Classroom teacher turnover in London needs watching

Posted on November 4, 2025 by John Howson

Historically, the turnover rate for classroom teachers in London has tended to be higher than elsewhere in England

Year	Inner London	Outer London
2016/17	14.9%	12.5%
2017/18	13.1%	11.9%
2018/19	12.8%	11.4%
2019/20	9.9%	8.4%
2020/21	11.1%	9.6%
2021/22	12.8%	11.1%
2022/23	12.3%	10.7%
2023/24	12.5%	10.7%

Source DfE evidence to STRB October 2025 Data annex

In 2016/17, turnover for classroom teachers in the Inner London boroughs reached 14.9%, or around one in seven classroom teachers either leaving the profession or moving school. Three years later, in the year where covid disrupted the summer term, turnover rates dropped below 10% for the only time in the last eight years. Once the pandemic subsided, turnover quickly returned to over 12%, or one in eight teachers.

In Outer London turnover rates have followed a similar pattern to those in Inner London, but a couple of percentage points lower than in the Inner London boroughs.

By way of contrast, in the North East, during 2023/24 turnover for classroom teachers was just 7.7%, some 4.8% lower than in Inner London schools.

Leaving aside the two years where covid affected the recruitment round (2019/20 and 2020/21), the national turnover rate for all levels of posts (classroom, leadership and headship) has generally been between 9-10%, but has been falling. In 2023/24 it was 9% compared with 10.6% in 2016/17.

Rates of turnover for assistant head and deputy heads probably reflect demand side issues more than what is happening on the supply side. When school rolls are rising, new schools may be created increasing demand: falling rolls may mean posts are cutback, and demand reduced, so less turnover.

Headship turnover is very closely linked to the age profile of headteachers. When a cohort of new younger headteachers has replaced a generation that has retired, turnover is likely to fall for a few years. However, turnover tends to be within a narrow range of between 9.5-10.5% per year. There is now no discernible London effect on headteacher turnover, as there used to be many years ago when headteacher salaries were more tightly controlled.

Might we now be entering a period of stability, with lower turnover rates for classroom teachers , especially should the possible upheaval in the graduate job market created by the AI revolution coincide with the period of stable rolls in the secondary secto,r and falling rolls in the primary sector?

Year	Primary	Secondary	STEM subjects	Non-STEM	All Teachers
2016/17	86.35	83.1%	81.2%	84.5%	84.9%
2023/24	90.0%	89.4%	88.0%	90.2%	89/7%

The table taken from various tables in the DfE evidence to the STRB shows a consistent trend of improved retention for teachers at the end of the first year of service. However, the same tables show that there is still a job to be done to retain these teachers in larger numbers beyond their first few years of service. The government needs to be aware that teaching is now a global career, and teachers from England can easily find work overseas.

How easy is it for a mature entrant to become a headteacher?

Posted on October 3, 2025 by John Howson

The recent DfE research into promotions provides some food for thought School leadership in England 2010 to 2020: characteristics and trends

Page 69 of the report contains the following paragraph.

‘Teachers may enter a leadership grade more than one step above their current grade or may enter a leadership grade after being outside the system. These non-sequential promotions make up a significant minority of promotions. In primaries schools, for example, for every 100 senior leaders in 2016 who were heads in 2020, 12 classroom teachers, 12 middle leaders and 11 system entrants also became heads. In secondary schools, for every 100 senior leaders from 2016 who were heads in 2020, 3 classroom teachers, 5 middle leaders and 5 system entrants also became heads. Non-sequential promotions appear to be more common in primary schools, where leadership roles are more limited and ‘linear’ progression may be more difficult.’

Interestingly no mention is made in the text of the position in special schools, a disturbing oversight in view of the current concerns about SEND.

Following on from the text there is a histogram of ‘The Grade occupied by 2020 heads in 2016, split by school phase in 2020, in terms of FTE’.

Grade	Primary	Secondary	Special
Head	64	52	52
Senior Leader	26	39	32
Middle Leader	3	1	4
Classroom Teacher	3	1	3
System Entrant	3	6	9

There is no mention in the text of the fact that in many small primary schools there may be no senior leader, so any internal appointment would inevitably come from either a middle leader or classroom teacher.

What is interesting is the fact that almost one in ten headteachers in special schools in 2020 were system entrants in 2016. Where did these entrants come from, were they from special schools outside the state sector or did they bring other expertise to the post of headteacher.

