Tag Archives: recruitment

Counting Jobs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

More on BREXIT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My talk to the Merchant Taylors’ Company Education Seminar

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Yesterday, I  was privileged to be able to deliver a talk at a seminar arranged by the Merchant Taylor’s Company. This is one of the Livery Companies and education has always been a key part of their role ever since their foundation many centuries ago.  Below is the text of my talk.

Finding and keeping teachers: Is there an issue?

In the autumn of 2015, the House of Commons Education Select Committee launched an inquiry into the issue of teacher supply. Some 15 months later we still await their report and a lot has happened in the intervening period. For instance, we have had a report on the provision of new teachers from the National Audit Office and an interesting session of the Public Accounts Committee.

I am not sure whether the audience here today are prepared to await the view of the Select Committee or will rather share the NAO’s view that there is indeed an issue in teacher supply and retention?

That is the question I will attempt to deal with today.

Just over 30 years ago I started my study of the leadership labour market in schools. In the early 1990s, I added, firstly, a study of the trends in entry into teaching, and then a full analysis of the labour market for teachers. I regret that during the recession after 2008, I somewhat took my eye of the ball. However, since 2013 I have once again been studying in detail the teacher labour market in some detail.

The remarks in the remainder of my talk are based upon data collected by TeachVac, (the free job board I co-founded in 2013). I suspect some of you use it as a first port of call for mainscale secondary teacher vacancies and for those of you who don’t, we almost certainly collect the vacancies from your web site on a daily basis, assuming you post them there.

So what is the data from TeachVac telling us?

As far as secondary mainscale posts are concerned, subjects fall into three groups;

Group 1 subjects are easy to recruit throughout the year, such as PE and history;

Group 2 subjects become increasingly challenging later in the recruitment round, especially in London and the Home Counties; these include subjects such as English, IT and music.

Group 3 are the difficult to recruit subjects for most schools from quite early in the recruitment round. Subjects include physics, business studies, design and technology and in 2016, geography. However, we don’t expect geography to be a problem in 2017, largely because of improved recruitment into training in September 2016.

You will notice I haven’t mentioned mathematics. Here the overall numbers in training are at a level where most schools should have little problem filling September vacancies, but may struggle when it comes to an unexpected post to fill for January. However, this says nothing about the quality of trainees – a matter of concern that I often hear expressed.

So what can schools do about this recruitment issue? In one sense the government has taken a hand; well perhaps even two hands in “solving” any problem in the state sector.

  • One the one hand, many state funded schools are seeing budgets coming under pressure, despite the additional funds per pupil created by steadily rising rolls for the next few years, the pressures are as a result of government policies, not all of an educational nature, and may damp down demand for teachers.
  • On the other hand, schools have been encouraged to become teacher trainers and grow their own new teachers: Teach First, for schools in challenging circumstances, and School Direct for other schools, and not to overlook the opportunity to create a SCITT (School Based Teacher Training) group that has provided scope for schools to develop their own teachers for nearly a quarter of a century.

This approach to entry into the profession has created a headache for some schools. The DfE controls the total number of training places it is prepared to fund each year. The greater the number taken by schools likely to employ their trainees, the smaller the number remaining for other schools, including the independent sector and Sixth Form Colleges looking to fill a vacancy.

The issue that arises as a consequence is best exemplified in English. This is a subject where many schools find they have vacancies on a regular basis. As a result, it pays to be involved in the training of new teachers. By doing so, the school can obviate the need for an expensive recruitment round with all the inherent risks associated with such a process.

But, if the DfE accepts its responsibility for training for the sector as a whole, then it needs to ensure that its training approach provides for all, not just the schools directly involved in the training process.

In the autumn of 2016 just over 2,200 English graduates were recorded in the DfE’s ITT census as entering training as a teacher across all routes. Of these, a smaller number were left after removing those on Teach First, the School Direct Salaried route and adding an estimate for non-completers.

Even assuming a drop in recorded vacancies in 2017, due to budget pressures not offset by rising rolls, this number may not be enough across the whole of the recruitment cycle.

I don’t think there will be an issue for most schools in finding teachers of English for a September appointment, at least up to the end of the main recruiting season that lasts through into May each year. However, you may not want an unexpected vacancy for a teacher of English for January 2018. Such vacancies may be much harder to fill.

