Tag Archives: teacher education

Teacher Preparation data – Part 1

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The final UCAS figures for numbers on graduate teacher starting preparation courses this autumn were published earlier today. These figures exclude Teach First, but cover almost all other graduate courses. The final outcome figures of those that actually turned up, and were still there after the first couple of weeks, will be published in late November when the DfE’s ITT census appears. However, these figures from UCAS can provide a good approximation of that outcome.

This year has been an unusual recruitment round, as there has been a late surge in applications and acceptances. Such a late surge is normally only seen when the economy is in recession and jobs for graduates are scare. As that isn’t the case this year, there must be another reason for the upturn in interest in teaching. However, whatever the reason, the interest is to be welcomed.

By mid-September this year, UCAS had received applications from 41,020 applicants domiciled in England compared with 41,690 at the same point last year: a credible outcome for what might have been a disastrous year had early trends not been overturned. However, the only regions with more applicants this year were the North West and the West Midlands, both not key areas of teacher shortages. The most worrying trend is the continued downward rate in applications from the 23-29 age group. Applications from young new graduates held steady, while those from old applicants continued to increase. Whether older applicants will continue to apply, if Lucy Kellaway’s BBC radio series next week about her experiences of the profession gains wide traction, only time will tell.

The total number of men applying in England fell to just over 13,000 this year, from almost 13,700 last year while more women applied, but not in large enough numbers to offset the decline in male applicants.

Applications, and candidates may make several applications, were down for all types of course catering for primary teacher preparation. However, higher education and SCITTs saw more applications that last year for secondary teacher preparation courses. There were fewer applications for secondary School Direct courses, with only 4,970 applications for the ‘Salaried’ route compared with 6,170 in 2017. As far as secondary schools are concerned, there might need to be a review of training, especially when taken into consideration with the data on SKE courses contained in today’s DfE publication on the teacher workforce. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/teachers-analysis-compendium-4

School Direct ‘Salaried’ numbers ‘Placed’ have dropped in the secondary sector from 990 in September 2016, to just 560 this year, with similar numbers ‘conditionally placed’ in both years. By this time, one wonders why there are any remaining ‘conditionally placed’ applicants. Higher Education is again taking its places as the main route for preparing secondary school teachers, even if SCITT courses are counted with the other school-based routes. In the primary sector, there has been an increase in numbers ‘Placed’ on School Direct ‘Salaried’ courses, but fewer trainees were ‘Placed’ in higher education courses than last year, although the final outcome will depend upon what happens to the slightly higher number of ‘conditionally placed’ applicants this year.

The DfE has announced the bursary rates for trainees starting courses in 2019. Still no bursary for business studies trainees, and a shocking waste of money with bursaries for history trainees. Either, pay a salary or waive fees for all trainees or have a genuine policy of dealing with shortage subjects, not this charade where bursaries have little relation to real teacher supply issues.

 

 

Welcome for BERA Bites series

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BERA, The British Educational Research Association today publishes the second in its series of BERA Bites https://www.bera.ac.uk/researchers-resources/publications/issue-2-educational-leadership-are-our-schools-fit-for-the-future

The BERA Bites series presents selected articles from the BERA Blog on key topics in education, presented in an easily printable and digestible format to serve as teaching and learning resources for students and professionals in education. Each collection features an introduction by editors with expertise in the field, and each article includes questions for discussion, composed by the authors, prompting readers to further explore the ideas and arguments put forward in the original articles.

This second BERA Bite is especially of interest to this blog as it contains a post from almost exactly two years ago. The post appeared on this blog on the 7th September 2016 and you can read it be either downloading the BERA bits of searching the archive on this blog for September 2016. The post was entitled ‘Recruitment, Retention and Region The three ‘R’s’ challenging school performance in England’.

