Tag Archives: School Direct

Much as predicted in the spring

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The final set of monthly UCAS data for the 2017 recruitment round was published earlier today. There are no shock horror revelations and the progress, or lack of it, of the recruitment round has been well charted throughout the year on this blog. It remains true that unless the economy takes a turn for the worse at some point between February and July in any year the likely outcome of the recruitment round can be predicted in many subjects by the early spring.

The outcome of the 2017 recruitment into training round looks like being worse than last year for the subjects tracked throughout the year, except in PE, history, geography and IT/computing. In English, the situation looks to be similar to this point last year. In Music and business studies the acceptance numbers are the lowest for the past four years. Even where acceptances are in the mid-range of the past four cycles they may well not be enough to meet the DfE and NCTL’s expressed level of need. This will affect the 2018 recruitment round for vacancies in September 2018 – see my previous post on ‘the eye of the storm.

What is especially worrying is the level of reported ‘conditional placed’ applicants in the September figures; as high as 20% in some subjects.  Either this reflects a lack of updating by some providers, possibly schools, or it reflect uncertainty over whether some trainees offered places were actually going to start the course? We will know the actual numbers when the DfE publishes the ITT Census, either at the end of November or in early December.

Numbers recruited to primary courses are well up on last year, by around 2,000 and that masks in some of the data a slightly larger fall in placed secondary candidates. The fall in ‘accepted’ secondary subject candidates is relatively small, at 440 candidates, and most of the reduction is in ‘conditionally placed offers, so it may be that actual recruited and numbers counted in the ITT census may not be too far adrift from last year. However, it must be remembered that if some subjects have recruited more than last year; geography is an obvious example, then those increases also serve to mask the size of falls in other subjects.

On the face of it, science and mathematics continued to hold their own compared with last year, with a continued growth in late recruitment over the summer. Indeed, these are the only subjects where there are still candidates shown as ‘holding offers’.

School Direct secondary has attracted fewer applications this year; as a result there have been fewer offers on both the salaried and fee routes. Salaried School Direct secondary numbers only total 1,100 placed compared with 1,440 last year. Most of the decline has been in the ‘placed’ category. At this stage it isn’t possible to tell how different subjects have been affected, but this trend will almost certainly have an impact on the 2018 labour market if these posts not filled by School Direct trainees need to be filled in 2018 from the overall trainee pool.

The letter for ASCL to the Treasury reported in today’s press revels something of how pressures on school funding may mean fewer vacancies next year, but with rising pupil numbers and fixed size classrooms, how badly funding cuts will affect teaching posts rather than all other costs only time will tell.

 

Where is school-based teacher training going?

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Is there going to be a late bounce in acceptances into teacher preparation programmes for September 2017. The UCAS data for numbers accepted onto graduate progammes by mid July 2017, published today, shows a fall of 900 in placed applicants but an increase over last year of 890 in conditionally placed applications and 340 more applications holding offers than at mid-July last year. Assuming these are not applicants holding multiple offers and that conditional and firm offers being held translate eventually into applicants that turn up at the start of the course, then overall numbers might not look very different to last year. That’s good news for the DfE as it generally likes to talk in overall terms, but delve below the surface a bit and the picture is a somewhat murkier.

In the secondary sector, history and geography provide, between them, 510 of the 1,200 growth in offers to set against the 900 few placed applicants. Mathematics and English are also holding up well compared with last year, as is computing/IT. But, elsewhere the news is grimmer. Music is facing a decline, with the lowest July offers total since 2013/14. Business Studies, already a subject where schools face recruitment challenges, has only 160 offer in total, of which just 30 are shown as ‘placed’. Most other subjects have profiles below last year in terms of offers and similar profiles to the previous recruitment round. All this does not bode well for providing teachers for a growing secondary school population in September 2018.

Previous blog posts have commented on the situation in London and it now looks to be of great concern. There are only 4,750 applications with offers in London compared with more than 5,000 at this point last year. Assuming most primary courses are full, this means the majority of the shortfall will be in secondary subjects. Considering London receives by far and away the most applications, at over 23,000 this year (down from 25,000+ last year) it is important to know more about the distribution of the many unsuccessful applications as the offer ratio seems to have remained the same at around 20%: in the north West there is a closer to 25% offer to applications ratio.