How long does it take to become a headteacher?

In view of the fact that most headteachers seem to be appointed as a result of ‘linear’ progression through the different grades, especially in secondary schools, how long does it take to reach headship?

Is there an age or length of service by which, if a teacher has not reached assistant head grade, they unlikely to ever make it to a headship? If so, do mature entrants that become teachers after the age of thirty face a promotion ceiling in their careers? Is the position different in primary schools, with their flatter leadership teams, than in secondary schools with assistant, deputy and headteachers roles, often now overseen by an executive head.

The DfE research showed that in 2010, headteachers had a median of 27 years since qualification, and that this reduced to 23 years in 2016 and then rose slightly to 24 years in 2020. The median years of experience of senior leaders reduced from 18 years in 2010 to 17years in 2014 where it remained until 2020. The reduction between the upper quartiles for years since qualification was greatest for senior leaders, 24 years since qualification in 2020 compared with 30 years in 2010. There was virtually no change in the lower quartile between 2010 and 2020, for example, this was 13 years since qualification for senior leaders in both 2010 and 2020.

As this data covers both primary and secondary schools, it is difficult to know whether promotion is faster in the smaller primary schools, if you are lucky with turnover, that in large secondary schools with many more layers of leadership. Clearly, some mature entrants achieve headship, but the message must be that if you want promotion as a mature entrant, start your journey quickly and use the skills you have brought to the profession from your former career. A decade ago, I wrote this blog about the career of Mrs Clarke who went from volunteer to headteacher in the same school. Congratulations Mrs Clarke | John Howson

Sadly, the research is silent about entrants from different subject backgrounds. Do historians and geographers, generally joining smaller department, find progress to a headship easier than teachers of English and mathematics where there may be several grades of middle leadership within the department?

We should encourage mature entrants, but make it clear that those joining after the age of thirty may find career progression more of a challenge, especially where governing bodies value length of service rather than skills and expertise for the role. No doubt MATs with more professionals involved in promotion decisions will be more open to those entering teaching later in life.

Does where you study make a difference to ‘A’ Level outcomes?

Posted on August 15, 2025 by John Howson

Next week, pupils will receive their GCSE results and will then have to decide where to continue their studies. If they are intending to take ‘A’ levels, then the options may be between staying on at the same school or transferring either to another school or to an institution run under further education rules such as either a general further education college or a Sixth Form College, where they exist.

As the tables for this years’ results by type of institution shows, there are different percentage in terms of outcomes.

Centre type	Year	Percentage of results at grade A and above	Percentage of results at grade C and above
Independent school including city training colleges (CTCs)	2025	48.40%	89.70%
Secondary selective school	2025	43.70%	88.20%
Free schools	2025	31.30%	80.60%
All state-funded	2025	25.20%	76.30%
Sixth form college	2025	24.00%	76.20%
Academies	2025	23.10%	75.00%
Secondary comprehensive or middle school	2025	22.60%	75.20%
Other	2025	16.40%	55.80%
Secondary modern school/high school	2025	16.30%	64.80%
Further education establishment	2025	14.40%	66.30%

Young people across England celebrate exam results – GOV.UK

I don’t think anyone would be surprised to see independent schools with the highest percentage of results at A*-A. But it is important to understand what the policy about entering candidates for the examination is when considering outcomes. Is anyone taking the subject entered or is there a bar to be achieved at ‘mock’ exam time to be allowed to enter.

These results also cannot identify any time candidates spent either on tutoring during the course or cramming during the Easer break before the actual examinations.

I am not sure whether the institutions classified as ‘City Training Colleges’ are actually ‘City Technology Colleges’. If so, it is not clear where UTCs and Studio Schools have been located? Possibly, along with the academies group or do they make up the ‘other group’ and does ‘other’ include special schools. Why Free Schools merit a separate line under a Labour government is an interesting question.

It is also not clear whether the further education establishments (not Sixth Form Colleges) include entries from adults as well as those that would be in Year 13 if at a school? Certainly, anyone thinking of doing ‘A’ levels at a college might want to ask about the grades achieved by students at the college. The eight per cent gap to a comprehensive school for those gaining the top grades in a further education establishment and the nearly nine per cent gap for Grade C and above merits questions if faced with the choice. However, an earlier post noted, there are differences in the percentage of candidates achieving top grades between different subjects, and that may well be a factor in the outcomes.