I am grateful to BERA for putting this series together. It is a new form of peer review to have blog posts reviewed as well as more formal articles and the BITES series can become useful teaching aids for particular topics if kept regularly up to date. The issue of relevance is key. I turned to writing a blog, partly because for 11 years I wrote a variety of weekly columns for the TES and partly because, in a fast moving area such as the labour marker for teachers, writing academic articles is fine and dandy, but by the time they appear they are often only of historical interest in terms of policy development.

This is best seen in the series of posts on this blog during August 2013, when I wrote a post on the 7th August predicting a teacher supply crisis in London starting in 2014. The subsequent posts show the government reacted to my conclusions. Had I written an article for an academic journal about a possible teacher supply crisis and submitted it in August 2013, some reviewers might have rejected it as lacking sufficient evidence and, even if sufficiently articulate and scholarly, neither outcomes I can guarantee to produce, it would have been sometime in 2014 before it saw the light of day.

This is not to argue for the demise of academic journals, their place is firmly established in the academic discourses but to welcome the move BERA and others are making to recognise that some areas of education policy move at a different pace to others and may need different forms of discourse and that there is a need for teaching materials prompting readers to further explore the discussions put forward in the original articles.

So, please do read the BERA Bites both 1 & 2 and let BERA know what you think of the new series. If you are not a BERA member, but a regular reader of this blog, then you might want to consider whether it would be worth joining BERA, even if only for the access to the range research and information it provides to those interested in education.

QTS numbers: no room for complacency

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If you look at tables 6a and 6b of the ITT profiles published by the DfE this week, you can perhaps understand why some Ministers are sometimes dubious about a teacher recruitment crisis. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/initial-teacher-training-performance-profiles-2016-to-2017

In a whole range of subjects, the percentage of trainees in 2016/17 in employment within six months of gaining QTS was lower than in the previous year. A simple reading of those percentages might make one think that there were more unemployed teachers looking for work than the previous year, so that was alright wasn’t it. Not so. Although the number of secondary phase trainees awarded QTS in 201/17 was the highest since 2011/12, a whisker up on the previous year, there were still a range of subjects where the number of trainees awarded QTS was down on the previous year. However, it is worth acknowledging that 2015/16 and 2016/17 were better years for the award of secondary QTS than the two previous year. Sadly, 2017/18 isn’t like to continue the improvement; 2018/19 also looks like being another challenging year.

The DfE data on those with QTS in employment looks at both employment in state-funded and non-state funded schools, because of how the data has been collected. It is to be hoped that tying in QTS to the School Workforce Census will eventually revel better data about how many of those gaining QTS start teaching in locations other than state-funded schools.

In Physics, where 88% of those with known destinations from the 2016/17 were in teaching by six months from gaining QTS, the percentage a falls to no more than 70% of those that started a teacher preparation course. That’s a lot of bursary cash not producing a teacher in a state-funded school.

On the other hand, 88% of physical education trainees that started a course were teaching somewhere by six months after the end of their course. This is despite not having access to any bursary during their training and accruing fee debts of around £9,000 on top of their undergraduate debts. But, I suspect that the option for these graduates are less than for Physics graduates.

There are still worrying trends in some subjects, when comparing the differences in the percentage of trainees awarded QTS. The difference includes both failures as well as those that left the course after 90 days and those that failed to pass the Skills Tests for teachers.  The percentage of final year secondary trainees awarded QTS fell by a percentage point between 2015/16 and 2016/17 from 92% to 91%. However, the overall figure contains a range from 96% of PE final year trainees at one end of the scale to 83% of those on Physics courses. Even that percentage is better than the 79% of Physics final year trainees awarded QTS in 2012/13. Mathematics seems to have been stuck at just less than 90% for the past few years, whereas art and design and music recorded percentages awarded QTS in the mid-90% range most years. It may be that in these subjects technical subject knowledge is less of an issue with trainees and so more time can be spent on the application of the subject knowledge to classroom practice.

