Tag Archives: schools

Baroness Williams of Crosby

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I am saddened to hear of the death earlier today of Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby.

Baroness Williams was one of the founders of the SDP and had previously been an education secretary during the Labour government of the late 1970s. Created a Life peer in 1993, Baroness Williams played an important background role in education for the Party in her role as a senior politician of wide experience. Her great speaking ability motivated many audiences in both the conference hall and at fringe meetings during many Liberal Democrat conferences over the years. She finally retired from the House of Lords in 2016, but remained an inspiring figure for many in the Liberal Democrats.

In a blog post when another Liberal Democrats stalwart of the House of Lords, Baroness Sharp of Guildford retired, I paid tribute to these two Peers along with Annette Brooke the former MP. All were important for the Liberal Democrats in the field of education, from early years to higher education.

I first encountered Shirley Williams when she was Secretary of State for Education. She initiated The Great Debate in Education on the back of the Prime minister’s famous Ruskin College speech. This was the start of the shift from a national service locally administered to a nationally driven education service that we now have in England. I had achieved some notoriety after appearing in the national press and was invited to several media events where Shirley Williams was the speaker. I especially recall one such event in the Royal Institution where she was opposed Norman St John Stevas, possibly one of the best Secretaries of State we never had.

It was Shirley William’s misfortune to be secretary of State when the government of Jim Callaghan was teetering on the edge of collapse. She had to endure the ‘winter of discontent’ and during that period she failed to stop the caretaker’s strike in Haringey that lead to several weeks of school closures.

Although successful in taking North Yorkshire County Council to court over the need to create non-selective education in Ripon, it was too late in the parliament and the life of the Labour government for any action to be taken on the result that backed the government’s view of the 1976 Education Act, and so, along with the other selective schools that she tried to convert to comprehensive education, selective education still remains in that part of Yorkshire, helped by Mrs thatcher’s prompt repealing of the 1976 Act as one of her first actions as Prime Minister.  

Shirley Williams was an inspiring orator and a joy to listen to when speaking at Liberal Democrat events, either extempore or from a prepared speech. She was not a good timekeeper and was often late, but nobody ever seemed to mind. She was also a great European and had the courage to from a new political party. Along with many other, I will miss her.

UCAS end of 2020 cycle ITT data

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UCAS has today published the end of cycle data for courses that started last autumn. Regular readers that follow this blog will know that much of what is contained in the data has been commented upon in posts on this blog la the August and October.

However, ‘The End of Cycle’ (EoC) report contains much more information than the regular monthly updates published during the cycle. One area is in that of the ethnicity of applicants and the percentages accepted. Why gender is seen as capable of being revealed each month and ethnicity is not is an interesting question. I assume it is down to the fact that numbers in some categories would be too small to make publication viable or appropriate.

Regardless of the reason, the EoC report contains some interesting data.

Accepted percentages 2020 from UCAS PG ITT data
MaleFemaleAll
Black37%53%48%
Other41%51%48%
Asian50%61%58%
Not Stated55%57%56%
Mixed [sic]58%62%61%
Total63%70%68%
White67%74%72%

Source: UCAS

Black male applicants had less than a four in ten chance of being accepted on to a course compared with 74% of white females that were accepted. It would be interesting to drill down into these figures to see whether there are regional and subject/phase differences within the categories.  

My assumption would be that London courses perform well in terms of acceptance of ethnic minority candidates and those courses in regions furthest from the capital may attract few applicants from ethnic groups other than the White group. This can pose another issue if a few courses receive the bulk of say Black African Male applicants. The policy should be to take the most suitable applicants.

I don’t know how much effort the DfE puts into monitoring these statistics and how they respond to the outcomes? Are civil servants content with the disparity between the different groups or should more work be undertaken to reduce the differences across gender and ethnicity?

Male applicants domiciled in London had one of the lowest acceptance rates overall for me of just 50% of applicants. It would be interesting to cross-tab the domicile by region with ethnicity. By contrast, 86% of women applicants domiciled in the north east appear to have been accepted That seems like a high figure to me and it would be interesting to see how many of these were accepted before say, Christmas. Providers that fill courses quickly can save time and money but such a practice begs the question about whether there should be a closing date for applications to allow more equal chances not determined by how quickly you decide upon teaching as a career.

