Tag Archives: schools

17,500; 1,313; 3,500; 10; what’s the next number in the sequence?

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According to the Number 10 website:

17,500 maths and physics teachers will be trained over the next 5 years over and above current levels, with schemes to attract more postgraduates, researchers and career-changers, and extensive retraining for non-specialist teachers.

The scheme will cost £67 million and will include a programme to offer school leavers a bursary to help pay for university, in return for a commitment to become a teacher when they graduate with a maths or physics degree.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/maths-and-science-must-be-the-top-priority-in-our-schools-says-prime-minister

That deals with the first and last numbers in the heading. The second number is the shortfall against the Teacher Supply Model number across both mathematics and physics over the past three years. 3,500 is the number required each year above the existing levels to reach 17,500. Perhaps 2,500 more mathematics teachers and a 1,000 extra physics teachers or about double the present training targets for schools. Of course, some of the additional numbers will work in the further education sector and some might be trained as leaders in maths and science in the primary sector. Even so, this looks like a big ask along the same lines as Labour’s famous plan in the late 1990s to expand maths and science teacher numbers using the expertise of a leading supply and recruitment agency. However, perhaps the clue to success lies elsewhere in the press release with the slightly different wording of:

New programmes will retrain 15,000 existing teachers, and recruit up to 2,500 additional specialist maths and physics teachers over the next Parliament, on top of existing plans.

If the government is going to offer new undergraduate bursaries to physics and maths students without increasing the number of degree places specifically for students whose ‘A’ levels fall just short of current entry requirements it might just set up a bidding war between education as a career and the other employers that are seeking such graduates. Expanding the number of degree places is absolutely essential. An alternative would be an apprenticeship model for would be teachers that want to earn a salary from the age of 18 with a degree as part of the package but that would involve using university education departments as well as subject departments and as such might not meet current attitudes to teacher preparation.

The rest of the Prime Minister’s announcement was about computing and technology, including the new GCSE, and the rightful return of coding to the school curriculum. No doubt we have moved on from turtles hurtling around the floor of primary school classrooms to scenes of six year olds flying drones above the school playgrounds to take Arial photographs of the school in its setting with all the programming coded by the pupils. That might need some updating of primary teachers qualifications, but I didn’t see anything about that in the announcement.

I hope we can find ways of improving both maths skills for the millions and physics for the masses, but the muddled nature of this press release not even announced jointly with the DfE doesn’t fill me with any certainty about a successful outcome. Reflecting on Labour’s attempts more than 15 years ago, I fear history may be about to repeat itself.

Kazakhstan

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As a geographer by background, I am always intrigued to see where the readers of this blog come from? Overwhelmingly, as might be expected for a parochial blog of this nature, the readers come from the United Kingdom. However, views from Kazakhstan have now topped the 100 mark over the past twelve months, making it the third ranked country by number of views of this blog: Thailand is ranked fourth during the same period, with the USA in second places, as might be expected. The People’s Republic of China notched up one visit the day after I commented that I hadn’t seen any views from that country: will the same thing happen again after this post, I wonder?

I am not sure who reads this blog in Kazakhstan and whether they are in Astana, Almaty – the largest city – or out on the Steppes of Central Asia, but I send them all best wishes for the celebration of their Independence Day in a couple of weeks time.

This musing about the geographical distribution of readers naturally followed on from writing the previous post about the likelihood of the need for the recruitment of overseas teachers to work in schools in England finding it challenging to recruitment enough home-based teachers. I doubt many Kazakhstan teachers will be headed for the bright lights of London just yet, but teachers from the Irish Republic do seem to be likely to face a publicity blitz trying to entice them to teach in London and other parts of the country.