As remarked in previous months, it is the younger applicants that are deserting teaching. There are 800 fewer applicants from those age 22 or under this year compared with 2016 and nearly 1,000 fewer than two years ago at this point in the cycle. Some 300 of the reduction compared with two years ago are due to a reduction in the number of young male graduates applying for teaching.

There remains a startling decline in offers for secondary School Direct Salaried places, down from 1,420 last July to just 1,040 this July of which just 220 are confirmed placed applicants. Higher education courses have attracted more applications than last year for both primary and secondary courses. The same is true for SCITTs, whereas only primary School Direct Salaried courses have attracted more applications than last year among the school-based courses not in SCITTs.

Next month should see many of the conditionally placed applicants become fully confirmed as the reasons for their being conditionally placed are removed. By now, it seems as if the secondary numbers are going to be more challenging than last year and that means a more difficult recruitment round for September 2018.

TeachVac, http://www.teachvac.co.uk the free job portal for schools, trainees and teachers will continue to provide a service to all interested in the labour market for schools.

 

 

School Direct in trouble in the secondary sector?

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The wider world seems to be receiving the message in the Conservative manifesto. At least as far as graduates looking to train as teachers are concerned. The latest data on applications and offers was published by UCAS earlier today.

Offers in geography and history, EBacc subjects, have reached new highs for this time of year, easily exceeding the numbers reached last year and the year before at the same time. At the other end of the Range, for business studies, chemistry, music and physical education, offers are below both last year and the year before at this point in the cycle. In IT the number of offers is the same as last year, but below the year before. In the other subjects tracked, biology, design and technology, English, mathematics, physics, Religious Education, art and modern languages, the number of offer made so far this year is below this point last year, but still above the figure for two years ago at this point in time, albeit in some subjects only just.

Time is running out, with only three months of the recruitment round left before courses commence and less than two months before school start the summer holiday period. This means how new graduates react to the possibility of a career in teaching once finals are over is key to the outcome of the recruitment round and whether some subjects will confront a sixth year in a row of not meeting the government’s identified trainee numbers needed. Frankly, with the present economic climate and demand for graduates, I don’t currently expect a large rush into teaching, even with a vague promise from the Conservatives of some debt forgiveness for those that stay in teaching.

So, how bad is it looking overall? The crisis, to the extent that there is one, is most severe in School Direct in the secondary sector. Offers made for secondary School Direct Salaried route places are down from 1,130 at this point last year to just 730 this year. Of these, only 100 firm placed students are on this route, compared with 160 at this point last year. Uniquely, there are even fewer potential trainees holding offer than last year. Elsewhere, the increase in applicants holding an offer is the one bright spot in a generally dismal picture for secondary training places. Secondary higher education applications have actually increased from nearly 25,000 last year to 25,260 this year, as have applications to SCITTs. The two School Direct routes have seen a drop of round 4,000 in applications. This is a significant decline by any standards.

This blog has remarked on the decline in applications from recent graduates in previous posts looking at the earlier months of this recruitment round. The trends continues, with more than 1,000 fewer applicants under 22 than last year; a drop almost ten per cent from this age group. As this group cannot apply for the School Direct Salaried route it would seem that older applicants are applying to higher education rather than School Direct, although the reason for this trend cannot be determined from the data.

Overall, the assessment must be that School Direct in the secondary sector needs the attention of the in-coming Secretary of State as a matter of urgency. The ideological battle to take secondary teacher preparation away from higher education seems under challenge from the behaviour of the very applicants it was designed to serve. After so many –U- turns, perhaps this is another one that might be worth considering by the new government.

Heading towards disaster?

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The latest UCAS data on the number of trainees offered or holding places for 2017 graduate courses to train as a teacher makes for grim reading. This blog has been warning, without trying to use sensational language, for some months now that all wasn’t going well. The figures issued today, based upon offers recorded up to Easter, show new lows over the last four cycles at this point in the year in terms of offers made and accepted in some subjects. So far, the serious issues are only in Business Studies, Chemistry, IT and music, and in two of these subjects a decline in teaching time over recent years means the Teacher Supply Model may be over-estimating the likely demand for teachers. In Chemistry and Business Studies, the lack of offers so far this year may be more serious for schools in 2018, especially where there are rising rolls.

