Tag Archives: schools

Troops into teachers or children into soldiers

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Last week the government announced it was going to create a route to allow ex-military personnel to become teachers. Essentially, for graduates in the military, the route will be the same as for other graduates, but with more cash, and possibly some ring-fenced places on either one or all of the routes into the classroom.

The main interest in the media was in the training to be offered to non-graduates. As the non-graduate scheme envisages the bulk of the trainee’s time during training will be spent in school, presumably it is assumed that sufficient subject knowledge will have been acquired during a military career to make the time spending acquiring a degree unnecessary. Now I might be persuaded that a physical education instructor; a chaplain – if any enter the forces these days without degrees; or even a musician, might have acquired enough specialist subject knowledge to teach their subject in a secondary school. But, outside of areas where the work in the forces is at least congruent in some ways with what is taught in schools I cannot see how military life would prepare someone for subject teaching in schools. Many former military staff members have for a long while made worthwhile contributions to the further education sector where their specialist vocational skills can be in high demand. Perhaps the government is thinking that many on the ‘troops to teachers’ programme will work in the burgeoning 14-18 sector of UTCs and studio schools.

Much has been made of the attitude to discipline those with a military background might bring into schools, but discipline in a uniformed service, where a refusal to obey a lawful order might result in a charge, is not the same as either helping a frustrated teenager act out their angst against society during a bad day at school or even just any class or youngsters that feels like playing up a new teacher to test the boundaries of their authority. This is not to deny the great strides the forces have taken in recent years in moving away from a ‘do as I say’ mentality. However, war does require obedience to orders, in a way that society more generally has moved away from. And in the end, the armed forces training is designed to prepare personnel for armed conflict.

Nevertheless, the BBC quoted David Laws as saying that military values such as leadership, discipline, motivation, and teamwork would benefit children.

“We want to capture the ethos and talents of those leaving the armed forces and bring this experience into teaching. We know that our highly-skilled servicemen and women can inspire young people and help raise educational attainment.”

But, perhaps more worrying was the section of the DfE press notice that said:

“We are already working to bring military ethos into our education system to help raise standards and tackle issues such as behaviour. In June the Prime Minister announced a £10.85m expansion of the school-based cadets to create around 100 more units by 2015. Extending the scheme in state schools will allow even more young people to benefit from the life-changing opportunities that cadet forces offer.”

At a time when the armed forces are being severely pruned, perhaps it would have been better for any uniformed units created in schools to have been based upon a civilian service model, and not on a military model dreamed up after the South African war over a century ago. As a means of instilling values such as, discipline, motivation, and teamwork it would bring the same benefits to children without the militaristic overtones. Next year we will be remembering the foundation of army formations such as the Glasgow Boys’ Brigade (16th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry) Battalion as one of the many ‘Pals’ battalions formed at the start of World War One. How far the cadet forces aided recruitment in 1914 is an interesting discussion point.

By all means let’s ensure discipline in schools is as good as it can be, but not at the price of creating a militaristic culture in our schools. So, I welcome ex-service personnel who want to become teachers, just as I welcome those from other walks of life, but schools must no longer be expected to become the training grounds for our next generation of the armed forces. Let it be an adult decision to take the Queen’s shilling.

Funding per pupil, spending by schools: does it give value for money

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‘Many of the important operational financial decisions of schools are largely idiosyncratic.’ This was the finding of a DfE sponsored research project that reported in 2012. Earlier today David Laws as Minister of State issued a written ministerial statement on future funding for schools in 2014-15. In the end, whatever decisions are made about how to fund schools, the spending decisions are now taken at the school level. How idiosyncratic schools’ individual decisions are can be determined, at least in historical terms, by an analysis of the raw data the DfE now publishes on its web site

Recent data for academies allows comparisons between such schools expenditure patterns. The latest data is for the school-year 2010-11 since it seemingly takes longer for the private sector to produce accounts than for state owned schools, where data up to March 2012 has been in the public domain for some time now. It would be invidious to look at academies starting in 2010, since they would not have a full complement of pupils, and there are always extra start-up costs. However, taking four academies outside London with starting dates between 2003 and 2008 provides an interesting picture of expenditure over four different categories.

