Tag Archives: recruitment

Am teacher will travel

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The BBC is reporting that another top UK Independent School is opening up a campus in Asia. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35533953 I am sure that the move will make good business sense and possibly even help to keep down fees in their UK operation if it makes money.

The BBC piece concludes that there are now about 8,000 international schools around the world, teaching 4.26 million students, according to research by the International School Consultancy. Apparently, nowhere has growth been faster than in Asia.

Such has been the growth that the BBC article reports Thailand now has over 172 international curriculum schools, half of them following England’s national curriculum.

Malaysia has 142, Japan 233, and Singapore – which makes it difficult for foreigners to enrol in local schools – around 63. Myanmar could also become a hotspot – Dulwich College will open there next year. .Hong Kong which had 92 such schools in 2000, now has 171. Only South Korea has seen a retraction, with some international schools struggling to fill places.

However, the big growth has been in mainland China. From a dozen schools 15 years ago, China has some 530 English-medium international schools, catering for 326,000 students.

Now those that have heard me speak at conferences recently will have noted that I have said I was one of the few people that would be happy to see a slowdown in the Chinese economy because of this growth in schools. I have said that too many international schools in China could be a real drain on teacher supply in this country.

If we assume that the majority of the 8,000 schools worldwide use English as at least a partial medium of instruction and employ an average of ten UK trained teachers per school that would mean upwards of 80,000 trained teachers not available to work in the UK. Assuming a 10% growth, would mean 800 new schools a year and as a result possibly 8,000 teachers departing overseas to staff these schools, this plus the regular replacement numbers for posts in existing schools. This might explain some of the growth in departure rates identified in the recent NAO Report. 8,000 teachers would equate to between a quarter and a third of the output of training in England, although presumably some of the teachers going overseas will come from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, so the lower figure might be more realistic. Even so, anything above 10% would be worrying, especially in the subjects where there is a shortage of supply.

It is not clear what can be done to stem the growth of international schools and it is becoming a valuable export industry that no doubt also helps to steer undergraduates in the direction of UK universities. Perhaps we will need to import more teachers from overseas, but that won’t go down well with those worried about immigration.

What we cannot do is allow schools in deprived areas of England to be starved of teachers to satisfy the demands of the affluent middle-classes of the emerging Asian nations.

 

 

Another market failure

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Two studio schools for 14-18 year olds in the midlands are to close because of a failure to recruit enough students. This is how the message was announced by the trust responsible for the schools.

The Midland Academies Trust is to change the learning provision for students at its studio schools in Hinckley and Nuneaton.  Students will now be given the opportunity to continue their studies at other schools within the Trust supported by North Warwickshire and Hinckley College.  They will continue with the specialist CREATE Framework, supported by personal coaches and enjoy work experience arrangements aligned with the key features of the studio school model.

The decision comes as increasing financial pressures due to low pupil recruitment make the economic viability of small schools hugely challenging. The studio schools cater for 300 students each (600 in total) but there are currently a total of 157 pupils on roll across both schools. Year 10 and Year 12 students will be given the opportunity to continue their studies at either The George Eliot School or The William Bradford Academy from January 2016.  Current staff will continue to work with them and they will continue with their work placements and relationships with employers.

The Year 11 and Year 13 students will remain at the studio schools until the end of the academic year. – See more at: http://www.msc.leics.sch.uk/news?story=47#sthash.Ho3nB2FV.dpuf

At least the examination year pupils are to be catered for without the need to move school just over a term and a half before their examinations. Hopefully, they won’t experience any serious staff changes.

The Trust responsible for the two schools posted this announcement on the 1st December. As I pointed out when the UTC in the west midlands announced its closure in the spring, local authorities weren’t allowed to just shut down a school at short-notice.

Indeed, it is probably time that the EFA has talks with the government about a protocol on closure procedures, especially where it is due to financial viability. With the first stage of the admissions process now largely finished for 2016, a stress test, like that applied to the banks, should be administered by the EFA to all schools it funds and a list of those at risk published so that parents can decide whether moving their child at 14 is really a sensible idea.

