Are small sixth forms a good idea?

Posted on March 29, 2026 by John Howson

In a post in January, I mused about the issue of how falling rolls might affect schools particularly if it meant less funding, where school funding is based upon a per pupil funding model. Fewer pupils = less cash. Accountability and falling school rolls. Was it different in the past? | John Howson

One of the possible solutions discussed in that post was a reform of post-16 education. In a cash-strapped school system, is it possible to justify schools with small sixth forms? Are such sixth forms in the best interest of the students?

In order to think more deeply about this issue, I have looked at the ‘A’ Level results from one local authority, as published on the DfE’s website. 11-16 schools are excluded, as are schools that will eventually expect to have a sixth form, but aren’t currently at that stage, and also colleges. What’s is left are the details for the outcomes on ‘A’ Level results for 34 schools, as shown in the table below

pupils entered	best 3 score	progress score	average or above
312	39.88	0.2	AA
211	35.75	0.08	A
125	40.77	-0.13
117	41.68	0.02	A
110	31.45	-0.30
107	33.24	0.00	A
96	34.34	0.00	A
94	38.3	0.17	AA
90	36.33	0.19	AA
89	35.51	-0.12	A
87	31.53	0.08	A
82	39.15	0.80	AA
82	36.42	0.07	A
79	34.57	-0.33
69	29.47	-0.21
66	35.1	0.26	AA
66	32.37	-0.10	A
65	35.64	0.03	A
64	33.39	-0.15
62	35.7	0.20	AA
59	34.69	-0.09
57	32.52	0.06	A
46	34.57	-0.33
42	33.65	-0.11	A
41	31.14	-0.46
30	14.67	-0.69
28	36.31	0.21	A
25	25.07	-0.02
22	34.85	0.70	A
14	24.52	-0.83	A
13	18.21	-0.75
9	24.52	-0.83
9	37.78	0.35	A

For comparison purposes, the average score for state schools in England was -0.03 for Progress and 35.76 for the best 3 ‘A’ Levels score. There are other measures that could be used, but these are three I chose to use for this blog post.

Nine out of the 34 schools beat the national average for ‘best score’, although another couple of schools narrowly missed the national average, so it might be better to conclude that 14 schools were either close to or exceeded the national average for ‘best score’, leaving 20 schools that were below the national average.

Progress score is a more contentious measure. Here 15 schools did less well than average. The same schools often feature in both lists. Most of these schools entered less than 100 pupils for three subjects at ‘A’ level. Some pupils might have taken either two subjects and a vocational qualification or just two subjects at ‘A’ Level.

Schools that entered more pupils for 3 ‘A’ Levels were more likely to receive an ‘average’ or ‘above average’ grade.

The data forces me to ask the question – is the current arrangements for ‘A’ Level study across these schools producing the best outcomes for students? Two subsidiary questions are; if this is the outcome close to the top of the demographic cycle, what might happen to sixth form sizes in these schools once rolls start to fall in a few years’ time? The second question is, what is the cost of tuition per pupil under the present arrangements.

To answer the latter question, let’s assume a Year 7 class of 30 for mathematics taught by a newly qualified teacher on the bottom of the Main Scale for five period a week for 40 week, and an ‘A’ Level group taught for 5 periods a week by the Head of Department, on the top of the Upper Pay spine, and with a TLR 2A in addition.

The newly qualified teacher teaches 6 classes per week for 40 weeks, while the Head of Department teaches two ‘A’ Level sets, one of which has 10 weeks examination leave in Year 13. In addition, the Head of Department teaches four classes of 30, one of which has exam leave in Year 11.

Using this data, and ignoring any other time spent on non-teaching duties, the Main Scale Teacher costs work out at 0.91p per pupil, while the Head of Department costs are £2.33p per pupil.

If the ’A’ Level groups were smaller than 15 in each year, as they well might be in some schools, then the cost per pupil increases unless the Head of Department receives a lesser amount in TLR.