This year, boys outperformed girls for the first time since 2018. There have also been different rates of improvement when comparing percentages achieving the top grades by type of institution. Without knowing what types of institution are classified as ‘other’ it is difficult to account for the decline in outcomes for the top grades for these schools.

Provider	% difference 2025 on 2023
Free schools	4
Secondary modern school/high school	2.7
Secondary selective school	2.3
Independent school including city training colleges (CTCs)	1.9
All state-funded	1.7
Academies	1.6
Sixth form college	1.5
Secondary comprehensive	1.3
Further education establishment	0.7
Other	-2.3

It would also be integrating to compare the different types of intuitions by their outcomes by region.

ITT: less good than hoped for

Posted on September 26, 2023 by John Howson

The September data on postgraduate ITT curses was published by the DfE yesterday. Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2023 to 2024 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK (apply-for-teacher-training.service.gov.uk) Sadly, there was no last-minute surge in offers for teaching. Although offers for primary courses should be sufficient to meet the number of places on offer, the same cannot be said for the secondary sector.

Amongst secondary courses, only English, history, geography and physical education seem likely to meet their DfE targets. Offers in mathematics this September are less than 2,000 for the first time in over a decade. In music and religious education, it is necessary to delve further back in the archives to find offer levels of 480 across the two subjects. There will be real issues with the supply of new teachers in these two subjects next year.

Although physics and design and technology have seen better offer levels than in recent years, in neither subject will the DfE’s suggested recruitment level be met. I suspect that the numbers actually starting courses this year will only be above last year’s dismal total for all secondary subjects if those with conditions pending are able to convert these conditions into recruited students, otherwise the total may be little different to the seriously low number recorded last year.

In mathematics, the number ‘recruited this year is just 1,340 compared with 1,482 last year. However, there are 516 applications listed as ‘conditions pending’ compared with only 300 in this category last year. Should these ‘conditions pending’ relate to visas and right to enter the country it is possible that the number that transfer into the ‘recruited’ column may be smaller than wished for.

The number of new graduates aged 24 or younger is considerably down on last year, a worrying sign for future leadership recruitment. Less than 5,00o men have been ‘recruited’ this year despite the total number of applicants being 16,470 compared with 11,819 last year. This means that those ‘recruited’ has dropped from 46% of applicants to just 30% this year. Such a dramatic decline must merit some form of investigation to allow providers to understand the cause of the change.

The answer may lie with ‘rest of the world applicants, where only 6% have been accepted this year, compared with 13% last year.

The final outcome for recruitment that will include Teach first must await the publication of the ITT Census, early in December. Although this may show a small improvement over last year’s total, there will not be enough trainees to allow the government to be able to say that it has hit its target and STEM has now really become STEAM in terms of recruitment into teacher preparation.

These figures are such as to warn schools to think carefully about recruitment for September 2024 and especially January 2025. Retention may become an important watchword in the corridors of power.

Welcome back to returning teachers

Posted on July 5, 2023 by John Howson

How important are returners to our school system? The DfE measures returner numbers each year as part of the data collected in the November School Workforce Census. The returner numbers during the past few years have been affected by the covid pandemic, so it was important that the fall in new entrants from training last September was balanced by an increased number of returners to help mitigate the staffing crisis affecting schools.

The need for returners will be even more important next September to balance the further reduction in new entrants into training in some subjects in 2023 that seems likely on the latest data around applications and offers.

We won’t know the data on returners this autumn util next June, but the fact that there is a recruitment crisis this year is now well understood.

	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23
NQT Entrants rate	5.3	5.3	5.2	4.5	4.9	4.7
FTE number of entrants	23,406	23,473	22,925	20,146	22,096	21,653
Returner Entrants rate	3.8	3.8	3.7	3.5	3.2	3.7
FTE number of entrants	16,595	16,869	16,305	15,771	14,663	16,737
Deferred Entrants rate	0.6	0.6	0.6	0.6	0.9	1.0
FTE number of entrants	2,772	2,626	2,616	2,883	3,861	4,750
New to State Entrants rate	1.0	1.0	0.8	0.7	0.7	1.1
FTE number of entrants	4,291	4,248	3,519	2,984	3,392	4,814
Entrants rate	10.8	10.8	10.3	9.3	9.7	10.5
FTE number of entrants	47,064	47,216	45,365	41,784	44,011	47,954

Source: DfE School Workforce Census Tables 2022

Although returners were some 2,000 in number higher in 2022/23 than in 2021/22, both their number and percentage was in line with the figures from the three years prior to the pandemic – the equivalent of 3.7% of the workforce, and just short of 17,000 teachers. My guess, is that schools need around 17,000 returners this year, even with the reduction in demand this September across parts of the primary sector.

