Tag Archives: schools

TeachVac issues end of term warning

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Schools across England will find recruiting staff for unexpected vacancies in January 2018 challenging. This is the message from TeachVac, the free to use job board for teacher vacancies across all schools in England that is already saving schools large sums of money in line with the DfE policy of reducing unnecessary expenditure by schools.

TeachVac is celebrating entering its fourth year of operation. At the end of the summer term of 2017, TeachVac have rated 7 of the 13 secondary subjects it tracks as in a critical state for recruitment. This means that TeachVac is warning schools of recruitment difficulties in these subjects that might occur anywhere in the country and not just in the traditional high risk areas for recruitment.

The high risk subjects are:

English

IT/Computing

Design & Technology

Business Studies

Religious Education

Music

Geography

In the other six subjects tracked in detail by TeachVac, most schools will still find recruitment easier, although any specific demands such as subject knowledge in, for example, a specific period of history will always make recruitment more of a challenge. On the basis of current evidence, TeachVac expects schools will face the least problems in Physical Education and Art where, if anything, there is still some local over-supply against need in some parts of the country.

In Science overall, – but not in Physics and possible Chemistry – Mathematics; Modern Languages overall, but not in certain language combinations, and in History, supply should still be adequate to meet expected demand between now and January 2018.  Because most schools still advertise for teachers of languages and science and only specify within the advert the more detailed requirements it takes longer to analyse the data on vacancies in these subjects and that information is not yet fully available beyond the headline figures.

TeachVac can provide the data in a form useful to schools facing Ofsted inspection where recruitment may be an issue for the inspection team. For local authorities and others interested in the recruitment patterns over the past three years in specific locations and between different types of school such as academies and free schools, TeachVac now has a wealth of data available. TeachVac is also now looking in detail as senior staff appointments and especially leadership posts in the primary sector and the challenges some schools face in replacing a head teacher when they leave. The outcome of that research will form the basis of a further detailed report to follow the posts already written on the topic.

With recruitment to training for courses starting this September still below the level achieved last year, 2018 is also beginning to look as if it will be a challenging recruitment round, especially for schools not involved in training teachers either directly or through tie-ins with other training providers. This blog will update the situation regarding numbers offered places for September at the end of this month and again at the end of August.

 

 

Celebrating school music services

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Last evening I attended the Oxfordshire Music Service annual end of year concert. The setting was the lovely one of Dorchester Abbey, although the pews do seem rather harder than a few years ago. Music has played a large part in the post-war education scene. This is despite successive governments from the 1980s onwards often seeing it as a dispensable extra activity. The fact that this was the 75th year the Oxfordshire Music Service has been in operation and it is now working at arm’s length from the local authority is a tribute to all who care about what this type of service can bring to the life of our young people.

Earlier in the afternoon I had been reading the latest briefing note on school funding from the Education Policy Institute. David Laws, the former Schools Minister and sometime Lib Dem MP makes no secret that he doesn’t believe in local democratically elected councils having a role in education funding. The briefing note laments that there was no legislative proposal in the Queen’s Speech to allow a ‘hard’ national funding formula. However, the EPI note suggests that the DfE could still significantly reduce the role of local authorities by the use of secondary legislation.

Now, regular readers will knows that both as a councillor and philosophically I believe locally democratically elected councils have an important role to play in education. I am not opposed to a national funding formula, but it throws up interesting issues if implemented as a ’hard’ national formula. An academy in the North West is to close as it is uneconomic and in deficit. The Multi Academy Trust will hand the lease back to the council that owns the freehold. All well and good, but the school was built by a PFI deal and those payments will presumably continue whether it operates as a school or not. Who should bear the cost, the local council taxpayers or the government? At present, it will be the local taxpayers, probably without any ability to recoup the costs, just as they cannot for additional transport costs that could result from a school closure. Would the government keep activities such as school music services going or be content to just leave them to market forces? I wonder.

