Little or Large?

Posted on December 1, 2020 by John Howson

The DfE is once again showing signs of wanting to progress its review of the Initial Teacher Training (ITT) market, first announced nearly two years ago as a part of a Recruitment and Retention Strategy, if an article in SchoolsWeek is to be believed. https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-to-reboot-itt-market-review-to-slim-down-sector/.

Does it make sense to slim down the teacher preparation market sector to a smaller number of providers? Well, certainly, those providers that shut up shop at the end of June and leave the heavy lifting of recruitment over the summer to others might be considered as not fully participating in ensuring that all places on teacher preparation courses are filled.

With the DfE aiming to take over the application process, it may also make sense to have to interact with fewer larger providers in order to more easily manage the market.

On the other hand, as NASBITT has pointed out, the ITT sector is performing exceptionally well. Ofsted inspections have 99% of providers rated good or better. On this basis, it seems odd that any DfE officials should think too much provision is of poor quality, especially without providing the evidence for that judgement.

As NASBTT makes clear, smaller SCITT providers very often serve a very specific need in recruitment cold-spots and rural/coastal communities. Often, in the past, larger central providers did not manage to service the needs of schools in these areas, which is often why the smaller providers emerged in the first place in order to to fill the gap.

Smaller local providers can also meet the needs of career switchers that are unwilling to move long distances to undertake their course to become a teacher. This was, after all, the thinking behind the School Direct Salaried Scheme and its predecessor Employment-based routes of the past thirty years.

Large providers in the wrong place don’t meet the needs of the market and the DfE has always wrestled with the need for both quality provision and the recruitment of around 35,000 trainees each year that are willing to train to meet the needs of all schools.

Perhaps, any review might focus on those schools that find recruiting NQTs a challenge and explore how within a market system of recruitment, schools can recruit their fair share of NQTs?

A compromise might be for the DfE to engage with a few larger providers – perhaps NASBTT could even be one of them and UCET another – and these wholesalers of places would then handle the smaller units actually undertaking the training. There are some examples of national providers in the past, of which The Open University was perhaps the most well-known. Indeed, might this be an opportune moment for that University to reconsider returning to providing initial teacher preparation courses across England?

What the DfE must not do is undermine recruitment to the profession at this extremely sensitive moment in time. The ITT core content framework has only just been rolled out, as have the expectations under the new ITE inspection framework. As NASBTT point out, providers need time to embed and consolidate this before any further changes are thrust upon them. If it isn’t broke, be careful about how you fix it.

Reflections from a round table presentation

Posted on November 30, 2020 by John Howson

Foundation for Education Development Round Table

Part of 150^th Anniversary of the 1870 Elementary Education Act

A synopsis of my presentation

Education workforce

Teacher supply over the past 150 years, and certainly since World War Two, has been a perpetual cycle or more accurately a sine wave, moving from shortage to surplus to shortage, mostly governed by the coincidence of the economic and demographic cycles.

All schools are often only fully staffed when pupil numbers are low and the economy is in recession. A buoyant economy; rising birth rates and increases in length of education have created shortages that have most affected schools serving our more deprived communities.

The current situation

What are some possible issues within the workforce? Here are three dichotomies to consider:

Career Development

Personal Goals v System Needs

At every stage there can be tensions between the career goals of teachers and the needs of the system to fill vacancies at every point in the system from classroom teachers to head teachers in schools and the many roles beyond schools that need expertise in teaching. For example, the tension over seen in supporting candidates for headship when a school may lose a highly able deputy.

However, schools with a good track record of staff development attract staff that want to work in such environments and the turnover is more than compensated for by the staff attracted.

Teachers need support at every stage of their careers and currently CPD is not treated with the attention it deserves.

Where to work

Market v Direction

England has a very market-based approach to teaching jobs. A teacher is in charge of their own career and there is still little advice available. When should you seek more responsibility? Is it ever too late to look for a new post? Is there hidden discrimination in appointments?