Teaching is increasingly becoming a global profession with opportunities to practice across the globe. I first visited international schools in Dubai in 1991, coincidentally taking the first digital pictures on the trip – long since lost – with a Canon camera. The past half century has marked profound technological changes, the tablet might one day rival the original word processor as a change of monumental magnitude, a development rivalled only by the development of the internet that has made the communication of this blog possible. Or, it might, like the fax machine and overhead projector, become little more than a footnote in the history of technology and communications. Either way, I think that a teaching and education approach based upon a nineteenth century model of learning has eventually to succumb to new approaches. What that will mean for teachers and their relationships with pupils isn’t clear.

Such changes will also affect the State and its relationship with its citizens. Transferring the cost of education back to parents might be seen by some governments an alternative to raising taxes, especially as governments may think that such an approach has been working in higher education where tuition fees have been introduced. Although here, pressure to reduce fees through competition has yet to really manifest itself; probably because demand still exceeds supply in most countries.

For us, in England, the core is how to deliver effective learning to those that don’t see the value of schooling? Does that require us to do things better, or to do better things?

More or less, but not enough

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Last week in the House of Commons, the Secretary of State for Education confirmed that ‘some 32,543 trainee teachers started undergraduate or postgraduate initial teacher training in 2014-15—236 fewer than last year’. She went on to add that on the fact that ‘one reason more teachers are attracted to the profession is the recovering economy’. I am not sure whether that was a slip of the tongue or a deliberate juxtaposition of two seemingly different facts?

Either way, the numbers are nowhere near as high as the DfE has predicted will be needed to meet the demands of schools in 2015 for teachers unless there are more returners than expected or, as now seems likely, schools start recruiting overseas. BBC Radio Kent is covering the issue on Tuesday morning in their Breakfast Show, as it seems likely that some schools in the county are already considering looking overseas for teachers.

Any qualified teachers in the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia thinking about working in England as a teacher are reminded that they have automatic qualified teacher status and this means they can be paid the same rate as teachers qualified in the UK or EU. In the event that they need a visa to work in England, some agencies are adept at making a case to the Home Office to grant a visa. Teachers and schools should always check the track record of agencies in this respect as well as whether they are members of the Recruitment Employer’s Confederation, a trade body for the industry.

Vacancies in November may well have been higher than in the past few years. We have recorded more than 3,000 main scale posts notified by secondary schools across England.

Schools can register these vacancies for free at www.teachvac.co.uk – the site has a demo video of the simple registration and recording process: trainees and teachers can also use the site to tell us where they want to teach. Overseas teachers can register and use the site to monitor vacancies in areas where they are interested in teaching and there is a demo video for teachers about the site as well. At present, the site is restricted to main scale posts in the secondary sector.

Trainees using the site also have access to a monthly newsletter with information about making the best of applications, interviews, and, in coming months, the current state of the job market.

Based upon current sign up numbers we are starting to create a picture of possible job hotspots in certain subjects and as we expect to be able to offer advice on how the recruitment season will unfold between January and some point in the summer term. With schools already having a good idea of their budgets for 2015/16, recruitment is likely to start early to provide schools with the best opportunity to access the largest number of potential teachers, especially in those subjects where recruitment is likely to be the most challenging: physics, design & technology, English and business studies.

A teacher recruitment crisis in 2015?

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Yesterday this blog reported on the ITT census for 2014. Most of the trainees counted in the figures will be looking for teaching posts starting work in September 2015. The fact that there are around 1,300 fewer secondary trainees this autumn than last year is certainly an alarming statistic. However, many subjects are yet to reach the sort of shortages noted at the end of the last century when a severe  staffing crisis developed.

If we compare this year with recruitment into training in 1998/99, then that year only 52% of places for maths trainees were filled, compared with 88% this year. Similarly, in English, 89% of places were filled in 1998/99, compared with 122% this year, although the actual number of places on offer was probably less this year, so that might have made a difference to the percentages. Certainly, recruiting fewer than 1,700 trainee English teachers this year is unlikely to be enough to satisfy the demand for such teachers across England.

