Tag Archives: schools

Exploring Teacher Recruitment and Retention

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

I doubt whether many will want to buy it outright with even an e-book price of over £30. However, I mention it here for two reasons. Firstly, the authors asked me to write what has become the opening chapter. In it I discuss the history of teacher supply at the national level since 1970 within the context of my own career during the past half century.

Secondly, reading the book makes it obvious why I prefer to write blogs than books or academic articles about such a fast moving environment as the labour market for teachers. This book is now as much a work of history as it is a discussion about current policy, since the world of teacher recruitment has been changed by the pandemic.

Indeed, we are unlikely to see a return to conditions of widespread teacher shortages for at least a few years, however much of a -V- shape the recession we are now entering turns out to be. The opposite was, of course, the case when this book was being crafted.

I never envy the authors of a collection of chapters by different authors. Ensuring academics meet deadlines is a thankless task. This is the second time I have contributed a chapter to a book where the time between commissioning and publication rendered the original text not fully fit for the original purpose.

It would be interesting to bring together the various posts about teacher shortages on this blog and compare them with articles I wrote during periods of plenty in the labour market as part of my contributions to the TES during the first decade of this century.

There is one group that may find the book worth purchasing. The group is those successful in tendering for the DfE’s longitudinal survey of teachers designed to underpin their currently outdated Recruitment & Retention strategy. Those designing the survey for the DfE might like to link my previous post about the OECD data with the level of vacancies due to maternity leave currently being advertised on both TeachVac and the DfE’s vacancy site.

OECD Education Indicators at a Glance: 2020 Edition

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Each year the OECD brings together the most recent data about education systems. Originally it was just data from the OECD countries, but now the scope has widened to include some other countries. This allows for both a EU23 country average and in some cases a G20 average number to be calculated in many of the tables.

In this blog post, I look at three sets of data; age of teachers in primary and lower secondary sectors; the percentage of female teachers in these sectors and some data about class sizes.

The data for the home nations is aggregated into a United Kingdom statistics. This is despite, as pointed out in a previous post, education is a devolved activity and each constituent part of the United Kingdom takes its own decisions on education policy. However, they are not separate countries, and are viewed no differently than either German Land or French Departments by the OECD.

On the ratio of students to teaching staff in 2018, the United Kingdom still has one of the largest ratios in the table for the primary sector, at 20 pupils per teacher. Only The Russian Federation, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, of the nations included in the table, have larger class sizes. By comparison, the OECD average is 15 pupils per teacher, and the EU23 average is even smaller at just 13 pupils per teacher.  The United Kingdom figure comes after including the smaller class sizes often found in swathes of rural Scotland and Wales.

In the lower secondary table, the United Kingdom performs better. The average falls to 16 pupils per teacher, compared with an OECD average of 13 and the EU23 average of 11 pupils per teacher. Although the imbalance between staffing is of long-standing, it is smaller than a generation ago. It is to be hoped that as policymakers fully understand the importance of early education the gap will continue to close between the staffing ratios funded for younger and older pupils.

On the age distribution of teachers, the United Kingdom had the system with the highest percentage of teachers below the age of 30 working in the primary sector at 29% of the teaching force, and one of the lowest percentage of teachers older than 50 in the sector.  Young teachers are more recently prepared for the classroom, but less likely to remain there than older teachers.

The large percentage may partly be down to the rise in the birth rate that required more teachers to be hired as the increased number of pupils reached school age. By contrast, many western European countries, including Finland, had less than ten per cent of their primary teaching force in the under-30 age bracket in 2018.

The position is similar in the lower secondary workforce, with the United Kingdom again leading the way at 22%, with the second highest percentage of teachers in the youngest age grouping: only Turkey had a higher percentage. Indeed, the EU23 average was only nine per cent of lower secondary teachers under the age of thirty in 2018.

On gender, although we tend to think of teaching these days as a profession where women vastly outnumber men, and that is true, the data revealed that in 2018 the United Kingdom was close to the OECD average of 83% female teachers among teachers under thirty in the primary sector. The EU23 average for this group was 85% ,with a UK figure of 84%.  By contrast, in Austria and Italy more than 90% of their teacher under the age of 30 were female. In Denmark, the percentage was only 58%.

In the lower secondary sector, the international averages were a 68% of teachers under thirty being female. The United Kingdom were again similar to the averages with a figure of 66% for female teachers as a proportion of teachers under the age of thirty. Denmark again had one of the lowest percentages, but Italy had a much higher percentage of male teacher in the lower secondary sector.