The lack of a rational plan for the governance of our schools have been a worrying feature of the past thirty years, ever since central government really started the process of nationalising the schools with the Conservative Grant Maintained Schools.  Sadly, no government has had the courage to do what David Laws would like and fully remove all education from democratically elected councils. Such an outcome would at least have the merit of clear-cut solution.

You really cannot have a system with responsibility but no power. This fact is highlighted by the plight of children taken into care who have no right to a school place if moved to another area for their safety. I am delighted that all Oxfordshire MPs from the three Parties have signed a letter to the Minister highlighting this issue. Our most vulnerable children deserve better than to be not only be taken from their homes but also have their education disrupted, sometimes for months on end.

Who remembers the OHP now?

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The Centre for Education Economics has produced an interesting research digest on the ‘Evidence on uses of technology in education’.  http://www.cfee.org.uk/sites/default/files/CfEE%20Annual%20Research%20Digest%202016-17%20-%20web%20version.pdf?mc_cid=9c5c208670&mc_eid=11bc2206a8

Now, the use of technology isn’t new in education and much technology, such as the cassette tape-recorder, banda copiers and the OHP has come, gone and faded into the memories of those of us of certain ages. Throughout the whole of my life, the problem all too often isn’t the technology, but rather the way teachers and others are taught to make use of it in helping the learning process.

If I was still teaching geography, I guess I would have a string of web sites open on my interactive whiteboard to let pupils watch for a magnitude 6 earthquake; a volcanic eruption and at this time of year the development of hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean, all so as to engage all my classes in knowing the dynamics of these natural events and possibly encouraging them to find out more. Today, I would have a web cam streaming live from somewhere in the USA celebrating the 4th July. All this is low level motivational use of technology.

I am convinced that data recording can help play an important part in pinpointing where resources are needed, although all too often teachers are required to create and input the data. The next generation of learning technology should address that issue. Indeed, I wonder whether we should be spending the cash currently expended on research into driverless cars into improving the learning process for those we fail at present in our education system. I always wonder whether, with the development of technology we need, those preparing the next generation of teachers are as open to new possibilities and to enthusing the next generation of teachers to be aware of the way the world is changing as I would like them to be.

I first used a word processor in 1979; it revolutionised the work I could undertake for the dissertation I was researching and eventually writing at that time. From mail merging the letters accompanying my questionnaire, to changing spelling mistakes the day before submission, there were lots of small advantages. However, the real benefit was longer to arrange and rearrange my thoughts and analysis to produce a higher standard of writing that would have been much more challenging to achieve with just pen and ink or that other disappeared piece of technology, the typewriter.

This blog would not be possible without the developments in technology and I would only be able to communicate with the outside world if someone, as the TES did in 1998, offered me the opportunity to write a column for their magazine.

Indeed, TeachVac, www.teachvac.co.uk our free to schools and teachers job board is the product of disruptive new technology that has driven down the cost of communicating teaching posts to the audience seeking them out.

As we approach the 150th anniversary of the 1870 Education act, I remain an optimist that technology can improve our lives for the better and reduce the learning deficit some many children still experience, especially at the start of their formal education.

Immediately after writing this post I came across the following BBC video posted today that raises many of the same issues about technology and learning

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/magazine-40485293/the-futuristic-school-where-you-re-always-on-camera

Well worth a view.

New data on schools and their pupils

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Unless there is a dramatic change in the birth rate over the next few years, the peak in the primary school population is probably very close to being reached. Data on schools and pupil numbers published by the DfE today https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2017 reveal a slight decline in the number of Key State 1 infant classes above the nationally agreed limit of 30 pupils per class. The decline is only 0.1% from 11.9 to 11.8% of these classes and is still way above the 10.4% achieved in 2011 and 2012. Still, it remains below the 13.8% of 2006, and should fall further over the next few years.

There is still pressure at Key Stage 2, with average class sizes increasing from 20.4 to 20.8 across England. It seems likely that this average will continue to increase for the next couple of years that is unless Brexit results in a mass emigration of young families to other European countries. This seems less likely, although still possible, after the discussions last week on allowing existing migrants from the EU to remain in England.

