Tag Archives: schools

Pay primary teachers more?

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Should we pay primary teachers more than their secondary colleagues? Figures published today by the DfE show that the average primary class, mostly taught by one teacher, but often with assistance from a teaching assistant, is now 26.9 pupils in size, up from 26.3 in 2006; an increase of 3.6 pupils per teacher over the period. During the same time period the average class faced by a secondary teacher declined in size from 21.5 to 20.1; a reduction of 1.4 pupils per teacher. Thus, overall, primary teachers on average face classes 6.8 pupils larger than their secondary colleagues. Put another way, in July a Year 6 teacher has around a third more pupils to cope with than a Year 7 teacher with the same children the following September.

Of course, older children demand more attention, have more behaviour issues with adults, require teachers with more specialist knowledge, sometimes have a longer teaching week, and there are no doubt a whole host of other reasons that could be advanced why secondary teachers should be paid the same as their primary counterparts despite teaching smaller classes. However, on sheer productivity grounds, the average primary teacher now has far more contact with pupils than their secondary colleagues even allowing for non-contact time during the school week.

Disaggregated by Key Stage, the figures look even worse; with Key Stage 1 teachers faced with an average of 27.4 pupils compared with 25.6 pupils in 2006; and Key Stage 2 teachers facing an average of 27.2; actually down on the 27.3 of 2006. These figures are taken from the DfE’s Schools and their Pupils Statistical Bulletin https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2014 that clearly show the pressure primary schools are under as rolls rise while their secondary colleagues enjoy the final years of declining numbers before the avalanche of rising rolls hits them in a couple of year time.

As the Teachers’ Pay Review body Report referred to in my previous post on this blog makes clear, the issue of how to calculate pay for teachers is complicated. However, for many years it has been agreed that the same basic scale applies to both primary and secondary teachers. Now pay is open to a free for all should this basic tenet of pay over the past three quarters of a century be open to discussion? With pupil numbers being a key component of a school’s funding, many primary teachers will no doubt want to know where the £15-£20,000 extra per class implied by the increase in class sizes since 2006 have gone in the school budget? For those schools that have just added to their reserves, there might be some challenging questions for the head and governing body to answer from their class teachers.

Birmingham is as much about governance as extremism

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There are at least two facets to the Birmingham story. One, mostly catching the headlines today, is about extremism; the other is about governance. Birmingham is our second largest city, with what looks like a generally centralised approach to governance from City Hall. Since most of the schools caught up in the row are academies, with only one apparently being a maintained school, Birmingham can claim ‘not our fault gov’ if you believe that academisation, started under Labour and pursued with vigour by Mr Gove, absolves a local authority from any involvement in the running of such schools. Personally, I don’t, but it shows what can happen when a system of education governance is systematically weakened over time by denigrating the role of one participant, in this case local authorities, and talking up the important of Whitehall.

When the discussions about how we educate our young people have subsided, and these discussions are important, especially when communities live in specific neighbourhoods, as I have known since a childhood being brought up on the borders of Stamford Hill and its orthodox Jewish community, the issue of effective governance will remain to be decided. Does education in London work better because education is divided between the different boroughs, whereas in our metropolitan cities of the midlands and the north there has been since 1974 one large local authority, and several relatively small ones, whether in Merseyside, Greater Manchester or West Yorkshire.

Realistically, the span of control is important; too small, and overheads become too expensive, especially without a geographical integrity common to local authorities: this is something some academy chains may well now be finding out. On the other hand, too large, and without sub-divisions, such as the divisional structure used before London was broken up into its boroughs, and there is a risk of a lack of oversight. This is especially true when resources for administration are seen as an unnecessary waste of money; a view strongly peddled by successive Tory administrations, and the last Labour government. In education, handling control of finance to schools just made certain most oversight would be neutered.

So why does all this matter? Well, apart from the mess the governance of education is in at present, there is the issue of eradicating illiteracy and innumeracy within a generation, highlighted by Mr Gove over the weekend, possibly as a diversionary tactic to his other problems. After all, what government doesn’t aspire to do so, and why hasn’t he, as Secretary or State, had a plan to do so over the past four years? Why has creating academies and free schools been more important? Governance matters in eradicating failure, such as illiteracy, because planning is involved.