After two relatively good years, when the DfE recognised that there was a potential for a serious crisis in new entrants to teaching and upped the marketing on teaching as a career, the next two years are likely to see fewer new entrants with QTS. This is just at the time when pupil numbers in secondary schools are once again on the increase. Whether that will matter in 2019 will depend upon how many teaching staff schools will be able to afford to employ: it certainly mattered in 2018.

 

 

Signs of some relief

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You can just see the picture from earlier today. A civil servant rushes into Private Office and announces, ‘some good news on teacher recruitment at last!’ There have been 1,000 offers in English over the past two months and the subject is off the danger list, joining geography, history, biology, modern languages and physical education in the category of ‘should meet their targets in 2018, if these numbers are meaningful’.

However, that still leaves a slightly larger group of subjects where accepted applicants to teacher preparation courses won’t be enough to meet predicted need according to the DfE’s modelling process. Time is running out for these subjects and some, such as music and physics, are recording not only levels this month, where the Teacher Supply Model number won’t be met, but the number of offers made are also below the number of offers in July 2017.

Equally of concern is the further drop – compared with 2017 – both in the number of applicants (now down by slightly less than 2,000 on July 2017) and in the number of ‘placed’ applicants.

Although there are more applicants with a ‘conditional place’ than in July last year, there are around 900 fewer ‘placed’ applicants compared with July last year and around 3,000 fewer than in July 2015. This matters, because ‘placed’ applicants are the most likely applicants to turn up when the courses starts. Conditional placed applicants remain slightly more of a risk.

Age Group 2017 2018 Difference
21 and under

430

 270

160
22

750

 670

80
23

800

 690

110
24

640

 570

70
25-29

1550

 1250

300
30-39

810

 720

90
40 and over

610

 500

110
All age groups

5590

 4670

920

Numbers rounded to nearest ten, so total may reflect that fact.

The decline in ‘placed’ primary applicants in England, to 2,590 from 3,270 is clearly of concern, even though demand for primary teachers may be slackening compared with a couple of years ago as pupil intake numbers start to decline, mostly due to the fall in the birth rate since 2013.

There are only around 60 recorded ‘placed’ candidates in physics this year, compared to around 80 in July 2017. Even in history, ‘placed’ numbers are down from around 280 to around 240 this year. However, there 410 ‘placed’ candidates in biology compared with around 160 last year. This is another rare bit of good news and even figure is partly balanced by a decline in the number of ‘placed’ applicants in ‘science’.

The STRB Report, published earlier this week, showed a decline in the percentage of trainees on School Direct courses in 2017/18 over the previous year. In terms of ‘placed’ applicants, that decline has continued, with School Direct numbers of ‘placed’ candidates on Primary phase courses down from 1,270 to 1,060 and for Secondary phase courses, down from 1,000 to 790, with only around 130 ‘placed’ applicants on School Direct Salaried secondary courses in July this year. By contrast, placed applicants on Secondary phase courses in higher education are actually up this year compared with July 2017, from around 1,340 to around 1,390: another welcome piece of good news. Higher education courses also have more conditionally placed applicants than in July 2017 in the secondary phase, but not in the primary phase.

As we approach the summer season and the start of courses in less than two months’ time, 2018 looks like being another challenging recruitment round and it is possible that the 29th STRB Report in 2019 will have to record the seventh straight year that recruitment targets were not met. Of course, Brexit might change all that: only time will tell.

 

 

A glimmer of good news

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The government can take some relief in the UCAS data issued earlier today, but only in subjects such as English and art that really shouldn’t be a problem anyway. The list of subjects where offers to applicants by mid-June were still below the very poor 2017 figures include the key science subjects of Chemistry and Physics, -although there is a surfeit of Biologists this year. Mathematics, Music, and Religious Education complete the list of areas of real concern with just two months to go before most courses start in September.