There was a big jump in the average size of secondary classes, from 20.4 to 20.8, their highest level since 2008. With the increase in pupil numbers over the next few years, this average seems set to increase still further, perhaps towards the 21.5 reached in 2006.

The implications of the National Funding formula will probably be most keenly felt in the 5,400 primary schools and nearly 130 secondary schools with fewer than 200 pupils. Some of the latter may be UTCs and Studio schools with the chance to grow, but many of the primary schools could face an uncertain future with the costs of closure affecting local authority transport bills in rural areas.

On average, 12% of primary schools have less than 100 pupils. However, the average hides a wide range, from just 2% of schools in London to 19% in the East Midlands and 22% of primary sector schools in the South West. I am sure the travel implications have been taken into account by those reviewing the effects of school funding and the new formula.

The Church of England will certainly be interested in what happens to small schools under the new funding formula since more than a quarter of their primary schools have fewer than 100 pupils. In five regions the percentage of their schools with less than 100 pupils is more than 30% with the East Midlands having more than a third of Church of England primary schools being of this size. However, the Church of England has only 2% of its schools in London with less than 100 pupils, the same as the average for all schools. By contrast, London has the largest Church of England primary schools with one having more than 800 pupils. Still, by that is small compared with the largest primary school in London that has more than 1,500 pupils.

 

 

 

Confusion over future pay

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The confusion over the future of the public sector 1% pay cap that apparently highlighted differences between the Treasury and other ministers yesterday is but one symptom of the malaise at the heart of the present government. We are used to hearing of –U- turns, but what do we call a double reversal of intent since the term spin has already been appropriated in the political landscape?

Nevertheless, it is clear that pay and associated conditions of service for teachers cannot for ever avoid the effects of competition in a labour market while we live in a society where the State doesn’t direct the job you have to take.

While the labour market remains buoyant, and especially the graduate labour market, it does seem inevitable that any ceiling on pay will have adverse effects. Later today, the June data on recruitment to teacher preparation courses starting this autumn will be published and that will be another straw in the wind. Regular readers will know that I don’t expect the data to be very encouraging in terms of meeting the government’s modelling over numbers needed to be recruited.

Eventually, the pay cap in education will have to go. The government can fudge the change by making changes to the overall structure through, for instance, initiatives such as loan forgiveness schemes that reduce a new entrant’s monthly outgoings by taking over their student debt. However, that won’t help older teachers and encouraging experienced teachers to remain in the profession may be as important as attracting new entrants, if you want a balanced age profile in the profession reflecting both experience and new ideas.

Then there is the question of regional pay. Should London pay rates go up faster than those elsewhere in the country because the London area is where the problem of recruitment is most severe? The data in a previous post about percentages of unqualified teachers might support this thesis, but it could also be down to academies in London looking for a different mix of skills not adequately provided by the subjects identified in the Teacher Supply Model? Should we pay more to secondary school teachers than those that work in primary schools? Traditionally that hasn’t been the case and there seems little evidence that freeing academies form national pay rates has altered the pay landscape very much, except in one specific area.

Senior staff pay in schools, as much as elsewhere in society, doesn’t seem to have been subject to the same degree of pay restraint as classroom teachers have experienced over the past decade. I don’t buy the view that adding one or two schools to a Multi Academy Trust requires the Chief Executive to receive a pay rise to compensate for extra responsibilities.

Since academies are national schools, the government should look at whether chief officer pay in MATs is governed by any specific restrictions and whether there is at least a moral obligation to follow the government’s line on pay restraint while it is still in force.

Perhaps a learned body or a university research team could produce some pay guidelines for chief officers of MATs that relate their pay and conditions to those of chief officers in local authority Children’s Services? They might even be included in the Top Salaries Review Body since these staff in MATs are paid from government funds.

 

 

Do schools employ teachers with QTS?