In an 11-16 school, where the Head of Department might teach five classes for 40 weeks and one for 30 to allow for examination leave, the cost per pupil for the Head of Department reduces to below £2 per pupil. If the school has only long-serving teachers then the per pupil for teachers increases to nearer £1.50 per pupil.

For small schools with settled staffrooms, the difference in cost between the cost of teaching Years 7-11 and Years 11-13 may be marginal. The issue then becomes one of teaching and learning. Do small sixth forms produce as good examination results as larger sixth forms? The evidence from the table would suggest they are less likely to do so.

What of the student experience? Is it better to be either ‘a big fish in a small pool’ or ‘a small fish in a larger pool’? Has anyone ever asked students their views?

I think that there is a debate to be had about school organisation and size of school sixth forms when rolls fall, especially if school funding comes under pressure from increased government spending on both defence and welfare, and especially if we are in a recession.

As my colleagues in Haringey found out in the 1970s, such debates about changes to sixth forms can be fraught with political pitfalls for anyone suggesting change. But, is that a good enough reason not to at least discuss changes?

Note: I have only used salary costs in the modelling and not included on-costs from National Insurance and Pensions. I have also ignored premises and other staffing costs, as I assumed the to be low in a subject such as mathematics.

The other crisis facing schools

Posted on September 6, 2023 by John Howson

In my experience, editors usually have September, and the national annual ‘return to school’ event, as a time to ask journalists to look for a school centred story. This follows on from the useful two-week period in August when there are examination results to cover in the month when there is often little news from the political scene.

This year, editors and their journalists didn’t have to work very hard, if at all, for their ‘return to school’ story. RAAC, and the school buildings saga, was a gift send. Would the story have topped the bill at any other time of year? Who knows, as it is an important issue, but more important say that a reshuffle?

What is clear, is that by focussing just on the school buildings issue, editors are missing the opportunity to take a wider look at the health of our schools. Had there not been RAAC, and the still largely hidden asbestos issue, might the staffing of our schools have been the main story this September?

This is a much more difficult story to sell, as except in rare cases such as a special school reported to the DfE in the summer, schools don’t send children home for a lack of teachers. Instead, they cut subjects from the curriculum – I have been told of a school that is no longer offering languages in the sixth from this September; increase class sizes; reduce non-contact time for teachers and, most commonly, employ what might be considered as under-qualified teachers to teach some groups.

Because anyone with Qualified Teacher Status can teach anything on the curriculum, it isn’t easy to identify the problem, as schools, quite rightly, don’t advertise any shortcomings in the staffing of their timetable. However, extrapolating from the last School Workforce Census that provided a baseline, and adding in the results of new entrants being below the targets set by the DfE through the Teacher Supply Model, it seems clear that some schools are not properly staff this September.

Does this matter? Like the lack of a schools’ database on building issues, we don’t know whether some young people are missing grades in those public examinations we celebrate each August because of staffing issues last year or even earlier in their school lives.

This blog has charted re-advertisements of teaching post against free school meal rates in schools. I wrote a blog on this issue last month, just before the exam results season started Are we levelling up? | John Howson (wordpress.com) I won’t bother to repeat what I said then, but it would be interesting to look at examination results in specific subjects at different centres with different levels of staff turnover for a period of three to five years, to see if there is any measurable effect of staff turnover on outcomes, including entry policies.

My hunch is that it is difficult to create a ‘normal’ distribution curve for results subjects such as ‘A’ level physics if many schools cannot offer the subject, and those that do only enter those likely to be successful candidates.

Editors might like to pencil in a story for January 2024, when secondary schools facing unexpected vacancies will find recruitment even more of a challenge than for this September. What might be the effects on their results in Summer 2024 of an unexpected vacancy, especially if they started the school year this September with both a RAAC and a staffing crisis?