Last week we celebrated one of the major events of planning in the last century; the ‘D’ day invasion of Europe. Imagine saying to a group of regiments, and a bunch of ship’s captains, just work out your own plan of attack and then get on with it. Planning isn’t something Mr Gove is good at; take the introduction of Computer Science instead of IT. Because academies don’t have to follow the National Curriculum, many may have just ignored the change because they already had staff teaching the subject, and no vacancy to recruit a different specialist. Where is the follow through from Whitehall?

Ideas are a start, but not enough. A good Department has ideas, knows what is happening, and manages the outcomes. Perhaps that explains why our education system hasn’t been world class. Too many ideas, and not enough effective action.

Fine the feckless?

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There are reports in the media that Michael Gove wants to deduct fines imposed on parents of those pupils not attending school from child benefits. This policy was suggested earlier in the coalition by a Conservative adviser, but blocked by the Liberal Democrats. Presumably, this revival of the idea could be designed to prevent UKIP announcing it as a policy ahead of the Conservatives.

As a headline it no doubt resonates with groups that feel you shouldn’t get something for nothing, and part of the contract in receiving state benefits is that you play your part; in this case ensuring your offspring go to school regularly. From the opposite perspective it looks like punishing the child by reducing family income, often already low in real terms, because of the actions of the parents. The sins of the fathers or in this case possibly even the mothers, being transferred to the next generation.

None of this is to underestimate the problem of children missing education, and the part parents play in conniving in their absence from school, but to seek to discover how best to deal with the issue.

I have never liked the idea of schools being able to fine parents. Recent governments have taken the idea that fines can be administered by public bodies without recourse to the judicial system to absurd lengths. This means that, unlike in court, those imposing the fines have neither the whole picture nor the means to compel someone to attend to discuss their means. As a result, fines are a very blunt instrument, and this often resorts in them eventually being written off unpaid. If fines are the solution they need to be imposed by a court with oversight of all State imposed penalties: as a form of punishment a community sentence to some form of parenting programme might well be a better alternative, especially if imposed early in a child’s record of unapproved absence. Personally, I think returning Magistrates’ Courts to local areas so that they can act quickly and decisively with the ability to understand the whole picture might be better than allowing head teachers to cut child benefit.

On the other hand, schools do need to consider how, especially in the early years, they can tackle those children that fall behind in their learning through absence. I am sure that the best schools do this as a matter of course, but some research into outcomes at the 20 or some primary schools with the worst attendance records might pay some interesting dividends. It would be an easy win to ask these schools that the DfE has already identified whether they are using their Pupil Premium to help these children?

Where the welfare of the child is in danger a local authority has the extreme option of directly intervening in the parenting of a child. Perhaps the Secretary of State should start by asking his colleagues in the Children’s Services part of his Department what they would recommend before targeting benefit cuts as the headline solution. Liberal Democrats were correct to block this policy last time it was mooted, and although they cannot stop Mr Gove campaigning to put it in the Tory manifesto for 2015, I hope that they will make clear their opposition to it by a definitive statement to that effect from their education minister, David Laws.

Teacher training transfer window opens

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As I hinted in a recent post, things are seemingly not going to plan in this year’s recruitment round for teacher preparation courses. If they were, then today’s announcement from the NCTL would not have appeared offering as it does additional places to providers with courses that are full. http://www.emcsrv.com/prolog/NCTL/Additional-HEI-places-available-for-2014-guide.pdf What is interesting is not so much the list of secondary subjects reproduced below, but the fact that places are also still up for grabs for non-specialist primary trainees.

According to the NCTL places are available in the following subjects:

  • biology
  • citizenship
  • classics
  • computer science
  • design & technology
  • engineering
  • geography
  • health and social care
  • modern languages
  • music
  • religious education
  • primary mathematics specialist and
  • all non-specialist primary

And the NCTL will continue to allocate places on request for all physics and maths courses, as it has done all year.

It remains to be seen how responsive schools and universities will be at this stage of the year to the invitation to top up courses that are full.