There has been a post finals bounce in some subjects, no doubt helped by the publicity about teaching as a career. An announcement about teachers’ pay going forward might also have helped boost recruitment if there were signs of an end to the pay cap. Interestingly, history, always a banker for meeting its target in the past, is showing signs of weakness this year when compared to the record breaking numbers of last year. However, offers are still above the figure for two years ago.

Overall, applicant numbers still haven’t recovered to the level of last year and, at 33,210, are some 2,600 below June 2017. More worryingly, the ‘placed’ number of applicants is down from 3,480 in 2017 to 2,770 this June. This is partly compensated for in a rise of 200 in those ‘holding offers’. The number of conditionally places applicants is broadly similar to last year, at just over 20,000

Interestingly, Mr Gibb won’t find much evidence in this data to support his expressed view of higher education turning away quality applicants. As noted in another earlier post, the data on applicants as opposed to applications isn’t easily accessible but if you look at secondary applications minus an estimate for Higher Education’s contribution to Physical Education – where applicants numbers exceed places by a significant amount you end up with higher education and SCITTS doing far better than School Direct routes in terms of turning applications into offers.

Secondary minus

Estimate for PE

 Placed Conditionally Placed Holding Offer All Offers Total applications % Applications as offers
HE 740 4770 540 6050 20500 30%
SCITT 100 1780 110 1990 6470 31%
SD Fee 360 3190 150 3700 14770 25%
SD Salaried 70 590 40 700 3860 18%
All routes 1270 10330 840 12440 45600 27%
Source based on UCAS data for June 2018

With the data on applicants and offers by subject this would be more than an estimate of the position. Nevertheless, the longer established routes do seem to be performing better than the School Direct routes, especially the salaried route into teaching. Unless schools continue to recruit during the summer holidays this table is only likely to see a further strengthening of higher education and SCITTs in their share of applicants made offers.

Elsewhere, the data shows the continued weakness among younger applicants and relatively better application rates from those over 30. The over-30s now make up around 30% of applicants.

Unless there is a dramatic change in the next month, 2019 is going to be another challenging recruit round for schools, especially in London and the Home Counties where pupil numbers are on the increase.

 

The making of a myth?

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Where a Minister say ‘it is my view’ you can wonder whether he asked his civil servants for some evidence to support his statement, but likely it wasn’t there. Nick Gibb, a relic of the Gove era and generally no friend of higher education’s role in teacher training and development, uttered the said phrase in his speech to the Festival of Education held this weekend. As reported by the DfE he said;

It is my view that in previous years too many universities rejected candidates who were ready to be trained to become highly effective and inspirational teachers. The government has worked with universities and Ofsted to ensure that they are incentivised to take on applicants who are ready to train to teach.

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/nick-gibb-teachers-are-taking-control-of-their-profession

It is interesting to look at the evidence to see how far it supports his stated view

In 2017, the UCAS end of cycle report on applications revealed that there had been 54,310 applications for places on primary sector courses and 66,770 applications for places on secondary sector courses. Sadly, UCAS didn’t publish the data for applicants as opposed to applications.

Percentage of applications placed
Primary Placed Total % Placed
HE 6110 26100 23%
SCITT 1240 4910 25%
SD Fee 3390 13790 25%
SD Salary 1630 9510 17%
Total 12370 54310 23%
 
Secondary  
HE 7540 34770 22%
SCITT 1790 7330 24%
SD Fee 3800 18500 21%
SD Salary 990 6170 16%
Total 14120 66770 21%

Source UCAS End of cycle Report B Table 10

At this stage it is worth remembering that applicants could, but didn’t have to, make as many as three applications. Some rejected by all three may make additional applications to other providers. At least for 2017, the evidence is mixed. In the primary sector, two of the three schools routes accepted a larger percentage of applications than higher education, whereas in the secondary sector, where applications to different subjects plays a part, higher education placed a higher percentage of applications than the two main School Direct routes.  In both the primary and secondary sectors, the SCITT route had the highest percentage of applications accepted.