22% more teaching vacancies

Posted on April 3, 2023 by John Howson

How challenging has the teacher labour market been during the first three months of 2023? Certainly, there has been a recorded increase in vacancies compared with the first three months of 2022 in many secondary subjects as the data in the table shows.

(Jobs Found in Date Range: 01-01 To 31-03 in Years 2022 and 2023

Government Office Region: All
Local Authority: All

Subject	2022	2023	Percentage
Art	527	670	+27%
Business	636	654	+3%
Classics	110	111	+1%
Computer Science	1191	1519	+28%
Dance	42	41	-2%
Drama	358	368	+3%
DT	1643	2049	+25%
Economics	307	232	-24%
Engineering	7	0	-100%
English	2566	3392	+32%
Geography	1046	1429	+37%
Health and Social Care	160	124	-23%
History	748	841	+12%
Humanities	231	388	+68%
Law	32	31	-3%
Mathematics	3327	3942	+18%
Media Studies	75	110	+47%
MFL	1736	2208	+27%
Music	647	782	+21%
Pastoral	272	370	+36%
PE	906	1187	+31%
Philosophy	63	56	-11%
Psychology	307	286	-7%
RE	835	979	+17%
Science	3955	4839	+22%
–Biology	310	353	+14%
–Chemistry	438	429	-2%
–Physics	526	580	+10%
SEN	431	445	+3%
Sociology	133	137	+3%
Total	22291	27190	+22%

Source: Teachvac www.teachvac.co.uk

Chemistry is the only major subject to have recorded a fall in vacancies compared with the first three months of 2022, and the fall was only two per cent or just nine vacancies below 2022.

Overall, TeachVac has recorded a 22% increase in secondary sector vacancies, with English recording a 32% increase from 2,566 to 3,392 vacancies during the three months. Geography has recorded a 37% increase in vacancies and pastoral type vacancies increased by 36% compared with the first quarter of last year.

As the number of trainees entering the labour market is lower than in recent years, the next few weeks when the labour market for teachers reaches its annual peak will be challenging for many schools seeking to make appointments for September 2023, especially for schools in and around London where the competition between state and private schools for teachers is at its most intense.

This lunchtime, the BBC World at One invited three conservative supporters – one MP and two think tank commentators – to discuss the challenges facing the teaching profession. All agreed that there were deep-seated issues of both pay and conditions of work than will need to be addressed if state schools are going to stop the departure of teachers from the profession and encourage more new entrants into teaching.

The rejection of the current pay offer made by the government by NEU members means strikes will now continue into the summer term and the examinations season unless Ministers can squeeze more cash out of HM Treasury.

I don’t envy those trying to construct school timetables for 2023-24 school year especially in challenging schools with a high staff turnover. Ofsted should take the recruitment crisis into account when inspecting schools. TeachVac will happily offer data comparing schools being inspected with the norm for the local area.

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?

Stuck Schools

Posted on January 8, 2020 by John Howson

This Report from Ofsted is an important addition to the discussions aound school improvement and deserves to sit alongside other HMI documents on this topic. For those of my generation these include the famous ’10 Good Schools’ report of some 40 years ago.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fight-or-flight-how-stuck-schools-are-overcoming-isolation/fight-or-flight-how-stuck-schools-are-overcoming-isolation-evaluation-report

Using the terms ‘stuck’ and ‘unstuck’ schools, tells it as it is. I was especially struck by the paragraph in the Executive Summary that said:

‘Most stuck and unstuck schools stated that they had received too much school improvement advice from too many different quarters of the school system. Often, the advice was intended to help schools with their improvement strategy. However, this rarely had the intended impact. Leaders perceived that the quality of the advice itself was often lacking. School leaders also commented on a poor match between the problems of the school and the advice on offer. While many were concerned about the lack of support available following inspection, schools often welcomed the fresh thinking and impetus that independent inspection had given them. Schools did not appear to be inhibited from discussing some of the challenges of inspection during this project.’