What this move by the NCTL will mean for the regional distribution of places is not clear. In the case of geography, often a bellwether subject in terms of charting recruitment challenges, most regions of England have six or seven schools showing no vacancies today on the UCAS web site and would thus be eligible to take on more places. Helpfully, there are nine such schools in London, and 12 in the south East where teachers are often needed in greater numbers.

Two of the four universities that would be allowed to recruit more trainees are in the North East, where there appear to be no schools with their full allocation. The other two universities that could bid for more places are one each in London and the South East according to the UCAS public site.

It is surprisingly to see primary places being offered in June as historically almost all courses are fully recruited by now; many with waiting lists.

What the announcement does to the government’s intention to transfer more training to schools will not become clear until the autumn, when it will become clear how many places have been taken up, and by what providers. If these places need to be filled, and are not, then next summer some schools may struggle to recruit new teachers in a wider range of subjects than I was predicting only a couple of weeks ago.

Ofsted changes ITT inspection rules again

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The latest changes by Ofsted to the inspection of initial teacher training announced today look interesting on the surface, but may be fraught with some interesting issues.

The two stage inspection process; Stage 1 in the summer term, and Stage 2 in the autumn following the completion of training assumes inspectors will visit many more schools to see NQTs teaching in their first term than has been the case in the recent past. Indeed, they may almost take on the role of the former LA adviser dropping in to see how an NQT is progressing.

The new process raises interesting challenges for providers. For instance, the reference will take on a new role. A trainee that has only been in mono-cultural school settings teaching a specific subject might warrant a more caution reference when applying for a post in a multicultural setting dealing with many students whose first language isn’t English. Similarly, it might lead to specific subject certification, such as ‘this NQT is has only taught history during their training, and cannot be deemed to be suitable to teach humanities without further preparation’. If the school appoints the NQT, and the HMI doesn’t like the RE lesson observed because of the material used, does that reflect badly on the ITT provider? The same issue might arise where a primary trainee was appointed to teach a mixed-age class having never experienced that situation in training: does the ITT provider bear the responsibility for the observed outcome? And what of undergraduate trainees that might not normally teach in the final summer term of their course? Will special placements now need to be arranged to satisfy Ofsted?

The summer term may also be too late to observe trainees effectively, especially those in UTCs, Studio Schools, or sixth form colleges where the majority of students might be on examination leave. At the very least, these students might have different timetables to those in 11-16 schools and their primary colleagues. I would personally favour a window between February and May for the observation phase, as ITT providers should by then be indentifying those students that are making good progress, and those that need additional help to reach the required standard. That is one of the benefits of HE and SCITT provision over some forms of School Direct in that the training provider can tailor the placements more directly to the needs of the trainee.

At the end of the day, we need to train enough teachers for all schools, and if the Ofsted process does not match outcomes to training, there is a risk that won’t happen.  Of course, since academies can employ anyone, it is difficult to see how Ofsted can judge training provision against teachers seen where the ITT provider has specifically stated that the trainee is not suitable for the post. That raises interesting questions for providers going forward, and for partnership agreements with School Direct. ITT providers will want to know how they will be judged on the part of a training regime they offer where they have no relationship with the trainee, and where they eventually work. Unless that scenario is discussed, the risk to HE and SCITTs will be greater than to the same training provision offered through School Direct: but perhaps that the logic behind the change.

 

 

 

 

Schools in chains or not?

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The DfE’s recent publication of some case studies relating to effective academy chains presents a useful contrast to the departure of an academy chain earlier in the week; the first such chain to effectively fold. The DfE research can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/academy-sponsor-profiles

Both these events set me thinking about the issue of control of schools. For the past three years, the favoured solution, at least in terms of what has been happening on the ground, has been the converter academy model where in most cases a school goes its own way. This has replaced the sponsored academy model introduced by the Labour government, and now often reserved for either newly formed schools or school that are taken over after failure by Ofsted, or possibly groups of primary schools.

Of course, both chains, and individual schools within the State system, are nothing new in education. The dioceses that manage the large number of church schools might be described as the original chains, and it is interesting to see the Diocese of Wakefield as one of the DfE’s academy chain case studies. At the other end of the spectrum were those individual voluntary aided schools that traced their history back to charitable foundations. Many were, and often still are, selective secondary schools, but, for instance, around London there is a ring of schools linked either to the livery companies or to long-established charities. At one time there were many more, but the amalgamations of the 1980s, during the drop in pupil numbers, witnessed the disappearance of quite a number, including the final vestiges of three in Haringey alone.