In some countries, teachers are civil servants, and are directed where to teach. New teachers may serve early stages of their careers in challenging locations that contain posts that are otherwise hard to fill. Governments in England have dabbled with the idea of ‘direction’ from Fast Track to the coalition government’s desire to parachute heads and middle leaders into certain schools and the discussion of ‘super-heads’, but the market system has so far triumphed. That triumph has been at a significant financial cost to schools and teachers.

Both approaches have advantages and challenges. As noted, one approach is expensive, with schools spending millions of pounds on recruitment advertising for a process that should cost less than £3 per vacancy. (TeachVac data) The other takes away freedom from individuals – that freedom was a reason I became a teacher not a civil servant. But, as teaching is becoming a global career, can we afford to lose large numbers of teachers overseas?

Making teaching an Attractive Career

Intrinsic v Extrinsic Factors

Teachers don’t usually join just for the pay, but there are few other ‘perks’. Teachers work an ‘employer-directed form of flexitime and on balance have seen other workers catch up on the holiday front, This year has revealed how important teachers are as key workers and how well regarded they are by sections of society. Their workload needs to be constantly monitored and the implications of the changes in technology on re-training are not insignificant.

Finally, the importance of both

Morale and Accountability

These are not alternatives, but essential considerations for an effective teaching profession. Overload accountability and create low morale and there is a problem. At present we need to ensure teachers and leaders feeling drained by their efforts don’t leave the profession because they feel under-valued, especially by government.

To end with a personal plea: To celebrate the 150^th anniversary of State Funded Schooling

Make ‘TEACHER’ a reserved occupation term

And as a bonus, create some Regis Professorship of Education as well, to demonstrate the status of the profession.

Thank you America

Posted on November 27, 2020 by John Howson

This month there have already been some 500 recorded visits to this blog from the USA. An especial thanks to those Americans that took the time to visit on Thanksgiving Day. There weren’t as many visits as on Christmas Day 2019, when someone downloaded all 990 posts over the course of the day, but there were some.

I am very grateful to those that read the blog and send me comments. Pre-orders for my new book ‘Twin Tracks‘ written jointly with my brother – hence the title – about our pre-covid rail tour around parts of Europe are already mounting up. In England, Waterstones are offering the book at a pre-publication discount (put John & Peter Howson in their site to place an order).Read more in the blog titled Twin Tracks.

In January, and the 1,000th post, I wrote about winding down this blog. Seemingly, that hasn’t been the case, and I am wondering whether to celebrate its 8th birthday by selecting the best 250 posts to put into a book. Would you recommend such a book to your library to buy? Do please let me know.

So, thank you to all my current, past and future readers.

No Tsunami of Applications

Posted on November 26, 2020 by John Howson

Earlier today UCAS released the first data on the 2021 recruitment round for postgraduate teacher preparation courses. The data are for applications up to the 16^th November. Last year the data were for Monday 18^th November 2019. In addition, there are applications through the DfE’s new service for which no data are yet available.

Now, it is always dangerous to read too much into the first month’s figures, but thirty years of looking at the numbers does allow me to make some observations.

Firstly, the increase in applicants domiciled in England, from 6,290 in 2019 to 7,420 in 2020, does not include large increases in applicants from the younger age groups, and is skewed towards applicants domiciled in the London Areas.

Change in applicant numbers by age of applicant

Age 2020 round 2021 round change

21 and

Under 1510 1550 40

22 970 1040 70

23 630 730 100

24 420 570 150

25-29 1200 1490 290

30-39 940 1160 220

40+ 620 890 270

All 6290 7420 1130

Source UCAS Reports A 2019 and 2020 November data

For example, in the North East, applicants in November 2019 totalled 380. This November, the number is 390. In London the total was 890 in 2019, and is 1,300 this November. Similarly, in the South East Region, the increase is from 910 to 1,150. So, over half of the increase in applicants is accounted for by just two regions in England.

Although early days, should we be concerned that the number of male applicants aged 21 or under, final year undergraduates, has dropped from 360 last November to 300 this year? One to watch as the number of men over 40 applying has increased from 160 to 250. Overall, there are just fewer than 200 more male applicants this year compared to last year at this point in time.