There is more to be said about the difference in survival rates in teaching for men and women, and the relative lack of women in leadership positions, even after several decades of equal opportunities legislation.

Data on teachers’ ethnic backgrounds would also be useful, not least to know where and how well it is collected across the OECD countries.

The data was collected in a period of calm before the pandemic storm hit the world. What these numbers will look like in a decade if employment opportunities change is in the realm of speculation. Might the patterns be very different or might the journey to equal opportunities really be more firmly embedded in the labour market than ever before?

Sprinkler systems needed in school buildings

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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%).

According to Zurich’s research, in the last three years malfunctioning appliances or equipment, faulty electrics, arson and kitchen blazes are among the leading causes of school fires. Larger fires in schools cost on average £2.8m to repair and in some cases over £20m. Bigger and older schools, including those with a canteen, and secondary schools – which have more complex and dangerous equipment – were identified as particularly at risk.

Of particular concern was the fact that there was a correlation between poor Ofsted ratings and greater risk of fire was also identified in the analysis. If buildings can influence learning, then this is a factor that needs to be taken into account in relation to any school-rebuilding programme. Poor learning conditions don’t motivate pupils to learn.

Zurich echo what I said in 2019, by concluding that:

“Burnt out schools and classrooms cause major disruption to children’s education, with repairs leading to months or even years of upheaval. They also result in the loss of spaces which local communities rely on out of school hours.

As well as protecting pupils, sprinklers drastically reduce the extent of damage when there is a blaze, often confining the fire to a single room. This gets children back into schools and classrooms quicker as well as saving taxpayers’ money.”

The case for installing sprinklers seems overwhelming, and I hope that the government will review the present building guidance and rules and reinstate a mandatory requirement for sprinkler systems in all new schools being built from now onwards. Retrofitting existing schools would be much more expensive, but could still be justified in reducing the consequences of a fire in a school on children’s education.  

How many unqualified teachers are there?

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One of the questions that has exercised educationalists during a time of teacher shortages is whether or not there is a growing number of teachers without Qualified Teacher Status working in State School? Mr Gove, when Secretary of State for Education, changed the rules, from allowing all schools to employ unqualified staff only when they were unable to find a Qualified Teacher, to allowing academies and free schools to employ such individuals as core staff members.

Did this change open the flood gates? Data from the School workforce Census for 2019 and previous years suggests probably not, although there is a worrying figures in the data. Overall, some five per cent of teachers, as measured by the Full Time Equivalent number of teachers, did not possess QTS in the 2019 Census. In total, the figure in November 2019, was 25,078 compared with 25,860 in November 2016. Overall, the trend has been downwards. This may be because it is clearer to schools completing the census how to classify ‘teachers’ on either Teach First or School Direct Salaried contracts within schools.

Looking at the different sectors is illuminating. In the primary sector, there were 7,673 non-qualified teachers in November 2016, and 7,528 in November 2019. However, the bulk of unqualified teachers were in the secondary sector. In November 2016 the number was 25,860, but by November 2019 the number had fallen slightly to 25,078.

However, in the special school sector, where many of our most vulnerable learners are educated, the number of teachers without QTS increased from 3,033 in November 2016 to 3,729 in November 2019. By the latter date, such ‘teachers’ accounted for 14% of teachers working in the special school sector.

Now, hopefully, these are experienced teachers that bring special skills to bear to help with the education of these children. Sadly, the data doesn’t allow that to be more than a ‘hope’.  Should this not be the case, and many might lack specialist teaching as well as other qualifications, this must be a matter for concern? It would be interesting to see a regional breakdown of the numbers, to see if certain parts of the country ha percentages even higher than the 15% national figures for England.

Since the term ‘teacher’ isn’t a reserved occupation term, anyone can style themselves as a teacher. Indeed, as I have pointed out in the past, these individuals without QTS when working in schools were once categorised as ‘instructors’. However, the Labour government changed their designation to that of ‘unqualified teacher’.  I still think, in recognition of the preparation teachers have to undergo that the term ‘teacher’ should be reserved solely for use by those with QTS and that a person in training should have a separate designation such as trainee teacher. But, that’s a personal opinion.

Of course, few schools tell parents whether there child is being taught by either a teacher with QTS or one with appropriate subject or other specialist knowledge. Should there be more transparency?