At least two subjects fared worse this year than in 1998/99: Religious Education filled 81% of places in 1998/98 compared with 71% this year and in music it was 81% this year compared with 82% in the earlier year. Changes in subject titles mean that direct comparisons aren’t possible for all subjects over time, but the fact is that schools cannot afford another poor recruitment year for trainees in 2014/15 if a real crisis of the level not seen since the early 2000s is not to re-occur.

Clearly, the bursaries and scholarships are helping keep up recruitment in some subjects, but once again the government taking over paying the fees for all graduate trainees would be a simple and clear message to all that there is no extra student debt burden as a result of training to be a teacher through any postgraduate route. Looking to create apprenticeships in subjects like Physics where studying for a degree requires ‘A’ level grades not achieved by some candidates might open a new route into the profession.

As a support to trainees and schools during the recruitment round I have set up a free service at www.teachvac.co.uk to allow schools to notify vacancies suitable for NQTs and for trainees to identify where they want to teach. Trainees will receive details of vacancies as they arise and schools will be kept informed of the size of the potential applicant pool and how it is reducing. The DfE suggest that 50% of main scale posts are taken by NQTs and the figure may be higher in the key January to June recruitment period. Where the 450 D&T trainees and 373 music trainees want to work may be crucial and by registering with TeachVac we will keep schools informed.

Trainees have the added advantage of a newsletter offering advice on recruitment. The December newsletter, out next week, offers trainees advice about interviews following on from the advice n how to fill in an application form in the November edition.

2015 is going to be a challenging year for schools and I hope to make it bit less stressful for heads and for trainees.

Education markets and teacher quality

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When I studied economics at the LSE nearly half a century ago markets were relatively simple affairs used to help regulate supply and demand through the mechanism of price. A shortage of supply forced up the price and that resulted in new entrants to the market and eventually the price came down. In labour market economics some saw wicked employers tried to find ways of holding down the price by controlling wages and working conditions and others warned of dastardly trade unions trying to force up wages through all means at their disposal. How times have changed.

Yesterday I listened to a fascinating debate about labour markets and teacher quality. The lecturer’s thesis seemed to be that even though we had difficult ‘ex-ante’ deciding what was a good teacher, good teachers were really the only thing that mattered in improving pupil performance; so all would be well if we could somehow harness market economics to handling the issue of improving teacher quality.

The thesis is interesting, especially in view of the previous post on this blog about teacher supply. The lecturer didn’t discuss whether there is a hierarchy of markets that will address issues in a particular order. If there is, I would content that markets will address any shortage issue before quality issues and only then deal with matters such as equality and other government desired outcomes.

If I am correct, then there is little practical point talking about teacher quality until the market has dealt with the supply problems.  Now the Right in society has an answer to that problem: let anyone become a teacher. In view of the lack of ‘ex-parte’ evidence on what makes a good teacher this is a seductive theme. However, I would argue that the school system in England has been trying that approach for many years by allowing anyone with QTS to teach any subject and, for instance, letting PE and music teachers teach mathematics but overall the policy doesn’t seem to have improved outcomes. But, would say the defenders of the  ‘all may be teachers’ policy, it is because these are poor teachers. The best teachers of PE and music are no doubt teaching PE and music.

In the end the discussion last night about teacher quality came down to the –X- factor. What is it that makes a good teacher rather than how markets can help achieve improved teacher quality? There were some in the audience that no doubt would have been happy with the definition of a teacher from the 1840s offered by the National Society that:

It is not every person who can be fitted for the office of schoolteacher. Good temper and good sense, gentleness coupled with firmness, a certain seriousness of character blended with cheerfulness, and even liveliness of disposition and manner; a love of children, and that sympathy with their feelings which experience alone can never supply – such are the moral requirements which we seek in those to whom we commit the education of the young.

Although they might not be bothered about the need for ‘a love of children’.

I am also reminded of the more recent quote from the Newsom Report previously quoted on this blog that:

“In the primary and secondary modern schools teaching methods and techniques, with all the specialized knowledge that lies behind them, are as essential as mastery of subject matter. The prospect of these schools staffed to an increasing extent by untrained graduates is, in our view, intolerable.”