The one crumb of comfort is the increase in offers in both history and geography. Elsewhere, in Mathematics and English, the trend line look unpropitious for the remainder of the recruitment round, unless there is a major shift in direction. This may be less of an issue in Mathematics than English. There are already shortages in English in 2017 according to TeachVac’s data. In Mathematics, as ever, it is not just the numbers, but also the quality of mathematical knowledge and the teaching ability of trainees that matters to schools. Hopefully, lower numbers don’t mean fewer high quality applicants.

Overall, around 2,000 less offers have been made in this recruitment round across England compared with April last year. Applicant numbers are down in all age groups, but significantly down for the younger age groups. For instance, women 21 and under are down from 3,990 applicants last year to 3,490 this year, with a similar fall of 410 in applicant numbers for those aged 22, but smaller falls among the older age groups. Only 1,100 men age 21 or under have applied so far this year; a drop of around 10% on last year at this point in time. Overall, applications from men are down by just over seven per cent, a greater decline than for applications from women.

In total applications are down to only just over 90,000, meaning most applicants have made full use of all their choices.  The good news is that there are 10 more applicants in the South West than last year; the bad news, 500 fewer in London. Indeed, there are 770 fewer offers to applicants applying to London than this point last year: with rising rolls that is really bad news for 2018.

School Direct Salaried has attracted around 500 fewer applicants for the secondary sector this year, with only 80 confirmed placed applicants so far in 2017. As these are all graduates with work experience, this number is disappointingly low and down on the 120 of April last year. The conditionally placed number is also down, from 790 to 530. Undoubtedly, some of the decline is due to the Easter holidays, but that would also have been true for 2016 figures. The one potentially bright spot is the increase in applicants holding offers, but until these numbers turn into placed applicants they are always at risk of disappearing. On the face of it, and without overall allocation numbers, primary offers seem to be holding up relatively well. It is the secondary sector that remains the key area for concern.

With purdah upon us, we can but hope that the increased DfE marketing budget, the topic of an earlier post, will help to attract more applicants over the summer. However, uncertainty over the future direction of secondary education and selective schools might put off some would-be teachers educated in the comprehensive system. Either way, 2018 looks like being a challenge for schools in London and the South East needing to recruit teachers. You will need TeachVac’s free service more than ever: have you signed up yet? http://www.teachvac.co.uk

Uphill task, but not yet panic mode?

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At the end of January, when that month’s UCAS data on applications to ITT postgraduate programmes was published, I wrote in a blog ‘The next four weeks are vital ones for teacher supply and the number of teachers entering the labour market in 2018.’ So, it has turned out to be.

The February data was published earlier today. It is worth noting that it is data up to 20th February this year, whereas the comparative data for 2016 was up to the 15th February. On that basis there are several more days for applications included in this year’s figures.

As a result, the fact that applicants with a domicile in England are down from 26,130 last year to 24,720 this year is disappointing to say the least. Applications aren’t just down in one region, but across most of the country. In London, a key area of need for teachers, applicants are down by around 200 and in the usually buoyant North West, numbers are down by around 300.

Most alarming is the haemorrhaging of applications form those under 22. Compared with 2016, there have been around 1,000 fewer applicants from this age-group, to just 7,850.

The loss of keen bright new graduates has not been fully offset by additional applications for career changers and other older applicants. It is worth recalling that in February 2012, before the School Direct programmes were included in the process, there were 34,936 applicants at this point in the cycle. So in five years, teaching has seen around 10,000 fewer applicants by February As that month marks the half-way point in the application cycle, time is already slipping away to make up this deficit.

Of course, if the smaller number of applicants are of high quality, this may not matter. But, assuming no change in the profile or even that fewer doesn’t mean better, this poses a problem for providers. Do they lower the quality mark when offering places?

Interestingly, this is a dilemma for higher education as much as for school-based providers thus year since applications to higher education are holding up better than for school-based training. HE institutions have attracted 36,260 of the 73,440 applications. School Direct salaried has only attracted 10,350 compared with 11,680 last February. This is despite the greater proportion of older applications that would be eligible for the School Direct Salaried route. Of course, there may be fewer places on offer, but that fact remains a mystery since government won’t publish the national targets.

