Tag Archives: Select committee

Pay your bus fare to learn

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The government has responded to the House of Commons Select Committee report of earlier this year about bus services in England. I am sad to see that not only will free transport not be available nationally for those under the age of 22, but the government doesn’t even seem prepared to concede that there is an anomaly regarding free transport to school or college for those aged between 16-18.Buses connecting communities: Government Response

Recommendation 15

The Department’s review of the English National Concessionary Travel Scheme should consider piloting a free bus pass for under-22s, valid for travel at any time of day. This would support access to work and skills opportunities for younger people and help embed long-term public transport use.

Response from the government 

The Government recognises the benefits that free travel for under-22s could bring. However, we are operating in a challenging fiscal environment and the future funding for bus services has already been allocated through the Spending Review, with no funding available for such a scheme. Expanding concessionary travel would therefore be unaffordable within this SR period without diverting funding away from maintaining current bus service levels.

I read the dead hand of HM Treasury here. Perhaps the Select Committee could also have sent the recommendation to the Department for Education for their views, although I suspect the answer would be the same. Local authorities serving rural areas cannot afford to subsidise 16-18 travel as might be the case in the large urban areas.

My previous post showed how out of line education in Oxfordshire is compared with other key indicators for the districts within the county. Should the NHS pay more to support children with SEND? | John Howson This is a missed opportunity by the government to improve education for those in rural areas living in poverty. Sadly, it seems like a missed chance. Both a lack of ambition and a lack of resources seem to be the reasons.

A Virtual School for those missing school?

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The House of Commons Education Select Committee inquiry into SEND has been in existence for around six months. Such was the volume of evidence submitted to the inquiry that some of the evidence has only just been published. Among the submitted evidence published this week was that from Oxfordshire County Council. committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/137147/pdf/

The section of their evidence that interested me most was contained in paras 15-17 about the idea of a virtual school.

Online schooling

15. Oxfordshire County Council’s Virtual School, a service which supports children in our care with a suitable educational placement that meets their needs, has taught the council some valuable lessons in maintaining an educational presence for children.

16. Some children with SEND, especially those for whom education in a school or other education institution is not appropriate, are supported through an ‘Education Other Than At School’ (EOTAS) mechanism. EOTAS provision is usually intended to be short-term, with the goal of finding a more suitable school placement for the young person as soon as possible.

17. We believe it would be worthwhile for the government to explore the creation of a virtual school to support the needs of children with SEND, for whom education in a school setting is not appropriate. This would enable every child to remain on the roll of a school, maintaining funding and visibility for them, and continuing their education whilst a more appropriate long-term placement can be found. Such a school might also be appropriate for other children missing education, such as those arriving with EHCPs mid-year, when no immediate special school places are available. A virtual school would therefore be able to provide continuity of education.

This is an interesting idea that might merit some further discussion as it would clarify the role of the State in educating all children where the parents have entrusted their education to the State.

I wonder whether such a school might also be where excluded pupils could be enrolled if a new school or Alternative Provision has not been found for them. Unlike to present Virtual School for children in care that operates where children are on the role of an actual school, and provides additional support, the New VS would be an actual school, and could require virtual attendance twice a day to help with checks on progress and attendance.

Enrolment in such a VS would also ensure no child was missing school, as too often happens at present when pupils either arrive mid-year into a local authority or are excluded from a school with no new destination.

Such a virtual school might significantly reduce expenditure on private providers as well as ensuring parents did not have to complain to the Local Government Ombudsman that their child had fallen off the radar. Every child in the authority that parents want the State to educate would then be receiving an education every day of the school-year. The school would be free to offer after-school activities and to bring groups of its pupils together where learning in person was appropriate.

The aim should be to manage resources so that children pass through the VS on their way to a learning placement that is suitable for them.  As such, it should replace most packages of ‘education other than at school’ that were never originally designed to be long-term solutions, and too often leave pupils with no check on their development and limited group activities, even on-line where children cannot physically meet together.

Whether the VS could provide all the extras, such as work with animals or other individual sporting instruction in some EHCPs is an interesting area for discussion. Where it clearly aids learning it should be delivered and the volume generated by pupils at the VS should help provide more cost-effective services and coherent local authority wide provision. The VS might also be responsible for monitoring the learning outcomes for pupils where the local authority is paying for pupils to attend fee-paying schools or colleges.