Ofsted’s suggests that there is enough capacity in the system to move ‘stuck’ schools forward, but that the content of the support, including whether it enables focused may be lacking. There also needs to be effective action that responds directly to the issues identified. Additionally, is the support for a ‘stuck’ school best provided internally or externally to the school or MAT and there is also a question about the quality of those coordinating or delivering the support?

This last point is important as the fractured governance model for schools sometimes makes it difficult to identify the organisation responsible for taking the lead role in actually improving these schools.

What is the penalty for failure? Obviously, for local authorities and maintained schools, it is a transfer to become an academy. But what of academies? And, especially what of academies that are part of faith-led MATs where the Church doesn’t want to give up running the school, but cannot stop it being a ‘stuck’ school within a reasonable period of time?

Should there be a review of each Office of Regional School Commissioner to establish a baseline of the number of ‘stuck’ schools and a target for improvement that has consequences if not met? Alternatively, should the Office of Regional School Commissioner be abolished and a closer link to local democracy be once again added to our school system?

Finally, there needs to be a discussion about both funding for ‘stuck’ schools and how any extra funding is allocated under a National Funding Formula that clearly doesn’t take fully into account the fact that some pupils need more resources to achieve a desired level of outcome than do others.

Staff Development, and especially leadership development, also needs to be looked at afresh by the DfE. Should we re-introduce a qualification for leadership with modules about leading a ‘stuck school’? At least then the system would have a better idea of capacity to support and ‘unstick’ these schools.

We cannot allow the next decade to be wasted as the last one has been in so many cases as far as the education of these young people is concerned.

Treasury woes

Posted on June 18, 2019 by John Howson

Teacher recruitment crises are not a new phenomenon in England. Indeed, almost 30 years ago, at the start of the 1990s, the country was experiencing a very similar sort of teacher recruitment and retention crisis to that seen now. As a result, it is interesting to revisit the comments made by the then Interim Advisory Committee on Teachers’ Pay and Conditions, the forerunner of the present School Teachers’ Review Body, and the successor to the Burnham Committee.

In Chapter 6 of their 1991 report, at paragraph 7.13 the IAC said:

Our final key principle has been to support the provision of proper rewards for additional responsibilities and high performance. Put, bluntly, the teaching profession is no different from any other in needing to recruit and retain effective and ambitious people. Whatever the details of the pay structure, it seems self-evident to us that if adequate levels of differential rewards are not available, as they increasingly are elsewhere, then there will be serious difficulties in tackling the recruitment and retention problems we have highlighted.

(IAC, 4^th Report January 1991 para 7.13 page 49)

I found this comment of interest, as I discovered it when I was trying to determine whether more teachers had access to allowances now than at that time before devolved budgets and the total freedom for schools to decide how to pay their teachers. At that time, in the early 1990s, although the pay scales were different and local management of schools was on the horizon, there was still a national structure for responsibility payments, and schools had little choice over the number of such posts that they could create. School size, as determined by the number and age of the pupils, was the key source factor affecting the chance of promotion for a teacher.

Interestingly, a quick look at DfE statistics for both 1989 and 2013, suggests that far more teachers in secondary schools than in primary schools had access to payments above their main scale salary in 1989, and that in both sectors the percentage of teachers paid above the main scale was higher in 1989 than in 2013. Additionally, in 2013, you were less likely to receive a TLR if you worked in an academy than if you worked in a maintained school.

Since 2013, the DfE has changed how it reports teachers’ pay, and it now uses cash amounts in bands as the reporting measure that doesn’t allow an easy identification of the percentage of teachers paid a TLR in addition to their main salary.

Of course, a few teachers have benefited from an opening up of extra posts on the Leadership Scale. But, could this lack of incentives, suggested as important by the IAC in 1991, be partly responsible for the problems with retention in years five to seven of a teacher’s career that have become a feature of recent years?