Still not enough trainees

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By Monday 17th August some 45,210 people had applied for postgraduate teacher preparation courses through the UCAS Scheme. This was an increase of 6,000 on the number recorded in August 2019, for these courses in England. This represent a 15% year on year increase. However the number is still well below the record levels of more than 60,000 witnessed during the previous recession caused by the banking crisis. No doubt, this is in part due to the fact that it wasn’t until March that the world was turned upon its head.

The 2020/21 recruitment round may well see much high numbers of applicants right from the start of the cycle later this autumn. There are also Teach First numbers to be taken into account, although they don’t publish regular figures on total applicant numbers.

Every region of England witnessed increases in applicant numbers over 2019, with more than 1,000 additional applicants in the South East, and 1,500 in London: good news for both regions. There were also more applicants from all age-groups, as well as from both women and men.

As many of these new applicants have arrived relatively late in the recruitment round, and while schools and universities have been enduring ‘lockdown’, it is, perhaps, not surprising that ‘conditional placed’ numbers are up on last year, whereas, in some cases, ‘placed’ numbers are down.

For instance, for men in the age 21 and under category, there were 340 placed this August compared with 400 in August 2019. However the conditional placed number this year was 760, compared with 530 in August 2019. The number of applicants in this age group increased from 1,300 in August 2019 to 1,450 this August. While four of the seven age-groupings for men recorded fewer placed numbers than last year, only two age groups, the youngest and oldest groupings, for women recorded placed numbers below last year. This may give credence to the suggestion that male applicants for teaching tend to apply later on average than women.

School Direct seems to have suffered this year, with fewer placed applicants for both primary and secondary courses, and quite markedly fewer for School Direct Salaried places. This year only 610 applicants have been recorded as placed against 890 last year. Conditional placed numbers for School Direct Salaried this year are 1,550, compared with 1,710 in August last year. No doubt funding arrangements and school closures have affected this route more than some others.

Some subjects have seen significant increases in the number of applications. Art and design has increased to 3,570 this August compared with 1,890 in August 2019. Business studies, a shortage subject, now has 1,720 applications compared with 770 in 2019. By contrast, geography only has 3,740 applications this year compared with 4,380 last year at this point in time.

Mathematics has seen an increase from 8,600 to 11,000 applications, but only 770 of these are placed and with just 1,750 holding a conditional place it seems less than likely that the Teacher Supply Model number will be reached. The same is true for physics, where applications are up from 2,220 to 2,450, but only 550 are recorded as either placed or conditionally placed: not sufficient to meet the requirement.

So, 2020 looks like being better than recent years, but not yet a great year. Hopefully, the 2020/21 round will see all places filled. Since secondary pupil numbers will still be on the increase, this will be important to ensure adequate staffing for our schools.

School websites: some thoughts

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This summer I have been looking at more than a thousand primary school websites. This is because each year, TeachVac www.teachvac tries to look at all the sites where we find our teaching posts. Although most of the work is carried out by the dedicated staff team located on the Isle of Wight, I like to do my share as Chair of the company.

Incidentally, if you aren’t using TeachVac as your search vehicle for teaching posts, why not? So far in 2020 we have identified over 43,000 vacancies and last year the annual total was over 60,000. We are the most comprehensive job board for teachers in England that is free to both teachers and schools.

Looking at lots of websites can be very boring to do. However, it can also be very revealing.

As a community of educations, we are deeply concerned about children and meeting their needs for learning. Do we forget that adults may also have challenges? Certainly, looking at lots of websites, I do wonder. Not many carry WCAG or other notification that the site has been matched against guidelines for those parents or other adults that might use the site and have various challenges.

A percentage of the population is colour-blind. Do school web sites take this fact into account? How about background colours and those with adult dyslexia?

Then there is the issue of which ‘browsers’ the web site uses, and if tailored to work best on one type, does it make that clear to first time visitors?  

I am intrigued to see that teaching posts can be found under any of the following list of tabs: vacancies; employment opportunities; working for us; jobs: there may be others as well.

Jobs can be mixed up with others from the Academy Trust or hidden so well that you must assume that the schools doesn’t want anyone to find them. As to leaving jobs on sites well beyond closing dates, that’s all too common and frustrating for job searchers.

Few sites offer translation options even where the school acknowledges that pupils speak a variety of languages.

Of course, none of this is true for your web site, but if you want a checkout, do please make contact with the TeachVac team via ww.teachvac.co.uk

A Failure of Leadership?

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Christmas 2019 must have been a wonderful time in the Prime Minister’s household. A stunning election win just weeks before; a new family member on the way and our exit from Europe assured.