Teaching

All academies with Key Stage 4: National median expenditure £3,544

The 4 academies  £2,047  £3,512  £3,700  £4594

Cleaning

All academies with Key Stage 4: National median expenditure £29

The 4 academies  £65  £72  £99  £123

Staff Development

All academies with Key Stage 4: National median expenditure £71

The 4 academies  £24  £53  £81  £92

Educational Supplies

All academies with Key Stage 4: National median expenditure £603

The 4 academies £602  £779  £880  £885

On every element there is a wide range of expenditure between the four academies. It is important that boards of directors of academies do these sorts of comparisons just as much as governing bodies of community schools so that they can justify the use of what is still in the final analysis public money.

The new funding arrangements for 2014-15 may be the last before a major reform that will grapple with the vexed question of regional funding levels, as well as those at the individual school level. The greater flexibility for the funding of small schools in rural areas highlighted in the ministerial statement will no doubt be welcomed by many in the shire counties and unitary authorities in rural areas, but the approach could mean the end of some small urban primary schools unless they have relatively low overheads and staffing costs towards the lower end of the range. There won’t be many TLRs in those schools, and the new pay arrangements might mean these were the first schools to face the staff with the choice of an increment or the closure of the school.

School funding arrangements will never please everyone, but it is clear that value for money benchmarks that governors and directors of schools can benchmark their own schools against might be a useful aid to constructing budgets and helping ministers decide the funding mechanisms for the future.

Good schools for all or just for some?

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Should society concentrate on making entry to good schools fairer rather than trying to expand the number of good schools? The Sutton Trust Report published earlier today about eligibility for free school meals at the top state schools seemingly opts for supporting the former approach. That’s not surprising since it paints a dismal picture where in the top 500 comprehensive schools the overall rate of pupils eligible for free school meals is half the national average, and only 40 of the 500 top comprehensive schools have higher free school meals than the national average. Indeed, since the Sutton Trust first looked at the issue of the number of pupils on free school meals in top performing schools little has changed, except that more pupils are entitled to free school meals as a result of the recession.

Top State Schools            Local Area of school       National Average

2005 Study          3%                                          12.3%                                    14.3%  Mostly selective schools

2006 Study          5.6%                                      13.7%                                    14.3%  200 comprehensive schools

2013 Study          7.6%                                      15.2%                                    16.5%  500 comprehensive schools

Schools in the top 500 are, according to the Sutton Trust study, more likely to be faith schools; single sex schools; converter academies; voluntary aided schools. Some schools may fall into more than one of these categories. All of these types of schools control their own admissions policies.

The alternative approach, making all schools good schools, is the driver that underpins the coalition’s Pupil Premium policy of adding extra revenue support to pupils on free school meals. The top 500 comprehensive schools won’t see much of this money. The Pupil Premium policy tackles the issue of where children are now, not where the authors of the Sutton Trust study might like them to be. Interestingly, the study is silent about what would happen to pupils displaced from the top 500 schools by those on free school meals? Is it assumed that their parents would lead the drive to improve the schools their offspring ended up at?

Ever since the attempts in the 1960s and 1970s to create a rational secondary school system to replace a system designed for an age when the majority of pupils left school at 14 to join the workforce, secondary schooling has all too often been about social segregation in the urban areas, rather than a force for greater social cohesion. The philosophy inherent in the Sutton Trust report seems to be that of offering an escape route to better education for the deserving poor rather than accepting the view that being poor should not mean having to accept a lower standard of schooling from the State for your children.

A good school for all has always been the standard I want our education system to strive for. Looking at what has happened in London over the past decade shows what can be done. I believe it starts with good quality primary schools for all. As a nation we aren’t there yet, and indeed we are often too fixated about the secondary sector. I firmly believe that good primary education will mean more good secondary schools, and ease the debate about admissions policy. After all, those children who live in really rural areas generally have no choice in the matter about where they go to school: they deserve to go to a top school as much as any other child.

Some Studio Schools encounter student attendance challenge

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Are the government’s new studio schools getting off to a difficult start? Recent DfE figures for pupil absence during the autumn term of 2012-13 do at the very least raise questions about what is happening. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/200820/Main_text_-_SFR17_2013.pdf

Five of the ten schools with the highest absence rates, across both primary and secondary sectors, were either studio schools or in one case a University Technical College. As all five of these schools had relatively small enrolments, the behaviour of just one or two reluctant transferees may have unduly affected the outcomes. Nevertheless, against a national rate of 5.2%, or 5.7% for the secondary sector as a whole, absence rates of more than 14% do seem a little on the high side.