DfE and Teacher Vacancies: Part Two

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The DfE is spending more money supporting their latest venture into the teacher recruitment market. Schoolsweek has uncovered the latest moves by the government to challenge existing players in this market https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-leans-on-mats-to-boost-teacher-job-vacancies-website-take-up/ in an exclusive report.

The current DfE foray into the recruitment market follows the failure of the Fast Track Scheme of two decades ago and the Schools Recruitment Service that fizzled out a decade ago. The present attempt also came on the heels of the fiasco around a scheme to offer jobs in challenging schools in the north of England that never progressed beyond the trial phase.

The present DfE site rolled out nationally two years ago this month. How successful it has been was the subject of a Schoolsweek article earlier this year. https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfes-teacher-job-website-carries-only-half-of-available-positions/  This blog reviewed the market for vacancy sites for teachers last December, in a post entitled Teacher Vacancy Platforms: Pros and Cons that was posted on December 7, 2020.

In that December post, I looked at the three key sites for teacher vacancies in England. TeachVac; the DfE Vacancy site and The TES. As I pointed out, this was not an unbiased look, because I am Chair of the company that owns TeachVac. Indeed, I said, it might be regarded as an advertisement, and warned readers to treat it in that way.

There is an issue with how much schools spend on recruitment of teachers. After all, that was why TeachVac was established eight years ago. The DfE put the figure in their evidence to the STRB this year at around £75 million; a not insubstantial figure.

Will TeachVac be squeezed out in a war between the DfE backed by unlimited government funding and the TES with a big American backer? At the rate TeachVac is currently adding new users, I don’t think so. After all, the DfE site doesn’t cover independent schools, and in the present market I believe that most teachers want a site that allows access to all teaching jobs and not just some. That benefits both TeachVac and the TES as well as other players in the market, such as The Guardian and Schoolsweek, as well as recruitment agencies.

How much the DfE will need to spend on ensuring they cover the whole of the state-funded job market in terms of acquiring vacancies by the ‘school entering vacancies’ method is another interesting question? As is, how much will it also cost to drive teachers to using the DfE site and not TeachVac or the TES?

A view of TeachVac’s account reveals that Teachvac provides access to more jobs for teachers at less than the DfE is going to spend on promoting their site over the next few months. Such spending only makes good commercial sense if you want to remove a player from the market.

So here’s a solution. Hire TeachVac to promote the DfE site and use the data TeachVac already generates to monitor the working of the labour market. After all, that was also one of the suggestions from the Public Accounts Committee Report that spurred the DfE into action and the creation of their present attempt at running a vacancy site.

DfE and Teacher Vacancies: Part One

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In my previous post I discussed the issue of the DfE’s vacancy site and how by viewing it a page at a time resulted in duplication of some vacancies and the inability to see other vacancies. I asked the DfE to shed light on the problem by submitting a Freedom of Information request (FOI).

I have reproduced the DfE’s response below.  Essentially, the DfE site seems sound except for anyone undertaking the view of the site by the means that I selected. Since my purpose was to check how many non-teaching vacancies were listed on the DfE site, I had no other option but to use the method of viewing the site I selected.

Those using the sorting by closing date will discover another wrinkle, but I will leave you to do so if you are interested.

The DfE site has hit the headlines in a Schoolsweek exclusive https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-leans-on-mats-to-boost-teacher-job-vacancies-website-take-up/ TeachVac’s contribution to the story can be found at https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfes-teacher-job-website-carries-only-half-of-available-positions/

I will discuss the possible implications for the teacher recruitment market in my next blog. But, here is the DfE’s response to the FOI.

Thank you for your request for information, which was received on 15 March 2021 and assigned case number 2021-0017953. You requested the following information:


On the DfE vacancy site for teachers: https://teaching-vacancies.service.gov.uk/
1. How many of the published vacancies on 16th March or nearest available date with data were duplicated; and,
2. What was the number of unique vacancies on that day for teachers in institutions operating under schools regulations displayed on the DfE Vacancy site after excluding Sixth Form Colleges, other Further Education institutions and any private sector institutions and posts not requiring a teacher such as, but not exclusively, Teaching Assistant, cleaner, Examinations Officer and cover supervisor? Vacancies providing services across MATs and not linked to a specific school should also be excluded from the total provided.