How different, it must seem now. On March 20th, as schools were locked down, I wrote on this blog:

How a Prime minister deals with a crisis sometimes seals their fate. Chamberlain did not survive the switch from phony war to Blitzkrieg, and Eden paid for the shambles of Suez with his job. How our current Prime Minister handles the next few weeks will seal his fate.  I never thought I would be writing these lines, especially in a situation where the current government has such a large majority. But even a large majority cannot protect someone in Number 10 Downing Street if both the opposition and significant parts of his own Party want a change of leadership.

We haven’t reached that state yet. But, just looking at how the government has handled the school situation in England this week leaves me wondering, as a political opponent, how much more his own Party will take? Why was the list of key workers not available on Wednesday? COVID-19 PM’s Suez? Posted on March 20, 2020

Since then we have had the PPE crisis; the care homes testing fiasco along with the test and trace debacle. Admittedly, there was firm leadership over self-isolation requirements for travellers from Spain, France, the Netherlands and some other countries. But, even that leadership has too often turned into a communications disaster.

Now we have the Prime Minister seemingly abandoning his own Education Secretary to his fate. Leadership means either sacking him or backing him, not disappearing from sight. It is not for me to suggest a way out, but here is what I would do now:

Honour predicted GCSE Grades 

In this exceptional year, employers, colleges and schools should honour all teacher predicted grades for this year’s cohort of GCSE Students. Oxfordshire County Council Liberal Democrat Group believes such an approach provides clear leadership. Examinations at 16 are no longer an exit point from learning for the overwhelming majority of our students, and they should not be penalised by decisions taken in the interest of smoothing out a time series of achievement.  

Students starting in September will need support whatever the grades they were predicted to achieve, and using teacher grades to determine futures is the fairest method possible. 

In the longer-term, Liberal Democrats want an assessment of the cost and effectiveness of retaining public examinations at sixteen over more local forms of less expensive assessment. 

Finally, we acknowledge the hard work of teachers, parents and many others in supporting our young people and adult learners during this challenging period in our history. 

It is up to Tories what they do about the government, but the people will speak when elections return in 2021. A Prime minister that understands the history of this nation will know the portents.

Well Done Worcester

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Inequality isn’t just about 2020 hindsight

Congratulations to my former college, Worcester, for deciding to honour all the offers it made this year. Had it done so in the past, it might have stoked the controversy about unconditional offers. But that was last year’s debating point about university admissions. Indeed, the debate about whether offers should be made on predictions or actual grades has rumbled on for years without reaching a conclusion, other than the status quo.

I find the interest in social mobility that has been awakened by the use of the prior attainment achieved by schools and colleges in the decision-making process by the regulator an interesting sign of the times. After all, such disadvantage for some groups was present even when examinations were actually taken.  

Why has this blog been so strident over the years about teacher shortages? One reason is that stark differences in the knowledge and experience of teachers can affect learning outcomes. A quick glance at the distribution of vacancy adverts for the limited supply of teachers of physics demonstrates a pattern that favours certain types of schools and leaves others rarely advertising for such teachers. Of course, some may respond to vacancy adverts for a ‘teacher of science’, but when offered the chance to teach their subject, many would, I guess, rightly prefer to do so. For physics, you can substitute mathematics, and a host of other subjects.

This is however but one form of difference between schools and their pupils in preparing for examinations. The ability of parents to afford revision classes, if the school chooses not to offer them, and to provide top up tutoring for parts of the syllabus not covered for any reason is another unfairness.

I write from personal experience on how sixth form life can change outcomes. My own GCE results at age sixteen were mediocre, not good enough to be allowed into some sixth forms these days. Yet, two years later, my grades at ‘A’ Level were 2Bs and a C, with a pass in a special paper. Might I have been downgraded this year?

 The government appointed Social Mobility Commission has highlighted the inequalities in the education system for years, but it takes a pandemic to rocket the issue up the national agenda. Even then, the focus is on a narrow point resulting from the unique circumstances of school closures and a lack of examinations. Few seem to have broadened the debate to discuss the more general point about equality in our education system. Class still rules: OK.

Has the switch to a centrally controlled Academy system, from the former devolved and locally accountable system of schooling helped or hindered social mobility. To the extent that councillors were as little interested in the issue as are politicians at Westminster it has probably made little difference. However, the view of individual heads of school, like those of individual Oxford colleges can and does make a difference.

Might the Secretary of State become the first political casualty of the pandemic? Next week’s GCSE results, and how they are handled, will probably seal his fate. Certainly, his Minister of State had a rough ride on the BBC’s Any Questions last night.