It is just as intolerable today and I speak as someone that started their teaching career as an untrained graduate in an inner city comprehensive school.

Of course we must strive to identify and improve teacher quality, but no teacher means there is no quality to measure and that is the fundamental problem facing policy makers today.

Side show attracts more attention than main event

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Labour’s thoughts on the subject of private education received more coverage this week than their announcement on teacher supply issues put out the day before. Public fee-paying schools are a part of the political agenda and Labour’s call to remove business rate relief from such schools not prepared to go further in cooperating with schools in the state-funded sector avoided the thorny question of charitable status, but no doubt played well to voters that would prefer to see all children educated by the State.

My view has always been that the State in England lays the obligation on parents to educate their offspring. It has never mandated where or how that should be achieved. In an unequal society some parents can buy schooling. If they were forced to send their child to a local state school they would still buy tutoring, as many parents do at present, to improve the educational outcomes of their children. Preventing parents from spending money on education while allowing them to spend money on cigarettes, gambling and other potentially bad habits would seem illogical. However, we know that private schools produce better results than many state funded schools, just as selective state schools do. Interestingly, Tristram Hunt didn’t appear to say that such schools should share teachers with other state schools.

Labour’s carrot and stick approach to the private schools, ‘either help or pay more tax’ probably does recognise that with a teacher supply crisis looming in some subjects, and some parts of the country, private schools may be in a better position to recruit not just better teachers but actually enough teachers. The fundamental question is, therefore, as ever, how will schools that cannot recruit enough teachers effectively teach their pupils? Sharing a scare resource sounds fine in principle as a solution but is fraught with practical difficulties. I assume that private schools don’t have spare teaching capacity just waiting to be redeployed, so to use their teachers to help state schools they either have to employ more of them, potentially making the situation worse or create larger teaching groups – the very thing some parents are paying to avoid – or perhaps offer spare places in ‘A’ level groups where an additional one or two students might make no difference. But, that is no solution for the small private primary school.

The Conservative Party’s solution to the education problems around improving quality seems to be a discussion of more grammar schools. This suffers from the Oxbridge dilemma. How do you stop parents with money paying to secure entrance by improving the learning opportunities of their children before the test? This takes us back to where this piece started. Do parents have a right to pay for education if by doing so they advantage their children over others?

Finally, as Tristram Hunt failed to acknowledge, private schools are now a large export earning industry.  Id that something we wish to encourage or does it risk educating the children of our competitors in the global market place as the expense of children brought up in England?  Of course, one solution to the teacher shortage is to recruit more teachers from overseas, but how does that play in the present debate over immigration?

Gradgrind was wrong

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The peak period for diagnosis of metal health problems is between the ages of about ten and thirty. For the first third of that time schools play an import part in the life of young people. However, whether they are as responsive to mental health issues as to physical health matters is worthy of scrutiny as the Fooks lecture I attended recently in Oxford made clear.

Dr Ian Goodyer from Cambridge suggested in the lecture that we all have a checklist of what to do if we encounter a cut finger; stop the bleeding, prevent infection and find a sticking plaster. But, there isn’t the same level of immediate in-house steps to dealing with mental health matters. Of course, if the cut is deep or otherwise problematic, you seek expert help. The same is true for diseases of the mind. But, how much do we offer simple suggestions to teachers and others to look for signs of an unwell mind? Thirty years ago Sir Keith Joseph as Secretary of State for Education started the assault on universities rather than schools preparing teachers with an attack on the study of the ‘ologies. I think he especially disliked sociology, but psychology became caught up in the general attack along with philosophy and the history and governance of education. He may have had a point. However, taken to extreme the cure is sometimes perhaps worse than the disease.

As we now teach children in classes, not just the class as a whole, there is a need to know pupils as individuals and not just en-masse. This is challenging for secondary school teachers with many different groups to teach each week. I am sure that trying to do the best for every child has added to stress levels of teachers, as it is much more demanding than teaching to the average of the class.