Conservative politicians, as the previous post on this blog has noted, are aware that current funding for schools is not only insufficient to pay support staff their pay award but also to reward and retain teachers in many parts of the country. The problem is, where to find the cash to pay for schools to recruit and retain effective and ambitious people, the same requirement as the IAC pointed out all those years ago.

More evidence that London is different

Posted on February 16, 2019 by John Howson

In a previous post about the DfE’s evidence to the Teachers’ Pay Review Body (STRB) in 2019 I mentioned that the DfE cited that the wastage rate for Inner London schools was 14% in 2017. This was the highest for any area in England.

After reflecting upon this statistic, I went back to the data in the School Workforce Census to see whether high wastage rates were confined to specific schools or a more general matter for concern? The basic data on the Census, as it appears on the DfE’s web site, doesn’t allow that question to be answered. The DfE provides information on vacancies and temporarily filled posts at the school level, but not wastage rates. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2017

	*Percentage of schools in the region reporting a vacancy (%)*	*Percentage of schools in the region reporting either a vacancy or a temporarily filled post (%)*

REGION

North East	3.2	9.1
North West	2.6	9.4
Yorkshire and the Humber	3.4	11.0
East Midlands	2.9	8.2
West Midlands	3.4	11.3
East of England	3.2	12.0
Inner London	5.3	22.5
Outer London	4.1	24.8
South East	3.8	12.2
South West	2.2	7.4

ENGLAND	*3.3*	*11.9*
School Workforce Census 2017

Looking at the table abstracted above, from the 2017 School Workforce Census, it seems that around twice as many schools in Inner London reported a vacancy in November 2017 as did schools in the North West region. The gap was even wider between those London schools and schools in the South West.

Once the percentage of schools reporting a temporarily filled post in the November Census was added in, the gap between schools in London and the South West was even greater. Now, it just may be that there are more temporary posts in London than other regions because more teachers are on maternity leave in London than elsewhere in England. Since London does tend to attract many teachers at the start of their careers, this is indeed a possibility. However, the size of the gap does seem to call into question whether this is the only reason for such a large difference.

Taken together with the wastage figure, it does seem that schools, and especially a small number of secondary schools in London, were facing a problem with staffing at a time of year when schools would expect to be fully staffed.

Previous staffing crises have been based upon data that was collected in January, the census date before the School Workforce Census was introduced. However, if the current census covers the whole period from November to November that change of date would not be an issue. Should the data only relate to the situation at the time of the census, it would be or more concern, as the consequences of departures of any staff at the end of December would not be captured in the data.

What are the implications for the STRB if schools in London were finding the staffing situation challenging in 2017. The STRB will certainly want to know whether the early returns from the 2018 Census reflect any improvements or whether the situation has deteriorated further. If the DfE is unable to answer that question, then I am sure that the teacher associations and others providing evidence will be able to do so.

TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk has consistently reported that London schools top the list of schools advertising the most vacancies.

With separate London pay scales, will the STRB look to increase them more than the national scale this year? Only time will tell.

Portents on pay

Posted on July 24, 2018 by John Howson

Will today’s announcement on teachers’ pay end the shortage of teachers in some of our schools? Not this year, as the announcement has come too late to affect recruitment on to teacher preparation courses, except possibly at the margins. The latest UCAS data should appear on Thursday and will provide a good guide to the supply side of the teacher labour market in 2019, at least as far as new entrants are concerned. A decent pay settlement may tempt back some leavers from the profession, but, again, probably not enough to make any real difference.

The big change in response to the pay settlement may come on the demand side of the labour market equation. Let’s assume that the Treasury won’t fully fund the pay settlement, leaving either the DfE to find more cash or schools to decide how to make use of the cash they have. This could mean a reduction in demand for teachers next year as a funds are directed towards paying the remaining staff more and those leaving are not replaced.