I have used English as a case study, because it is a subject where schools have taken to training the next generation of teachers in significant numbers. As I suggested earlier, there are other subjects, especially in some parts of the country, where schools may struggle to fill vacancies in 2017 and especially for January 2018, even at the present level of school-based training, due to a combination of other reasons.

So, what is to be done? I don’t want to trespass on Alison’s brief, but in an increasingly devolved system of schooling, someone has to take a lead.

  • If you want to treat schools as separate businesses, then each business will have to develop a staffing policy that includes training for new appointments. Such a market will be served by the private sector, but at a cost. That cost takes cash away from teaching and learning, as we have seen with spending on recruitment.
  • The other extreme is a completely managed system. Until the 1970s training, where it was thought necessary, was the responsibility of the employers, whether local authorities or the churches. Robbins, in his famous Report, moved the bulk of teacher training into higher education and pre-entry training became mandatory by the end of the 1970s for teachers in all state-funded schools and not just primary and secondary modern schools.

Well, we don’t have a role for local authorities anymore and the churches have a very different place in society compared with 50 years ago, so do we let schools go it alone on training or find some other model? One solution is for schools to group together in Multi-Academy Trusts that take responsibility for the training for all schools in the Group as one of their functions. After all, a MAT is basically little different to a local authority, unless, of course, you value local democratic accountability.

A local approach does have the merit that it ensures that trainees are roughly in the correct places to meet the demand from schools. After all, what is the point of training new teachers in areas where there are a limited number of vacancies, especially if, as with many career changers into teaching, the new teachers are not mobile.

A second solution, currently being tested by the government, is to improve the skills of the existing workforce, especially in terms of subject knowledge. Whether the current programme for improving the skills of those teaching mathematics and science will be dealt a possibly fatal blow by the recent DfE paper on subject expertise and outcomes, only time will tell. Despite the findings of that Report, I have long been an advocate of ending QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) as a passport to teach anything to anyone at any level. It is only one step better than not needing any preparation for teaching at all.

We have a relatively young teaching force at present and as such professional development should be a key to retaining staff. Perhaps the most worrying DfE statistic of 2016 was the increase in wastage rates, not at the end of the first year of teaching, but after 3-5 years. Where these teachers are going and why, is a key question that needs to be answered. Some may be going overseas, into the rapidly expanding international school market, others may be of an age where they are taking a career break and yet more may be affected by pay, workload and morale, the three defining areas any government needs to pay attention to if it wants to avoid a teacher supply crisis.

Before closing, I just want to say a few words about teaching pupils with special needs. I think much has been achieved for such pupils, but in terms of training teachers, especially to work with those pupils with the greater degree of challenge, much still remains to be done. Training for teachers to work and lead our SEN sector seems to me to be far too haphazard at present. I believe such training must come after the acquisition of the basic skills of being a teacher, but in our fragmented, school-based world how that can be funded remains a challenge.

We are on the cusp of an exciting period in education, as we approach the 150th anniversary of state schooling in 2020. For most of the history of education, teaching has meant one teacher to one class. Anyone who has followed the recent debates about driverless cars or watched programmes about the new gadgets at CES in Las Vegas earlier this month will know how pervasive changes in technology are becoming in our lives. It would be irrational to think that in education technology will stop with the inter-active whiteboard. With more processing power in our pockets than ever seemed feasible a decade ago, the very notion of a five-day school week for 40 weeks a year may come into question, along with our accepted notion of one class: one teacher.

Such changes can have profound effects upon the need for labour in our education system. What will the learning team of the future look like? If Rip Van Winkle had gone to sleep when Forster passed his Education Act and then woken up today would schools be one of the few places where he might still recognise his surroundings and even feel at home?

In the later 1980s, the City, where we are today, experienced its ‘big bang’: out went the bowler hats and share dealing by ‘open outcry’, and in came computer trading and the end of the trading floor. Might education witness a similar revolution driven by technology and a spirit of entrepreneurship that Britain is so good at?

I don’t know, but I do know that our aspiration must be to achieve the best education for all our young people that is possible in a world where the market porter of the 19th century trundling his barrow or carrying Billingsgate’s fish on his head was replaced by the fork-lift truck driver in the 20th century. In the 21st century it is the software engineer that writes the programmes for the automated warehouse that companies must now recruit.

I may, perhaps, have strayed slightly from my brief, but at heart, I believe we do need to ensure not only sufficient teachers for today, but also for tomorrow’s world.

Thank you for listening.