Looking back into the archives, I see that in the 1980s, returners averaged between 45-50% of entrants each year. In recent years, the percentage has hovered around the low 30%s figure. In 1987, the returner percentage reached what was probably an all-time high of 58%. However, those percentages were reached on a workforce with much less turnover than nowadays.

By 2000, returner numbers were at 13,000, only a few thousand below their current levels. With the fall in rolls now apparent in the primary sector, although not yet affecting the secondary sector: that’s to come in a few years’ time, will schools opt for newly qualified teachers over returners or prefer experience to recent training? Newly qualified teachers are usually cheaper than returners, so if budgets are tight, schools may prefer teachers from training, unless the added requirements of the Early Career Teacher Framework push up the cost of employing new teachers to appoint where returners look to be a cost-effective hire.

There are also likely to be regional differences accentuated in a largely female workforce from the consequences on house prices of increased mortgage rates. Dual household earners may react differently to a period of high mortgage rates to single household earners. High mortgage rates might also force an earlier than anticipated return to the labour market of some teachers currnetly taking a career break. This sort of boost might produce some a short-lived improvement in the teacher labour market in some areas, but would be unlikely to solve to the present crisis in teacher supply.

Bad news for January vacancies

Posted on June 3, 2023 by John Howson

The May 31^st date for teacher resignations has come and gone. This year it has excited some interest in the press, as they have finally caught on to the thread this blog has been running ever since the DfE’s ITT census was published last September: namely, this this was going to be brutal recruitment round, and that there would not be enough teachers to meet the demands from schools seeking to fill vacancies for September 2023.

So far this week TeachVac has provided data for both tes and schoolsweek, and had calls on the subject from national newspapers as well. One group that has been conspicuously silent has been the House of Commons Select committee on Education that instituted an inquiry into teacher recruitment and retention on the 20^th March, and required evidence by the 21^st April: since when silence. I know that the Committee normally meets on a Monday, and that there have been a lot of Monday bank holidays, but not to even have considered whether any of the evidence was worth publishing for more than a month does seem a little strange.

Anyway, this blog isn’t about the Select Committee, but about schools faced with unexpected January vacancies. Last year, between the 1^st November 2022 and the end of December, secondary schools posted 7,857 vacancies according to TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk That was a 53% increase in the number of vacancies recorded during this period when compared with the same period in 2021. Geography teachers were particularly in demand.

Whether in the autumn of 2023 it is the 7,857 vacancies of 2022 or just the 5,136 of 2021, schools will struggle to fill these vacancies, regardless of the subject. Some schools will struggle more than others. Indeed, previous analysis by TeachVac of the data, as reported on this blog, has shown that secondary schools with high percentages of pupils on free school meals tend to place more adverts for teachers than either private schools or state schools with low numbers of pupils claiming free school meals.

What can be done to help? If, as seems likely to be the case, there are more primary school teachers looking for jobs this year than there are posts available, could there be a one-term conversion course established for the autumn term, along the lines of the subject conversion courses for those lacking the full qualifications to enter ITT in a particular subject.

The primary to secondary course would be different in that the teachers would be qualified. For such a course to work the teachers would probably need to be paid a salary that made it worth their while taking part in the course. If the DfE wanted to recoup their costs they could offer schools a teacher that completed the course for the price of a recruitment advert or the amount a school would spend with an agency to find a teacher.

Such teachers could teach Key Stage 3 based upon their A level subjects and release existing teachers to cover Key Stages 4 & 5, and examination groups left without a teacher by the vacancy created or indeed left unfilled from September.

There is little time to organise such a programme, but the alternative is to saddle schools with the need to spend lots of cash chasing teachers that aren’t there in vain attempts to fill their vacancies.

Note: As a director of TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk I am an interested party in the operation of the recruitment market. However, TeachVac’s £500 offer for listings of all vacancies for 15 months until August 2024 is substantially cheaper than other sites, especially for non-state schools that cannot access the DfE’s job board.

