Tag Archives: schools

Should women teachers wear trousers?

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Is Ofsted’s latest desire to remove scruffy teachers exhibiting poor standards of behaviour real or just another part of the inter-nicene battle currently being fought within Whitehall? I mentioned in my last post that the revised Ofsted framework would consider issues of dress among trainees and new teachers. Interestingly, I have yet to see any evidence from Ofsted to justify this change in the inspection regime. Given that inspectors carry out more than 9,000 visits to schools each year that are regarded as inspections they probably already know what dress standards are like. Backing the need for change with evidence would have provided more credibility for the decision as well as perhaps identifying what is acceptable. Can women still wear trousers or do the fashion inspectors want a return to either dresses or jumpers and A-line skirts? Must men wear ties along with jackets? Will exceptions be made in both cases on the sports fields and in the gym, workshops, and kitchens?

Based upon views from TV documentaries, and not just of the main characters, is how teachers dress really an issue in secondary schools. So, is it the primary sector Ofsted has in mind? Does the HMCI of Schools want formal dress for those teaching five-year olds, and will it extend beyond the teachers to classroom assistants? Is the policy really about distinguishing teachers from others working with children so that they stand out in a crowded assembly hall as the formally dressed adults? Trainee teachers need to know the standards they will be expected to be judged against. What does ‘neat and tidy’ mean, and is it different in West London to say Northumberland?

I went back and reviewed the findings of a survey I conducted for ATL in 1996 that included a question about spending on clothing by trainee teachers. 80% of trainee teachers that completed the survey claimed to have had to buy suitable clothes for the school environment during their training. I observed at the time that perhaps the expenditure was necessary because the casual attire worn by many students on campus wasn’t acceptable elsewhere, presumably including in the classroom.

Personally, I have always taken a relaxed view of these issues, as I always did when discussing whether pupils should stand up when an adult enters the classroom. There are occasions when it is appropriate, and times when it isn’t. Now both fashions and times change, but whether Ofsted monitors or sets the standards is a key question? We have a profession where around half of teachers are below the age of 35, so how does that age gap between many classroom teachers and those that inspect them affect attitudes between the generations over these issues?

Is the issue of dress among trainees in the classroom really a chimera created by Ofsted for its own purposes or does the HMCI have the evidence to justify the change to the framework? How strict will inspectors be, and will it deter some creative and divergent thinkers from becoming teachers if applied too rigidly? Without the evidence we shall never know.

Never mind the quality, feel the width

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The announcement today by Ofsted that it proposes to change the inspection framework for ITE partnerships from May, effectively immediately after the 13 week consultation period ends, http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/proposed-revisions-framework-for-inspecting-initial-teacher-education-consultation-document suggests there is still no answer to the basic question; who is in overall charge of teacher supply policy?

In a year where there are already insufficient trainee teachers in some subjects, making it harder to enter and then to pass the preparation period risks making that situation worse. If that happens, who will teach the children in those schools that cannot recruit a teacher; and will these schools be in the leafy suburbs or the inner cities?

It is now time someone took overall control of how we train and then offer employment to teachers. Are schools and higher education departments of education agents of central government or independent operators in market-based environment working within a regulatory framework?

For design and technology students, a subject area of key importance where the government had difficulty securing enough training places for 2014, presumably because recruitment had been so poor in 2013, the notion of changing the ‘standard of professional dress’ needed in the kitchen or workshop might be open to debate. Will such teachers now need one set of clothes for when they are with their tutor group, and another when they are actually teaching? Will this promote a return to the use of academic gowns as cover-ups for shabby suits, patched elbows, and no doubt the ties that male teachers will be required to wear at all times.

More seriously, providers have no control over where their former trainees find a teaching job. Many years ago I questioned the problem of trainees that learnt their craft skills in a cathedral city, but ended up working in an inner city. The cultural and other shocks for the successes of our education system learning to work as teachers with the whole range of learners have been brought home very clearly in the two recent TV series. Preparing teachers for the ‘real world’ in its many manifestations is a key part of training, but at present using their skills and qualities to best effect as they emerge during training isn’t part of the deal.