In many ways I think the notion of a 14-18 sector is a good one and some of the schools are already flourishing with good recruitment, but many aren’t. After all, why would a school want to wave goodbye to four years of possible funding by encouraging students to change school at 14 unless by doing so their results improved.

Market failure, especially in new products, isn’t unusual. These schools do represent a new type of schooling that may need more marketing to parents. Whether we should be experimenting in an age of austerity where the government wants to take a billion pounds out of education procurement – presumably including spending on marketing – is an interesting question.

Could the same result have been achieved just by general further education colleges widening their offering to the 14-16 age-group? What are the real costs of each of these new UTCs and studio schools? As I have said elsewhere, each school needs a head teacher and other leadership staff. This puts pressure on the pool of leaders that isn’t an inexhaustible supply, making it more difficult for every school looking for a new leader.

However, the biggest question for debate is that of how far our education system should be organised on market principles?

Recruitment Controls on ITE part 2

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Earlier in the week I estimated it might be some time next week when recruitment controls would be introduced in PE. I speculated that the university providers in the North West might be the first to receive the email from the NCTL imposing these controls. After looking at the data issued today from UCAS at, https://www.ucas.com/sites/default/files/dcs_03_05nov2015.pdf I am inclined to think that by the end of this week HEIs across the country may be told to put on the brakes and some schools may also be receiving warnings that the position in their region is such as to bring recruitment under close scrutiny. Controls across the board in PE may not be far off being imposed.

Viewing the UCAS data showed some 1,035 applicants are already in the system looking for a place on a PE programme. However, as this is from the table that measures applicants by course type, UCAs staff have confirmed to me that some applicants have applied to more than one route leading to over-counting in relation to actual applicant numbers.  As another UCAS table shows applicants at 670 and that number is the more accurate figure for the number of bodies that have applied. Even so, this means that within a short period of the admissions process opening applicants for more than two thirds of places have applied to train as a PE teacher.

That’s applicants, not applications. As the Teacher Supply Model figure for 2016 showed only 999 places required to be filled – forget the 2,166 places allocated as that number is now irrelevant – there are already more applicants than trainees needed in the system: would that it were so in Physics as well where, despite the generous bursaries and scholarships, there are only around 30 recorded applicants already in the system.

I am sure that there will be a rush by HEIs that don’t have any safety net under the present system, unlike the School Direct providers, to make offers as fast as possible before they are capped. Now with the demand for both men and women to teach the subject this may pose some problems for schools in 2017 if there is a considerable gender imbalance as a result of a large number of early offers being made.

One solution might have been to create a closing date, as there used to be in primary, to allow all applicants that applied by that date to be considered. It wasn’t a perfect solution, and was open to abuse, but it did neutralise the benefit of an early application and allowed the best candidates from a time period to be recruited. Still, it is too late to do anything like that now.

As expected, English, history and primary have attracted significant numbers of early applications, but not in the same league as in PE. It seems that even the prospect of £9,000 and no help with living costs isn’t putting of applicants to train as a PE teacher. Interestingly, we don’t have a breakdown of the age profile of those that have applied to see whether it mainly undergraduates or career changers that form the bulk of those that applied when the admissions system opened. My hunch would be more undergraduates than thirty somethings.

I am not sure how often I will look at these figures because of the time it takes, but possibly once a month. Daily figures are a long way from the situation in 2013 when even publishing the data in August revealing a possible crisis meant big trouble for the writer of this blog. But then the world didn’t know what they know now about teacher supply.

i am also grateful to UCAS staff for drawing my attention to the need to be clear about applicants and their choices and individual applicants as a body of individuals.

Recruitment Controls

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How soon before recruitment controls are introduced into PE teacher recruitment for 2016? I guess the answer lies in whether the initial burst of applications recorded in the data already published by UCAS is followed many more applications or whether this initial rush is replaced by a more steady flow of applications.