More applicants means more applications, and the total increased from 17,840 in November 2019 to 21,710 this November. Again, as expected, London has done well, with an increase from 2,740 applications by last November to 4,120 this November. In the North East applications only rose from 1,090 to 1,110.

Both primary and secondary sectors have benefitted from the increase in applicants. Applications for primary sector courses are up from 7,980 to 9,890, and for secondary courses, from 9,860 to 11,790.

All types of provider have seen increases, but one of the smallest increases is in secondary SCITT applications, up from 1,320 to 1,360.

Almost all subjects have seen an increase in applications – data on applicants by subject isn’t published in the main reports.

Arts and humanities subjects has seen some of the largest increases in applications. Even Physics has 240 applications this year, compared with 180 at this point in 2019. Art has seen applications double from 240 to 540, and even Design and Technology has 190 applications this year compared with 140 in November 2019. But, this might mean an increase an applicants from 50 last year to no more than 70 this year. Still, an increase is to be welcomed.

How long will this increase in interest in teaching last? There has been an article in SchoolsWeek recently suggesting it might be short-lived. After the start of the financial crisis it took just three years before teaching was starting to struggle to attract applicants to the profession. This time, with the pay freeze, who knows? More thought when the next set of data are published.

Report to the APPG Teaching Profession November meeting

Posted on November 24, 2020 by John Howson

This report to the APPG notes the state of the labour market for teachers during September and October; a report from the EPI on men and teaching and the section of the Migration Advisory committee Report that dealt with teaching as a career.

Teacher Labour market – current thoughts

Teacher Shortage over: well almost

The latest data from UCAS about postgraduate ITT numbers for September provides a first view of what the outlook for the year is likely to be. The September data will provide the basis for the likely supply of teachers into the labour market for September 2021 and January 2022 vacancies.

In view of the shock to the economy administered by the covid-19 pandemic, it is not surprising that there were nearly 7,000 more applicants in 2020 than in 2019. Up from 40,560 to 47,260 for those in domiciled in England. The number placed or ‘conditionally placed’ increased from 28,500 to 33,800. This is an increase of around 20% on last year.

The number of applicants placed increased across the country, although in the East of England the increase of only 120 was smaller than in the other regions. In London, the increase was in the order of an extra 1,000 trainees placed on courses compared with 2019.

More applicants from all age groups were placed this year, although the increase was smaller among the youngest age group of new graduates. This might be a matter for concern. Over, 2,000 more men were placed this year, compared to 4,500 more women. This is proportionally a greater increase in the number of men placed.

There was much more interest in secondary courses, where applications increased by nearly 14,000 to more than 81,000. For primary courses, the increase was near 6,000 to just over 53,000. The difference may be down to the date the pandemic struck home, and the availability of courses with places still available at that point in the cycle. Many primary courses will already have been full by March.

Higher education seems to have been the main beneficiary of the wave of additional applications. Applications to high education courses increased from 55,000 last year to nearly 65,000 this year. Applications for apprenticeships reached nearly 1,600 and there were 1,800 more applications to SCITT courses. The School Direct fee route attracted nearly 6,500 more applications. However, the School Direct Salaried route only attracted 200 more applicants this year, and the number placed actually fell this year, by around 300 to just 1,470. Does this route have a future?

In most secondary subjects, more applications are recorded as placed this year than last. Geography, languages (where classifications have changed) are the key exceptions, with fewer recorded as placed than last year. Even in physics, there has been a small increase on last year. However, the increase in design and technology is not enough to ensure the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model (TSM) number will be reached. This is also likely to be the case in physics, chemistry and mathematics. Fortunately, in the sciences, there are far more biology students than required by the TSM number.

I am also sceptical as to whether all the history and physical education trainees will find teaching posts in their subjects next year, because the excess of students placed to the TSM number is such that it is difficult to see sufficient vacancies being generated even in a normal year. If fewer teachers leaves than normal, then the excess may be significant and these trainees might well want to look to any possible second subjects they could teach.