Now that the remaining community schools are not very different from academies in respect of their control as local authorities have few powers left, even where they are able to retain considerable influence, the question of the span of control needs properly debating properly.

The chief officer for Children’s Services in Hampshire recently expressed concern to the Select Committee about a dip in performance in some converter academies, and the DfE recently released figures for the number of schools not opening an email about safeguarding. Both these incidents raise the question about effective span of control. The other key question is the place of education in the democratic process?

Put the two questions together and you essentially ask the question successive governments since the Thatcher era have ducked; town hall or Whitehall as the key player in education.

Despite my preference for the local, especially for primary schools, where most children attend their nearest school, and there must be key links to other community services such as health and welfare, I fear we are moving inexorably towards a Whitehall run system with un-elected local commissioners; and not even the semblance of a School Board as in the USA.

I predict that whoever wins the 2015 general election, assuming the nation isn’t in a state of legislative paralysis after a hung parliament when the notion of five year fixed term parliaments may yet come back to haunt the electorate,  any sensible government will take decisive action to make clear the policy and decision-making processes within our school system.

Hopefully, the system that emerges will be effective at continuing to raise standards. Certainly, it won’t be as democratic as what has been the position during most of my lifetime, and possibly it will be expensive in managerial overheads. Whether small chains will survive is still a matter for debate.

Slow start for UTCs

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Along with Free Schools, the Coalition, (well the Conservative section at least), is keen on University Technical Schools and Studio Schools. I don’t really know what my Party’s position is on these new types of 14-18 schools offering specialisms designed to help the local labour market, and provide youngsters will vocational skills.  I suppose we accepted them as part of the Coalition deal, and because we have always wanted better 14-18 education for those not likely to be heading straight for university at eighteen. But, I don’t recall any serious debate about the topic; perhaps I missed it somewhere early on in the life of the Coalition.

Whatever their purpose, it is sad to see that the 39 UTCs and Studio Schools open by the start of September 2103 have in some cases attracted only limited numbers of students. Perhaps not surprisingly, the UTC with the largest number of students is the JCB Academy, a flagship schools which opened in January 2013, and had 276 students enrolled by September of that year. As befits its flagship status, it also had the best attendance record of any of these schools.

Of the other UTCs and studio schools open in September 2013, 25 had an enrolment of 100 students or less, and 14 had enrolled more than 100 students. Now 150 students is a reasonable number for one year group in a 14-18 school, and would give a total of 600 when the school was fully operational. However, three of the schools with fewer than 50 pupils opened in 2012, and one that opened in 2011 with the first tranche of such schools still, apparently, only has 54 students on roll in September 2013. So, unless they increase enrolment over the next two years, they could be fully operational with little more than 100 students.

I am not sure how much capital for new buildings has been ploughed into this programme, but so far it is educating fewer than 2,500 students across the whole of England, or the size of one large comprehensive school. Hopefully, the new schools aiming to come on stream in 2014 will have fared better in the admissions round just completed; perhaps someone might like to file a few FOI requests to find out.

After the recent debate about funding for the 800,000 extra pupils entering the mainstream school system over the decade after 2010, it might be appropriate to ask whether many of the skills being offered in both studio schools and UTCs could have been taught more cost effectively in the further education sector. How far should the national taxpayer be asked to pay for a specialist local school that is often only of benefit to a small section of local industry?  This is especially the case when government is also championing the growth in apprenticeships: the two policies risk being at odds with one another.

As the decisions on where to place these schools seem more related to who wants to fund them, the opportunity to develop a coherent policy towards 14-18 education once again appears to have been lost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trojan horse or Zinoviev letter?

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As I understand the situation, part of the row in Birmingham, and now Bradford, over the targeting of several schools by those with a particular view of education, centers on the issue of the possible use of schools to radicalise young people. However, much of the public discussion appears to be around issues linked to more traditional educational debates, such as separating the genders in classrooms, and denying girls the right to some activities such as sport and physical education. Clearly, these educational points should be easily disproved or established, and dealt with.