The Education Select Committee: reflections on evidence sessions

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After two evidence sessions of their inquiry into recruitment and retention by the House of Commons Education Select Committee there are a number of interesting themes that need teasing out in more detail during the summer recess. Teacher recruitment, training and retention – Committees – UK Parliament

On the topic of recruitment, I have thought of these issues, in no particular order:

Linking recruitment to need

There has been talk of ‘cold spots’ and ‘certain schools’ finding recruitment (and retention) more of a challenge in the evidence sessions, but the evidence base has been limited. There is more certainty over the subjects with a lack of recruitment, although the committee has not delved into the cumulative effect of years of under-recruitment in some subjects. How many schools, for instance lack a properly qualified teacher of physics? The DfE can provide that information from the School Workforce Census. Also, the providers could have said how many of the physics ITT graduates start work in the private school sector or the FE sector in sixth form colleges rather than in schools?

Teacher vacancies and Free School Meals | John Howson (wordpress.com)

Leadership turnover and Free School Meals | John Howson (wordpress.com)

The Select Committee should ask Ministers about their policy. Oxfordshire would provide an excellent case study of demand from 80 secondary schools, but limited ITT numbers across all subjects.

I did some analysis last Christmas that could from the basis for a national study A Christmas holiday read about Teacher Supply | John Howson (wordpress.com)

New graduate numbers

New young undergradues still remain the most important source of entrants into ITT. However, this age-group has been experiencing something of a demographic downturn that will, fortunately, reverse in a few years’ time.  Higher Education has compensated by enrolling more undergraduates in their 20s.

The implications for teaching of any change in the profile of new graduates needs to be understood, as does the relationship between the location of undergraduate courses in different subjects and entry into ITT. Again, physics makes an interesting case study. Some of the physics degree courses in London are not linked to a college with an ITT provider. Teach First can link with these colleges, but more could be achieved in the field of linking courses with ITT marketing programmes.

Applications and acceptances

The current DfE application process provides less data than the UCAS system it replaced. There are no monthly numbers around applications and offers by either gender or ethnicity making trends difficult to identify until outcome data are produced. This is an easy win for the committee to recommend a better dashboard on applications and offers. As the second panel identified, there are issues with discrimination in both ITT and teacher recruitment at all levels from classroom to head teacher’s study.

 All Lives Matter: But some need to matter more | John Howson (wordpress.com)

‘We need more black headteachers in our schools’ | John Howson (wordpress.com)

Few teachers from ethnic minorities outside London | John Howson (wordpress.com)

Training salary or bursaries?

Regular readers of this blog will know that I favour a training salary for all postgraduate entrants into teaching rather than the present confused, bursary; salary or no support shambles that changes on an annual basis. Could anyone image the Ministry of Defence telling the army to pay cadets at Sandhurst according to how easy it was to recruit to their corps? No support for cavalry regiments, but a big bursary for engineers? I cannot see that happening.

However, partly, I suspect because of the numbers, teaching has a muddled approach across the three routes:

Undergraduate

Postgraduate non-classroom

Postgraduate classroom

A training salary would at least make marketing simpler, and mean career changers would always be sure of an income. When introduced in the early 200s it produced an increase in interest in teaching.

The undergraduate route has been withering on the vine, and before looking at new routes such as undergraduate apprenticeships for graduate professions there should be an understanding as to whether the undergraduate degree has now replaced ‘A’ levels as the last level of pre-career entry qualification. If so, then the new route may not be successful.

Does the sector really wish to reinvent the pupil teacher role? And, will it largely attract those unable to afford the cost of a university degree?

The suggestion that different placements can affect costs for trainees needs to be investigated. In the past, placement costs were borne by providers to ensure a level playing field. The random nature of the travel costs makes them unfair for individual trainees to bear. I researched issue this for the former ATL in the 1990s on two separate occasions.

Employment based routes into teaching

Are we offering fewer employment-based routes into teaching than a decade ago? Teach First is now the dominant salaried route into teaching. School Direct (salaried) has failed as a route into the profession and graduate apprenticeships are in their infancy. Both need closer monitoring to see how they are being used across different sectors and subjects.

In 2009/2010 EBIT (employment-based routes) accounted for 5,800 trainees, according to the DfE census. In the 2022/23 ITT census there were 2,679 trainees on three salaried routes (590 School Direct Salaried; 759 apprenticeships and 1,330 Teach First). This would seem to suggest that either opportunities for career changers needing a salary to train as a teacher have declined by several thousand or the offer is no longer attractive enough to entice career changers into teaching.