Although the majority of the studio schools in the list were in manufacturing centres, with school systems that have faced considerable challenges over the years, it does seem odd that despite the variety of different specialism in these new studio schools so many have these high levels of pupil absence. It might have been though that a fresh start in a new school with a definite vocational slant to the curriculum, and often backed by well known employers, might have inspired pupils to attend regularly. On that basis, it is important to identify what, if anything is going wrong? Indeed, although two studio schools are ranked better than 4,000 in the list of all schools for overall absence rates, the other three schools with studio in their title are in the 600 worst performing school for absence rates.

By focussing on vocational trades, it may be that the early studio schools that a skewed distribution of ability and it will take time to enthuse the pupils about the value of their education after nearly a decade when school has not been the most welcoming of places for many of them. What really must not happen is that these schools become dumping grounds for the failures of the mainstream school system. The new schools coming on stream in 2013 and 2014, including the space studio school in Banbury, need to learn the lessons, not least about transfer to a new school at age 14, that these schools have had to encounter in their early stages of development. It would certainly not be acceptable to either turn a blind eye to high levels of absence in these new types of school or to accept it as a part of the deal for the future of education in England.

As the responsibility for these schools lies with Ministers in Westminster, so officials in the DfE, as would any competent local authority, must ask these schools for the preliminary figures for term two. If these so no improvement over term one of the academic year, action must be taken now. Not to do so will reveal to the education community that while it is acceptable  for central government to castigate local authorities for poor outcomes, government schools are able to produce even worse outcomes with impunity.

Tear down the ring fence?

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The Think Tank Reform today published a report about spending on schools. http://www.reform.co.uk/resources/0000/0765/Must_do_better_Spending_on_schools.pdf

As a right of centre think tank it might be accused of having arranged some of the data to make the most of its thesis that spending on schooling has increased without an associated rise in outcomes. Taking the period from 1999-2000 as a base for some of the analysis means the analysis started from the end of a period when government spending had been depressed during the Major government and the first two years of the Blair government, so some recovery in spending on schooling as a proportion of GDP might have been expected.

The overall thesis is that the ring fence on school spending should be removed, and the same degree of efficiency imposed on schools as on other public services. Now the issue of funding of schools has featured in several earlier posts on this blog. Interestingly, I cannot find any reference in the Reform pamphlet to the growth in school reserves. This issue, the subject of the first column in this blog, is one that has disturbed me for some time. In an age of austerity why are schools taking cash from taxpayers and putting it in their bank accounts rather than spending it? Why, indeed are some schools sitting on balances of over £1 million pounds: the number of schools with deficit budgets was at an historic low in 2012.

Reform also seem to neglect to note that during the period 1999-2003, before spending on schooling increased significantly, there was a teacher supply crisis. They don’t model anything about labour costs in detail. A failure to staff schools does lead to poor performance, and one reason I expect the next PISA results to be better is because schools have been better staffed during the past decade than at any time during my adult life. My anxiety is that an end is now in sight to that period of full staffing unless the government is very careful.

One issue the Reform report does note in passing is the difference between spending on primary and secondary schooling. According to the figures used by Reform, secondary schools accounted for 46% of spending in 2011-12, whereas primary accounted for only 27%; or 33% if under-fives spending was included. In my own view targeted spending on primary pupils who fail to achieve where they could do so might produce the best return on investment within the school system. The Pupil Premium has the capability to achieve this end, providing schools fully understand its purpose.

Indeed, adopting the suggestions in the Reform Report, and abandoning the ring fence on school spending while still aiming to improve educational outcomes and pupil attainment, might affect more affluent areas more than the less well off parts of England. Reform’s supporters might well reflect that it was David Blunkett as Secretary of State who imposed a maximum class size of 30 at Key Stage One. The major beneficiaries of his policy were mostly schools in Tory authorities where large class of over 30 were more frequently to be found at that time. Removing the funding cap might cause a return to that situation. It might also sound the death knell for small and expensive post-16 provision in some schools that is already under threat from other government actions such as the introduction of studio schools and UTCs. Reform’s authors should be careful about what they wish for.

Challenging schools find difficulty recruiting new leaders

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Each year more than 2,000 schools in England advertise for a new head teacher. Most are successful at their first attempt. However, regular surveys have revealed that a proportion does not achieve success at their first attempt, and a small number require more than two attempts to find a new leader for their school. Recent research by the National College (Earley et al, 2012) has emphasised the importance of good leadership to the success of a school.