Are Ofsted really pointing to a disconnect in the profession between training and employment that has affected the primary sector ever since training was taken away from the employers and moved to higher education, where training for selective schools and the independent sector already mostly took place to the extent that there was any training at all.

Ofsted, do at least seem to be on the side of the need for a training requirement; otherwise what’s the point of the framework? However it isn’t clear whether they support the notion of any school-based trainees teaching from day or accept the need for some initial input such as the 30 days offered by Teach First. What may be more important is how trainees in schools with few behaviour-management issues are prepared for more challenging situations where they might eventually want or be required to work? Is training entirely in one school a good idea, or does a period in more than one school enhance and deepen the experience of learning how to become a teacher?

It seems to me that changing the framework for inspection without clear ministerial guidance on the training process, and its link to employment, is like putting the mobile phone before the mast to update the cart before the horse analogy.

You cannot penalise a provider that has no control over where a trainee takes a job unless you make it an absolute requirement as to what needs to be covered during the training period, and make that the same for all providers.

Ofsted, the NCTL through the DfE, and the employers of teachers, all need to sort out a framework for producing both enough teachers, and teachers of high quality so that we can move the school system forward. At present, what is emerging is a muddle that might have serious consequences for teacher supply at a time when the school population is rising rapidly.

Work smarter not harder

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A big thank you to the Guardian.com that featured my blog post on episode two of the series about Teach First currently being shown on the BBC: It brought in around 1,000 extra views of this blog over four days, and make the target of 10,000 by the end of January into a feasible proposition.

Episode three of the series was aired last Thursday, and I caught up with it on the BBC i-player yesterday. The underlying themes of the episode seem to be the continuing discipline issues encountered by one of the trainees, and the interaction between teachers and pupils as they learnt about both motivation and setting boundaries. In doing so they also learnt about themselves. What was missing, I felt was any analysis of feedback to trainees making satisfactory or better progress. On the other hand, the one teacher causing concern said at one point she as being observed in half her lessons. How any preparation programme can afford such a high level of observation is a matter of no little wonder to me. What we didn’t see was the way the feedback from these observations was translated into action by both the school and the teacher. There was an interesting juxtaposition of one trainee teacher making a class enter the science lab several times because they didn’t do it to her satisfaction the first time and the trainee judged to have problems were there was no sense of what strategy she was using to gain control of the class.

As I expected, Caleb, and his opinions, featured in the episode along with the views of several other pupils, particularly about examinations. Perhaps too much time was spent on the slaughtering of the birds as a bonding exercise, and we didn’t really hear what the teacher though the outcome of that exercise had been after teaching the pupil again for several lessons. Also, did the RE teacher set to find an Arab looking Joseph (non-speaking) by his head of department really call another teacher Sir when he entered his tutor group to speak to a pupil? I will need to go back and re-check.

The new teachers spoke frankly to camera about their experiences, and the first year trainees were compared to a second year Teach First participant that the school wanted to keep even thought she expressed concern that the results for her Year 11 group would show a dip over the previous year: time will tell. One teacher that featured in episode two didn’t seem to appear this time, but there was no explanation as to why he didn’t feature.

The next episode will take the teachers into their second term when my advice to them would have been, work smarter not just harder. It assessment and preparation are taking over your life, look at how you can restore some normality, because it you aren’t teaching a full timetable think what it will be like when you are. So far, apart from assessed lessons, we have seen few interactions between the Teach First teachers and the bulk of the staff at the schools. Do they ever take part in department meetings or socialise outside of their group?

As a series about human interaction, and the feelings of young people, it makes interesting television, but whether I am not sure about what I have learnt about the Teach First method of preparing teaching that is different to other methods once they are in the classroom except that after a whole term of teaching the team are still being supportive of the teacher facing the most challenge. In this episode she received a warning about her progress from a University tutor. Next time, will she sink or swim in the new term?