In terms of subjects, geography and history are doing well, several other subjects are holding their own and schools might well start making room for PSHE by axing business studies since there are likely to be few teachers. After all, it isn’t a subject we are going to need post BREXIT anyway.

Teaching seems to be looking less attractive as a career to women. In February 2012, some 24,265 women has applied for courses in England. This year, the number was just 17,360. Down by nearly 7,000 or more than a quarter. In the same period applications from men fell from 10,600 to around 7,400: some 3,200 fewer.

With the exam season approaching and no obvious reason for career switchers to increase their level of applications, the remainder of the recruitment round looks like being a real challenge. Not yet a crisis, but the problem of recruiting the next generation of teachers certainly hasn’t been solved despite three reports in the past twelve months.

 

Some light on entry to the teaching profession

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The NCTL issued an interesting set of reports yesterday. At present they aren’t on their main web site, or at least I couldn’t find them, but they are available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications?keywords=&publication_filter_option=all&topics%5B%5D=all&departments%5B%5D=national-college-for-teaching-and-leadership&official_document_status=all&world_locations%5B%5D=all&from_date=&to_date=

Regular readers of this blog may find some of the Report linking ITT and workforce data somewhat familiar, but none the worse for that.

Here are the key findings that the authors believe stand up even though they have issues with the quality of the data.

  • Three regions of England – North East, North West and South West – appear to have large numbers of new qualified teachers who do not join a state-sector school immediately after achieving QTS.
  • Those studying on undergraduate with QTS courses have low initial retention rates in the profession, though we cannot know whether this results from subsequent choices made by the individual or recruitment decisions made by schools.
  • Teach First has very high two year retention rates, but thereafter their retention is poorer than other graduate routes.
  • Ethnic minority teacher trainees have very low retention rates.
  • Individuals who train part-time or who are older have much poorer retention rates, which may simply reflect other family commitments that interfere with continuous employment records.

The first point is no surprise given the official policy of allocating places by quality of provider rather than by labour market need. As the Report uses School Workforce data it largely predates the big shift into School Direct.

I am not sure whether the authors qualify the second point in relation to the first; too many primary trainees in the big four providers might have made a difference especially as the difference between HEI-led FT (I assume the graduate routes) and Undergraduate with QTS that is largely primary courses is only around three percentage points by Year 3 and in for the 2010 entry undergraduate routes were higher in terms of retention after three years than HEI-led. (Table 1).

EBITT did very well on retention and the early years of School Direct were above university courses rates, but below the former EBIT retention rates that they largely replaced. Teach First had the worst retention rates after three years. This isn’t surprising since its original raison d’etre was as a short-service type programme with the hope some would become career teachers: disappointingly less than half, even of those that entered during the years of recession, chose to do so. The exit of this group pushes up demand for replacements especially as Teach First expands.

The news about ethnic minority teachers isn’t surprising and reflect the study I did for NCTL a couple of years ago. While the last bullet point may be true, it could also reflect their location and job opportunities and the decisions schools make about the cost of teachers and the age profiles of their staff. Without more geographical information linked to TeachVac data on where the jobs are we can only speculate.

Finally, it would have been interesting to have had some contextual information such as the state of the economy and of the teacher labour market and whether the TSM numbers were over or under-recruited to for each cohort. Too many trainees against predicted demand can lead to wastage at the point of entry.

Teaching attracts career changers

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The data provided today by UCAS about the state of play with applications to the graduate teacher training programmes administered through them provides mixed messages. On the one hand, applications overall continue their upward trend: good news. On the other hand, young graduates, and especially young men, seem to be avoiding teaching as a career. There is a loss of 320 men under the age of 30 compared with the same point last year. However, that is more than compensated for by 420 more men over the age of thirty than applied last year, including 270 in their 40s or 50s., for a net gain of 150, or about 1.5% more than last year. We don’t know how these extra men are split between those applying for primary and secondary courses as that information isn’t provided.

The pattern for women is very similar to that for men, except that it is only the 22 and 23 year olds that are applying in smaller numbers than last year and then only by 180 overall. However, 770, of the just over 800 more applicants than last year, are in their 30s or 40s. The total increase is in the order of four per cent compared with last year.