In view of the fact that the Teacher Supply Model predicted a need for around 1,000 trainees in PE in 2016, but the NCTL allocated many more places than the TSM figure – indeed proportionally more than in any other secondary subject – the need for controls will almost certainly come sooner rather than later. With applications to all routes already topping the 1,000 mark (applicants can make up to three applications and they may not all be in PE) and recruitment floor numbers specified for the School routes it seems likely that some university courses will be the first to receive the email imposing recruitment controls and curtailing any more offers.

The present three application system makes the whole exercise more of a challenge to understand than it would have been under the former sequential application system where applications and applicants could be more easily matched together. However, it does offer more choice to applicants, albeit that they may find themselves having to attend more interviews than under the former system.

The other subject where it looks as if recruitment controls might become necessary is history; always a popular subject. I am not sure about what might happen in primary now that the bursary rates have been reduced. Will this put off some applicants who might have been prepared to train to teach at the former bursary rates or are there really lots of graduates that see primary teaching as the career of choice? The next few weeks will clearly show the pattern that develops and whether or not the bursary reduction has affected recruitment.

Interestingly, although there has been a good spread of applications across the different regions of England, there are far more applications to courses and schools in the North West than in other regions. This might mean recruitment controls might be more likely in that region than in some others if this trend continues in the early part of the admissions round; we shall see, and universities will no doubt be watching the admissions figures on a daily basis until the trends become clearer.

Teacher Supply in 2017

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The National College recently published details of the 2016 entry to teacher preparation courses starting in the autumn of 2017 and I commented on the data in an earlier post. Here are some further thoughts about how the decisions might affect the labour market for teachers in 2017. Now, I know that is a long way off and we still haven’t had the ITT census for 2015, but these numbers matter.

The first big change, as I noted in the previous post, is the inclusion of Teach First in the Teacher supply modelling process. This change cuts around 2,000 entrants from the total but will allow the government to claim that it has provided sufficient teachers if recruitment continues at the level we expect to see when the 2015 figures are published. Now the last time a government did this sort of thing was when it incorporated the old GTTP and other employment-based numbers into the modelling process and provided a single figure. In that respect, Teach First has always been an anomaly. When the numbers were outwith the published planning process there was always a risk that the government would train too many teachers. Indeed, between 2010 and 2014 Teach First may have led to some over-supply of teachers. Since that isn’t the case now, the incorporation of the numbers can save the government’s blushes, and won’t actually reduce the intake into training. It will just remove empty places from the system. The problems will arise when teaching once again becomes a more attractive career for graduates.

As in the past two years, the National College has allow bids for more training places, especially from schools, than the government statisticians seem to think we need. There are higher allocations except in mathematics and design and technology where allocations for 2016 are down on the 2015 figure; this despite there being more mathematics places required by the Teacher Supply Model than last year. Perhaps schools have decided that it isn’t worth making the effort when there just aren’t the quality candidates looking to enter teaching in their area. The following list shows the relationship between the level of allocations and the Teacher Supply Model for secondary subjects. For this list, it is possible to imagine where recruitment controls might be applied first.

allocations as % of TSM
Physical Education 217%
Geography 215%
Physics 215%
Computing 211%
History 210%
Drama 209%
Music 209%
Chemistry 204%
Business Studies 200%
Religious Education 198%
English 165%
Biology 160%
Modern Foreign Languages 158%
Art & Design 157%
Mathematics 135%
Design & Technology 116%
Other 107%
Classics 57%

Interestingly, if anyone wants to start a classics course there still seems to be places unallocated. PE and history course providers on the other hand seem almost certain to be subject to recruitment controls, at least in some parts of the country. On the other hand, those with maths courses seem highly unlikely to be subject to any recruitment controls at these levels.

In passing, it is worth noting that, if the economy were suddenly to turn downward, and the National College didn’t impose the recruitment controls, then the Treasury would be faced with close to £180 million pounds of unnecessary tuition fee costs. That doesn’t seem likely at this point in time.