At this point in time, it looks as if 20202/21 round will start with a significant increase in applications over the numbers at the start of the last few years: we shall see.

Seealso:. https://www.nfer.ac.uk/media/4143/the_impact_of_covid_19_on_initial_teacher_training.pdf

The data on vacancies recorded during September and October 2020

The recorded level of vacancies during October was around 30% below the number recorded during October 2019 with less than 4,000 vacancies recorded during October this year compared with more than 5,000 during October 2019.

As with other months this autumn, primary vacancies have been holding up better than those posted by secondary schools with the vacancies across the primary sector down by only some 13%. In the secondary sector, English, down by 50% on October 2019 and mathematics, down by more than 45% are amongst the subjects recording some of the largest declines in vacancy totals. By contrast, music has only recorded a fall of around 14% and art a fall of 24%. However, with not even 150 vacancies between the two subjects, these are not major recruiters of teachers.

Traditionally, the end of October marks the conclusion of the annual recruitment round. Most vacancies appearing from now onwards will normally be geared towards appointments for September. In this case that will be September 2021. In a normal year there are few vacancies advertised for an April start. It is too early to tell whether 2021 will be different in that respect.

Leadership vacancies remain another bright spot in an otherwise challenging recruitment market for job seekers. Head teacher vacancies have remained at very similar levels to October 2019. While there have been slightly fewer deputy and assistant head teacher vacancies across the secondary sector, this has been offset by higher vacancy levels in the primary sector for posts at these levels.

Most notable at this time of year is the high percentage of temporary and maternity leave vacancies advertised in the primary sector. During October 202, some 20% of recorded primary vacancies were listed as a result of a teacher taking maternity leave and a further 28% were listed as temporary positions, some of which may also have been as a result of a teacher taking maternity leave. Overall, only just over half of the primary posts were offered as permanent positions during October 2020.

Although the percentage of vacancies resulting from a teacher taking maternity leave was similar in the secondary sector, at 195 of October vacancies, there were far fewer temporary vacancies advertised. Such vacancies only accounted for 10% of the total vacancies during October. This meant that permanent vacancies accounted for more than 70% of vacancies in the secondary sector during October. A much higher percentage than in the primary sector.

Men in teaching EPI Report

EPI, the Education Policy Institute, published a short report entitled ‘Trends in the Diversity of Teachers in England’ that is largely about gender diversity in teaching. The report brings up to date some of the data that can be found in m post on john Howson’s blog from April 2020 at:https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2020/04/09/are-new-graduate-entrants-to-teaching-still-predominantly-young-white-and-female/

Interestingly, although the report does put the issue into the wider context of the attractiveness of teaching as a career, and the lack of women taking degrees in some subjects such as physics, it doesn’t really consider the fact that some of the change may be down to teaching also becoming relatively less attractive to women, especially primary school teaching.

The EPI paper, while revealing the genuine concern about the issue, doesn’t point out that at the end of the 1990s when the economy was also doing well, the percentage of male graduates accepted into teaching through the UCAS graduate entry system (then administered by the GTTR) was as low as it is now and possibly even lower in the primary sector.

Percentage of men accepted onto graduate teacher preparation courses

1998 31%

1999 30%

2000 29%

Source GTTR annual Report for 2000

The EPI paper is also correct to draw attention to the fact that men generally decide to apply later in the recruitment round than women, suggesting possibly that the attraction of teaching as a career is less strong for some male applicants. This is possibly also borne out by the higher departure rates from teaching for men, although some may remain in teaching, just outside of state-funded schools.

Linking the evidence to wage rates, where public sector workers have not fared well compared to other graduates in the South East, is interesting but doesn’t explain why Inner London schools have the second highest percentage of male teachers. Perhaps, this is the Teach First effect?

So what might be done? EPI have some good suggestions. In taking over the admissions to teacher preparation courses, the DfE might want to look at how the process across the year might be more neutral in terms of encouraging diversity among both applicants and those placed.