Earlier this year, I wrote the following:

“Applications are being sustained by an increase in career changers. Candidate numbers in the age groups below 25 continue to fall, with just 4,027 candidates in the 21 or under age grouping. By contrast, this year there are already 600 candidates in the 50-54 age grouping compared with 449 in March 2022. The number of candidates recorded as over the age of 65 has increased from 12 in March 2022 to 25 this March! The bulk of the career changers seem likely to be men. The number in this group has increased from 6,525 in the March 2022 data to 8,037 this March. However, the number recruited has fallen from 562 to 419, perhaps indicating that many of these older men are in the group applying from overseas?” Teaching not attracting new graduates | John Howson (wordpress.com)

The mention of overseas applicants is important, as the 2023ITT application round has seen most of its growth in applications for ‘rest of the world’ and this has important implications for the outcome of the round if these applicants cannot obtain a visa, even if offered a place.

Some other issues

School there be subject quotas for the primary sector ITT numbers to ensure a spread of expertise?

Does the present application system discriminate against those that apply later in the recruitment round, and does that fact have implications for under-represented groups and their patterns of applications?

Should the DfE consider funding Recruitment Strategy Managers on a regional basis once more?

Do we need a unique job number to be better able to track vacancies?

With a largely female workforce should the level of departures each year for maternity leave be predictable and does the resignations total include those taking maternity leave?

And the big one – does the market model of placing teachers in schools work? Are we returning to an employ-driven model of teacher supply that existed as the dominant model before the Robbins report?

Evidence to Select Committee

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The House of Commons Education Select Committee today published 28 pieces of evidence submitted to their inquiry into teacher recruitment and retention. My evidence was one of the pieces published. You can access it at: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/7357/teacher-recruitment-training-and-retention/publications/

The first oral evidence session with the teacher associations will be held next week.

This is the sixth inquiry into the topic by the Select Committee that I have submitted evidence to since penning my first piece to the inquiry in the 1980s about the number of inactive teachers in what was then known as the PIT (Pool of Inactive Teachers).

The current inquiry is quite wide in scope and the world has moved on since the call for evidence was launched in March. I hope that the SEND sector is not overlooked during the inquiry.

I have updated the index chart in the evidence to reflet the present position.

GroupITTNumber left% left
Art440-107-24.43
Science1505-1749-116.25
English1214-1281-105.52
Mathematics1467-1145-78.08
Languages652-866-132.82
IT304-672-221.05
Design & Technology372-1063-285.89
Business164-569-347.26
RE249-384-154.42
PE129538830.00
Primary12000622651.88
Music228-306-134.21
Geography523-531-101.53
History95030432.00
Source: TeachVac

The position is now much worse than in March, but regular readers of this blog would know that fact already. Schools looking for January appointments will really struggle in many subjects. The situation has moved beyond challenging into a crisis. TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk may be able to help.

Education spending: government less than generous

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The House of Commons Treasury Select Committee has today published its Report on the Autumn Budget and Spending Review 2021. Normally, this blog doesn’t read Treasury Select Committee reports, but this Report did have something to say about government spending on education.

In paragraph 48 the Committee noted the evidence it received from Dr Tetlow and in paragraph 54 it made its own comment, noting that the DfE …’ , did not receive such a generous settlement’ and that ‘School funding per head has only now returned to 2010 levels following the latest Budget.’

The two paragraphs are reproduced below.

48. While the Department for Education (DfE) will have received a real-terms increase in its budget of 2.3 per cent compared to 2009–10, Dr Tetlow told us that the DfE had not done as well in the Spending Review as the sector may have hoped for, given how it had been impacted by the loss of learning during the pandemic, and the need there would be for educational catch-up: Education was clearly one of the relative losers from the Spending Review. Certainly, the £5 billion that has gone into education isn’t large enough to meet our estimate of what might be needed to catch up on lost learning. […] Poorer skills in the cohorts going into the labour market over the next few years does run the risk of having longer-term impacts on productivity.58 […] Even though the Chancellor hailed in his speech that per pupil spending would go back to its 2010 level, it is pretty remarkable to have a decade with no real-terms growth in spending in schools. That is quite unusual and not a strong signal of prioritising improved skills in the UK.