TeachVac expands its free service into the Primary Sector

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Teaching and schools have featured strongly in the news today with the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire Show covering the issue of possible teacher shortages and most other news media featuring the opening of new free schools at the start of term. The Victoria Derbyshire piece is at 30 minutes into the show and can be seen on BBC i-player for anyone interested. The head from Educating Essex and the President of ATL were joined in the discussion on the show by a Teach First primary teacher and the chair of the House of Commons Education Select Committee, with a small contribution from myself.

A little earlier, just before 0830 the Secretary of State for Education was interviewed on BBC Breakfast News about the new Free Schools. Not I think her finest hour in front of the TV cameras, but sadly you cannot judge for yourself because BBC Breakfast doesn’t appear on the BBC i-player. If anyone recorded the interview, hopefully it might turn up on youtube or somewhere else.

It was disappointing to hear a Secretary of State that didn’t know how many free schools weren’t opening today due to problems and even worse, what was going to happen to the children affected by schools not opening on time. In the days before cabinet government, could you imagine an Education Committee that would let such a thing happen? Most had far more civic pride in the service they provided regardless of their political background.

TeachVac launched its expansion into the primary sector yesterday and also welcomed another of the large academy chains to the site. As more schools and applicants register for free, so the quality of the data collected improves and more and more vacancies can be matched with teachers. I am delighted to see we are beginning to understand in ‘real time’ what is happening in the labour market for teachers. There are still issues about measuring quality, especially in mathematics where trainee numbers at the ITT census last November looked as if they might have been sufficient to meet demand but clearly haven’t been.

I suppose the trips to Canada and South Africa recruiting maths teachers are about as welcome to deputy heads as taking a press gang out during the Napoleonic Wars was to naval officers of the day. The only difference is that ship’s captains didn’t lead press gangs, but some heads might lead the recruitment team on overseas visits. However, in my experience work trips are never the fun others think they were, despite what sometimes sound like exotic locations.

There have been concerns about the pre-entry skills tests affecting recruitment. I thought it was a good idea to move them to before entry, but I may need to re-think my view if it appears that the change is reducing the intake of possible trainees that might have passed the tests at the end of a PGCE or School Direct year when they could have had some coaching in areas they found challenging. After all, we cannot afford to lose would-be teachers. The alternative would be for the government to pay potential teachers to attend courses that improve their knowledge and skills to the standard required. About as likely as paying trainees fees, I fear.

Please Keep Recruiting

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The latest data on applications by graduates to train as a teacher was published earlier today by UCAS. The good news is the gap between the total number of applicants this year and the number recruited at this point last year is still being closed; it is down to just under 3,400. The gap closed by around 15% in the last month, but time is running out to eradicate it completely by the time courses start in just over a month from now and the total is still some eight per cent below the 2014 figure.

The more depressing news is that only physical education, history and languages among secondary subjects will probably manage to meet their target as set by the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model. All other subjects will probably fail to make the target number unless there are a significant number of last minute offers. In geography, music and business studies it looks as if the position is even worse than at this time last year. In several other subjects, an increase in the TSM number for last year means even with the improved offers the shortfall may be greater than experienced last year.

Of as much concern is that there are still a large number of conditional offers in the system. As most graduates should now know their degree class it may be that health, criminal checks or skill test results are still awaited. Even in history, the majority of offers are conditional, so the level of possible dropout is crucial.

The DfE has today also updated is key messages for School Direct – not please note for teacher preparation courses – to entice more graduates to be trainees. I thought that I would share the messages with readers;

Messages to use to recruit to School Direct Updated 30 July 2015

1. A great teacher can earn up to £65,000 as a leading practitioner
2. Get £25,000 tax-free to train to teach
3. Teachers start on a salary of between £22k and £27k
4. Teaching is a career for achievers. Three-quarters of new teachers now have a 1st or 2:1 degree
5. Teacher training is better than ever before
6. Good teachers are in demand, and there are excellent employment prospects
7. Get young people inspired by the subject you love
8. Inspire young people to fulfil their potential
9. Change a young person’s life for the better
10. Help young people to realise their ambitions
11. Go home each day knowing you’ve made a difference

All worthy sentiments, although I was told to avoid ‘get’ as it was considered slang. May be it isn’t so offensive nowadays.