However, one issue has always been that some course providers attract a disproportionately high percentage of applicants from certain groups. Male Black African applicants at one time largely only applied for places on four courses, and some early years courses rarely if ever saw a male applicant.

Finally, the media has a role to play in stereotyping certain careers. The anguish of those that suffered child abuse, mostly at the hands of men, may have deterred some men from choosing careers such as teaching.

But, that’s not something just looking at statistics as both EPI and my blog does, can tell you. As the EPI paper concludes, ‘it is important to understand the root cause of why more male graduates don’t choose teaching.’

Migration Advisory Committee – teaching conclusions

Teachers of all Modern Languages struggling to find a teaching post may be surprised to discover that the government’s Migration Advisory Committee believes that their subject should be added to the list of shortage subjects. The Report from the MAC https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/922019/SOL_2020_Report_Final.pdf tackles the issue of secondary teaching on pages 606 onwards.

For anyone familiar with recruitment patterns in teaching, using data on job posting in August collected by a company called Burning Glass may raise some eyebrows. August is after all the least representative month for teaching vacancies, except perhaps in Scotland where school return from their summer break up to two weeks earlier than in England and Wales. Previously, Mandarin was on the list of shortage subjects, but not teachers of other languages.

TeachVac has recorded fewer vacancies for teachers of modern languages this year compared with last year since the start of the covid-19 pandemic, so the data from Burning Glass seems curious to say the least.

There is no mention of business studies as a shortage subject in the MAC report even though TeachVac has consistently pointed out that the subject tops the list of subjects where schools have found recruitment a challenge. Perhaps there is a pecking order of subjects that typifies their status. Following the Prime Minister’s announcement this summer about a focus on skills, it is even more difficult to see why business studies is not even considered by the MAC in their report.

The fact that the MAC doesn’t even seem to have taken into account the DfE’s own vacancy site is also curious. As a result the outcome of the data analysis on secondary teaching must be open to discussion.

The MAC decision seems based on the fact that The APPG on Modern Languages was concerned about shortages and that an above average number of EEA nationals made up part of those students on teacher preparation courses. The fact that these courses filled more of their places than say, design & technology isn’t mentioned.

The MAC noted that: We recommend, in addition, adding all modern foreign language teachers within SOC code 2314 (secondary education teaching professionals) to the SOL. Overall the occupation has a relatively low RQF6+ shortage indicator rank and is less reliant on migrant employees than the UK average. Statistics show a gradual rise in the number of entrants to ITT (England only). However, there is also some evidence of shortage, particularly for MFL teachers, a subject more reliant of EEA employees. Page 610

Interestingly, the MAC see no reason to add either primary teacher or FE lecturers to the list of shortage subjects. The former is understandable, the latter strange in view of some of the skills areas on the list. Did the MAC ask whether there was any difficulties in recruiting lecturers in these areas? On the face of their report it seems they treat FE like primary teaching as a single sector, whereas secondary teaching was looked at in more detail down to subject level.

New book

Exploring Teacher Recruitment and Retention

This book is sub-titled Contextual Challenges from International Perspectives, and is jointly edited by Tanya Ovenden-Hope and Rowena Passy, and was published by Routledge on the 2nd October. The ISBN is 9780367076450

Taxing our schools

Posted on November 4, 2020 by John Howson

What started out as a ‘good idea’ has now become a tax on schools, and especially primary schools: at least in Oxfordshire. The apprenticeship Levy doesn’t seem to work as intended, as the following information provided by the Council to a Lib Dem question clearly shows.

The Apprenticeship Levy started in May 2017.

The levy is funded via a monthly charge against our payroll bill of 0.5%. This equates to approximately £100k a month. The money charged to our payroll is put into an OCC digital apprenticeship account and is drawn down by apprenticeship training providers on a monthly basis. For example, if 1 apprenticeship costs £4,800 and has a duration of 2 years, the provider will draw down £200 a month for 24 months.