54. While some departments which had been significantly disrupted by the pandemic, such as the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Transport, received large increases, the Department for Education, which was also affected by the pandemic, did not receive such a generous settlement. School funding per head has only now returned to 2010 levels following the latest Budget.

Budget report (parliament.uk) 27th January 2022

No doubt in their defence The Treasury would point out that more children are being educated because of the increase in the birth rate and the move to all staying in education or training until age 18 than in 2010. They might also point out there are more students in higher education, but most of their costs are probably being taken on the student loan account.

Without a more generous settlement over the next few years, spending per pupil on education is once again going to be tight, and probably will fall in real terms. The DfE needs to look at the costs of running a mixed system of academies and maintained schools. Why are there several hundred Chief Executives of Academy Trusts when previously there were only around 150 Chief Education Officers in local authorities. What is the extra salary bill costing and how many more civil servants are needed to manage the Department to School budget process compared with discussing with just a limited number of local authorities? It really is time to sort out the middle tier of schooling and the extent to which there should be democratic accountability.

Finally, if I can suggest a simple cost saving measure to the DfE. Compare the cost and effectiveness of your job board for teacher vacancies with other products offering similar services and check that you are now spending more than necessary on this service.

Congratulations to the Education Select Committee

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Alongside the unfolding shambles that is Brexit much of the work of parliament at Westminster goes on almost as normal. Next week the All Party Parliamentary Group on the Teaching Profession s its spring meeting, and I have provided them with an update on teacher recruitment along the lines of yesterday’s post on this blog.

However, of more significant to the work of parliament was the meeting yesterday of the Education Select Committee. Details at https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/education-committee/news-parliament-2017/send-evidence-17-193/ The minutes haven’t been published yet, but will be well worth reading when the do appear.

When I first started following the work of Select Committees in the 1980s, and then submitting written evidence, and in 1996 being called for the first time to provide oral evidence, these Committees met in rooms at Westminster. They mostly just questioned experts in the field they were discussing. There was no TV channel or live streaming, and I recall astonishing a clerk by requesting that a graph accompanying my evidence needed to be reproduced in colour in the minutes if it was to be understood by readers. Incidentally, guidelines in many organisations for reproducing graphs and charts in both colour and monochrome are still often very lax, making some documents very difficult to understand.

Issues such as concerns about the presentation of data will have been fully understood by those providing evidence to the Education Select Committee yesterday. In three groups, of either two or three, young people with special needs or disabilities provided evidence of their own experience of the education system to the MPs on the Committee. I think this is the first time that the Committee has actually heard at first hand from students with SEND of their experience of our education system.

Schools should not be just exam factories, but pupils with SEND should not lose out in achieving their full potential just because they face additional challenges.  Relegating these pupils to a separate room at lunchtime might be both convenient and help to ensure their safety, but it doesn’t help in making friendship with other pupils. Simple actions such as the wearing of a ‘high vis’ Gillet in the playground can warn other pupils to take care, and reduce the need for isolation and significantly increase opportunities to associate with other classmates.

All new schools should be built with doors and circulation spaces wide enough to take motorised wheelchairs, for even if there are no pupils when the school is being built, who is to say that there won’t be parents, staff, governors or even HMIs making use of such aids to their mobility? For the same reason, lifts must provide access to all upper floors where teaching takes place.

Funding for SEND, and the High Needs Block in general, needs more attention and I hope the Select Committee will consider that issue along with the part the NHS can play in early identification of those that need EHCPs rather than waiting for children to start their education. I hope that yesterday was the start of more conversation between Select Committees and those whose voices are often not heard enough.

Not a surprise?

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In my Review of 2017, I wrote that:

‘Although there have been changes in the junior ministerial ranks, the Secretary of State has served throughout the year and is now approaching the point in her tenure when she is in the zone where many politicians find themselves either changing jobs or being removed from office in a reshuffle.’

Lucky guess or just reading the political runes? I note that the TES expressed similar views, so perhaps the departure of Justine Greening wasn’t unexpected. Nevertheless, we must thank the now former Secretary of State for her calming period in office. If it survives, still no means a certainty, the National Funding Formula may be Justine Greening’s legacy from her time in office at Sanctuary Buildings. We now await the possibility of changes in the more junior ministerial ranks.

The new Secretary of State served on the Education Select Committee for a period after 2010 and we had this exchange when I gave oral evidence to the inquiry into attracting, training and retaining the best teachers, when I appeared as one of a panel of witnesses.