The other interesting figure is the fate of the salaried route in School Direct where conversion rates remain much lower than for other routes into teaching. Indeed, the secondary salaried route may yield fewer trainees than the former Graduate Teacher Training Programme that it replaced did in some of the years when it was in operation.

Applications are still down in all regions and all age groups, with London some 600 applicants down on this point last year. Applicants from the over-40s seem to be holding up better than from any other age group.

So, please carry on recruiting through the holiday period: we need the applicants.

 Pool for profit

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As we come to the end of another school year I have been reflecting upon the state of teacher supply. TeachVac the recruitment site free to both schools and teachers is now one year old. I seems incredible that the team started only started work on the concept last July.

In September, the TeachVac site will be extended to cover the primary sector, still for free, and will handle vacancies at all levels from classroom teacher to head. Future developments may include a portal for support, administrative and technical staff since they now comprise such a large percentage of the workforce and the addition of vacancies in the many international schools across the world that recruit teachers qualified in England. One of the issues is whether the latter group of schools should benefit from free access to the TeachVac site in the same way as schools across England: discussions are still underway.

There is now widespread acceptance that the teacher recruitment market is becoming more challenging. However, there are still those that see the solution as letting anyone walk in off the street and start teaching. There is another group that believes that anyone with subject knowledge can teach. A read of any Ofsted report of a school with a large number of unqualified teachers would probably provide some cogent reasons why that is not the case. Indeed, Ofsted inspections might usefully report on unqualified teachers as well as how well NQTs have been trained. But, a full discussion of the issues relating to un-qualified teachers will have to wait for another post.

More interesting is the debate about whether the recruitment market for teacher is changing? In one respect, the market may just be responding to changing conditions: a move from a glut of teachers to widespread shortages. In another respect, making trainees spend even more time in schools may curtail their enthusiasm for job hunting while in schools, especially if they are aware that their services are in demand and they can afford to wait.

Historically, many local authorities operated ‘pool’ systems on behalf of primary schools in their locality. New entrants filled in a single application form and were interviewed; those successful were offered to schools looking for teachers.  In the days when local authorities had budgets this was a free service, but it always had a cost attached to it even if it was hidden.

These days some recruitment agencies are offering trainees, and indeed all teachers, the chance to complete a single application form and the agency will find them a job that matches their needs. They will then, in some cases, charge the school a fee for finding a teacher. They may also negotiate the best salary possible for the teacher. All right and proper in a market situation. It saves applicants time and effort, although they lose the personal touch an application tailored to an individual school brings, and it can save schools money where several adverts may be necessary to recruit a teacher.

This approach comes as a shock to secondary schools used to advertising every vacancy in a national marketplaces. I would, you will not be surprised to know, advocate that schools do still advertise their vacancy for free on TeachVac and they then decide whether they have received any applications. In easy to recruit subject such as PE recruitment might be straightforward, but those looking for a physics or business studies teacher for January 2016 or even during August for September 2015 might find that using outside help could eventually be a cheaper solution.

It’s official: no recruitment crisis

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The Minister for Schools has told the TES there isn’t a recruitment crisis in schools. However, in the same interview he did admit that there was ‘a challenge’ and that the challenge was ‘being managed’. The on-line report of his interview can be found at: https://www.tes.co.uk/news/school-news/breaking-news/schools-minister-there-no-recruitment-crisis

Now it may be mere sophistry to claim that there isn’t a crisis but to admit to a challenge. After all, we don’t have a definition for what would constitute either a crisis or a challenge in teacher recruitment. So let’s try and crunch a few numbers. According to the DfE Teacher Supply Model the for 2014/15 there was a need for 14,295 trainees in the secondary sector ITT that year. Assuming 10% would drop out during the year that would have left just under 13,000 potential completers looking for teaching jobs this year if all places had been filled.