More on made not born: how teachers are created

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Last night I caught up with the second episode of BBC3’s new series, ‘Tough Young Teachers’ that is all about the progress of a group of Teach First recruits. (Past episodes are available on the BBC i-player). The teachers featured were working in Harefield Academy, Crown Woods School and the Archbishop Lanfranc School. Although Teach First started as a programme for inner city schools, these three schools that are located in Uxbridge, Croydon, and Bexley, might better be characterised as suburban, and not inner city. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t challenging. Their Free School Meals measure for the Pupil Premium – anytime in the past six years on free school meals – ranges from 29.2% at The Harefield Academy, to 41.7% at Archbishop Lanfranc, and 46.2% at Crown Woods College according to DfE figures; all well above the national average. Both the latter two schools have a significant number of pupils whose native language isn’t English; although as a measure of the need for support it is probably worth re-visiting this indicator to see how it is calibrated. It might be better to classify whether pupils have a level of English that allows them to function effectively in a learning situation rather than know what their native tongue might have been.

All three schools have above average levels of persistent absence, and perform less well with least able pupils than their most able. According to the DfE, Archbishop Lanfranc is an 11-16 school, and the other two have sixth forms. This point worries me, since it is not clear how Teach First ensures any exposure to post-16 teaching for those placed in 11-16 schools? If they want to stay in teaching after two years, this lack of sixth form experience might restrict the range of schools willing to employ them. This is always a risk with a single-training location over courses that allow training in several schools during the programme.

Another risk of such single-school programmes also became apparent in last night’s episode. One of the group was seen facing considerable discipline challenges in their classroom. In a traditional programme of teacher preparation they would receive a second chance to start again in a new school on their next placement. This would allow for a fresh start and see whether they could improve with a new set of pupils. On Teach First, it was suggested last night that the choice is to be battle through or be sacked. In an earlier post last year, I commented how much Teach First appeared to spend on recruitment and selection, so it is worrying that someone can pass through selection, and the six weeks of training, and still face such challenges in a school where many pupils are there because of their sporting achievements: judging by their appearance, and that of the school, they are also generally working in a supportive learning establishment. But, television has to tell as story that entertains, informs and hopefully educates the viewer, so we may not know the real situation. However, that student was filmed sitting down in the classroom too much for my liking, although the arrangement of the furniture probably also didn’t help a new teacher.

For entertainment value, watching endless lessons can become a bit like watching paint dry for the average viewer, and even I looked at my watch a couple of times, so the storyline of the pupil recently returned from a spell in a Pupil Referral Unit offered an interesting counterpoint. Caleb was articulate, truculent, and as viewers know from Educating Yorkshire before Christmas, exactly the sort of pupil to challenge a school, and its experienced teachers, let along one just arrived from six weeks of basic training outside the classroom. No doubt viewers will see more of Caleb in later episodes.

By now the viewer also knows something of the personalities of the new recruits. They also know, if they didn’t already, that teaching is not easy, and there is no such thing as deference to authority in modern society. Respect has to be earned in the classroom as on the beat or by anyone in a position of authority.

As ever, one asks of oneself, how would I have fared?  I don’t know, but if it is any consolation to those training at present, my first year, admittedly with no training, and as a supply teacher in Tottenham, was far worse than some of the scenes from last night’s programme. I will watch future episodes with interest.

Do 40% of teacher quit in their first five years?

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When the HMCI makes a statement such as ‘we invest so much in teacher training and yet an estimated 40% of new entrants leave within five years’ it much be taken as being authoritative, and presumably correct. However, it is worth digging a bit more deeply into the data to see what actually happens to new teachers. Fortunately, the DfE published a detailed analysis of a cohort in their review of the first School Work Force Survey of 2010. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/182407/DFE-RR151.pdf

According to the DfE’s analysis of 100 entrants to training, 56 would still be teaching in the state-funded sector five years later, and another six would be teaching in the non-maintained sector; others might be teaching abroad or in the further education sector, possibly in a sixth form college. So, the 40% looks like an upper limit on the number leaving post-qualification.

What is more interesting is the loss after actually entering the profession. According to the DfE analysis, only 4 of the 47 postgraduates that found a teaching job left after five years, and the number of undergraduates was actually greater by one at the five year point than the number counted at the first year after training; presumably as late entrants found a teaching job. This analysis, therefore, points to the greatest loss being between training and employment. Indeed, of the 63 postgraduates that completed training only 47 will be teaching in publicly-funded schools a year after training, along with 12 of the 17 undergraduate completers.