Now it is possibly that some routes attract more mature and location specific applicants. These might make less than three applications but, overall, there were 41,700 applicants recorded by UCAS with a domicile group shown as England. Providers in England received 122,150 applications. This equates to just over 2.9 applications per applicant if we assume applicants domiciled in England applied to providers also located in England, so may well not be the reason for the disparity. Applicants for primary courses may prefer training in a university rather than a school setting: the data doesn’t allow us to answer that question.

Looking back in time to 2007, where I can easily access the data on applications and acceptances through the then GTTR system from a paper I wrote for Policy Exchange on The Labour Market for Teachers, I see, higher education and the few SCITTS then around, had an impressive track record of accepting 57% of all secondary applicants and 44% of those applying for primary courses. In those days there were lots of would-be primary teachers.

In Design & Technology, always a shortage subject, 77% of applicants were accepted, as were 70% of those wanting to be music teachers and 70% of would-be languages teachers. At the other end of the scale only 32% of would-be drama teachers and 35% of potential PE teachers were accepted.

So, please Mr Gibb, can we have the evidence for your view before it joins other myths about teacher education.

 

Notice to ITT providers, both existing and potential new providers

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I would be grateful if readers of this blog could alert those that either provide ITT places or are seeking to do so in 2019 to the following.

In the DfE’s Requesting initial teacher training places for 2019 to 2020 document issued yesterday https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-itt-requesting-places-2019-to-2020 There is mention of:

.. a realistic assessment of employment need in the local area in submissions (Section 3, page 6)

TeachVac is able to offer providers an independent set of figures showing the number of vacancies advertised in Jan – Dec 2017 and from Jan – Jun 2018 in a range of secondary subjects and for primary teacher posts. There is a small fee providing this information. TeachVac will also add some summary information about the national vacancy situation at the end of 2017. The information provided can be used to justify data include din submissions to the DfE

TeachVac’s normal turnaround for this service would be three working days from receipt of both an official order and details of the secondary subjects needed, whether primary teacher vacancies are required, and local authority areas to be covered. A one working day turnaround is available for an extra fee.

TeachVac can offer the following list of secondary subjects for which data is readily available:

PE, Art, History, Languages, Mathematics, All sciences, Music, Geography, English, Computing /IT, D&T, Business Studies as well as primary teaching vacancies.

Other secondary subjects on the DfE may well be available – if you would like data on these, please ask about the specific the subject required.

Costs:

For many providers the costs are likely to be £55 + VAT, but larger providers requiring more data, a provider could pay around £110 + VAT. This is made up as:

Up to 5 subjects across up to 5 LEA’s – £55 + VAT (this is the minimum cost)

If you need more subjects / local authorities then TeachVac will charge £28 + VAT for each group of up to 10 subject-LEA’s (1 subject in 10 LEA’s or 2 subjects in 5 LEA’s etc).

Expedite fee (1 day turn around) – £85 + VAT

Sub division of science into Combined / Physics / Chemistry / Biology specialisms as requested in the job adverts – £11 + VAT per LEA. This service is also available on request for design and technology and modern languages for an extra fee.

Those providers who recommend TeachVac to their trainees and or registered schools are entitled to a 10% discount on these costs.

How to proceed:

Email data@teachvac.com with details of who you are, a list of subjects, a list of LEA’s, any special requirements and whether you recommend TeachVac to your trainees and or registered schools.

TeachVac will email back a total cost and action the request upon receipt of an official order / order number.

TeachVac is a totally free national vacancy service to schools and teachers.

If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact TeachVac.

 

A thank you to Schools of Education

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Michael Gove didn’t like Schools of Education in Universities. He effectively set out to reduce their leading role in teacher education and especially their role in training new teachers. He wasn’t alone in that regard among Conservative Secretaries of State for Education. Mr Gove took the decision to create the two School Direct routes – fee based and salaried – to replace the former Graduate Teacher Training Route (GTTP) that had been operating for just over a decade as a replacement for earlier schemes designed to help alleviate teacher shortages; he also decided to allow Teach First to expand.