An analysis of primary and secondary schools advertising for a head teacher during the 2011/2012 school year revealed that the schools needing to re-advertise were likely to present several factors that possibly made them unattractive to some candidates. Understanding the factors affecting a school’s likely success in recruiting a new leader is of importance in the present market-led recruitment system for school leaders. Such knowledge may also help in determining whether preparation for headship embodies the appropriate skills and practices necessary for leading such schools.

Some 335 primary schools and 85 secondary schools that placed a first advertisement for a head teacher during the period between the end of August 2011 and the end of August 2012, and where there was at least one re-advertisement during the period up to the end of December 2012, were assessed as part of the study. Generally, secondary schools experience fewer challenges in recruiting a new head teacher, possibly because the ratio of potential candidates to vacancies is much higher than it is in the primary sector.

The research assessed three different aspects of each school:

  • Schools that were not straightforward primary schools, including junior and combined schools were assigned a score of 1.
  • Faith schools of any denomination were assigned a score of 1
  • Schools with KS2 results below the national average in 2012 were assigned a score of 1 as were secondary schools where the % of A*-Cs at GCSE including English and Mathematics were below the national average.
  • Schools with Free School Meals above the national average for the past six years were assigned a score of 1
  • A score of 1 was awarded for each re-advertisement. A re-advertisement was a second or subsequent advertisement more than 21 days after the original advertisement, but no more than 365 days after the original advert. The same rules were applied to each re-advertisement. The maximum score on this count was 6 for the primary sector and three for the secondary sector. In the primary sector, there were 72 schools with two re-advertisements; 23 with three; four with four; two with five and the one school with six re-advertisements. Since the re-advertisements included those during the period between September and December 2012 a small number of schools may have had their score affected by one point because they commenced their search for a new head teacher early in the 2011-12 school year compared with those that started the process latter. Hover, as 50% of head teacher initial advertisements appear between the start of January and the end of March each year the number affected is likely to be small.

Finally a minus score was applied for advertisements placed during most of the month of August and the whole of December as these are times when fewer candidates may be looking for a new post than at other times of year.

A total score was then created for each school, and the schools were ranked in descending score order. Schools with missing data were excluded from the ranking at this stage. Three schools scored six out of a possible maximum score of 10 for primary schools and one secondary school scored five out of six.

Results

Primary

Of the schools ranked in the top 100, there were only three community primary schools including St Meryl a community primary school in Watford that topped the list. Although it has the name of a saint, according to the school brochure this referred to the name of the builder’s wife when the school was built in the early 1950s. If so, then this successful school might be well advised to consider a change of name to one less suggestive of a religious affiliation on a casual glance.  The other two community primary schools in the top 100 with below average numbers of Free School Meal pupils and above average KS2 results included another primary school in Hertfordshire, and one in Bracknell Forest.  The latter had been under-performing at KS2 for the three years before 2012.

Of the remaining 12 schools in the top 100 with below average numbers of Free School Meal pupils and above average KS2 results 10 were faith schools including three Roman Catholic, six Church of England, and one Jewish School. The two community schools were a combined school in Buckinghamshire and a junior school in Kent. Of the faith schools, one Church of England school was a combined school and three schools were junior schools, (two Church of England schools and one Roman Catholic school).

The geographical distribution of the 100 primary schools at the top of the list included 45 schools in the south East; 20 in London and nine in the counties of the East of England adjacent to London that are similar in many ways to many of the authorities in the South East. Thus, 74 schools in the top 100 were located in or around London.

Secondary

Because of the large number of academies and recent academy converters full details are only available for 69 of the 84 secondary schools with re-advertisements. The missing data relates to either Free School Meals or KS4 results data. Of the 84 school with full or partial data 10 are in London, including seven of the 37 schools with a score of three or above, some 19%. Fifteen of the schools in the top 37 are faith schools, including 12 of the top 20.

Some 20 of the schools have above average KS4 results and below average scores for Free School Meals. Of these schools, ten are faith schools. However, there are only four such schools in the top 37. Three are Roman Catholic schools, and the fourth is an 11-18 boys’ school that is converting to become an academy.

Discussion

The presence of a significant number of faith schools in our results is perhaps not a surprise since it has been reported for many years that such schools, and especially, but not exclusively, Roman Catholic schools have experienced difficulties in recruiting new head teachers.