English: early warning

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This is a message for schools not involved in either the School Direct Scheme or Teach First. The number of candidates likely to be available for appointment this September to teach English is already showing signs of being insufficient in number, if vacancies continue at their present rate.

Schools directly entering vacancies into TeachVac receive this information for free every time they enter their vacancy. They can also monitor the wider situation through the TeachVac monthly briefing, sent to all schools that have registered.

Registration and posting of all vacancies are free www.teachvac.co.uk for all schools all the time and it is a free job service to teachers and trainees as well.

The situation in English is largely caused by the large number of the total trainees either on the School Direct Salaried program or on Teach First. A significant proportion of both these groups of trainees are likely to continue working in the schools where they train. This reduces what I call the ‘free pool’, training on the higher education, SCITT and School Direct fee routes that may be available to all schools seeking to fill a vacancy. As is acknowledged by the DfE, at least half of classroom teacher vacancies go to new entrants, these numbers matter.

After taking out Teach First, School Direct salaried and recorded vacancies gathered by TeachVac since 1st January, the number of trainees left in the free pool was just over 1,200 on the 6th January. That probably not enough to fill a vacancy in every secondary school, epsecially if you include the independent sector and Sixth Form Colleges, even applying the 50% rule.

Schools looking for particular types of teachers of English, say with degrees in specific characteristics of English Literature, may well find the numbers available even fewer in total. We also don’t know how evenly spread across England the trainees are, although we do know London and the Home counties are likely to account for more than a third of all nationally advertised vacancies, if 2017 is anything like the last two recruitment rounds.

So far, maths and science are less of an issue in 2017 than English because of better recruitment into training than in recent years, but business studies is already on our radar as likely to also cause problems for schools in 2017. Post BREXIT, we need students of business even more than in the past; Ministers please note.

There is a debate to be had about the balance of training places between different routes and different parts of the country, but the DfE seems reluctant to open that issue up. The Select Committee has an opportunity to do so when it finally writes its report on teacher supply and the Migration Advisory Committee will need to address some aspects when they consider whether maths and science teachers should still qualify for Tier 2 visas?

This year, more information will be channelled through TeachVac, so if you are in a school as a teacher, trainee, leader or are a returner to teaching, do sign up. It is free service and will remain so.

 

 

 

Bursaries Matter?

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Yesterday, UCAS published the December 2016 data for applications to teacher training courses starting in the autumn of this year. The figures are for graduate courses. The data shows that compared with December 2015, applications for courses to train as a primary teachers were very similar this year to levels seen in December 2015. However, there has been a worrying dip in applications from those under the age of 22 for some secondary subjects. Applications from older graduates are much closer to the figures for December 2015; indeed, applicant numbers from those over the age of 40 were exactly the same as in December 2015.

The worry is around the fact that those under the age of 22 make up around a third of applicants, even at these reduced levels. Now it may be that this is a one month dip that will be rectified next month when the January data is published but, if it isn’t, then there is more concern going forward. This is because we we traditionally see final year undergraduates being more concerned in the February to June period in completing their studies and graduating than in filling in applications forms for life after university.

Another explanation might be that the referees of these students are more dilatory in completing their comments than those from older applicants; but why especially in this round, this year? That theory would have more credibility if all subjects were affected. However, applications are actually up in Physical Education and geography. Both were strong subjects in recruitment terms last year and easily met their national recruitment levels.

More worrying are the declines in applications to courses in business studies, design and technology and even English, some of these are subjects where recruitment has been insufficient for some years. It is interesting that the decline in applications for mathematics, where there are generous bursaries available, is very small, with just a few less applications in 2016 than last year. In physics, the numbers seem lower, but that is complicated by the manner in which UCAS report applications for science courses.

Apart from the observed decline in applications from younger candidates, there seems to be an issue in London where the number of offers made is down by around 30% on December 2015. Now, were are only talking of just over 1,000 compared with 1,400 at the same point last year, but with primary numbers probably holding up, this may mean greater issues with secondary numbers in London.

Could it be that the higher costs associated with studying in the capital, plus the requirement to pay another year of fees at around the £9,000 level with no bursary, is finally having an impact on undergraduate thinking and that the class of 2017 are thinking twice about entering training to be a secondary school teacher where there are obvious alternative careers in the private sector?

One shouldn’t make too much from two months data, but a quarter of a century of studying the numbers does make me uneasy. If the January data revels a three month downward trend, then I will be more concerned.