So, is this loss of around a quarter immediately after training a matter for concern? Much may depend upon whether during the period of the DfE analysis too many teachers were being trained. Hopefully, some decided after completing the course that teaching wasn’t the career for them. Other students, especially mature students, may be tied to a particular location, and just haven’t seen a job in their subject advertised yet.

Indeed, since HMCI Annual Reports in recent years have said how good new teachers are, it seems a little odd to suggest there might have been a dip in quality recently. HMCI cannot have his cake and eat it. Either he repudiates publicly the work of his predecessors or he explains what evidence he had to use for his speech to the North of England Education Conference.

Personally, in the new world where many schools sail alone, I think it is important to ensure adequate professional development for new teachers. The audit trail will quickly reveal whether it is during training or afterwards that problems arise. What is more important is for the evidence of any systemic weakness during training to be fed back into consideration of how teacher preparation might evolve. For instance, more time in the classroom might not improve classroom management outcomes unless it is associated with the time spent on the theory and techniques of behaviour management, and the part played by good subject knowledge and an understanding of young people. If, as a result, HMCI decides to tell the government that the present one-year course, especially for new primary schools teachers needs a complete overhaul, I would be delighted.

No more free market for teachers

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The North of England Education Conference may have diminished in status over the years, but it hasn’t completely lost its role as a major source of policy announcements, especially in relation to teachers and school leaders. This year, both the Chief Inspector, Michael Wilshaw, and Minister of State, David Laws, used their speeches to the conference to hammer very hefty nails into the long-held doctrine of the market as the solution to all public sector problems by suggesting that teachers – and heads – should be matched to schools where their services are most needed. This is a radical break from the practice of the last 50 years when schools have become used to advertising vacancies, and teachers have been free to choose which ones to apply for.

HMCI talked of a “national strategy” to ensure we place ‘good teachers in schools that face the greatest challenges’, while the Minister announced a ‘pool of top talent within the profession, a champions league of head teachers, made up of heads and deputy heads, who will stand ready to move to schools in challenging circumstances that need outstanding leaders’.

From the policy of matching initial appointments of trainees to schools for their first appointment it is but a short step to the idea of then moving teachers between schools. To do this most effectively schools need to be grouped geographically in a manner that most academy chains, with the possible exception of Harris and some ARK schools, clearly are not. No doubt this will be a point the new school Commissioners will not be slow in making to their boss as they waste large amounts of time travelling around their bailiwicks.

However, the idea of assigning more senior “champions league” head teachers to schools, and possibly moving them long distances, as might happen under David Laws’ plans for heads to be parachuted into failing schools, must come with  terms and conditions that are attractive enough to encourage staff to sign up to the proposals. As we know, most heads, especially in the primary sector, only apply for posts within their existing travel to work areas: this is hopefully something that has been researched properly before the Minister made his announcement.

Now, I have always thought it daft that the weakest NQTs had to wait to find a teaching job, and in some cases were left without a teaching post for some time so that when they did eventually find a vacancy (after term had started) they were even more in need of further help than if they had been hired at the start of term. Of course, if there are more than enough teachers of good quality to go around that isn’t an issue. However since teacher supply is already under pressure in some subjects, and at risk of becoming even worse in 2014, the debate threatens to become academic as some schools will just need a teacher to fill their vacancy. David Laws has no doubt taken advice about the outcome of Labour’s Fast Track Scheme of the early 2000s before launching another national staffing initiative.

Linking training and employment will also help identify whether I was correct in 2008 in coining the phrase, admittedly about the primary sector, of ‘training in cathedral cities to teach in inner cities’ to characterise those who trained in one sort of environment, but found employment in an entirely different setting. Not everyone agreed with me, and there are those that think you can train anywhere to teach in any school. The new HMI inspection evidence will help clarify the situation.

Finally, it will be interesting to see what Mr. Taylor, has to say on Friday morning at the conference. Last year in Sheffield he proclaimed the end to central planning for teacher supply. However, this year, the message now seems to be that the new NSS (National School Service) will look increasingly like the NHS – and be equally devoid of democratic accountability.