The extension of the work to consider whether there might be other factors affecting recruitment, and specifically whether a combination of higher than average numbers of pupils with access to Free School Meals and lower than average Key Stage outcomes for the sector might affect recruitment is a new departure. Seemingly, such a combination does affect the market, with higher numbers of such schools re-advertising, with the South East and counties to the north of London being noticeable among the schools in the primary sector, with secondary schools in London probably also being over-represented. Clearly, where these schools are faith schools, the issues are obviously compounded.

It is clear that as Free School Meal levels increase, so there are a greater number of schools performing less well. While this may be understandable for secondary schools, where many are coping with the effects of under performance by their pupils since the start of their education it is less so in the primary sector where the importance of the early years of education has been known for some time. Those schools with high levels of Free School Meals are now being helped with the additional funding through the Pupil Premium scheme. However, the considerable number of primary schools with relatively few pupils who will benefit from that scheme, but still currently under perform  in some cases quite markedly so, must be of concern.

An analysis of schools in the primary sector where the Free School Meals index was below 20 revealed no real difference between the performance of faith and non-faith schools

There may well be other factors, such as the size of the school that need to be taken into account when considering the challenges facing school seeking a new leader, but it seems likely that the interplay of factors relating to deprivation and control of the school are still key factors in how easy a school will find it to recruit a new leader. The location of a school in London or the counties and authorities surrounding the capital may be a further subsidiary factor that can affect some schools.

How the future governance of schools will affect leadership recruitment and development in the future is clearly something that will need watching with interest.

Bibliography

Earley, et al. (2012). Review of the school leadership landscape. Nottingham; National College for School Leadership.

Was there a baby boom in 1953?

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Figures published by the TES from the database I created over 25 years ago, and left with the TES when I retired in 2011, suggest that the highest percentage of primary schools for thirteen years failed to recruit a new head teacher at their first attempt during January 2013. Give that January is the month that witnesses the largest number of new recruitment adverts for heads, a 26% re-advertisement ratio, rising to over 40% for schools within the Greater London area, must be a matter for concern.

Perhaps it was unsurprising that the government spokesperson when asked to comment on the figures said according to a BBC report that, “we have always been aware that as the baby-boomer generation started to retire we were likely to see a rise in the number of vacancies.” Well now that comment begs two questions. Firstly, has there been a rise in vacancies, and secondly is it fair to  still be citing the baby boom for a rise in vacancies and the subsequent challenges in filling these vacancies?

According to a spokesperson for Education Data Surveys that compiled the TES Report, there were 261 vacancies for new primary head teachers advertised for the first time during January 2013. In January 2009, there were 416 advertisements for head teachers of all types of schools, so the 216 primary vacancies this January doesn’t look like out of line with previous years.

The second question relates to how fair is it to attribute the present problem to the retirements by baby boomers? Heads retiring at 60 this summer would have been born in 1953, Coronation Year. Those retiring at 65 would certainly have been part of the immediate post-war baby bulge, but as the DfE 2012 Workforce Survey only found around 1,000 primary heads over the age of 60 in November 2012, it would require virtually all of them to decide to retire this year to have any impact on the figures. Since the number of vacancies doesn’t seem out of line with recent years, any retirement boom among the over-60s will probably have been counter—balanced by a reduction in the retirement rate among the approximately 3,700 primary head teachers in the 55-59 age group last November.

So was there a baby boom in 1953: apparently not according to the Office of National Statistics

Live births in the United Kingdom

1959

878,561
1958

870,497
1957

851,466
1956

825,137
1955

789,315
1954

794,769
1953

804,269
1952

792,917
1951

796,645
1950

818,421
1949

855,298
1948

905,182
1947

1,025,427
1946

955,266
1945

795,868

Although higher by around 10,000 than in the years either side of the Coronation, and perhaps that event had some effect on the figures, the number of live births in 1953 across the United Kingdom was around 200,000 below the really baby boomer year of 1947 when I entered this world (Office for National Statistics, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/taxonomy/index.html?nscl=Live+Births+and+Stillbirths#tab-data-tables).

Indeed, the DfE might now park the baby boomer excuse until at least 2017 when it might again be worth using as an excuse based upon these figures. Even then, I would approach the task with some caution.

So, are the NAHT right in suggesting rising targets and negative rhetoric from ministers as the cause of deputies shunning the top job? They may have a point, as the recent tragic death of a Worcestershire primary head teacher pointed up, the job is not without considerable stresses and strains and the lack of a credible middle-tier of support since local authorities had their budgets slashed probably doesn’t make the job any more attractive.