Happy Birthday

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Today is the 150th birthday of the 1870 Education Act. This was the Act of Parliament that established State Schools in England for the first time. There had been funding for schools before this date, but 1870 marked the start of a State education system.

However, there was no requirement in the Act to send children to school, and there still isn’t. Parents must educate their offspring, but it is up to them how to do it. If they make no provision, then the state school system is the default catch-all option: parents cannot simply ignore the issue of education once a child reaches statutory school age.

It is perhaps symbolic that the Prime Minister has chosen today, probalby unknowingly, .to talk of the new term and a ‘moral duty’ to get all children back to school.

As I said in an earlier post, I worry not for the children, but for those they come into contact with both at home and at school. High risk teachers should be deployed working with high risk and self-isolating children that cannot attend school by using the developing technology to offer appropriate learning strategies available to all.

Much also needs to be achieved with those that have fallen behind over the past five months so that they can catch-up without just facing a diet of just English and mathematics.

Cash strapped local authorities need to consider retaining uniform grants for those pupils attending schools requiring special clothes whose parents are unable to afford the cost of this specialist clothing. Schools should also make uniform optional, and not mandatory, in the present climate, and certainly not use it as a means of discrimination against certain pupils.

The government must also not forget further education and apprenticeships. Those with long memories will recall the TVEI scheme of the 1980s. Perhaps it is time to create a 20th century version, so that no young person leaves education without some offer of continued education or employment.

Local authorities should investigate how much cash they have taken from maintained primary schools through the Apprenticeship Levy that is currently sitting in bank accounts and set up task forces to ensure it can reduce youth unemployment locally. There is no point in giving the cash back to government. The same is true for the MATs.

MATs, diocese and local authorities should also review the level of school balances. Now is the time to spend them and not to leave them in the bank doing nothing. It is just a rainy day, but a monsoon of unimaginable proportions. If head teacher need convincing, then offer suggestions for how the cash can be spent.

Finally, I have suggested before that the class of 2020 that graduated as teachers all be offered work in view of the steep decline in vacancies that has led to many not being employed for September.

Let us celebrate this special day in the history of education in England by working to provide the children of today with the best possible education in these unprecedented times.

Some subjects may still be short of teachers in 2021

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The covid-19 pandemic has come too late in the recruitment round to ensure that all teacher preparation courses for graduates in all subjects will recruit enough students for September 2020 in order to ensure enough teachers for September 2021 vacancies.

On the basis of the July data from UCAS, the number of ‘Placed’, ‘Conditionally Placed’ and ‘Holding an Offer’ applications were sufficient in biology; Business Studies; English; history; music; physical education; religious education; art and modern languages to reasonably expect the DfE’s Teacher Supply Number to be reached. The percentage in art and design is the highest number recorded for more than a decade. The primary sector should also exceed its target set by the DfE.

On the other hand, computing and geography might meet the target with a few more acceptable applicants during the summer. However, it seems unlikely that chemistry; design & technology; mathematics and physics will meet the desired number this year. There simply haven’t been enough time to attract applicants, unless that is there is a stream of highly qualified applicants between early July and the start of September.

Interestingly, 24% of applications in physics were in the ‘Placed’, ‘Conditionally Placed’ and ‘Holding an Offer’ categories by mid-July 2020. This was the same percentage as in 2019. The figure for mathematics was also 24% in both July 2019 and July 2020. In Chemistry it had dropped from 25% in 2019, to 23% this year, although there were nearly 600 more applications for providers to process, so the final percentage might be higher.

In music, the percentage in the ‘Placed’, ‘Conditionally Placed’ and ‘Holding an Offer’ categories by mid-July 2020 was 32%, one of the highest for any subject, and up from 26% in July 2019. Physical education, not a shortage subject, has seen their percentage increase from 20% in July 2019 to 24% in July 2020.

So, 2020 looks like being the best year for recruitment into training for teaching for five or six years, but it seems unlikely that all subjects will meet their targets. However, there may well be a glut of both physical education and history teachers entering the market in 2021, unless all the vacancies lost this year by schools either retrenching or not needing to recruit appear again for September 2021.

Would I take on the extra debt to train as either a PE or a history teacher? Well, I would certainly look at the employment record of the course offering me a place this year and check with TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk what the job situation is like in these subjects, especially in view of any debt to the government that will be incurred by joining the course. After all, we don’t know what might happen to interest rates and repayment terms as the government seeks to manage the economy over the next few years.