Notable during 2013

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Education politician of the year

Graham Stuart, chair of the Select Committee at Westminster. He has returned strongly to his role after a serious accident. His rebuke to David Laws for being late and taking off his jacket without permission, and his interchanges with the Secretary of State, notably over careers education, stamped his authority on a Committee where often he has had to rely upon the terrier like support of the Labour members in evidence sessions.

PR coup of the year

Nick Clegg’s announcement, on the Tuesday of his Party Conference, that all 5-7 year olds would receive free school lunches. This was a closely kept secret up to that point, known only to a few. Had it been announced as part of his Leader’s speech it wouldn’t have had the same impact. In the 2015 Manifesto the Lib Dems can suggest extending free meals to all primary school pupils at some point in the future. Honourable mention must go to the DfE for the announcement in early December of the new role of School Commissioners through the jobs pages of the TES. Seemingly even the TES didn’t pick up on the implications. Hopefully, that is not a return to the bad old days when journalists at the TES didn’t know what interesting news stories were appearing in the classified pages of their own paper. Finally, but not in the running for coup of the year, was the Labour Party’s well researched press release issued on Christmas Eve highlighting the government’s failures in recruitment to teacher training courses. Whoever at Labour HQ thought education journalists would be working in the run up to Christmas needs some re-education, especially when these journalists have to work throughout the Easter holidays attending the professional association conferences. This was a waste of a good opportunity.

Export of the year

The TES, to a USA company: will the profits from all that recruitment advertising now flow overseas.

Most challenged local authority of the year

There are two main contenders: Norfolk and the Isle of Wight. This proves that size has nothing to do with success. Both were effectively issued with notices to improve by Ofsted. Interestingly, both are experiencing the effects of a move from a 9-13 three tier system to a break at 11+. Oxford City, whose schools at Key Stage 1 were once the worst in the country also experienced such a system change. It is worth looking to see whether sufficient attention was paid to CPD when these changes take place. Unlike Oxford, both Norfolk and the Isle of Wight also have many coastal communities, one of the vogue terms of the year.

Technology of the year

Tablets: these electronic successors to slates seem likely to put the learning firmly in the hands of the learners even more than laptops did. And, for the first time the software to make really useful is starting to emerge. Whether teachers have been trained to make the best use of new technology, or even old technology like interactive whiteboards is another whole debate.

Still waiting at the bus stop award

The DfE pulled guidance on school transport during the early summer, promising a revised set of rules by the autumn. At the year-end this is still awaited. Perhaps the problems in the Prime Minister’s own backyard may be causing some re-thinking. One overdue change is to increase the age for free transport to 18 now the participation age has been raised. This is a real issue for less well off families living in rural areas, including Mr Cameron’s own constituency, as the audience of around 100 at a recent turbulent meeting at Burford School made clear.

Tectonic Plate award

The notion of combining children’s social services with education into a single department looks increasingly passé. With child protection issues taking up more and more of many Director’s time, and schools policy no longer run by councillors or even authorities but School Forums, the idea of marrying all services for children into one department will undoubtedly come under scrutiny as local government cuts begin to really hurt. For many authorities, schooling is now little more than a regulatory activity and an oversight of standards. For that reason it might now better live in the Chief Executive’s domain in many authorities, along with Trading Standards and the lawyers.

Personality of the year

Like him or loath him, it must be the Secretary of State. Although the Chief Inspector made a brave run on the inside rail late in the year nobody else came close to Mr Gove as the public face of education change. However, the run up to the 2015 general election may prove more of a challenge if other Free Schools follow the Discovery School into closure, and his School Direct training route for teachers proves less than a resounding success. However, his Achilles heel is undoubtedly a lack of feeling for numbers. When the Chancellor was accepting the needs of rural areas, including specifically mentioning schools, at his recent visit to the Treasury Select Committee, Mr Gove was continuing a policy of per pupil funding regardless of where the pupils live. This may drive some Tory voters towards UKIP in 2015 if they think their former Party is favouring urban areas.

And finally, in no especial order, the Parliamentary Education debate of the year award

This goes to the debate where the differences between the coalition partners over teacher training were first written into the Order Paper for all to see.