I recall a meeting in Whitehall with David Laws, when he was Minister of State during the coalition, where I explained that the policy then in operation would have effectively destroyed many higher education secondary teacher preparation courses, especially where they were not under-pinned by a large primary cohort, because they would simply not have been economic to run.

Had all the requests from schools that year for arts and humanities places been accepted, there is no doubt in my mind that there would have been considerable changes in the landscape of university provision across England and possibly course and even department closures. Fortunately, increasing secondary pupil numbers and a degree of common sense, plus I suspect a degree of lobbying by others more influential than myself, meant that the doomsday scenario for higher education didn’t come to pass.

So what has happened over the past four years in terms of the percentages of applications via the different routes? The month of May is a good time to consider this question as, although universities and most SCITTs remain open all year for applications, some schools tend to close their books with the end of their summer term. As a result, the data for the end of the year may be skewed in favour of higher education providers. I was also asked the question by a course provider in response to yesterday’s post ‘a sigh of relief’.

So here are the percentages for applications in May over the past four years, as derived from the UCAS monthly data reports.

Primary 2015 2016 2017 2018
HE 51 45 48 47
SCITT 8 9 9 10
SDFEE 24 27 25 25
SDSAL 17 19 18 18
Secondary 2015 2016 2017 2018
HE 51 47 50 52
SCITT 8 10 11 12
SDFEE 29 31 29 28
SDSAL 12 12 9 7

Source; UCAS Monthly data reports on ITT – percentage of applications

The key point to note is the different position of higher education in the two sectors. In the primary sector, schools have been adding market share in terms of applications every year since 2015, although the School Direct Fee route seems to have stalled this year. Some of the change may be due to the reduction of new women graduates looking to train as a primary teacher, as the decline in their numbers may have dis-proportionally affected higher education providers. It is worth noting that in May 2015 there were just over 49,000 applications for primary courses, compared with just 38,100 in May 2018.

In the secondary sector, as numbers applying have reduced, so higher education has started to regain market share, reaching 52% in May 2018. The big decline is in School Direct Salaried – down from 12% of applications to seven per cent in 2018. Had SCITTs not taken up part of the decline, higher education might now have an even larger market share of the just under 47,000 applications this year. This compares to more than 53,000 applications to secondary courses in May 2015.

Without higher education and its willingness to train teachers and to fight for the right to do so, our schools  might now be in an even worse situation than they find themselves in when trying to recruit new teachers.

it is a salutatory lesson to politicians such as myself that we need to look not only at the immediate consequences of our actions, but also ensure resilience for the longer-term. That isn’t an argument for never changing anything, but for being aware of the consequences of our actions. A new system would have emerged from any collapse of existing higher education providers, but would it have been worth the pain and turmoil?

 

 

A sigh of relief

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The UCAS data on postgraduate applications to train as a teacher as recorded for May appeared today. The combination of the arrival of offers affected by the Easter holidays plus the addition of almost an extra week of data compared with last year means the government can breathe a small sigh of relief. On the evidence of this data meltdown has been averted for 2018, except perhaps in music, religious education, design and technology and probably physics.

Overall applicant numbers have recovered to 29,890 in England, still down on last year, despite the extra days and some 10% down on May 2016 applicant numbers, but it could have been worse. The decline is still national in scope, with all regions recording lower applicant numbers than in 2016. The almost 3,000 fewer applicants than last year are also spread across the age groups, although the loss is probably greatest among early career changers in their mid to late 20s. This fact shows up in the further reduction in the number of ‘placed’ applicants compared with those with either ‘conditional firm’ places or ‘holding offers’. By domicile region of applicants, ‘placed’ applicants are down from 2,330 last year to 1,890 this May. In London, ‘placed’ applicants are down from 380 to just 300.  Of course, over the next few months the ‘placed’ number will increase as ‘conditionally placed’ applicants receive their degrees and complete any other requirements needed to move them into the ‘placed’ category.