However, there may be other structural reasons for the rise in re-advertisements, especially in London. The asymmetric nature of house prices that allows Londoners to move out of the capital and trade-up to a better property, but means those outside the capital cannot afford to move in may be one issue restricting supply. However, a bigger issue may be the lack of deputy heads in the age-group one would expect to be seeking headships. I will return to analyse this point and the type of schools that may be suffering unduly in the contest for a new head teacher in a future blog. But, let me end with what I said about headship recruitment last summer in the report that I wrote for the Pearson Think Tank.

The market for head teachers in London is always complicated by the fact that the price of housing in many parts of the capital restricts the likelihood of inward movement by senior staff working in schools outside London. The increase in salary is often not enough to compensate for any such move, despite the average recorded salary in the 2010 School Workforce Survey being £99,000 for a secondary head teacher and almost £72,000 for a primary school head teacher – both some £15,000 more than the recorded average for a head teacher working outside of London

In general, it seems that the larger the number of different factors affecting a school seeking a new head teacher, the greater the risk of disappointment at first advertisement. Thus, a small school that is a faith school and also has relatively poor results may find the search for a new head teacher more of a challenge than a larger community school with results slightly above average located in an area with average housing prices that advertises at a point in the year, specifically between January and March, when the majority of candidates are looking for headship vacancies for September.

http://thepearsonthinktank.com/2012/are-we-running-out-of-teachers/ page 31

Are heads salaries on the rise: What are the consequences for taxpayers?

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How come secondary heads cannot fill in forms about their salary correctly? Figures issued yesterday by the DfE show around 300 misreported leadership salaries in the primary sector, but some 400 misreported salaries in the numerically much smaller secondary sector where the misreported figures were split evenly between academies and other maintained secondary schools. According to a footnote in the government tables the misreporting includes any salary above £200,000 per annum.

Now it may be that the census form that collects data on teachers and school leaders and their salaries does not deal well with issues such as executive heads and those head teachers leading federations of schools where others have the courtesy title of head when in fact they are just a head of a school site. If this is the case, then the form needs revision after three years in use. However, if it is heads, and they are responsible for their schools return of the form, fudging their salary and those of others on the leadership team then the schools should be identified and required to provide a correct return.

At the start of this parliament the Prime Minister was keen than no public servants should earn more in salary than he does, but of course he has a rent free house in London and a large country mansion for the weekends in addition to his salary. Nevertheless, one side effect of Michael Gove’s freeing up of teachers’ salary regulations could be that the salaries of heads rise even further and faster in the coming years while those of classroom teachers are held down because of their relative bargaining power.

After more than a quarter of a century of studying the pay of heads, I am aware that the job is a challenging one, and with Ofsted breathing down their necks it can be very like that of a football manager seeking either a place in Europe for their team or striving to avoid relegation. Either way, their job is at risk if they fail to perform well. The tragic case of the Worcestershire primary head reported at her inquest earlier this week shows just how much pressure Ofsted can exert of school leaders. As a result a risk premium is increasingly necessary for many headships. How large that premium should be must be determined by governing bodies, and they need guidelines for what is appropriate.

However, letting the market be responsible for the calculation of salaries in education has another and wider impact on taxpayers in general. At present, many heads are still retiring on a final salary pension, although this will be replaced by an average salary pension for those who retire in the future. As the Teachers’ Pension Fund doesn’t actually exist, and any pension is paid out of  taxation, the burden of the large pensions of up to half the final salary falls onto general taxation. A pension of £50,000 would require the contributions from around 20 NQTs, so if there are now more than say 500 pensioners in the Teachers’ Pension Scheme with pensions of over £50,000 they might require the contributions of 10,000 Newly Qualified Teachers just to cover their pensions. As this number increases so will its share of the income from the Pension Fund necessary to cover the payout even if it is offset by the higher pension payments from those receiving the high salaries.

Teacher compensation regimes are complicated affairs, and the government should be wary of tackling some areas of pay without considering the consequences as a whole. At present governing bodies have the power to set salaries, but without the responsibilities for all the consequences. That said I quite understand why heads want to achieve the highest salary possible in an environment where the ethos of public service seems to reside solely with a Prime Minister who can afford to take such a stance.