Thank you

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My thank you to everyone that has followed this blog in 2016. By the end of this month or in early February, the 500th post is likely to appear. Not bad for a blog started in January 2013 with no such goal in mind. Rather, it was originally designed to replace my various columns that had appeared in the TES between 1999 and early 2011 and then in Education Journal in a more spasmodic form during the remainder of 2011 and 2012. This blog has allowed me both editorial freedom to write what I have wanted and also to avoid the requirement of a fixed schedule of a column a week that had dominated my life for more than a decade.

Anyway, my thanks to the 11,738 visitors from 88 countries that read at least one post during 2016; creating a total of 22,364 views. The viewing figures have been around the 22,000 mark for the past three years, although the visitor numbers in 2016 were the highest since 2014.

My thanks also go to the many journalists that have picked up on stories that have been run on the blog during 2016. Many of these have been associated with TeachVac, the free to use recruitment site I co-founded in 2014. The recognition of the brand has grown, especially over the past year, so much so that its disruptive technology poses a real threat to more traditional recruitment methods. With funding for Teachvac throughout 2017 secured, plus a growing appetite for the data the site can produce, it will be interesting to see how the market reacts in 2017.

TeachVac can easily meet the needs of a government portal for vacancies suggested in the White Paper last March, with the resultant data helping provide useful management information for policymakers. TeachVac already provides individual schools with data about the state of the trainee pool in the main secondary subjects every time they input a vacancy. With regional data from the census, it is possible to create local figures for individual schools and profile the current recruitment round against data from the past two years taking into account both the total pool and the size of the free pool not already committed to a particular school or MAT.

2017 is going to be an interesting year for recruitment as school budgets come under pressure and it is likely that teachers and trainees in some subjects in some parts of England may find jobs harder to secure than at any time since 2013. However, London and the Home Counties will still account for a significant proportion of the vacancies.

What is unknown is how teachers will react if the government presses ahead with its plans for more selective schools. Will new entrants to teaching be willing to work in schools where a proportion of the possible intake has been diverted to a selective school; will the current workforce continue to work in such schools or seek vacancies in the remaining non-selective parts of the country? No doubt someone has some polling data on this issue.

 

 

Is there a headship crisis?

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According to a story in The Times today, one in ten schools is losing its head teacher each year. Reading the headlines of the story, outside the pay wall, there are examples of schools advertising up to seven times to find a replacement and of schools without a permanent head for three years. Local authorities, still seemingly worth talking to about schools, even by this Tory supporting newspaper, tell of high turnover of heads and head teachers of small schools being enticed away to larger schools by promises of more money. All this makes for a crisis.

Between the early 1980s and 2012, I studies the labour market for head teachers on a regular basis. I stopped, partly because I didn’t’ think there was a crisis at that time and partly because I left my long-term database with my former employers. Since the establishment of TeachVac, I have gradually started to rebuild the data on leadership turnover and will report fully this time next year when there is sufficient comparative data.

A turnover of ten per cent isn’t, in historical terms, anything out of the ordinary, especially as some of the total will have been made up from head teachers required for new schools due to increasing pupil numbers and the 14-18 UTCs and studio schools as well as genuine ‘free schools’. Although there probably not as many of these as a previous Secretary of State might have wished.

For most of the early part of this century, re-advertisement rates for secondary heads were in the 20%+ range; for primary schools, the rate exceeded 30% in most years between 1997/98 and 2009/10, so re-advertisements are nothing new in the leadership market. Indeed, recruiters have made a tidy sum from encouraging schools to take ever larger and glossier advertisements on the basis of recruitment challenges. As regular readers know, TeachVac challenges this principle by offering a free service.

Any school seeking a new head teacher for September that advertises in January and runs a sensible recruitment round should have no problems recruiting unless it has one or more of the following characteristics:

It is a faith school,

It is located in London,

It is a small or very large school,

If a secondary school, it is single-sex or selective (or a secondary modern in a selective area).

Two or more factors and it needs to consider carefully how to recruit a new head teacher, especially if outside of the normal recruitment season from January to March where around 50% of vacancies are advertised each year.

Advertising outside the first quarter of the year, when fewer candidates are looking to move schools, is also often a waste of money, as is putting off candidates through the content of the advertisement or taking a long time over the process; candidates often apply for several posts and may be hired by another school if the process is too long.

Being a school in challenging circumstances has become more of a handicap as MATs and governing bodies seem to think the head teacher needs changing if there is a poor Ofsted report or a disappointing set of examination or test results. There are cases where a change of leadership is appropriate, but not, in my view, in every case.