All routes, apart from applications to secondary SCITTs, have been affected by the reduction in applications. Primary courses have lost more than 6,000 applicants compared with last year and numbers ‘placed’ only just exceed 1,000, with fewer than 10,000 applicants with ‘conditional places’ and a further 700 holding offers. In total, this is barely more than 11,000 potential trainees and marks the continued downward trend for the primary sector.

In the secondary sector, SCITTS have attracted just a couple of hundred more applications than this point last year, but that must be regarded as a success. Applications to School Direct Salaried courses have nearly halved over the past two years, although whether that is a drop in applicants or a decline in interest in this route on the part of schools isn’t clear from this data. At this rate there will be fewer than 1,000 secondary trainees with a salary come September (leaving aside those on Teach First).

Looking at some of the individual secondary subjects, music has just 200 possible applicants with offers of any type, compared with 260 in May 2017. Design and Technology is down to only ten ‘placed’ applicants compared with 30 in May 2017. Even in mathematics, numbers placed or holding offers is little more than 1,500; a new low for May in recent times.

Finishing on a good note, English is doing relatively well, with 1,640 offers, although that still isn’t enough to meet the Teacher Supply Number of just over 2,500 trainees.

Overall, perhaps the sigh of relief might only be a small one at the moment. Let’s hope for better times next month as new graduates that haven’t done anything about a job while studying start to decide how to spend their future.

 

Why the TSM matters

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The TSM, or Teacher Supply Model to use its full name, is the mechanism used by the DfE to identify the changes in the labour market for teachers that will determine how many training places will be needed and thus funded in a future given year. It also provides indicative numbers for other years, mostly assuming current policies and other inputs don’t change during the time period under consideration.

For many years the workings of the TSM under its various iterations were largely concealed from public view. However, over the past few years, the outcome of the process and how the numbers were created has been exposed to public gaze. Not that many members of the public have probably taken the opportunity of open government to work through the DfE’s calculations. If you are interested, visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-supply-model and immerse yourself in an interesting read.

Why bring this up now. Well, apart for the fact that the TSM for 2019 to 2020 will appear sometime soon, tomorrow is the last day for resignations for teachers wanting to leave their jobs this summer. At that point in time, it is often possible to see how well the TSM has worked. However, in periods where recruitment into training is a challenge and the TSM or any other figure for trainee numbers set by the DfE isn’t reached, the outcome is more complicated.

Nevertheless, if there are still far more trainees than jobs in the recruitment round by the end of May, then something isn’t working as efficiently as it might. There are two subjects where, based upon the vacancy data collected by TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk where I am the Chair, questions might be asked? These are physical education and history. Both are important because students training to be teachers on these courses bear the whole cost of their training through fees and living costs. Should such students have an expectation that the DfE will not create too many training places resulting in a proportion not being able to secure a teaching post in their subject in either a state or a private school?

The over-supply of physical education trainees has been apparent for some time now and many find jobs in other subjects where they are not fully prepared for their teaching timetable. Potential teachers of physical education presumably do their homework before apply to train as a teacher and decide the risk is manageable, since numbers of applicants hold up very well every year.

The situation in history is more complicated. The advent of the English Baccalaureate created an expectation in the DfE TSM modelling process that more teachers of history would be required as more pupils studied the subject at Key Stage 4. How far that expectation has come to pass will be revealed next month when the data from the 2017 Teacher Workforce Census is revealed. However, even allowing for post for teachers of Humanities as well as teachers of History, this recruitment round does not seem to have created enough vacancies to absorb anywhere near the number of trainees.  Indeed, the risk to history trainees looking for a teaching post is now little different to that for physical education trainees in some parts of the country.

I don’t think that this means the DfE should no longer model teacher needs through the TSM, but I do wonder whether its regime should be so market orientated in how it deals with those that want to be a teacher.