I have dealt with your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the Act”).


For context, the total number of live vacancies on Teaching Vacancies on 16 March was 1,386. As of 1 April, there are 2,330 live vacancies on Teaching Vacancies.

1. How many of the published vacancies on 16th March or nearest available date with data were duplicated?


For the purposes of this request, we have considered a ‘vacancy with data duplicated’ to be a vacancy with the same job title as another vacancy published by the same organisation which was also live on this date. The total number of vacancies meeting this definition on 16 March was 37 (2.7% of all live vacancies).

2. What was the number of unique vacancies on that day for teachers in institutions operating under schools regulations displayed on the DfE Vacancy site after excluding Sixth Form Colleges, other Further Education institutions and any private sector institutions and posts not requiring a teacher such as, but not exclusively, Teaching Assistant, cleaner, Examinations Officer and cover supervisor? Vacancies providing services across MATs and not linked to a specific school should also be excluded from the total provided.


Further Education institutions and private sector institutions are not permitted to list roles on Teaching Vacancies. Technical restrictions are in place to prevent this.


The total number of live vacancies on 16 March that were not at sixth form colleges, across a MAT or at multiple schools was 1,344 (97% of all live vacancies). Of these, the number of vacancies ‘requiring a teacher’ was 1,169 (87% of these live vacancies).


For the purposes of this request, we have defined ‘requiring a teacher’ as a listing with a job title containing the phrase ‘teacher’, ‘head’, ‘principal’ or ‘ordinat’ (as in coordinator or co-ordinator), but not containing any of the phrases ‘TA’ (in upper case only), assistant (but not in conjunction with ‘head’ or ‘principal’), ‘intervention’, ‘admin’, ‘account’, ‘marketing’, ‘admission’ or ‘care’. Structured data is not available on whether roles require a teacher, because the relevant fields are either optional for schools to complete or do not exist because they relate to vacancies that are not within the service’s Terms & Conditions. To obtain this information, vacancies have been filtered by relevant words and phrases. As a result, some teaching roles will have been excluded in counts of non-teaching roles and vice versa.

ITT: not all plain sailing

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Normally during a downturn in the economy, and the associated rise in unemployment, teaching does well as a career choice, and applications for places on graduate teacher preparation courses surge; they only peak when the labour market shows signs of picking up again.

The trend during the pandemic of the past year has been slightly different to this pattern. Yes, overall applications, and applicant numbers are up, as commentators that just look at the overall numbers have noted. However, for those more concerned with the details, the picture is more nuanced.

In primary, applications have not yet reached the peak seen in the 2016/17 round, and are some 5,000 or so below that level, and only 8,000 applications above the low point reached in March 2020 before the full extent of the current pandemic had become clear. There may be a warning here about the desirability of becoming a primary school teacher among the group that society has relied upon to ensure an intake of high quality new teachers each year. The public data doesn’t allow for any further comments, but someone should be taking a look at the detailed data.

It is in the secondary sector that the outcome is more nuanced. Three subjects stand out for concern. In biology, overall applications are down on March 2020, by around a thousand, to 2,360. While there will be plenty of chemistry trainees this year, with applications double what they were in March 2020, physics, as a subject, seems unlikely that it will meet its target for the year unless applications pick up in the second half of the year. As a result, any shortfall in biology may leave school struggling for science teachers for September 2022, if demand return to more normal levels next year.

In geography, applications are down by around 300 this year on last, meaning offer levels are not much above the low levels seen seven and eight years ago. However, with ever more history trainees competing for jobs, schools will be able to replace geography teachers with humanities teachers. Whether their quality of subject knowledge will be acceptable is an issue for others to debate.

Design and technology, the ‘ugly duckling’ and neglected child of the school curriculum is a real and serious concern. Applications by mid-March were just 760, compared with 820 at the same point in 2020. That’s application and not applicants. As a result, offer levels are at their lowest point for March for any year in the last decade.