 Professor Howson: I can’t imagine that the CBI would be terribly happy if we took the whole of Oxford and Cambridge’s output to fill our 35,000 places. That is part of our dilemma. Yes, we want people who are as well qualified and able as possible, but we are not competing in a vacuum, and society as a whole has to decide where it wants to put teaching in terms of the competition for graduates.

Q149 Damian Hinds: Gosh-most people would say that teaching should be very near the top. McKinsey, BCG and Goldman Sachs can fight their own battles, but in society, we want teaching to be very high up on that list of priorities, don’t we?

Professor Howson: Then this Committee must recommend that the Government take actions to achieve that. As someone has already said, pay may well be one of those actions.

Q148 & Q149 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmeduc/uc1515-ii/uc151501.htm

It will be interesting to see how quickly Mr Hinds acts to deal with the problems over teacher training numbers discussed in this blog and elsewhere during the past week. Perhaps he might like to create a specialist group to advise him on possible ways forward. I am sure that with his track record on social mobility including his role in the APPG on social mobility, he will find many willing to offer help.

Apart from teacher supply issues, Mr Hinds will need to look at the governance of the academy sector and how it relates to the remaining maintained schools. Having been educated in a faith school, he will not be unaware of the role such schools play in our system despite the increasingly secular nature of much of modern society. They may offer a model for cooperation that could plot a path to a unified system working towards the goal of greater social mobility that works not only for potential university graduates but for apprentices and everyone else in society.

Who would have thought it?

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Education has suffered some high profile losses in the general election. Not only has Neil Carmichael, the chair of the Education Select Committee in the last parliament lost his  Gloucestershire seat, but Flick Drummond, another Tory MP with an interest in education, also lost her Portsmouth South seat to a surprise Labour victory. Edward Timpson, the Tory MP with a strong interest in the Children’s Services part of the DfE brief also lost his Cheshire seat to a Labour education activist.

Sarah Olney, given the education brief for the Lib Dems after John Pugh retired from parliament, also narrowly lost the Richmond Park seat she had so recently won in the by-election.  Sir Ed Davey once held the education brief for the Lib Dems, but he may be earmarked for another role this time around. Layla Moran, the new Oxford & Abingdon MP might be a possible Lib Dem spokesperson, but she has little or no experience of the State school system except in relation to the examination system.

Now that the Conservatives have returned as the largest Party at Westminster, to be once again called Conservatives and Unionists after their success in Scotland and with the need to rely upon the Northern Irish DUP for a working majority at Westminster, where does that leave the manifesto? Much, I suspect, will depend upon the make-up of the ministerial team and their preferences and support for different policies.

I have already written about how TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk can cheaply and quickly fulfil the idea of a national vacancy portal and almost certainly at a much lower cost than anyone else can offer. That would be a quick win on savings to offset possible issues of further pay restraint. I suspect that industrial action over pay won’t be far off if the government sticks to the one per cent limit on pay rises.

Although, I suspect, the DUP may favour selective schools, I find it difficult to see the spread of new selective schools really taking hold in such a finely balanced parliament. After all, some Tories were not greatly in favour of axing successful comprehensive schools in their constituencies and can be expected to remain sceptical of the idea that has been so strongly associated with the Prime Minister.

Even more urgent, and top of the new Secretary of State’s agenda, may be sorting out the effect of the -U- turn on funding announced during the election campaign. Is the National Funding Formula dead in the water or will money be found to compensate the losers and still allow the formula to go ahead as planned? This will require some fast footwork between the DfE and The Treasury and it might be that the present arrangements will continue for another year, much to the displeasure of the F40 Group.

Personally, I would like to see the role of the local authority strengthened and a cap on the pay of Chief Executives and other senior staff in MATs in line with the pay of local government officers carrying out similar functions. But, that might be a bit too radical.

We are in a new era, whether it last a full five year parliamentary term looks very doubtful at present, but the Conservative won’t be keen to offer Labour a second chance anytime soon, unless they are forced to by circumstances.

 

Recruiting Teachers for September 2018

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Next week UCAS opens the recruitment round for ITT courses starting in the autumn of 2017. So far the government seems to have kept those that watch the annual recruitment round in the dark as to the outcome of the Teacher Supply Model and the total number of places allocated to each route for next year. Perhaps the Select Committee can ask the Minister for the figures when he appears before them next Wednesday to talk about teacher supply. It is a slightly odd time for the Minister to appear before the Select Committee as the ITT census for 2016 has yet been published, so he presumably won’t know the final outcome of the number of places filled this autumn and how much better it was then last year?