Teachers are the only group in society working day in and day out with young people going through profound physical, emotional and psychological changes, especially during their teenage years, yet how well do we prepare them for this task?

It would be interesting to see how the different routes into the profession deal with these challenges at the present time? How far do trainees meet with school nurses and counsellors to discuss the challenges young people face during adolescence and how they respond to them. Do we tell teachers to look for self-harming, for eating disorders, and for isolation and failure to engage in class? These are arguably as important as other child safety issues, but while these receive headline attention Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services have languished as the poor relation of an under-funded part of the National Health Service. Fortunately, the Health Select Committee at Westminster has recently illuminated this dark space and Ministers in the Health Department, if not yet in education, have taken some notice.

As a man interested in numbers, I could look at the loss of productivity or the absence figures cited by Ian Goodyer in his lecture, but as a human being I see the tragedy behind the numbers and some of the effects on individuals and their families. If restoring the ‘ologies to teacher preparation saved one young person from self-harm, an eating disorder or a suicide it will have been well worth doing.

Should trainees bring benefits as well as costs?

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The IFS Report on The Costs and Benefits of Different Initial Teacher Training Routes published on Monday makes for interesting reading. On the face of it, paying all trainees a salary might be less expensive for government than paying bursaries to some but not others and trying to reclaim the fees that the government used to pay anyway, from some, but not all, trainees.

The IFS study has shown that the costs of training differs according to the route chosen and the nature of the trainee, but that many costs are not fixed but rather variable in outcome, dependent upon factors such as the quality of the trainee and how much input they require during their preparation period as well as how much government must pay to attract them into the teaching profession.

Generally, the costs of preparing a teacher can be divided into student support (fees and bursaries on some routes and salaries on others); training costs, and finally marketing and recruitment costs.

On the other side of the ledger is the benefit a trainee can bring, especially towards the end of their course when they may require less supervision. However, since they could acquire more skills if the training cost was regarded as a fixed cost this might push up standards rather than trying to quantify a benefit from a trainee. Herein lays the issue at the heart of the IFS research; should schools be expecting to reap benefits from trainees?

I am sure that those that think teaching is a profession where you don’t need training will regard the cost of some routes as too high and will try and focus on the benefits of early immersion in the classroom. However, as anyone that has watched the recent spy on the wall documentaries about schools will know some teachers need more help than others at the start of their careers and that such help comes at a price.

The other part of the IFS study that concerns me is the manner in which views of teachers about trainees are turned into numbers. Although the responses aren’t large for the different routes I would have liked to know, if this approach is going to be used, whether trainees in subjects where recruitment is easy returned more positive feedback from the schools than subjects where trainees were more of a challenge to find. In relation to School Direct I am not sure at this stage whether there has been any attempt to quantify the cost to the school of an unfilled place and to set this off against an overall sum for the route.

Traditional higher education providers may set the threshold for entry into training at a lower level than schools offering the newer routes. This will undoubtedly increase the cost of their training, but if taking risks provides sufficient teachers and only recruiting certainties doesn’t then, although the cost of training may be lower, the cost to education may be higher unless, for instance, teachers were prepared to teach larger classes.

At first glance the IFS study provides a good basis for further thinking by policy makers, but there is still a great deal of work left to do. For instance, what are the longer-term costs of programmes with lower retention rates in the profession; and are different routes better at attracting future leaders?

Free Schools but not Free Education

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The report from The Children’s Commission on Poverty saying that the cost of basics, such as uniforms, school trips, materials and computer access can amount to £800 per child each year in state schools raises fundamental questions about what should be paid for by the State in terms of schooling.

https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/sites/default/files/At%20What%20Cost%20Exposing%20the%20impact%20of%20poverty%20on%20school%20life%20-%20Full%20Report.pdf

I have long been aware of schools identifying specific textbooks and expecting pupils to have access to them and also in some cases in the past even expecting parents to donate to a fund for the school. Over the years these practices seem to have been growing as local democratic control has been eroded by successive central governments of all political persuasions. The Pupil Premium and free school meals for infants are at least a step in recognising there is a balance that needs restoring and these pupils with extra funding should not be asked to pay for items that are part of the basic life of the school.