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What can the School Workforce Census tell us about who is teaching in our schools? At the level of the individual school record there is some valuable data that can be mined by researchers looking to answer specific questions such as those in the newly published NfER study research into staffing and the role of MATs. https://www.nfer.ac.uk/about-nfer/media-and-events/being-part-of-multi-academy-trusts-may-help-schools-in-challenging-areas-to-recruit-and-retain-teachers/

Of course, such a study doesn’t discuss the important policy issue of whether schooling should be like the NHS and governed centrally or as they used to be, under local democratic control: parents could eject their local councillor if the schools wasn’t properly funded or performed badly. They are unlikely to eject an MP on the same grounds.

Anyway, the School workforce Census public tables contains a wealth of interesting material. Take the issue of secondary schools employing Qualified Teachers. Excluding trainees and schools such as Farringdon Academy in Oxfordshire, where there appear to be nil returns, most secondary schools employ teachers with QTS.

GOR % of schools  with less than 90% of teachers with  QTS
North East 6%
North West 7%
Yorkshire & Humber 11%
South West 11%
West Midlands 12%
East Midlands 14%
South East 21%
East England 23%
Inner London 24%
Outer London 25%
Oxfordshire 21%

Source DfE School Workforce Census 2016

What do we know of the schools with less than 90% of teachers with QTS.? Many are specific types of school. UTCs and Studio Schools for 14-18 year olds abound in the lists across the country. Then there are specific schools such as the Steiner Schools where teaching and learning outcomes follow a specific pattern, but there are limited teacher preparation courses leading to QTS. There are also schools with a specific religious character of which Jewish and Roman Catholic schools appear most frequently in the list of schools with less than 90% of teachers with QTS.

Schools also differ in their age profiles. There are over 120 secondary schools where more than a third of the teaching staff are over the age of 50 despite the general trend towards a younger teaching force across the system as a whole. These older teachers are less likely to be found in London schools than in some other parts of England.

Male teachers are also becoming rarer in secondary schools, with none of Oxfordshire’s 11-18 secondary schools reporting a gender balance: all have a majority of female teachers, albeit only a small majority in a few cases.  There is no doubt still something of a general imbalance at the Leadership level.

The School Workforce Census also includes some data on vacancies, but with the collection date in November, when most schools are fully staffed, it isn’t anything like as interesting as the TeachVac site that collects vacancy data throughout the year. TeachVac also has extra data on science, design and technology, mathematics and IT vacancies that can be of use to those interested in information about that group of subjects. We can collect the same detailed information on other subjects and leadership posts as well.

 

 

 

 

Support Staff axed by secondary schools

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In the previous post I discussed the changing level of the pupil teacher ratios in schools, following the publication of the 2016 School Workforce Census, conducted last November. Of course, teachers are not the only staff employed in schools and there are a vast number of other staff either employed by the school or by third party suppliers, but working on school premises.

With the increase in pupil numbers, it is perhaps not surprising that the number of teaching assistants increased in the primary sector to 177,700. The number of administrative assistants also increased in primary schools. However, there was a reduction in the admittedly small number of technicians employed in the primary sector. I assume most of these work on IT systems?

In the secondary sector, the position was almost exactly the opposite. The sector employs less than a third of the number of teaching assistant that are found in the primary sector. However, there was a reduction in their numbers to just over 50,000; down by just over 2,000 in one year and more than 4,000 from the high point reached in 2013. By contrast, the secondary sector employs many more technicians than in the primary sector; somewhere between four and five per schools. Even here, the numbers reduced between 2015 and 2016 as they also did for administrative staff.

Third Party employed support staff increased in number in the primary sector, but fell in the secondary sector. Again, the difference in pupil premium cash per pupil between the two sectors may well account for some of the trends. I think it fair to say that secondary school budgets, even when helped by rising rolls from 2016 onwards, will likely cause pressure in many of these areas in years to come.

How the National Funding Formula is introduced, if indeed it is introduced in its present iteration, will undoubtedly shape the future spending patterns, even if there are floors and ceilings introduced. I suspect that teaching jobs will be protected at the expense of other staff in schools, but that the possible reductions in the number of minority subjects on offer may well affect the employment possibilities of teachers in those subjects.

