects. They can also put pressure on providers to work faster in dealing with applications.

Approaching 40% of candidate by provider region are in London, the south East or Eastern Regions. This is in line with where demand is in the labour market for teachers. However, a portion of that demand each year is from the private schools.

It will be February before a real picture emerges for September 2022, but I would already be worried about the outcome for some subjects.