This afternoon the Labour Party at Westminster have an opposition day debate in the main chamber around the topic. This is the sort of debate that normally passes relatively without comment, but what is interesting is the amendment put down by the government in the names of the prime minister and his deputy; and Michael Gove and David Laws. I have reproduced it below with the key section underlined:

Line 1, leave out from ‘House’ to end and add ‘notes that this Coalition Government is raising the quality of teaching by quadrupling Teach First, increasing bursaries to attract top graduates into teaching, training more teachers in the classroom through School Direct and providing extra funding for disadvantaged pupils through the pupil premium which schools can use to attract and reward great teachers; notes that the part of the Coalition led by the Deputy Prime Minister believes all schools should employ teachers with Qualified Teacher Status, and the part of the Coalition led by the Prime Minister believes free schools and academies should retain the freedom to hire teachers without Qualified Teacher Status; further notes that funding agreements with academies and free schools will not be altered in relation to Qualified Teacher Status prior to the next election; and regrets the findings of the recent OECD skills report which revealed that those young people educated almost entirely under the previous administration have some of the worst levels of literacy and numeracy in the developed world, underlining the need for radical schools reform and demonstrating why nobody can trust the Opposition to protect education standards.’

For the full write up read the blog entry for the 30th October 2013.

So, what will 2014 bring? But, perhaps that’s best left to another post.

Another nail in the coffin

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The first Friday in December is a strange time to advertise eight top jobs in education. At this time of year either the employer is in a tearing hurry to make the appointments or the likely candidates have already been handpicked and by advertising when few candidates are job hunting the field can be appropriately small. I assume the DfE’s adverts for eight School Commissioners, each responsible for a region of the country, falls into the former category of advert.

The creation of these School Commissioner posts, and that of the overall national school commissioner, is the next step on the road to the full ‘nationalisation’ of the school system in England. Although these Commissioners are initially only to have oversight of academies and free schools, and presumably UTCS and Studio Schools as forms of academy, it would be an easy step for parliament to add maintained schools to their brief, thus finally depriving local authorities of any oversight of the school system after more than a century in some form of control.

I wrote earlier this year that I could understand such a system for the secondary school sector, but am apprehensive once central government control is extended to the primary sector. Most primary schools are essentially local in nature serving their local communities, and remote decision-making is not a good idea. The region that contains all the primary schools in Oxfordshire also stretches to include primary schools in Hackney and Haringey. The needs of schools such as Bruce Grove Primary in Tottenham and Buckland Primary in Oxfordshire would test any organisation, as we have seen when Oxfordshire managed to apparently overlook the poor performance of Oxford City’s primary schools a few years ago.

What is more alarming is that there has been little or no discussion about the change in control of schools with those most involved. At present, Oxfordshire is deep into a consultation, its second this year, on changes to home to school transport policy. But, the DfE doesn’t seem to have consulted before creating these new posts. Indeed, it doesn’t even seem to have bothered to tell MPs at Westminster.

There is also an assumption in the adverts that heads, assisted by a board of six other heads elected by their peers, will create the best management tier. Now there are many other capable people in and around the education scene that might want to apply, and I hope that they won’t be excluded if these posts do go ahead. Fortunately, being past current pensionable age, I can rule out self-interest in making that comment.

I don’t know what the churches will make of this change since many faith schools are now academies. Will they want one of the six person board to be from a faith-based schools. And what of the governors: how will they relate to the activities? Governors are key players on School Forums – will the power of that body now be diminished in favour of dictats from the Commissioner’s Office. The Daily Mail reported today that Bob Russell, a Lib Dem MP, held a surgery that lasted twelve hours: a record. Add in responsibility for schools, and who knows how long it might last?

Hard work ahead on teacher supply

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This has been a busy week for statistics about teacher preparation courses in England. Along with the full details of allocations made for 2014, published last Friday afternoon with little or no notice, always an interesting sign when that happens, there has been the census of recruitment to 2013 courses that was published on Tuesday.