Each month’s levy is treated as a separate pot of money with the oldest pot of funding being used first. The first allocation of £100k (May 2017) was used to pay providers until it was exhausted. For example, if our total training bill was £10k a month, it would take 10 months to use the first month’s levy. In the meantime, we would have accrued a further £900k over the following months which would not have been spent as there was sufficient in the first month’s pot to cover the costs. Once the first month’s levy was spent, future expenditure was taken from month 2 until this was exhausted and so on.

Since May 2017, Oxfordshire has accrued a total of £4,047,490 to spend on apprenticeships.

However, Oxfordshire can only keep the accrued levy for 24 months. So, we had until May 2019 to spend May 2017 allocation, June 2019 to spend June 2017 allocation etc.

Any money remaining in a pot that is more than 2 years’ old is returned to the treasury (i.e.The Government at Westminster – my addition). This means that any funding added to our levy pot before October 2018 and not spent was returned.

Our first repayment was September 2019. To date £611,788 has expired and has been repaid to The Treasury. This equates to approximately 37% of the levy we accrued between May 2017 and October 2018.

Levy accrued between November 2018 and October 2020 has not yet reached an expiry date so we have approx. £2,326,543 available to spend.

Spend on apprenticeships is increasing every year which indicates that the level of levy we will need to repay should reduce over the coming months and years.

Levy Spend per calendar year was:

	2017	£18,225.54
	2018	£144,403.85
	2019	£435,201.48
Jan – Sept	2020	£511,227.38

It is anticipated that 2020 final spend will be approx. £700k as we have recently started a number of degree level apprenticeships that will draw down large monthly amounts.

For information, school contribution and spend for 2019 is:

Contribution to the levy: £405,596
Spend: £232,858

The county team continues to promote apprenticeships (both employed and CPD) where ever possible throughout the organisation whilst recognising further work needs to be done.

If this lack of spending the cash raised by the levy from schools, and MATs have the same problem, is common across the country then it is time to seek reform.

We need more apprenticeships, so making use of the cash to train teachers would be one possible change. Creating two non-teaching posts with substantial training elements might be another low cost approach that might also help reduce unemployment if linked to other programmes.

Whatever approach is taken, schools should not see any of their hard fought for cash being returned unspent to government. Just as they should not now be wasting cash on expensive recruitment advertising.

To ask for more funds must run alongside making the best use of the cash already in the system.

Action for local government: Apprenticeship funding needs radical change. If the Government increased Levy flexibilities, including allowing public pooling of funds, Treasury pausing its expiry policy, and devolving non-levy funding, local government could support local businesses in a much more targeted and coherent way, including by allowing them to target sectors, address local supply / demand side issues, widen participation to disadvantaged groups and specific cohorts. A proportion could be spent on pre-apprenticeship training / administration of programmes. This could support the development of the Opportunity Guarantee. Alongside these measures, we call for a levy payment holiday (up to 6 months) for businesses struggling with cashflow problems and allow employers to collaborate on transferring / pooling. DfE should also pause the switch-off of frameworks until March 2021.

Nourishing beverages

Posted on October 25, 2020 by John Howson

Those with a sense of education history, in this the 150^th anniversary year of state schooling, will recall the last time a Conservative government became embroiled in a row over food and drink in schools. During the government of Edward Heath, Mrs Thatcher was Secretary of State for Education. Her term of office in education is generally remembered for two event. As Secretary of State she presided over the conversion of more schools to non-selective education than any other Minister, whilst also raising the school leaving age to sixteen.

However, it was her decision to remove the daily third of a pint of free school milk from pupils that is most often recalled as the defining moment of her term in office at Elizabeth House. The decision gave rise to the great slogan Mrs Thatcher: milk snatcher that was up there with the other food slogans of the era: ‘drink a pint of milk and day’ and ‘beans meanz …’

The milk campaign was brought back to my mind during the present campaign for free school meals to be extended to cover all of the year when schools are not in session. Then, as now, some local authorities decided to intervene. After all, this was time when local government had much more involvement with the day to day running of our schools than is the case now.