In a latter post, I will examine the trends in qualified teachers employed in different subjects across the last few years, along with trends in entry and departure rates from the profession. But it is worth noting that the average age of teachers in secondary schools is higher than in primary schools, with 605 of secondary school teachers being in the 30-50 age grouping compared with 55% in the primary sector. Only 22.6% of secondary school teachers are aged under 30 compared with 28.4% in the primary sector. This difference may have an impact on employment patterns.

In terms of gender balance, four out of five employees in the school sector as a whole are now women.  With the largest grouping of men being the 37.5% of teachers employed in the secondary sector. This compares with just 15.4% of male teachers in the primary sector. Over 90% of teaching assistants are women.

 

 

PTRs worsen in 2016

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The DfE has today published its first results from last November’s School Workforce Census https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2016 With an ever changing landscape across the school sector, it is sometimes difficult to discern the longer-term trends. However, it does seem as if the years of plenty are being replaced by more challenging times as the head teachers across southern England told the parents at many primary schools yesterday.

It is worth recalling the current environment. Pupil numbers have been rising for some years now in primary schools but falling in secondary schools. September 2016 market the first school year where the number of pupils in secondary schools started increasing. The DfE analysis comments that

The nursery & primary school population has been rising since 2009 and reached 4.50 million children in 2016. Based on 2016’s pupil projections the rate of increase is forecast to slow and the population is projected to stabilise in 2020 at 5 4.68 million children. The secondary school population rose to 2.76 million in 2016 (the first rise since 2005) as the increased births from 2002 reached secondary school age. The secondary school population is projected to continue increasing to 3.04 million by 2020 and further until 2025 when it is expected to peak at 3.33 million.

If pupil funding remains constant and there are no additional cost pressures, pupil teacher ratios should remain stable. Worsening, PTRs i.e. higher numbers of pupils per teacher, often indicate cost pressures on schools, although not always if a school has spare capacity and fills up existing spaces without the need to create new classes.

The best PTRs in recent years for all primary state funded schools in England were recorded in 2014 in at 20.9, while rolls were rising. By 2016, the primary PTR for qualified teachers was 21.3, a deterioration of 0.4 pupils per teacher. However, some of this difference may have been made up by unqualified teachers on School Direct and Teach First salaried schemes. The PTR is still far better than the 23.3 recorded in 2000, when schools were still suffering from the funding crisis of the 1990s.

In the secondary sector, the best year for PTRs was 2013, when it reached 15.5. It has always been better in the secondary sector than in the primary sector. By 2016, secondary PTRs had reached 16.4, a deterioration of 1.1 pupils per teacher despite the falling rolls during this period. I suspect that the change may have been greater in 11-18 schools because of the driving down of funding for the post-16 sector during the period since 2010 and the relative difference between Pupil Premium funding in the primary and secondary sectors.

Looking further ahead, it seem difficult to see the increase in pupil numbers helping the PTR to improve in the secondary sector in many schools; indeed, the prediction may be for the rate to continue to worsen back towards the 17.2 recorded across maintained secondary schools in 2000.

State funded special schools also recorded their first pressure on PTRs for many years, although their overall pupil adult ratio remained constant for the third year running.

Of course, as the mix of staffing changes in schools the use of a single ratio such as a PTR may become less significant than the wider pupil adult ratio.

The government probably won’t do much about education

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Such is the position the government finds itself in that education was relegated to little more than a paragraph in today’s Queen’s Speech. As might be expected, the government, through Her Majesty, said;

“My Government will continue to work to ensure that every child has the opportunity to attend a good school and that all schools are fairly funded. My Ministers will work to ensure people have the skills they need for the high-skilled, high-wage jobs of the future, including through a major reform of technical education.”

In the briefing there is little more by way of amplification. Does a good school mean a selective school where pupils already attend such schools and pupil numbers are on the increase or does it mean no expansion of selective schools? On funding, does it mean that the manifesto amplification that no school will lose money under the new funding formula holds good or will the formula be implemented as consulted upon?

Just saying, “we will deliver on our manifesto commitment to make funding fairer” isn’t really helpful.

The primary schools that sent letters home to parents today would certainly like to know where they stand. As would employees that can see the need for pay rises above 1% in the very near future.