The headlines from 2014 allocations are that higher education is still massively involved in teacher preparation, either directly or through validating the offerings of schools places offered via the School Direct scheme. However, many universities find themselves with allocations that are not economic in terms of viable courses, and there may still be other higher education institutions that follow Bath and the OU and either exit teacher preparation completely or withdraw from particular subjects. As the DfE has ensured some 30% more secondary places than might have been allocated if the Teacher Supply Model was followed more closely the risk has been transferred to students should all places be filled. In reality, there will be a tussle between the School Direct route and higher education in many subjects as to which places will be filled if the government cannot attract enough potential applications into teaching.

This is where the evidence from the 2013 ITT Census becomes important. Taken in association with the figures from the previous two years it shows some reduction in places filled. But, this was partly due to the 13% over-allocation the government has now owned up to. However, that does not explain either the massive decline in applications to train as design and technology teachers or the further declines in computer science and physics trainees accepted on to courses. The lack of awareness on the part of ministers as to how important the study of design and technology in schools is to the British economy is extremely worrying. Whether this lack of concern is part of the class system that says since you cannot study the subject at Oxford or Cambridge it cannot be important, or comes from a ministerial team with limited experience manufacturing industry I cannot tell. However, I might have expected the RSA along with other bodies with an interest in the future of design to be alarmed by the figures. The same is true for computing. I doubt whether the government will easily fulfil its desire to improve the skills in programming across the nation unless something is done to overcome a lack of trainees.

On May 8th I posted on this blog my concerns about recruitment for 2013, and that helped spark a debate about both where we train teachers and how many to train. My prediction for 2014 is that the challenge to recruitment may well be even tougher than last year, and the failure of the head of the NCTL to address the issue of teacher supply in his speech yesterday at the Academies Show, at least in the version I have seen, was a missed opportunity. In almost every subject the School Direct scheme under-performed higher education in recruitment, apparently leading one Vice Chancellor to reflect that universities rose to the government’s rescue. I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but how schools handle the significant increase in places allocated to them needs close monitoring. After all, in 2013, School Direct barely recruited more trainees than the former employment-based programmes achieved at the height of their popularity. That’s a long way off the total domination of teacher preparation ministers were championing only a year ago. This will be an interesting twelve months.

Do we need a Board?

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Much fuss is being made this morning over whether the Revd Flowers had the right expertise to chair a bank, and whether the regulators took any action to ensure his fitness for the post. Being chairman of a Board is an important post, arguably as important as the role of Chief Executive, but in a different way. For that reason it is unfortunate that unlike Ofsted or Qfqual the teaching profession no longer has a board to oversee the actions of the full-time officials working in the field of teacher preparation and development.

When the TTA and its successors in title were non-departmental bodies they had a Board to which the Chief Executive nominally reported. That did allow for some debate about issues of teacher preparation and development. It may not always have been the most challenging of Boards, but at least it was there. The same was true for the National College. Since the functions of teacher preparation and development have been taken back into the Department no such balance now exists, and the only checks on what is happening are either through the media or the parliamentary process. The absence of a balance to the Executive may well account for the extra scrutiny that teacher preparation changes have come under this year. However, to the good, there has been much more data published by the Department than in previous years, including the recent profiles of 2011-12 teaching graduates. Used properly, these data can help inform the debate.

It was inevitable that a switch to School Direct as a training route, especially for secondary teachers, would attract attention, as any change where there are winners and losers always does. Might a NCSL Board have aired some of the issues it has been left to the professional associations, politicians and participants in the teacher education process to raise in public? I would have hoped so. That is why I have worked with Chris Waterman to suggest the government establish an Advisory Committee on Teacher Supply and Training in order to bring together those concerned with the long-term development of a world-class teaching profession rather than just leave decisions to politicians and officials whose horizon rarely extends beyond the next funding cycle, and only as an election approaches beyond the end of the present parliament or term of office of the Secretary of State.

Next week sees the publication of the ITT Census for 2013, and the extent to which teaching has retain its glamour as a profession in all subjects and phases will become apparent. This week, the new UCAS application system is to go live, and the first applications by graduates wanting to train in 2014 as teachers will start to be made. Undergraduates have been applying ever since the UCAS system opened.

I hope 2014 will be a good year for recruitment, but I am pessimistic about whether the government has done enough to attract sufficient high quality applicants with the right range of academic knowledge into the profession. After all, social mobility will definitely be hindered if we run into another teacher supply crisis, even in just one part of the country.