How PTRs have changed over time

Posted on January 19, 2023 by John Howson

Forty years ago, I wrote an article about variations in local authority provision for education that appeared in the Oxford Review of Education (Volume 8, No2). Part of the discussion in the article centred around the range of pupil teacher ratios within schools after local government reorganisation outside London in 1974 had completed the changes to the local government landscape started in London a decade before.

Of course, our school system was very different in 1974. Most authorities were still transiting from a two tier selective system to a fully comprehensive system; most based their new systems upon the traditional two tiers, but some used one of the variations of first, middle and upper schools that constituted the three tier system.

Local authorities had the freedom in the 1970s to decide how much of their funding to spend upon schooling, and although there were national guidelines on spending on resources and staffing, they were not mandatory. However, teachers’ pay, then as now the largest item of a school’s expenditure, was centrally controlled, as was the ratio of promoted posts to classroom teachers. The differential between the highest paid teacher and a classroom teacher was much narrower than it is today, especially in the secondary sector.

On the staffing side, there were few support staff, and hardly any classroom assistants working in schools forty years ago, so one class one teacher was very much the model across the board, with classroom teachers in the primary sector, and comprehensive schools following the model of the selective sector with subject specialists replacing classroom teachers that had been commonplace in some secondary modern schools.

Pupil Teacher Ratios (PTRs) can be calculated in the same way today as they were in 1974. Helpfully, the DfE published the results for all state-funded schools in England, by local authority, based upon the data collected in the November Staffing Census. The latest data, published in June 2022, was from the November 2021 census, so now some 14 months old.

What is interesting, despite the changes in local government boundaries is to compare the range of 1974 PTRs in the secondary sector with those from the 2021 census.

	Best PTR	Worst PTR	difference
1974	15.7	19.7	4
1980	13.6	18.6	5
2021	13.6	18.4	4.8
Source Howson 1980 and DfE 2022

Source Howson 1980 and DfE 2022

Compared with 1974, the difference between the best and worst local authority areas was greater in 2021 than in 1974, and similar to the difference in 1980 when the article was being prepared. What is noticeable is that both the best and the worst levels improved between 1974 and 1980, but are now, forty years later, still very similar to where they were in 1980. This despite academies, unitary authorities and the devolution of budgets to individual schools.

Even more interesting is the position of London schools. In 1980, London boroughs occupied eight of the top ten places for ‘staffing’, using data from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy data. In the 2021 census, four outer London boroughs have dropped down the ranking, as has Newcastle, to be replaced by northern towns and cities. However, London, now with individual boroughs rather than the combined Inner London Education Authority still takes a disproportionate number of the places in the authorities with the most favourable PTRs.

Since 2010/11, all but two local authorities with data for the whole period have seen a deterioration in the secondary PTR for their area. Slough and Southend on Sea, both authorities with selective school systems, have seen the biggest worsening in secondary PTRs over the period of Tory government.

With the pressure on funding, it is interesting to speculate what the outcome of the 2022 census will be when published this June. Could we witness some of the worst secondary PTRs in half a century?

Teaching staff ratios worsens in secondary sector

Posted on November 17, 2022 by John Howson

The DfE has published the latest Education and Training Statistics for the four nations of the United Kingdom. As education is a devolved activity, each nation choses how to use its funds in its own way. The remainder of this blog refers to outcomes in England. Education and training statistics for the UK, Reporting Year 2022 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk)

The largest expenditure item in schools is staffing, with teaching staff taking the largest share of that budget. One measure over time of the trend in that spending is the Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR). The ratio allows for changes in pupil numbers are well as in funding. When pupil numbers are falling but funding increasing, PTRs sometimes fall – i.e. show an improvement as there are then fewer pupils per teacher. In the primary sector, this is sometimes talked about in terms of class sizes, but such a measure is less useful in the secondary sector, so allow for comparisons in trends, PTRS are a more useful measure.

At present, pupil numbers in the primary sector are in decline, whereas they are still rising across the secondary sector as a whole. This is reflected in the trends in PTRs.

PTRs for school sectors in England
	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22
Nursery	England	21.9	22.8	23.5	21.8	23.4
Primary	England	20.9	20.9	20.9	20.6	20.6
Secondary	England	15.9	16.3	16.6	16.6	16.7
Special	England	6.2	6.2	6.3	6.2	6.3
Total Maintained	England	17.9	18.0	18.2	18.0	18.0
(1) In England, special schools include pupil referral units.
(2) In England, the primary pupil-teacher ratio includes local authority (LA) maintained nurseries.