It was interesting that the average cash balance for maintained schools in Oxfordshire dropped from £77,895 in March 2016 to £75,419 in March 2017. I don’t have data for academies and there are too few secondary schools to make the figures at all meaningful. I suspect that this is the first decline in average balances for quite a long time and even so hides the loss of a number of posts, with more to go this September.

The briefing note also explains that “we will continue to convert failing maintained schools into academies so that they can benefit from the support of a strong sponsor, and we are focused on building capacity across the system to enable this, including through growing new multi academy trusts.” In Oxfordshire, we still have a primary school that has waited for more than a year for a sponsor after having been inadequate, so here is some way to go with this promise.

The longest section is reserved for technical education. This oft overlooked sector does need serious attention and there is an interesting note about the introduction of Institute of Technology. Where will they fit in the landscape of UTCs, studio Schools and FE colleges?

Of course, not all developments in education will need legislation. My aim to ensure all looked after children can receive a school place within two weeks of being taken into care should be possible within existing legislation. I already have interest from Conservative and Lib Dem MPs in Oxfordshire and I hope they will be joined by the county’s Labour MP as this isn’t a party political issue, but rather a case of rectifying an unintended wrong created with the development of academies and free schools.

From TeachVac’s http://www.teachvac.co.uk point of view, the lack of any mention of a vacancy portal was interesting. As a way of saving schools money it might have featured in the paragraph on saving money and government tools.

Of course, if the vote next week were to be lost, who knows what will happen then?

System autonomy or a system for the future?

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Hard on the publication of the report from the social Mobility Commission, headlined in the previous post, comes a report from the Centre for Education Economics, the re-named CMRE or Centre for Market Reform in Education. This is a body that avowedly believes in market solutions to improving education. Their report is entitled ‘Optimising Autonomy; a blueprint [sic] for reform. http://www.cfee.org.uk/sites/default/files/Optimising%20autonomy%20-%20Web%20.pdf?utm_source=CMRE+News+and+Events&utm_campaign=15cd691116-The+Centre+for+Education+Economics&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9bd023bfaa-15cd691116-92109333

Now, generally I find the former CMRE view often too market orientated for my taste, but this new report by James Croft bears reading as it makes some interesting observations. I remain un-reformed in my view that if the democratic process has a place in education at a national level then it also has at a more local level. This report does at least recognise some role for local authorities, but it might be better if they were to have worked through case studies of what can actually happen. How much might bussing in rural areas cost to achieve greater parental choice and is it worth the expenditure. A key question surely for a centre concerned with economics one would have imagined.

I also conclude that if competition was such a good idea then large retail chains would not impose the discipline that they do on their stores. I think, more important, as I have said at two different conferences this week, is the issue of technological change and our approach to education. The ‘free marketers’ have become too obsessed with the ‘wrong’ question of parental choice and have missed the issue of how education should respond to a changing environment and what the consequences are for the system as a whole.

Before 1870, England assumed that parents that wanted education would seek it out and pay for it. With the advent of greater suffrage and votes for all came the thinking about educating the electorate and a necessity for State intervention; something many other countries had already embarked upon. Parents often now choose to rectify the deficiencies of the State system through paying for private tutoring and home schooling is on the increase.

I think a centre dedicated to education economics might well look beyond the issue of for profit or not in schools and widen the debate into ‘for profit’ activities in education and how we achieve the aims of social mobility discussed in the previous post. Especially, what part will changes in technology play in the future shape of learning for our citizens and their families?

The general election was a good example of backward thinking, with the debate largely about selective education. Why should the State pay for this form of education over any other. Again, an interesting question for economists to discuss. I suspect the return on State investment is much greater with non-selective education across all government services. But such a calculation is notoriously difficult to undertake effectively.

I am interested to know where Labour stand in the debate on the politics and economics of schooling. As a left-winger for most of his career, does Mr Corbyn want to see a return to full State control and is that local or national. After all, Labour nationalised the NHS in the 1940s, so presumably is comfortable in keeping schools out of local democratic control?