Although academies are free to set their own curriculum under Gove’s reforms, I am not sure that barring certain groups from some activities was an intended consequence. But, it shows what can happen with freedom. There is also an issue about how governors are appointed in the new undemocratic education world. In local authority controlled schools there was generally some democratic oversight of governor appointments with ward councillors being told of vacancies, and reports to Council. There is no such obvious mechanism for what is happening in academies. However, not all the schools involved in Birmingham were academies.

The wider point of segregation on gender lines in education is more interesting as an issue. There are, after all, selective gender segregated schools in Tory controlled Kent and Buckinghamshire; in the London boroughs of Merton and Kingston; and in northern authorities such as The Wirral and Lancashire. Indeed, it is only within my lifetime that the last gender segregated junior schools in places such as Croydon were turned into co-educational schools. Many of the three-decker Victorian schools in London still have the reminders of past times with separate boys’ and girls’ entrances, inscribed in the stonework over the doors, now happily used by all. Indeed, Birmingham has had separate boys’ and girls’ selective and comprehensive schools within its education system for many years.

Personally, I prefer co-education, but there cannot be one rule for some and not for others. The DfE database record 232 state-funded schools just for girls, including selective schools run by faith groups, and slightly fewer for boys. That means up to ten per cent of secondary schools across England may be single-sex schools. There is an issue about how any group of parents or other community groups can alter the characteristics of an existing school, compared with the clear framework for submitting proposals for a new academy of some sort or other.

Up until 1997, there was an understanding that Christian and Jewish schools would be funded by the State, but not those of other religions. The Blair government changed the rules to make them more logical, with any group being able to seek to set up a school with a faith-based character funded from the public purse. However, it never really discussed what to do when communities change and there is an existing pattern of schools.

Nevertheless, the government should have been alert to the problems that can occur with the secular curriculum in schools run for particular religious purposes. The Ofsted report of an independent school in Hackney this January is evidence enough to have alerted anyone concerned by the issue. It also demonstrates that Ofsted was perfectly capable of inspecting such schools, and reporting on their education functions. Why a former police officer needed to be sent into Birmingham ahead of Ofsted, only the Secretary of State can explain, as no doubt he will do so when the various reports have appeared.

The role of religions in education has always been complicated in England because of the manner in which the State replaced the churches as the main provider of schooling. The issue was discussed before the 1902 Education Act was passed by the then Wesleyan Methodist Church. The question they discussed was: were Wesleyans teachers of children or teachers of Methodist children. They opted for the former point of view, and as a consequence there were no Methodist state funded secondary schools, but many Methodist have become teachers. Other faith groups took the contrary view, and there are such schools. Where does the modern State want to go in a multi-faith community where schooling is a key factor in the lives of young people? Birmingham may present an opportunity to decide what type of schooling system the State should fund. A debate now joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury in favour of faith schools.

 

Can teaching schools create a universal model for teacher preparation and development?

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I must confess that the National College’s initial evaluation of Teaching Schools had passed me by. I don’t know whether it was because it appeared around Easter time or because it was inserted into the government’s publication list other than at the top where new publications usually appear. Nevertheless, it merits consideration by anyone interested in both ITT and CPD in schools as a means of raising standards. The full document can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/302659/RR332_-_Teaching_schools_Evaluation.pdf

The authors included a former general secretary of ASCL, and a well-known thinker on education policy, have published this report as part of a longer government backed study that commenced in 2013, and continues to 2015. There is much to ponder in their interim conclusions. In this piece I will concentrate on their discussion about initial teacher education and School Direct. The authors accept that, as is well known, last year there was little difficulty filing the primary places on offer but that there were challenges recruiting to the priority secondary subjects.