Of course, different schools have always had access to different fund-raising abilities. When I worked in Haringey, at the start of my career, schools at the Highgate end of the borough made many more times profit at their summer fete than did schools at the Tottenham end of the borough.  Indeed, one school always seemed to be able to pull in a TV personality that guaranteed good attendance regardless of the weather.

I do think schools should be compelled to publish on their web site what they charge for each year. Where schools have reserves above the generally accepted norms then they must explain to parents why they are not providing the items they charge for from school funds. Perhaps someone might like to complain to the Secretary of State that a school is acting unreasonably by not spending its own money on a basic item.

Taking a cut of uniform sales through suppliers puts up the cost to parents as does having uniforms that cannot be easily bought from high street retailers, perhaps because the blazer is an unusual colour or has piping around the edges. Whether or not these are devices designed to exclude certain children from a particular schools, especially once the cost of sports kit has been added to the basic uniform cost, they do create a burden on less well off parents that should be prevented in state-funded schools.

The issue of internet connections at home has been one that has raised concerns ever since IT became so important in homework. Schools need to monitor whether this is a problem and follow best practice in ensuring all pupils can use the internet to complete homework tasks regardless of where they live. This is especially true for less well off families in rural areas where access to broadband may be partial or even non-excitant at reasonable costs.

I hope Lib Dem ministers will take up the cause outlined in the Commission’s report and not shelter behind the notion of schools being free to decide their own policies. I would also like to hear from the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches a clear statement that their schools will be expected to provide an education that doesn’t cause hardship to some families and exclude pupils from some important activities. Free should mean free in all respects and not free, but only if you can afford it.

Youth parliament debates

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Yesterday afternoon I attended a debate held by Oxfordshire’s youth parliament. This body is the local arm of a national organisation and eventually elects representative to the national youth parliament that is provided with an opportunity to debate in the House of Commons chamber. The youth parliament creates an opportunity for young people to receive their first taste of that part of the democratic process in action. During the day they discuss topics in groups, creating arguments for and against policies that allow them to see and understand how the debating process operates.

The topic for debate yesterday was around the issue of young carers and the responsibilities schools have to this group of young people.

The debate was surprisingly balanced between those that felt schools had a key role to play in helping young carers and others that felt school was a place to escape the burden of care and be yourself. This group was afraid of the stigma other pupils might attach to young carers if their role was too clearly known at school. Most contributors on both sides of the debate made single points that were rather more in the form of interventions than speeches although the opposition closing argument was an impassioned speech that may have swayed a few votes in his direction.

Four county councillors, including the Council Leader, along with a group of senior officers, turned up to listen to the debate and support the young people.  Each councillor was able to express their support for the scheme and encourage the young people in their actions. After all, the teenagers had taken a day out of their half-term holiday to be at the youth parliament.

It was good to see the level of support and it is important that young people don’t take democracy too lightly, especially if England were to follow Scotland’s actions in the referendum and reduce the voting age for some if not all elections from eighteen to sixteen.

As we approach the 150th anniversary of the introduction of state education in England, in 2020, it is important to remember the part education has played in helping shape our democracy. One important change I have mentioned before is that the emphasis is now on educating children as individuals and not as classes. This makes more work for teachers, but creates more opportunities for children. How the rest of society handles that in terms of its effects on social mobility is another matter. But, we still struggle as a service to help those, whether young carers, pupils suffering from childhood illnesses and diseases, or children with parents that don’t appreciate the importance of school attendance. Unlocking the potential in all is a good phrase for an election slogan on education as it shows what we have still to do, but in a positive manner.

There is far more to a democratic state than the skill of debating, but to make at least that aspect of parliament real to young people might be to awaken the interest of the next generation of politicians.