With a greater number of older applicants than last year, it might be expected that those unconditionally accepted, or ‘placed’ to use the UCAS terminology, would be higher than last year. However, that isn’t the case. ‘Placed’ applicants are 320 down on the 3,340 recorded at this stage last year. There are also fewer holding interview requests and awaiting a provider offer. The good news is that the number of ‘conditional placed’ applicants is up from 19,420 to 22,590, a net gain of 3,150 applicants. I am sure everyone will hope that these applicants can meet the requirements over the next months and move from the ‘conditional placed’ to the ‘placed’ columns of the spreadsheet.

Although the numbers are small, there are fewer ‘placed’ candidates than last year in London, the South East and the South West regions, although all these regions have more ‘conditional placed’ applicants than last year.

In some subjects it is impossible to tell from the published figures how recruitment is faring compared to last year. However, it looks likely that mathematics won’t meet the required target number again this year unless there is a late surge in applicants. The same is true for computing and business studies. After a bad year last year, geography appears to be doing better this year, as is Religious Education. PE and history will rely upon retaining all their applicants with further recruitment closed.

Older applicants are more likely to be limited in where they will seek a job at the end of their training and once courses start it would be helpful to schools to know the age breakdown of applicants in their region or locality. It is also important to know whether more applicants are not lasting the course since the number of withdrawn applications is also up this year.

 

Do TV adverts work?

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The recent publication of the April admissions figures for ITT courses starting this autumn look like further acceptable news for the government. I hesitate to say ‘good news’ because it is still probable that not all subjects will reach their required levels of admissions to meet the probable demand for new teachers in 2017. That’s a rather convoluted way of saying some Teacher Supply Model numbers will be missed again this summer.

As ever, despite the upturn in university admissions for undergraduate courses in many STEM subjects, it is the mathematics, physics, design and technology and IT areas that are most likely to miss their targets again. Even Teach First, when I looked at their web site https://graduates.teachfirst.org.uk/application-selection/subject-availability on 6th May hadn’t yet closed any of their subjects including some where recruitment controls have been applied to the courses in the UCAS admissions scheme; Teach First don’t, however, offer PE as a subject.

Still, after a couple of frankly dreadful years, applications are generally holding up so far. The real issue is what will happen between now and the end of the recruitment round and then how many applicants turn up when courses start. There may also be regional issues, but they are not apparent from the data publically available. Whether or not training ‘career changers’ in parts of the country where vacancies are relatively rare helps the task of staffing schools is a moot point.

Looking at the UCAS figures in detail, it seems as if the trend to fewer applicants from the 22-24 age-group is continuing. This decline, reported in earlier blog posts on this site, is balanced this year by a slightly greater increase in the number of applicants over the age of 40. Overall, applications with a domicile in England increased by around 1,470 compared with April 2015 numbers. This is an increase of between 4-5%. In view of the recruitment controls, I am sure the percentage would have been higher with unfettered recruitment policies. So, I am sure that the TV advertising does make some difference to recruitment.

The other issue is whether the recruitment controls have allowed the best candidates to be recruited? There is a loss of recruits to choose from in PE, English and History, although the exact change in the number of applicants isn’t disclosed, even though the probable change in the number of applications can be deduced from other data. It would be helpful to know the number of applicants per subject and their age ranges to help inform the debate about what sort of system should be used for the 2017 admissions round?

Regionally, there are more applicants across the country with London and the Home Counties seeing the largest increase in applicant numbers, if not the greatest increase in the percentage of applicants. In terms of applications rather than applicants, the re-balancing of places has resulted in fewer applications to universities and more to SCITTs and the School Direct routes although overall there has been a slight drop in applications, possibly due to the effects of the recruitment controls.

With university finals looming, there will probably be little change in the May data, so it will be late June before it becomes obvious where new graduates are looking to teaching as a late career choice.

 

 

 

 

Is there a teacher recruitment crisis?

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I have been asked a lot recently whether there is a teacher recruitment crisis. The answer is, it all depends upon what you mean by a crisis. In the TeachVac evidence to the Select Committee, published on the Committee’s website before Christmas, I attempted to put some numbers to the terms ‘challenge’ and ‘crisis’. So far as I am aware, nobody has offered an alternative scenario. Certainly, nobody has suggested one to me.