Without a mandatory qualification for headship, it is difficult to know in details the size of the talent pool for future head teachers, something that should worry those responsible for the system at the EFA and NCTL, since a lack of supply will always drive up the price of a good or commodity and headship is no different to any other type of job in that respect.

At least some head teachers can look forward to recognition through the honours system, and I was delighted to see Professor John Furlong honoured in the latest list for his lifetime of work in teacher education. John, your OBE is a well-deserved mark of respect.

 

 

 

Jam: not today and probably not tomorrow for many

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Today is an important day in the history of the financing of schools; possibly the most important since the 1988 Education Reform Act heralded the introduction of Local Management of Schools.  Already, there has been the National Audit Office report on ‘Financial sustainability of schools’. https://www.nao.org.uk/report/financial-sustainability-in-schools/

This Report makes the point that, The Department [DfE] can demonstrate using benchmarking that schools should be able to make the required savings in spending on workforce and procurement without affecting educational outcomes, but cannot be assured that these savings will be achieved in practice.

This is because, as everyone knows, the DfE doesn’t actually operate schools directly, although Regional School Commissioners come much closer to doing so that at any time in the recent history of schooling in England.

TeachVac, the free to use job matching site that could significantly reduce the spending by schools on recruitment advertising and also the cost of using agencies to recruit permanent staff that is a growing feature of the marketplace, is a case in point.

Despite being developed by experts in both teacher recruitment and software design it has been shunned by the DfE and also be teacher associations, some of whom acknowledge support from paid recruitment sites on their own web sites. One association has even refused TeachVac permission to take exhibition space at their annual conference in 2017 on the grounds that’ we have sufficient recruiters exhibiting already’!

With such a playing field it is no wonder that driving down costs in schools has been so difficult. Perhaps, now is the time for a sector-wide task force to examine methods of reducing costs to schools through better procurement. In olden times there were benchmark figures for expenditure issued by bodies such as the Association of Education Committees and other similar national bodies. Indeed, such statistics help me compile my article on ‘variations on local authority provision on education’ way back in 1981 at the start of my career.

With the publication later today of the second stage consultation on a National Funding formula it is interesting to look back at the progress made over the past 35 years and to note that differences in funding between schools and authorities was a big issue even then. When the cake isn’t large enough, it is not surprising to find those that want to eat it fighting over the size of their slice.

If floor and ceilings are included in the funding formula consultation, as expected, then as the NAO Report shows, there will be pain for all. Maybe the DfE hasn’t published the ITT allocations for 2017 as they reflect an acceptance of that pain through reduced funding for employment opportunities for teachers?

What is clear that even if life is marginally easier for some schools after the Funding Formula announcement, for many it will be bad news and a real need to pull together to make savings.

 

Overseas teachers help take the strain

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Unemployment in Europe may have been been driving teachers to work in England. Figures released today by the DfE as part of the ITT statistics for 2015/16  https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/initial-teacher-training-trainee-number-census-2016-to-2017 show that record numbers of teachers from Spain (1,977), Greece (572) and Romania (431) were awarded QTS. There were also 545 teachers from Poland, although that was a small drop on the record number (580) of teachers from Poland recorded as being awarded QTS in 2014/15. Interestingly, only 274 teachers were recorded as being awarded QTS from the Republic of Ireland despite this group of teachers often being cited as helping solve the recruitment crisis.

Of course, being granted QTS doesn’t mean a person is actually teaching in a state-funded school or even a school and no figures have been published for those that originally trained in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland where school systems are increasingly different to those in England.

Although numbers from the Commonwealth countries, with a right to convert a teaching qualification into QTS, were higher in 2015/16 than the previous year, they only totalled 1,652 plus a further 379 that had qualified in the USA and gained QTS under the Gove changes. There may, however, be others teaching on a temporary basis that haven’t bothered to obtain QTS. Overall, 5,032 teachers from overseas were shown as being granted QTS in 2015/16. There isn’t a breakdown by either primary or secondary, or by subject, or where in the country they were teaching. All potentially useful facts to help understand the use of overseas teachers.

Many of these teachers will be subject to visa restrictions once the UK leaves the EU, if free movement of people is restricted. It would have been interesting to have seen the data on tier 2 visas issues by the Home Office as a part of this statistical bulletin. As far as I am aware, the Migration Advisory Committee has yet to rule on the future of teaching and tier 2 visas.