He will, however, be able to talk about progress on the National Teacher Service in Yorkshire and Lancashire and how successful it has been. He may also be able to announce the date of the national roll-out and when the tendering process will start. If the Committee is really lucky, the Minister might announce what progress there has been on creating a national vacancy portal that was mentioned in the White Paper last March. In the light of the research by the TES, the Committee might also like to ask whether there is any difference in recruitment and retention of teachers and school leaders between grammar schools and secondary modern schools in those areas that still have fully selective systems of education.

If they haven’t already seen the new TV advert, the committee members can do so at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-recruitment-bulletin/teacher-recruitment-bulletin-5-october-2016 and might wish to compare the level of spending on the campaign with that of other government recruitment initiatives. As we know, teaching is by far one of the largest recruiters in the public sector. There has clearly been a stepping up of effort compared with a few years ago, but until the census appears, it isn’t possible to judge the success of last year’s efforts. It is interesting that the new advert seems to focus once again entirely on the secondary sector and doesn’t seem to feature any male teaching role model, always useful to help attract men into teaching as an under-represented group.

Hopefully, the Select Committee might also provide some indication of when it will conclude its inquiry into teacher supply. After all, it is more than six months since the NAO and the Public Accounts Committee considered the issue of teacher training. The Committee might explore how far the government has moved in the direction of meeting regional needs, rather than just the national demand and whether the government tracks in-year recruitment against training numbers. This is, of course, something TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk does on a daily basis and it has reported its findings to the Committee both in its original evidence and in the supplementary evidence submitted at the end of the summer term.

Finally, the Committee might ask the Minister what the DfE said to the Migration Advisory Committee on the issue of teacher shortages and the need for visas in light of current government policy about immigration and the use of workers already living in England?

 

 

 

 

Select Committee: more questions about teacher supply they might want to ask

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Tomorrow the House of Commons Education Select Committee resumes its hearings into the question of teacher supply. This inquiry started in the autumn, so it is two days short of six months since the last public evidence session. Much has happened in that time, as readers of this blog with know; not least the NAO report and the White Paper, where Chapter 2 concentrates on the question of teachers without really providing much that was new in policy terms.

If, as I expect, the Committee members are on the ball, to use a footballing metaphor ahead of Euro 2016, they will ask the witnesses, some from the subject associations and others from higher education, the school sector and Ofsted, how much of an understanding the DfE really has of the issue of teacher supply?

Some possible questions the might ask could include:

Why are there too many PE teachers and too few business studies teachers being trained if the Teacher Supply Model is doing its job properly?

Given that by the Workforce Census date in November all pupils are being taught for the correct amount of time each week, how do we deal with the consequences of accumulated teacher shortages in a particular subject.

For the representative of DATA, how are possible shortages spread out among the different component parts of the D&T curriculum. Are there greater shortages of say food technology teachers than those with expertise in resistant materials? The same question might be applied to a representative from the languages area, but as there isn’t one it might as well be addressed to the Ofsted witness about the data they collect on subject knowledge and how teachers actually spend their time teaching.

Is the present squeeze on budgets affecting the demand for teachers and who would know if it was? How long would any slowdown in demand take to affect the supply side of the equation and could it leave more trainees with an extra £9,000 of fee debt, but no teaching job in England? If they took a teaching job overseas presumably the Treasury wouldn’t see any repayments during the period of time a teacher was outside the country.

There are lots more questions the Committee could, and no doubt will, ask tomorrow. I hope they do dis cuss the issue of primary teachers and subject knowledge as this is often overlooked. There was a useful APPG report on RE teaching a few years ago now that showed how little time a PGCE student had on developing their subject knowledge. This may also be true in other subjects and is a concern for those teaching at Key Stage 2. Are MATs, with an exchange of teachers between primary and secondary schools, a possible way forward? Will technology help with the brightest pupils or is it off-putting?

The Committee could also ask about part-time working in the secondary sector since that has risen up the agenda recently, but I doubt any of the witnesses will have much evidence on the matter, even if they have an opinion.

Finally, I hope someone will ask about the government’s idea of a national vacancy web site mentioned in the White Paper and whether TeachVac is not already providing such a service to schools, trainees and teachers at no cost as a public service, especially now TeachVac has launched its free job portal for schools.