Source DfE November 2022

Primary school PTRs remained constant in 2021/22 compared with the previous year, whereas in the secondary sector they continued to worsen, reaching their worst aggregate level since before 2016/17. The small number of state-maintained nursey schools came under the greatest pressure, with their PTR almost returning to the record pre-pandemic level recorded in 2019/20.

Most of the remainder of the data are for the United Kingdom as a whole, and not dis-aggregated into the national levels. Across the United Kingdom as a whole, Expenditure on education in real terms increased by 5.4% from Financial Year 2020-21 to Financial Year 2021-22. Expenditure on education as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) decreased by 0.2 percentage points.

Later today, the Chancellor, in his autumn statement, may well announce cuts to the education budget in England. Any significant cuts to revenue funding will have repercussions for the 2023/24 data when it is published later in the decade. PTRs may well worsen significantly, especially if teachers are offered a pay increase anywhere near the current rate of inflation.

However, past experience in previous ‘hard times’ has shown that schools do everything to protect teachers’ jobs and will first cut everything else in the budget to the bone. Today, a MAT in Oxfordshire has made that clear Oxford and Abingdon schools face choice of heating or teaching – BBC News My guess is, as she picture shows it will be the heating that is cut and not the teaching.

Are schools offering permanent posts?

Posted on November 15, 2022 by John Howson

What type of tenure is on offer in teaching vacancies posted during the autumn term? Research by TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk reveals big differences between the primary and secondary sectors in the type of tenure on offer this autumn.

TeachVac classifies vacancies into one of three groups: Permanent positions; temporary positions or posts arising from maternity leave.

The data is collected from vacancy adverts posted by schools on their web sites.

From the start of September 2022 up to 14^th November: an arbitrary date with no other reason for selection than that I am writing this blog on the 15^th November, the data collected was as follows.

	Classroom Teacher posts
Primary	Maternity	Permanent	Temporary	Total
Sep-22	491	611	326	1428
Oct-22	432	838	427	1697
Nov-22	169	460	376	1005
	1092	1909	1129	4130
Secondary				Total
Sep-22	554	2678	184	3416
Oct-22	553	3035	267	3855
Nov-22	276	1648	178	2102
	1383	7361	629	9373
Grand Total	2475	9270	1758	13503

Source TeachVac

Two facts stand out. The secondary sector advertised more vacancies than the primary sector, and there was a difference in tenure of advertised vacancies between the two sectors. This is obvious if the actual numbers are converted into percentages

	Classroom Teacher posts
Primary	Maternity	Permanent	Temporary
Sep-22	34%	43%	23%	100%
Oct-22	25%	49%	25%	100%
Nov-22	17%	46%	37%	100%
	26%	46%	27%	100%
Secondary
Sep-22	16%	78%	5%	100%
Oct-22	14%	79%	7%	100%
Nov-22	13%	78%	8%	100%
	15%	79%	7%	100%
Grand Total	18%	69%	13%	100%

Source TeachVac

Less than half of the posts advertised in the primary sector have been permanent positions, compared with 79% of vacancies in the secondary sector. Maternity leave vacancies are also much higher in the primary sector than in the secondary sector, accounting for a quarter of all vacancies in the primary sector and a third of the September vacancies.

Despite the downturn in the birth-rate nationally, primary school teachers are still it seems taking time out to raise a family. However, the downturn in pupil numbers across the primary sector must be affecting school budgets, because pupil numbers are an important element of school-funding these days. With any teacher leaving at Christmas for maternity leave not likely to return until January 2024, many schools may not be certain of their school rolls, and hence funding, beyond the summer of 2023.

With the Autumn Statement on Thursday, and the data from the recent NAHT Survey of schools, it seems likely that more schools will resort to temporary appointments in the future as they consider their budgets going forward.

Past experience from the time of the Geddes Axe of a hundred years ago and the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s suggests that class sizes will increase and teacher numbers decline, if funding is again put under pressure, although that outcome needs to be balanced by the number of teachers quitting the state-school sector.

In the past, when there were fewer graduate posts across the economy, a recession meant unemployed teachers. This time the outcome may be different between the primary and secondary sectors, with more unemployed primary school teachers than amongst their secondary sector colleagues unless there is a change in funding arrangements.