I would content that design and technology is an important subject, and the DfE needs to address where the future stock of teachers is to come from? An urgent look at the details of applicants and why only 190 offers have been made is needed. In reality, this could be a few as 100 actual applicants offered places on design and technology ITT courses by mid-March.

Nearly half of the growth in applicants can be found in the London and South East regions. Whether this means that some rebalancing of ITT places might be required, as these are the two regions with the greatest demand for teachers, is no doubt a matter for active discussion. It would be foolhardy to leave places unfilled in other parts of the country whilst turning away acceptable applicants from London, especially as London often produces a higher percentage of BAME trainees than other parts of England.

Next month the blog will consider the different routes into teaching, and how they are faring and also revisit the issue of the age profile of applicants.

Another nail in the coffin of 3-tier schooling

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Somerset County Council is to reorganise some of its remaining three tier schools into a more usual pattern of primary and secondary sectors according to a BBC story.

Council approves changes to Somerset schools

Somerset County Council has approved changes to nine schools in the Crewkerne and Ilminster area – saying that while the majority of responses to a public consultation had opposed the plans, no viable alternatives had been put forward. Pupils in the schools will move from a three-tier system (infant or junior, middle and upper) to a two-tier system (primary and secondary), with the change prompted by financial instability resulting from low pupil numbers. The Cabinet member for education and transformation said the decision marked a “significant milestone” following a “long and difficult journey”. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-somerset-56430254

Three tier patterns of schooling, similar in nature to the private sector, pre-prep, prep and secondary school model were introduced into the state system in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Usually they were introduced in response to both the move towards non-selective secondary education and the most efficient use of school buildings following the requirement of the 1944 Education Act to remove the remaining all-age elementary schools. All-age schools became briefly fashionable again with the advent of academies, but I have yet to see any research evidence of whether they work any better than the dominant system with a break at eleven.

A few three tier systems still linger on, especially in Northumberland and a few other areas, but for the past two decades authorities have been unwinding most of the systems. There were two models at the height of the three tier approach. A switch to secondary at age 12, where the schools educating children up to twelve were regarded as primary schools and those with a break at 13. The 9-13 schools in those systems were regarded as secondary schools. This compromise affected the funding arrangements for pupils depending upon which system was in operation. Buckinghamshire used the former system whereas Bedfordshire chose the latter.

In Oxfordshire, the City of Oxford, in 1974, at the point where it lost its status as a County borough and became a district council with no further responsibility or schooling, opted for a three tier system of schooling, even though the rest of the county had opted for a two tier comprehensive system. In those days, the city was run by a Conservative administration, and there are those that think the choice of a different system to the county system reflected a view on the loss of perceived status by the city politicians. Certainly, it took until the end of the 1990s before the county achieved a single unified system of education. That lasted a mere decade before the arrival of academies once again fractured the landscape asunder.

Three tier systems had some impressive supporters including Sir Alec Clegg in the West Riding of Yorkshire. But, in the end, they were never destined to be more than a footnote in the history of state schooling in England.

Fire Chiefs support school sprinkler system for new schools

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Those readers that have been following this blog for some years will know that one of the few matters that The Daily Mail and I both agree upon is the need to fit sprinkler systems in new schools.

On the 15th April 2019 this blog carried a post headed ‘Install Sprinkler Systems’. This followed a call to ensure all new schools had sprinkler system built into them during construction.

Zurich Insurance, a major insurer for local government risks has now come out in support of this suggestion in a new report. A review of their view can be found in this link to pbctoday https://www.pbctoday.co.uk/news/health-safety-news/fire-risk-in-schools/81974/

I fully support the recommendation that all schools should be built with sprinkler systems for the reasons cited in my blog post of April 2019.

Zurich found that the average school posed a fire risk 1.7 times greater than non-residential buildings. When compared to 2.9 million non-household properties, school buildings were also three times more likely to fall into the ‘high’ fire risk category (58% vs 20%).

Now the National Fire Chiefs Council has added their voice to those calling for the compulsory fitting of sprinklers in schools.

