Tag Archives: religious education

Find a teacher

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As the 26th May and ‘Thank a Teacher’ Day draws nearer I have looked at TeachVac statistics for vacancies in 2022 up to the 10th May compared with the vacancy number for the whole of 2019, the last full year before the pandemic. The statistics make for grim reading.

In seven areas, the total vacancies recorded so far in 2022 exceed the total recorded for the whole of 2019.

Subject 20192022Percentage +/- (The nearest whole %)
Teaching and Learning(Pastoral)50271542%
SEN61084539%
Social Sciences888107721%
RE1127132818%
Design & Technology252426646%
Leadership470850036%
IT182618461%
Business16571599-4%
Languages29322793-5%
Vocational432408-6%
Geography18121702-6%
Music11801031-13%
History13651190-13%
Total6456954453-16%
PE19831575-21%
Primary1664612964-22%
Science80596066-25%
Mathematics68485017-27%
Art1337952-29%
English63874253-33%
Source: TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk

These include subject areas such as religious education and design and technology where there have already been more vacancies posted in the first four and a bit months of 2022 than during the whole of 2019. Grim news for any school looking for a September appointment and possibly a catastrophe for schools that will need to make an appointment for January 2023.

Interestingly, it is still the EBacc subjects where recruitment is less buoyant. In the case of maths, English and the sciences, vacancies are still adrift of the 2019 total by some margin. That doesn’t mean everything is great, even in these subjects because the vacancies are still close to the total for the pool of new entrants, especially once those trainees already committed to schools are excluded from the calculations.

So, ‘Thank a Teacher’ Day must also be ‘recruit a trainee into teaching’ day, week and month if we are going to continue to improve the education for all children wherever they live and whatever school they attend.

At TeachVac, we monitor trends at every level from geographical to phase and subject and career grade. Our reports provide invaluable intelligence to schools, MATs, dioceses, local authorities and others interested in the labour market for teachers. The reports are also the most comprehensive daily reports available.

There are still a couple of weeks to go to the resignation date at the end of May and so far, this week, TeachVac has recorded more than 2,800 new vacancies in the course of just two days. By the end of this week, the total for 2022 could be in excess of 55,00 or less than 9,000 behind the total for the whole of 2019.

The teaching workforce crisis doesn’t receive the same attention as the NHS crisis, but its effects are just as key to the nation’s health, welfare and economic prosperity. Sadly, there was no recognition in the Queen’s speech of the issues facing teacher supply. Rearranging the organisational structure of schooling by making all schools academies may be a solution, but don’t bet on it.

Not much of a Christmas Present

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There is a need to be cautious about making too much of the latest DfE data on applications to start graduate training as a teacher in Autumn 2022. The newly published data covers the period up to mid-January 2022. However, this included both the Christmas break and the omicron infection surge of covid cases plus the first Christmas break for the new DfE application process.

Any one of these factors might have been a reason for treating comparisons with previous years cautiously. Taken as a whole, there must be a view that it won’t be until the February data – the half-way point in recruitment – that a clear picture will emerge, especially because of the large number of applications awaiting a decision from a provider.

Nevertheless, some comments are possible. In the primary sector, applications are close to the level of January two years ago at 18,300. In reality, this is the lowest January number for many years for applications, but should not be a cause for concern. In the secondary sector, the 20,254 applications are some 2,000 below the 2020 figure for January and 8,000 down on the admittedly high 2021 number. Comparison with 2020 is probably more helpful. In terms of applicants, there were about 750 more than at this point two years ago, but some may be making fewer choices.

Translating the overall number of ‘offers’ into issues for individual subjects produces four different groups. Firstly, those subjects where ‘offers’ – note ‘offers’, not applicants as that data aren’t available – are up and the expected recruitment level should be met. Amongst the subjects tracked, there are no subjects in this grouping. Secondly there are subjects where there are more offers, but the recruitment level won’t be reached on present levels. Physics, design and technology and chemistry fall into this group.

The third group is where there are either similar offer levels to two years ago or fewer offers than at this point in the cycle two years ago, but recruitment targets should be met. History, physical education, biology and art fall into this group.

Finally, there are subjects such as languages, religious education, music, mathematics, geography, English, computing and business studies where ‘offers’ are below the same point two years ago and unless the number of ‘offers’ made picks up, recruitment target may well not be met. As noted earlier, this list should be treated with some caution for the three reasons stated earlier.

Slightly worryingly, the largest increase in applicants seems to be amongst those in the oldest age groupings, with 140 more applicants aged over 55 at the point that they made their application than two years ago. New graduates still form the bulk of the applicants, but the 2,989 age 21 or under compares with 2,830 two years ago from this age grouping: an increase, but not a massive endorsement of teaching as a career. For the 22-year-olds the increase is from 2,080 to 2,098: hardly noticeable. London and The South East account for around a third of applications. This is good news if there are sufficient places on courses and the applications are spread across all subjects, as these are the two regions where demand for teachers is at the highest levels.

In summary, there is a degree of caution about the data in this monthly release, but there is almost certainly work still to be done to avoid another year of under-recruitment and a tight labour market for schools in 2023.

Losing the teacher supply battle

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This time last year I raised the question of whether we would recruit enough trainees to become teachers in 2014, in a post dated 1st June 2013, and headed ‘Missing the Target is a Known’. Sadly, I have to make the same prediction for the 2014 round that now has but three months to run before the majority of courses start in September.

With schools so heavily involved, and would-be trainees needing to pass the Skills Tests before starting their course, anyone that hasn’t applied by mid-July, effectively at some point during the next six weeks, will probably struggle to find a course unless the NCTL makes it clear to providers that they should recruit right up to the wire, as many universities have always had to do when recruitment was challenging.

The auguries for recruiting new trainees are not good. Recently the Association of Graduate Recruiters said that nine out of ten graduate employers still have vacancies for this autumn, with businesses in engineering and IT particularly suffering. Recruiters, they added, ‘cannot find enough quality candidates’. So the golden years of the recession, when a surplus of good quality graduates flowed into teacher preparation courses at the point in the demographic cycle when rolls in secondary schools were falling, and demand for teachers was declining, is over. We need more teachers and they are becoming harder to recruit.

My current predictions based upon data released this week by UCAS from the unified application process is that the following  subjects may well miss the lower of their DfE Teacher Supply Model figure or their NCTL allocation:

  • Biology
  • Design & Technology
  • Geography
  • Mathematics
  • Music
  • Physics
  • Religious Education

The jury is still out on Chemistry, but science overall is likely to face some sort of shortfall, if only because of the serious shortage of physics trainees. Although English will meet its target, I still do not believe we are training enough teachers, and governors still tell me that they are facing challenges recruiting such teachers in some parts of the country. It is significant that the TES job site has around 250 main scale positions for teachers of English today, but only around 200 for teachers of Mathematics.

Many of the subjects in the list where I expect shortages of trainees this year, were also subjects where there was a shortfall last year, so the warning that I and others made this time last year may been heeded, but has not been dealt with, unless you consider hiring unqualified personnel as the solution.

This year, there is also some nervousness about recruitment to primary ITT courses in some parts of the country. A shortfall there would be a real disaster, especially as schools with cash reserves will undoubtedly start upping the salary they are prepared to pay in the new de-regulated world of teachers’ pay and conditions. From there, it is but a short step to abandoning the principle of free schooling so parents can top up school coffers to help attract teachers through better pay. How that will affect the notion of fairness and equity only time will tell.