Ministers, however, have relied on the November Workforce census vacancies to suggest schools are fully staffed. More recently, during her speech to the NASUWT Conference, the Secretary of State quoted from a TES study that suggested 70% of vacancies were filled within four weeks of being advertised. No bad, but it means that 30% were not filled. As a head teacher I would be worried of around one in three of my vacancies weren’t filled quickly. That figure was presumably the average, so some will have done better, but others worse. Perhaps the DfE can tell schools at what point they should worry? 50% not filled within four weeks; 75%, or should they wait until they reach the position of the Oxford head teacher speaking on the BBC web site whose school attracted no applicants for a number of vacancies advertised?

At TeachVac, the free vacancy web site for schools and teachers, www.teachvac.co.uk we are gearing up for the April vacancy rush. The job market has definitely become more complex and can be divided into a number of different segments. There are probably now three groups of trainees; those on programmes such as Teach First and the School Direct Salaried route that have posts assigned to them and don’t enter the open competition for vacancies; the trainees that sign up with recruitment agencies in the hope of reducing paperwork and securing a better salary. As this group increases, and the government is doing nothing to deter agencies from signing up trainees, or indeed other teachers, and asking schools for a finder’s fee, so the free pool of applicants diminishes. The government’s offer of the DfE’s free website won’t alleviate the drain on school resources by having to pay these fees. However, it might encourage some academy chains and diocese to become more involved in School Direct or SCITTs as part of a ‘grow your own teacher’ scheme.

The third group of trainees form the traditional ‘free pool’ of new entrants competing for the vacancies offered by schools. It is difficult to see how, if the DfE’s Teacher supply model is anywhere near accurate, any substantial under-recruitment into training will not affect the size of this pool to some extent. For that reason, Ministers generalised references to the overall position aren’t helpful. The recent National Audit Office report highlighted the lack of government knowledge of the real position in the teacher labour market nationally, let alone at a sub-national level.

Later this week TeachVac will publish its April newsletters for schools and teachers containing our analysis of the vacancy trends during the first three months of 2016. These are free to subscribers to the TeachVac site.

 

TeachVac is ahead of the game

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Should schools be allowed to appoint staff as a result of vacancies advertised only internally; should MATs or diocese as employers be allowed to appoint staff to a new post anywhere in their organisation without an external advert? The BiS Department in Whitehall is currently carrying out a consultation on this topic entitled. CLOSED RECRUITMENT PRACTICES IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR.

The consultation poses a number of questions about the process that might affect schools, but one that interested me the most was:

Under this option, the Government would ensure that all public sector employers published information on the levels of internal-only recruitment used within their organisation. This might include the number of staff brought in under internal recruitment, and the proportion of all recruitment that took place as a result of internal-only recruitment. This information would be publicly available, and would allow scrutiny and debate over the extent of internal recruitment.

If accepted, this idea would require schools to publish details of the number and percentage of internal appointments. Now TeachVac is ahead of the game here because it provides schools with a list of vacancies advertised and we could easily extend that to include whether it was an internal or external advertisement.

As with other TeachVac recruitment services, this would be free to registered schools and would require only one extra keystroke at time of entry. Posts marked internal only would not be matched with candidates in the TeachVac database but we could provide data on their numbers to help schools justify internal advertising as the best way forward.

An extreme outcome of the consultation would be for the government to require all schools to advertise all vacancies. This might prove interesting in relation to say, the School Direct salaried route if those trainees had to compete with others on alternative routes.

The cost of advertising if schools do not use TeachVac’s free service is another issue. Does the government really want to divert resources into advertising and away from teaching and learning when the school has a perfectly good candidate or must we always be seen to being open with public money? TeachVac allows both options, at no cost to schools

I well recall in an earlier age a vacancy being advertised in a Saturday newspaper because nobody other than the internal candidate would be likely to read it. Such measures are within the rule but not the spirit of open advertising.

Any rule change would apply not only to teaching posts but also to all other vacancies. Schools that hired contractors would not be affected, and the contractors could do what they wished unless their contract specified the schools would only accept staff appointed after an open recruitment competition.

It would certainly make unlikely those cases that crop up from time to time of senior staff employing their relatives. That was something, I seem to recall, worried MPs at one time about who was employed in their own offices.