However, the ITT census, confirmed in figures re-released this week, showed 13,866 trainees were recruited. Take off the 10%, and the available number of trainees is likely to have been 12,500, including the over-recruitment in physical education and history. As the DfE estimates that 50% of classroom teacher vacancies each year are taken by new entrants that would require 25,000 vacancies for classroom teachers in secondary schools across the whole of 2015 to exhaust the pool of trainees. To date, TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk has recorded just over 16,000 such vacancies since January, with just the autumn term to come. So, the headline figure might well not yet be at crisis level, although it is obviously challenging.

However, the DfE has a responsibility not just to worry about the overall numbers, but the component parts as well. Here the TeachVac data reveals a different story. Applying the 50% rule to the ITT pool and setting the number against recorded vacancies since January 2015 reveals that business studies, social studies and design and technology already have more vacancies recorded than trainees. In English, IT and geography the remaining ‘pool’ of trainees is below 10% and in most other subjects the pool is between 20-30%. This latter number should be sufficient, if evenly distributed across the country; but that almost certainly isn’t the case. As a result, some areas of the country will have concerns about recruitment across a wider range of subjects.

It is also worth noting that when comparing the School Workforce Census for 2014 with that of 2013, vacancies had increased, albeit as the census is taken in November the absolute numbers were still very low; the percentage of teachers teaching English and mathematics despite not having any post ‘A’ level qualification in the subject had increased and the number of temporary and unqualified teachers had also increased.

Taking all this together, the Minister is definitely correct to accept that there is a challenge. I think he ought to spell out at what level it would become a crisis? He also told the TES that he was ‘managing the challenge’.  Now managing isn’t synonymous with tackling, so I wonder exactly what he meant by managing. I guess, making sure pupils aren’t sent home because a school cannot find a teacher and reminding everyone that not only do academies not need to employ a teacher with qualifications in the subject they don’t even need a qualified teacher: any suitable person will do.

Tell your Head

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The big story today is how the NHS can save money by better procurement. This provides me with an ideal hook on which to remind everyone about the success of TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk the free to use recruitment service for schools and teachers.

It has always seemed to me something of an irony that as the ability to recruit teachers becomes more of a challenge so the cost of doing so goes up, transferring resources from teaching and learning into the coffers of the private sector.

As a result, I worked with others to establish TeachVac, a recruitment service with the aim that using it would be free to both schools and teachers. We went live in January serving just main scale vacancies in secondary schools but have now expanded into all secondary vacancies up to and including leadership. In the autumn we expect TeachVac to expand into the primary and special school sectors.

TeachVac has a simple registration service and for schools that have difficulty with their URN, the most common registration problem, there is both a helpful demonstration video and a helpline to talk admin staff through the registration process.

For teachers it’s even easier to register a series of job preferences. Matching takes place daily and a job posted before lunch can be attracting interest the same evening. For main scale vacancies TeachVac has access to the overwhelming majority of vacancies as they arise using the best of modern technology.

As a bonus, with main scale vacancies schools are told each time they register what the likely size of the pool of trainees left is like. This can help schools judge how challenging recruitment might be.

Next year, as we have the data, the TeachVac team will refine this data down to a more regional level. Not that such a refinement will matter in subjects such as business studies, design and technology and in the next few weeks English, as in these subjects the pool has either already run dry or is about to do so. Those school unlucky enough to need to make an appointment for January will really struggle to do so in some parts of the country, but at least by using TeachVac they will know that is the case and can consider alternative arrangements and how useful throwing money at advertising really is?

The message about TeachVac is spreading quickly, but to keep down costs we need to remind you that if you are a school seeking to post a vacancy or a teacher or trainee looking for a teaching post at any level bookmark www.teachvac.co.uk and register today. Every million pounds TeachVac helps schools save on recruitment can help improve teaching and learning.

Tell your head and chair of governors and anyone in the staffroom looking for a job now or in the future to register today. Both schools and teachers receive regular newsletters about the recruitment scene.