Youth numbers in custody halve in a decade

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One of the more impressive statistics of the past few years has been the reduction in the number of young people held in custody. For much of the first decade of this century the average number of children and young people held in custody (including 18 year-olds) averaged around the 3,000 mark for England and Wales. The peak year was 2002/03 when the average was 3,451. With a month to go in the 2012/13 financial year the latest figures show that the average number in custody is now down to 1,755 almost exactly half the average in the peak year a decade ago.

Even more impressive is the decline in the 10-14 age group held in custody, down from a peak of 236 in July 2005 to 54 in February 2013. The decline in the 14-17 age-groups in custody has been from a peak of 2,885 in June 2008 to 1,266 this February. These figures can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/youth-custody-data along with other useful data for those interested in the topic of youth custody. For instance, only 52 of those held in secure institutions are females compared with 1,268 young males. Some 765 of the young population are classified as ‘White’ compared with 506 from the BME and ‘other’ classifications. The reduction in the ‘White’ population in youth custody from a peak of over 2,000 has been much steeper than for the BME and ’other’ group where the peak was less than 800. There are clearly questions to be asked about the differential rate of decline in the custody population by ethnic group. One explanation may be geographic since 389 of the custody population come from London, the most racially mixed part of the country with the other urban areas outside of the North East also over-represented. One disappointing statistics is that 281 of the young people in custody were on remand. However, if the census was taken on a Friday it may be a proportion of these were on ‘warrants’ awaiting an appearance at a Saturday remand court. However, even this number is well down on the peak of almost 700 recorded in June 2008.

Hopefully, keeping these young people out of custody will also reduce the revolving door where one custodial sentence invariably leads on to another, especially for those handed down sentences of six months or less where support after custody is often insufficient if not non-existent.

Schools have a part to play in reducing exclusions since a large proportion of those in custody were as some point excluded from school. It may be no accident that youth custody rates were at their highest when secondary schools in urban areas were struggling to recruit sufficient numbers of teachers. If there is a relationship between sufficient teachers and a reduction in youth crime then the DfE would do well to ensure we don’t slide towards another teacher supply crisis in the next couple of years.

Mrs. Thatcher as Education Secretary

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When I left LSE in 1969 I cannot recall a single person who wanted to start their own business. Although I took over the running of AIESEC-UK the student organisation, most of my graduating class headed for the civil service; large companies or a period of further study. It was not until the advent of the Thatcher government that entrepreneurship once again became something for the new breed of graduates to consider or even aspire to achieve in large numbers.

In reflecting on that change in society; a change that may have done more to allow the development of new industries that have in part replaced the ‘smokestack’ industries of the first industrial revolution I recalled that Mrs. Thatcher’s time as Education Secretary in the Heath government has perhaps received less notice than her premiership. However, as it was on her watch that I first entered the profession as an un-trained graduate and temporary supply teacher, at Tottenham School, in January 1971 some six months after the election. Those years between 1970 and 1974 that Mrs Thatcher spent as Education Secretary may be worth a moment of reflection on the day of her funeral.

The legacy of Mrs. Thatcher is best remembered by the general public through the slogan ‘Mrs. Thatcher: milk snatcher,’ as she was responsible for removing the right to free school milk from many older pupils. But, is that a fair summing up of her time as education secretary? Interestingly, as an aside, at least two Labour controlled education authorities, of which one was the London Borough of Hillingdon, attempted to take the ruling as only applying to the provision of milk, and continued to supply a ‘nourishing beverage’ to replace the lost milk supply. This stopped in Hillingdon when Labour lost control at the next London council elections. So what else did her time as Education Secretary leave behind as a mark on the world of state education?

One of Mrs. Thatcher’s first actions as Education Secretary was to continue the plan to eradicate schools built before 1906, started under the former Labour minister. I am not sure why that date was chosen, and it was interesting that Mrs. Thatcher extend the plan to cover primary as well as secondary schools. Those who teach or were educated, and indeed still are being educated in schools built either substantially or completely before 1906 will know that the ambitious plan failed, and has never featured in any subsequent discussions about school building. Indeed, until Mr. Blair’s ‘Building Schools for the future’ programme there was a period of almost 30 years when there was no national plan for a replacement school building programme, and Mr. Blair was seemingly only interested in the secondary sector, like so many politicians both before and after him.

Perhaps Mrs Thatcher’s high point as Education Secretary came in December 1972 with the publication of the White Paper ‘Education: A Framework for Expansion’. Sadly, this document appeared just as the oil crisis was breaking, and the Barber Boom was collapsing, so its plan for a ten-year expansion programme largely disappeared in the economic turmoil of the following decade.