The data issued today in the ITT census will make it more of a challenge to retain either biology or chemistry in the list of eligible subjects, as biology exceeded recruitment targets by 15% and chemistry recruited to 99% of their target. Physics, although more trainees were recruited than last year, remains a challenge with 19% under-recruitment. In mathematics, the target was increased by 500, so although more trainees were recruited there was still a 16% shortfall against target. Whether this is enough to keep the subject as a Tier 2 visa subject depends upon whether the evidence on vacancies and trainee numbers indicate a shortfall in numbers. I guess everyone agrees there are issues to do with quality and there are clearly regional shortfalls. However, the MAC usually only considers the national picture.

As recruitment for 2017 has already started a decision on any changes to visa regulations is really needed quite soon if there is not to be confusion for September 2017. The influx of teachers from overseas is the other side of the coin of teachers from England going to teach elsewhere in the world. On these figures the outflow is likely to be larger than the numbers recruited from overseas.

A shortage of leaders?

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Is there a shortage of school leaders that will become even worse over the next few years? This was the gloomy message from the report issued on Friday jointly by Teach First, Teaching Leaders and the Future Leaders Trust. https://www.teachfirst.org.uk/sites/default/files/The%20School%20Leadership%20Challenge%202022.pdf

As someone that has spent more than thirty years looking at leadership turnover, I have read the report, whose analytical support was provided by McKinsey, with interest. The report calls for a range of different interventions under four main headings:

  1. Develop a new generation of school leaders
  2. Expand the pool of candidates for executive roles
  3. Drive system change to support leaders more effectively and provide clear career pathways
  4. Build the brand of school leadership

These required interventions reflect the lack of government action ever since the Labour government abolished the mandatory NPQH qualification for headship and the coalition created many new leadership posts with the development of MATs and executive headships. The latter issue has been dealt with by this blog in previous posts, most notably in July this year with the post headed ‘Can we afford 2,000 MATs?’

The figures in Friday’s report, if accurate, are challenging with, it is suggested, a possible shortfall of more than 20,000 leaders in the coming decade. Now that may be the case, but it depends upon all the factors identified by the compilers of the report coming true. As noted, the greatest risk is the uncontrolled expansion of MATs creating a significant number of new posts.

While in the school sector, the growth in pupil numbers may lead to a development of more assistant head roles to recreate those abolished when roles were falling the likelihood of that happening is probably going to be governed by the degree of finance available to schools; a point largely ignored by the writers of the report. The report also misses the extent to which assistant head numbers have been inflated by what are essentially difficult to fill middle leadership posts such as head of mathematics and science departments being paid as assistant headship in order to be able to recruit to those positions.

Where I am with the writers of the report is in the need for creating not so much clear career pathways, they already exist, but in helping young teachers and especially returners develop the necessary skills to be appointed to a leadership post. With teaching increasingly a profession for women in both primary and secondary schools, someone, and it may be the three groups that commissioned this research, has to develop a strategy that allows the very large number of young women now in the profession to take up leadership roles both before and after any career breaks. If the profession doesn’t do that then we truly will have a crisis in a few years’ time.

One solution suggested by the report is to recruit outsiders to senior posts. I doubt that will work for most headships. In the past when asked my view of this solution by journalists, I have always asked if I could become their editor with no knowledge of journalism. You can image their answers.

Where I do think there is a possible direction of travel is for larger MATs. After all, there are example of CEOs of MATs currently without either any or any recent school experience. The larger the organisation the more leadership requires general not specific knowledge. Teaching and learning can be the responsibility of a second tier officer, whereas overall strategy remains the responsibility of the CEO. In effect, CEOs of MATS become very similar to Superintendents of US School districts, some of whom are recruited from the worlds of business and commerce.

Where you cannot recruit easily from outside the profession is where the leadership role requires hands-on experience of teaching and learning.  Despite the comments in the report, the majority of problems in recruitment in the past has been in the primary sector where the ratio of deputies to heads is much smaller than in the secondary sector.  Filling a faith school headship in an inner-city schools seeking a new head teacher in April has always been a challenge. This report doesn’t show whether it as actually any harder than it was twenty-five years ago.

In summary, the report is helpful in reminding everyone of the need for sufficient good leaders for all our schools and some of the risks ahead. The need for action over preparation is also vital, but the report doesn’t deal with who should take on the task? Presumably, the three organisations that put their names to the report would all like to play a part.