Over the last five years, 1,100 classrooms have been gutted by fire, with 47 schools destroyed among a total of 2,300 fire incidents – while just 2% of buildings were fitted with sprinklers. The National Fire Chiefs Council is calling for sprinklers to be mandatory in all new schools, in line with Scotland and Wales.

This is a powerful new ally in the campaign to fit sprinklers.

Those concerned about climate change might also add that an unnecessary fire in a school, as in any building, releases gases from the burring materials into the atmosphere that could be prevented by having installed sprinklers.

The removal of the requirement for sprinklers in new schools was a short-sighted measure that ought to have been changed already. Better some water damage than the destruction of a whole school and the disruption to the education of many children.

Schools and the pandemic a year on

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Health and Social Care, business and education. Along with the vaccine, these are the three big stories from the pandemic. Behind them lie probably close to 150,000 deaths; each one a tragedy for a family and friends. As befits a blog about education, I will concentrate on my thoughts of what has taken place in education since last March.

Cooperation can be better than competition

Not all expertise resides in one place, and fighting a pandemic is best achieved with teamwork.  Sadly, the government didn’t harness the expertise contained in bodies such as the professional associations. The worst example was probably the announcement that schools would open in January only to be rapidly changed a day later. The on-going saga over assessment is another example of unreal assumptions leading to damaging changes.

Technology finally caught up with schooling or teaching discovered technology

It has taken a pandemic to challenge the existing format of teaching and learning. The technology revolution has impacted on many areas of life over the past half century, since email and the internet entered our lives. However, the resistance of the school sector as a whole to embrace new technology in a systematic manner beyond just installing bits of kit, such as whiteboards, led to there being no road map for when schools were forced to close.

The closure and lack of foresight revealed another problem that has always been there, but had disappeared under the carpet in the past two decades

The deprivation gap

The National Funding Formula marked the low point in recognising that not all children have access to equal opportunities in life. In the 1970s this issue was a hot topic. Books such as, ‘Depriving the Deprived’’ ‘The poverty of education’ and ‘Planning and Educational Inequality’ are worth revisiting as is the section of the Plowden Report that deals with the issue. Despite Labour’s Education Action Zones and the Conservatives’ Opportunity Areas, little real attention has been paid to the lack of education progress linked to deprivation except by a few individuals, such as the work of Professor Dorling, until the pandemic exposed the gaps in society.

The fact that it took a footballer to motivate a government over the issue of free school meals was an indictment of a school system where responsibility for the system was concentrated at Westminster.

The importance of place in local decision-making

It has taken the pandemic to make clear that local decision-making can deal with local issues far better than long chains of command. The current dual system of academies and maintained schools doesn’t work. Either nationalise schools and create the education equivalent of the NHS, with little democratic accountability or return to a system where local democracy has a central role to play in the local school system.

Schooling is still a people-driven activity

Schools never closed, and most school leaders found themselves running two systems for learners: on-line and face to face. Early in the pandemic a headteacher in Cumbria died with covid.  Without committed staff, backed by parents, schooling an unhappily fail to meet educational goals. There is a task to be done in areas where parents are not engaged with schooling to encourage a change of attitude.

And above all

Schools Matter

Children are eager to return to school. In these days of small families – by historical standards – and less community involvement than in the past, schools undoubtedly play a significant social role in the lives of children and young people. I am sure that looking at families where siblings of one parent have attended school as children of key workers and those of another have not been in school for most of the past year will show up the differences in outcomes both intellectual and socially.

Finally, all schools rely upon dedicated and hard-working staff. This blog wants to thank each and every one of you for what you do for children and young people.

Covid and the Teacher Labour Market in England

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We now have data from twelve months that have suffered from the effects of the covd-19 pandemic. First thing this morning, I asked my analysts at TeachVac what had been the consequences for the teacher labour market in England. They came up with the following table for all vacancies.

2018201920202021
March715990299302
April813187356080
May10170114686357
June386248283286
July93312941043
August547565543
September295538843382
October418654383721
November366242583074
December201528931811
January5492638682162622
February5056579184215167
Monthly recorded vacancies for teachers in England

Source: TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk

Secondary teachers have suffered from a greater decline in their job opportunities than their primary colleagues. However, with the modern equivalent of ‘pool’ recruitment still in operation in parts of the primary sector, the figures are less reliable for that sector the for the secondary school sector where most schools manage their own recruitment.