It will be interesting to see whether the same pattern will be repeated in 2014, since using School Direct to provide a local trained teaching force was cited as a reason for participating in at least one case. The report noted that:

“In some case study TSAs Teaching School Alliances), there are examples of strategic planning work that addresses the needs of local schools when allocating School Direct trainees. For the Hallam TSA, School Direct has enabled them to build leadership capacity in local Catholic schools from ‘the start of the supply chain’ (strategic partner). It has also given them the autonomy to improve the supply of high quality teachers in Religious Education (RE). It is noted that recruitment and succession planning of RE teachers are ‘a crisis in church schools’. It is, however, too early to report successes yet”

As the Report also notes, the relationship between teaching schools and higher education is evolving at present. Some TSA have strong links that pre-date the present drive to employer-led training for teachers – a return to the pre-Robbins Report position – that have survived the change in circumstances. Indeed, for some universities, it is possible to dump the bits of training they don’t want to do as well as the administrative tasks and still be paid for the teaching they do better than schools with the bonus of the university charging the faculty a lower overhead. Much no doubt depends upon whether the TSA sees training merely as ‘coaching’ or recognises that anyone entering the profession needs far more than just some lesson plans and a few tips on how to manage behaviour. No doubt the new review Gove has ordered will have something to say about this topic.

The Report notes some challenges for the future, including what the authors see as the biggest challenge – one that is strategic in character – namely how sustainable is the whole teaching school concept in the medium term. As they note, there are concerns about how easily public policy can change.  Even more worryingly, they note that Teaching Schools appear to have been doing the softer working around support and development but not been able to hold to each other to account (or other schools in the alliance) if performance and progress starts to slip in a school. This is a vital issue that must be addressed if quality in training and development is not to be compromised. Ofsted will have to pay particular attention to this aspect of School Direct and the other programmes operated by teaching schools.

There is much else of interest in the report, and I would urge anyone interested in this field to download and read the whole report.

Pay rise for Maths teachers?

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Rather late in the life of this government the DfE seems to be learning some basic economic truths. Mostly notably they have discovered that when there is a shortage, the price goes up. However you dress up the announcement (made on a bank holiday Monday) that the DfE has done a deal with big business to deprive them of maths PhDs and to divert these scare resources into teaching at a price of perhaps £40,000 plus on-costs per year it must be a reaction to a shortage somewhere.

Indeed, just last week the DfE published an interesting paper on Indicator 19 of the School Workforce Survey showing the percentage of teachers with a relevant qualification teaching in English, mathematics, and the sciences across secondary schools had declined in all three subjects between the first School Workforce survey of 2010 and the latest conducted in 2013. This is despite improved coverage of the curriculum indicator across schools meaning that teacher coverage has increased from 66% to 81%, although the effective coverage rate has remained static at just under 75%.

The decline in the percentage of maths and science lessons taught by teachers with a relevant qualification – at least an ‘A’ level in the subject – is not a surprise. In view of the reductions in training numbers for teachers of English the fall from 88.4% to 84.8% in the percentage of English lessons taught by those with a relevant qualification must be a wake-up call, and vindicates some of the comments made on this blog over the past year. This is not a case of needing to pay more, but of increasing the training numbers to meet demand.

If I were a current maths teacher, or one in training, I would be paying special attention to the details of the DfE announcement when they appear and deciding what line I would take tomorrow with my head teacher. Now that schools have been removed from the shackles of a rigid pay scale, and left to fight out salaries with their staff many maths teachers may now find it worthwhile asking for a pay rise on the back of today’s announcement. This is especially if they teach Years 11-13. Their colleagues in the FE sector might also look to see whether the announcement is enough to seek a transfer into the school sector.

A helpful HEFCE publication http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/pubs/2011/201133/11_33.pdf shows that there were just 255 UK domiciled starters of full-time PhDs in the mathematical sciences in 2009-10, plus a small number of starters on part-time courses. Allowing for non-completion, this might generate around 200 possible new maths teachers, if all new UK domiciled PhDs in the mathematical sciences were diverted into teaching. As a morale booster, it certainly sounds good, but those sorts of numbers are only half the figure the DfE calculated in its evidence to the STRB that would be needed to extend maths teaching to all post-16 year-old pupils just in schools. This number would do nothing to alleviate the growing shortage of qualified maths teachers for years 7-11 in secondary schools.

Although worth a try, especially as it probably isn’t costing the government much in hard cash, this scheme seems more of a gimmick than a solution to a problem the government seemingly now acknowledges needs solving.

This blog has been based upon press reports and will be updated after the DfE publishes the details of the Scheme.