However, here are a few extracts from what was promised:

Nursery Education

Within the next 10 years nursery education should become available without charge to those children of three and four whose parents wish them to benefit from it. If demand reaches the estimates in the Plowden Report, some 700,000 full-time equivalent places may be needed by 1981–82. Some 300,000 are already available, half of them for children of rising five. As the extent of demand and its future growth are uncertain it will be necessary to watch the development of demand carefully in the early years. As a first step the Government propose to authorise earmarked building programmes of £15m each in 1974–75 and 1975–76. Total current expenditure on the under fives is expected to rise from nearly £42m in 1971–72 to nearly £65m in 1976–77.

Besides helping families in deprived areas—both urban and rural—in bringing up young children, the extension of nursery education will also provide an opportunity for the earlier identification of children with social, psychological or medical difficulties which if neglected may inhibit the child’s educational progress.[fo 2]

The provision of nursery education will be generally on a half-time basis but allowance has been made for about 15 per cent—as recommended in the Plowden and Gittins Reports—of three and four year olds to attend full-time for educational and social reasons. It is hoped that most of the extra nursery places will form part of primary schools to avoid a change of school when the child becomes five.

School Building

There should be a more systematic long-term approach to the renewal of school buildings, to prevent the accumulation of backlogs of obsolete buildings. But such a policy needs to be very flexible, not only between primary and secondary schools, but also to take account from year to year of variations in the level of basic needs and other factors.

The size of the Teaching Force and Pupil Teacher Ratios

School staffing standards should continue to improve progressively. The Government believe that local education authorities will welcome a broad policy objective of securing by 1981 a teaching force 10 per cent above the number needed to maintain 1971 standards. After allowing for the increase in school population and the increased proportion of older pupils, this will require about 110,000 extra teachers, bringing the total to about 465,000 qualified teachers for pupils aged 5 and over. With about 25,000 teachers needed to staff the expanded nursery programme, and another 20,000 to meet the needs of the Government’s policy for in-service training and the induction of new teachers, there would be some 510,000 (full-time equivalent) qualified teachers employed in maintained schools by 1981. The Government propose that this figure should be adopted as a basis for planning. This would represent an overall pupil/teacher ratio of about 18½:1 by that date compared with about 22½:1 in 1971.

Teacher Training and Professional Development

The Government propose to work towards the achievement of a graduate teaching profession. During probation teachers should receive the kind of help and support needed to make the induction process both more effective and less daunting than it has been in the past. Also they should be released for not less than one-fifth of their time for in-service training. For the remainder of their time probationer teachers would be serving in schools, but with a somewhat lightened timetable, so that altogether they might be expected to undertake three-quarters of a full teaching load. The Government propose to give effect to the James Committee’s recommendation that teachers should be released for in-service training for periods equivalent to one term in every 7 years of service. It is their aim that a substantial expansion of such training should begin in the school year 1974–75 and should continue progressively so that by 1981 3 per cent of teachers could be released on secondment at any one time. This involves a four-fold increase in present opportunity.

Some of these proposals have still not been achieved more than 40 years later, especially in respect to teachers’ professional development. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the lack of attention by successive governments to primary teachers, their training and professional development that includes the current coalition. With a primary sector facing many of the same issues as during Mrs Thatcher’s tenure at Elizabeth House, the home of the Department in the 1970s, especially in relation to rising pupil numbers and the pressure on places, and a young and relatively inexperienced teaching force, it is to be hoped that the current administration will find time to do more than just talk about creating a world class school system and take the steps to ensure it actually happens.

Finally, it is perhaps the supreme irony of Mrs Thatcher’s times as Education Secretary that she is also remembered for implementing two of Labour key education policies that were blown off course by the economic crisis of 1967: the raising of the school leaving age to 16, and the creation of a largely non-selective secondary school system. Both had a massive impact on the England and Wales of the Thatcher government, and will continue to do so when the coalition introduces the further raising of the learning leaving age to 18: again a proposal initiated by a Labour government.

Sir Christopher Wren’s inscription in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral, the church where Mrs Thatcher’s funeral took place, finishes with the Latin words LECTOR SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE which translates as, ‘Reader, if you seek his monument – look around you.’ It is a thought that each and every education secretary might bear in mind when they contemplate their legacy.