In passing, it is worth noting that leaving the outcome of the Review Bodies Reports until July is really unhelpful in terms of making meaningful budgets for both academies with their new financial year starting with the new school term and even local authorities where maintained schools still operate their budgets on the April to March financial year.

Since academies and free schools can set their own pay and conditions, it is entirely possible that some schools or MATs might choose to ignore the Pay Review Body Report and try to go it alone, by not paying the proposed increase. The Secretary of State has to approve the recommendation of the Pay Review Body – not doing so seems highly unlikely, especially if the pain can be passed to schools to deal with in human terms.

However, this will be the first big test of the Secretary of State. How far will he be able to stand up to the Treasury and gain any extra cash for schools? It is worth recalling that he was a member of the Education Select Committee that published the report: Great Teachers: attracting, training and retaining and best, so he is fully aware of the arguments about teacher supply. Indeed, I recall providing both written and oral evidence to the Committee during their deliberations on the subject.

Indeed, it is worth recalling this exchange I had with Mr Hinds during the oral questioning in November 2011 when teacher supply was less of a concern than it is now.

Howson … society as a whole has to decide where it wants to put teaching in terms of competition for graduates. (Q148 answer)

Q149 Damian Hind: 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 the list of priorities, don’t we?

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

HC 1515-11 published 25^th April 2012

Regular readers of this blog will know what has happened to both teachers’ pay and teacher supply since 2012.

Blink and they are gone

Posted on January 12, 2018 by John Howson

Be quick if you want a business studies teacher for September 2018. As this blog pointed out when the ITT census for 2017 was published, there weren’t a vast number of trainees in this subject. Now in the first nine working days of 2018, TeachVac has already listed enough vacancies to attract 20% of the ITT census total of trainees. Interestingly, the vast majority of the 2018 vacancies recorded have been posted by schools in and around London. Only seven jobs have been posted so far in 2018 for business studies teachers by schools in the remainder of England.

Unless the current rate of vacancies starts slowing down, then TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk will be issuing an amber warning of shortages in this subject by early February and the trainee pool will become exhausted well before the end of the current recruitment round for September. Since recruitment doesn’t meet the DfE’s target number it is perhaps not fair to complain that the Teacher Supply model seems to underestimate demand for teachers of business studies every year, just as it over-estimates the need for teachers of physical education.

London schools have certainly been quick of the mark in posting vacancies for September. Whether this is their relatively better financial situation; the result of anticipated growing school rolls; greater loss of teaching staff to other posts or a combination of all these factors isn’t obvious from the raw data. If schools were willing to post a reason for the vacancy, they would provide useful data to all sides in the teacher supply debate.

TeachVac will shortly be publishing two reports on the labour market for teachers in 2017. One will deal with the turnover of leaders in the primary sector and the other will consider the main scale vacancies in different secondary subjects.

The senior staff turnover report will restart the time series about senior staff appointments that went through 27 annual reports written by myself between the early 1980s and 2012. There are some illuminating facts in both reports. The secondary sector reports illuminates why some schools may find both the 2018 and 2019 recruitment rounds challenging, not only for business studies teachers but also for teachers in several other subjects. Schools would be well advised to arrange ‘keep in touch’ schemes for teachers taking career break whether for maternity leave or other reasons. Schools should also look at possible arrangements for teachers that want to work part-time.

TeachVac has now started a site for international schools and will be using this to also encourage teachers to return to teach in England by linking the site with vacancies in England across both state-funded and private schools.

The DfE are holding a meeting next week to update recruiters on progress with their embryonic vacancy service. With TeachVac already providing a free national service, it is difficult to see why the DfE wants to spend public money on something that already exists, especially given that apparently it cost the DfE £700,000 to revamp the static Edubase site last year.

Do schools employ teachers with QTS?

Posted on June 27, 2017 by John Howson

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

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

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

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

Oxfordshire	21%

Source DfE School Workforce Census 2016

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

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

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

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

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: staffing