At least two authorities, including Hillingdon that is again in the news over free school meals, decided to try and stand out against the decision to remove school milk. They know that they couldn’t provide milk, but lawyers identified that there was nothing in the rules to say that they couldn’t provide other liquids. In one case it was to be orange juice and in the other what was described as a ‘nourishing beverage’. At this distance of time, I cannot recall exactly what was to constitute such a beverage, but I guess it was to be hot in winter and cold in the summer months.

In the end, nothing long-term came of these proposals, and free daily milk during term-time for all except the very youngest pupils disappeared from our schools. Later, as Prime minister, Mrs Thatcher was to preside over the wholesale dismantlement of both the school meal system and the teaching of cookery in the curriculum.

In my earliest days working with trainee teachers, sitting in a double period practical cookery lesson being taken by a 4^th Year undergraduate was one of the joys of higher education. Watching Key Stage 4 boys in chef’s whites prepare a buffet for a parent’s evening was another delight. There was a sense of purpose and engagement in a group that might have possibly been disaffected by the Ebacc curriculum.

Although you can now learn to cook using YouTube videos, it isn’t the same as working in a group and is no preparation for a career in catering.

The ingenuity of local government then, as now, knew no bounds. However, far too often today central government is unhappy with such actions. I hope, until the government sees sense on feeding children during the pandemic that local leaders will continue to come up with solutions for their local communities.

More thoughts on school funding

Posted on October 25, 2020 by John Howson

Earlier this week I listened to the head of a leading group representing private schools tell us how much they saved the State, Their assessment of the amount was based upon the fees they received from parents.

Now, of course, the figure quoted was probably an exaggeration as even if it didn’t include income from overseas students, and the sector is a significant export earner in normal times, then the fees received for pupils resident in this country are higher than the State would be prepared to pay to educate these young people, except in the case of SEND places in specialist schools.

Even allowing for these caveats, if the unemployment associated with the pandemic really does slow down the economy, then, inevitably, some parents may decide that private schooling is something they can no longer afford. There will be bursaries and scholarship and grandparents will offer help, but every child that switches from the private sector to the State sector creates winners and losers and is an additional cost to the State.

Schools that gain pupils will receive extra funding in the fullness of time. However, unless the overall pot of cash increases, there will be less for everyone. With school rolls overall still increasing, especially in the more expensive to fund secondary sector, this possible demand for extra cash could not come at a worse point in the demographic cycles. Any switch to funding for vocational skills, and especially for the Further Education sector, will also make finding additional funding for schools more of a challenge for the Secretary of State in his talks with The Treasury. With pressure to pay the least well-off in society more, increasing teachers’ pay rather than that of support staff may well be a real challenge unless class sizes increase and teacher numbers are reduced.

So, how might schools react? Finding saving won’t be easy, but here are a couple of suggestions. Firstly, and not surprisingly, cut back on recruitment costs. The DfE vacancy site isn’t doing the job it was set up to do. As a result, the profession should create a working party to attack the recruitment costs with the aim of saving schools perhaps £20 million a year. A really effective scheme could save even more.

Secondly, take the profit element out of supply teacher costs. Thirty years ago, local authorities were inefficient and uncoordinated in carrying out this function for schools. Costs have been driven down, but market economics has created a business with a profit element. Removing this element by either taking it back in house or creating a fixed price model could again help save cash for schools.

The third, and most radical suggestion, is around the funding of teachers’ salaries. In the education governance revolution of thirty years ago, decisions about salary bills were delegated to individual schools, with each schools funding being based upon a notional average salary bill. Previously, schools had their salary bill paid for by local authorities based around a framework of school Group Sizes that generated numbers of promoted and leadership posts for each school.