Percentage of admission appeals fell last year

Posted on August 22, 2022 by John Howson

On Friday, the DfE published its annual update on admissions appeals for places in primary and secondary schools. The latest set of data covers admissions for September 2021. Admission appeals in England: academic year 2021 to 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The data are a useful indicator of the sufficiency of places, especially at popular schools that are always over-subscribed. Two sets of data matter: admissions to infant classes -the major of schools for this group are primary schools – and admission to secondary school.

The most important driver of appeals is the trend in birth for the year-group. Is it in a period of above average births or is the opposite true. The system provides a place for every child wanting one, but at peak times does not always expand popular schools, despite government pledges about parental choice that occur from time to time. When the birth rate is low, relatively more parents can gain admission to popular schools for their offspring without having to move house or devise other strategies to challenge the system.

At present, the country is in a period where numbers entering infant classes are falling, but there is still excess demand in the secondary sector for popular schools. This is shown in the following tables

Time period	school_phase	appeals_ lodged percentage	Appeals_heard_ percentage	successful_appeals_ percentage
2016	Primary (infant classes)	3.3	2.3	11.8
2017	Primary (infant classes)	3	2	11.7
2018	Primary (infant classes)	2.6	1.7	9.9
2019	Primary (infant classes)	2	1.4	12.6
2020	Primary (infant classes)	1.9	1.3	10.9
2021	Primary (infant classes)	1.8	1.2	10.5
2022	Primary (infant classes)	1.6	1	9.5

Source: DfE

2022 marked the sixth year in succession when appeals lodge and heard as a percentage of those seeking admission to infant classes fell. Only, 1.6% of admissions resulted in an appeal for 2021/22 school-year, compared with 3.3% for 2014/15. Appeals heard were even lower, at only 1.0%. The difference resulted from either a place being found at the school or parents accepting another school or choosing to use the private sector instead. Places become available as some parents request a place at a state school but then decide to use the private sector.

Interestingly, as appeals fall as a percentage of admissions, parents don’t find they are more successful by going to appeal. In fact, the opposite is the case. In these data only 9.5% of appeals were successful; the lowest since before the 2015/16 school-year. This probably reflects the fact that many of these appeals are for the most popular schools, and there is a limit of 30 on infant class sizes. Parents failing at appeal can always place their child on a ’continuing interest’ list for consideration should a place become available for any reason. This allows for the exercise of parental choice.

In the secondary sector, the pressure of recent years when the bulge year-groups transferred from primary to secondary school appears to be easing.

time_period	School _phase	appeals_lodged _percentage	appeals_heard _percentage	successful_appeals _percentage
2016	Secondary	4.5	3.6	26.3
2017	Secondary	4.8	3.7	24.6
2018	Secondary	5.3	4.1	23.4
2019	Secondary	5.5	4.6	23.3
2020	Secondary	6	4.9	22.2
2021	Secondary	5.1	4.1	20.1
2022	Secondary	5	3.9	21.1

Source: DfE

Appeals lodged fell for the second year in a row, as did appeals heard, where the percentage was the lowest since the 2016/17 school-year. Successful appeals also ticked upwards from the low point in 2020/21 of 20.1%, to 21.1% for 2021/22. Interestingly, presumably because secondary schools are generally larger institutions than primary schools with more ‘wriggle room’, successful appeals in the secondary sector tend to be a much higher percentage of appeals heard than in the primary sector.

One remaining area for appeals, even when the birth-rate is at a low point in the demographic cycle, relates to the building of new housing estates, and the provision of schools, especially secondary schooling where a new school will eventually be built, but early owners may have to rely upon existing schools and their admissions policies.

In these cases, parental choice and the notion of catchment areas may collide. In rural areas these days, there is also the issue of the provision of free transport. Local Authorities normally now only provide transport to the ‘nearest school’, thus preventing many parents from exercising any parental choice. With council budgets under severe pressure, and the growth of academies setting their own rules on admissions, the reason for this is clear, but upsetting for some parents.

When Transport for London offered free travel across their region for young people, politicians at Westminster couldn’t see what the problem was, even if their postbags were full of complaints from constituents.

A falling birth-rate does have one other advantage for government. Either cash can be saved as fewer new schools are needed or time-expired school buildings can be replaced with up-to-date new facilities. In the past, some local authorities used to be very good at exploiting this trend and renewing many of their schools when cash for replacement schools was on offer. But, that’s for another blog.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: secondary schools