Details data for local authority vacancy patterns and even those for a specific postcode are available on request, for a small fee. Data are also available for specific secondary subjects on a month by month basis, again for a small fee.

The next two months will be key ones for teachers looking for jobs. Will the market return to 2019 levels or continue to remain depressed. Much may depend upon the behaviour of the wider labour market for graduates. However, how many teachers decide to leave their jobs will also be important. It is also worth remembering that he supply of teachers leaving teacher preparation courses will not be sufficient in all subjects to meet the DfE’s estimate of need. How far ‘returners’ can make up the deficit only time will tell, but fewer advertised vacancies will also help close the gap.

I, for one, had wondered whether the pandemic and resulting effects on head teacher’s workload, might have resulted in a wave of departures. So far, in 2021, there is little evidence of any surge in departures of primary head teachers.

Although there have been fewer vacancies in London during the past twelve months, the Home Counties, and especially those parts of the Home Counties in the South East remain the part of the country driving the teacher labour market. This is not surprising as this are also contains the largest concentration of private schools. So far, these schools do not seem, as a sector, to have been badly affected by the pandemic in terms of pupil numbers. No doubt September enrolment will conform whether that is still the case.

Finally, although pupil numbers are still increasing in the secondary sector, will there be any effect from Brexit? Might some EU families return to their home country rather than stay in England? If so, could such departures have an effect on school rolls in some areas where there are large concentrations of EU citizen living in particular neighbourhoods? Comments on this point would be welcome.

More good news: but not for all

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Regular readers of this blog will know that the last Thursday of the month is the day that UCAS provides updated details of applications to postgraduate teacher preparation courses managed through their system. The numbers for February mark the half way point in the cycle between course commencements and thus represents a good time to make a judgement on what is happening in the marketplace for trainee teachers.

It is not surprising that with the economy facing the challenges resulting from the covid-19 pandemic that teaching appears a more interesting profession to pursue for graduates than when unemployment is low, and the economy is booming. However, there are not similar outcomes across the whole gamut of subjects.

This blog has used as a measure the number of applications classified as falling into one of three categories ‘Placed’, ‘Conditional Place’ or ‘Holding offer’. This is a more refined measure than using the gross total of applications, not least because each candidate can make several applications.

The news this month is that the numbers in these three categories are generally well above those for February in recent years. However, there are some exceptions to this general observation.

In geography, biology and design and technology numbers in these categories are below the same level seen last year.  Geography suffered from over-recruitment a couple of years ago, and numbers placed and holding offers have been controlled more carefully since then.

Now applications for places in biology and physics courses are on the increase, there is less incentive to recruit large numbers of biology trainees, so caution here is understandable. Design and Technology is a subject that regularly struggles to fill places, and the current nature of the pandemic may not have produced large numbers of potential teachers in this subject area.

Although applicant numbers are increasing, there has not really been a surge. Compared with February 2020, there are some 4,300 more applicants this year. These additional applicants are spread across the country, although 1,100 are domiciled in London and a further 1,200 in the South East, leaving the remainder to be spread across the remaining regions.

Applications are up from those in all age-groups, including both career changers and new graduates, producing little shift in the percentage composition of applicants by age-group compared with last year.

The inclusion of a gender category of ‘unknown or Prefer not to say’ makes annual comparison on this factor impossible, but it seems likely that there has been little change and perhaps that men have even lost a little ground on women in percentage terms.

In terms of routes into teaching, School Direct (Salaried) remains the big loser in the number of applications, especially in the primary sector. All other routes seem to have benefited, although the rate of offering places on the Apprenticeship route seems to be slow when compared to other routes. In view of the government’s plans for teachers, the higher education sector remains resilient, and is still the choice for more applications than any other route into teaching.

As places fill, we can expect applications to reduce. However, of more interest is how the wider graduate labour market will recover from the pandemic and what effect that recovery will have on applications to teacher preparation courses.