These days. MATs can set salary policies for all their schools, but local authorities cannot for maintained schools. Such policies can affect wage bills, and especially the cost of promoted posts and leadership positions. Young teachers are cheap; older more experienced teachers cost more. Do we want our more experienced teachers leading our more challenging schools? Could a more logical system that took the wage bill for teachers away from schools save money? I don’t know the answer. But, the wage bill is the largest cost in education and it is worth asking the question: how can we protect the income of teachers and other school staff in a time when pressure on the public purse is immense and are their efficiencies that can be made? A notional staffing model that school could test themselves against might be a start. Now is surely time for some radical thinking around the goals we want education to achieve for Society. Depriving the deprived is not one of them.

The author is Chair of TeachVac, the job board for teachers http://www.teachvac.co.uk

World Statistics Day

Posted on October 20, 2020 by John Howson

Today we recognise the power of statistics for both good and evil. Many years ago, when I was teaching geography in a school, I would ask my A level groups to at least audit, if not actually take, a course in statistics. As well as informing their general education, the course also helped with their understanding of the geography syllabus of the 1970s that was rapidly changing from mere descriptive and clerical tasks to a more analytical approach to the issue of ‘place’.

At the same time I was persuading my Year 7s to play games. The farming game and the railway game were two favourites. Both helped instil collaborative learning skills plus discussion about issues such as risk and probability.

One spin off from this interest in statistics was the ability to help students remember that temperature was continuous and rainfall intermittent, and thus one was represented by a line on the graph and the other by columns. There is an interesting debate to be had about when discrete data becomes continuous because of the length of the time series? Good question for today.

One of the earliest research projects I ever encountered was conducted by a lecturer at LSE who was counting the number of phone calls between different settlements in South Africa and creating some form of density map. The clerical work, pre-computers, took a whole summer. Now it might take just a few minutes. However, working through the data, town by town, created a feeling for ‘rightness’ that can be lost when a computer spills out the results. The ability to estimate when a number is in the right relationship to those around it is still a key skill.

Playing with information, not statistics, led me into the world of teacher supply via the database of leadership vacancies I started in the early 1980s. Later today, I will participate in a call set up by civil servants to discuss the replacement for the Teacher Supply Model. I think this will be the fourth or fifth iteration of such models to decide how many teachers we need to train each year. Watch out for more on this in a later post.

The School Workforce Census is a great improvement on what went before. However, despite the publicity for the new approach to displaying government statistics, I have some reservations. Perhaps, this is just my age showing, and I need to find some YouTube videos to help me learn new skills.

Understanding data in all forms has never been a more important prerequisite for those making decisions about our lives as the present pandemic has clearly demonstrated. A classical Oxbridge education might have been valuable as a foundation of a career in politics during previous generations. Surely, it is not adequate for leaders in the modern world.

Let us celebrate World Statistics Day by counting the number of different statistics we see during the course of the day. More than we might imagine.

Men and teaching: only a career in a recession?

Posted on October 19, 2020 by John Howson

EPI, the Education Policy Institute, has today published a short report entitled ‘Trends in the Diversity of Teachers in England’ that is largely about gender diversity in teaching. The report brings up to date some of the data that can be found in my post on this blog from April this year https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2020/04/09/are-new-graduate-entrants-to-teaching-still-predominantly-young-white-and-female/

Percentage of men accepted onto graduate teacher preparation courses

1998 31%

1999 30%

2000 29%

Source GTTR annual Report for 2000

I also wrote about this issue during my period as a TES commentator. There was a Hot Data column in April 1999 entitled ‘Male primary teachers still elusive’ and in one of my final On the Map pieces for the TES, headed ‘Female Teachers, schools remain a woman’s domain’, published in July 2010, I looked at some international evidence. (Incidentally, at the TES, I never wrote the headlines for my pieces).

In September this year, I again headlined the issue of gender in a wider post considering the evidence from the recent OECD Education Indicators at a Glance publication https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2020/09/17/oecd-education-indicators-at-a-glance-2020-edition/

But, that’s not something just looking at statistics, as both EPI and my blog does, can tell you. As the EPI paper concludes, ‘it is important to understand the root cause of why more male graduates don’t choose teaching.’

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: schools