Should trainees bring benefits as well as costs?

Posted on November 11, 2014 by John Howson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still looking for teachers

Posted on August 18, 2014 by John Howson

As of Sunday three-quarters of the undergraduate teacher training courses in England were still in ‘clearing’. That was just over 30 courses. What was interesting was the large number of church universities that weren’t in clearing. Indeed, even if you exclude the University of Durham from the list of church universities, despite the historical association between its teacher education college and the Church of England, more than half the list of institutions not in clearing were church universities, with Reading, Leeds and London Metropolitan Universities being the three exceptions.

From a quick look through the clearing courses, secondary design and technology and some of the sports Science courses related to teaching, as well as primary teacher training courses are looking to fill their remaining places. Of course, the clearing lists don’t tell anything about how many places are still available. Is it one at each institution, a tiny percentage of the overall total, or a more substantial number? Perhaps how many courses are still in clearing in a couple of weeks time will provide a better indication of what is happening?

With the skills tests to pass, and most courses starting around the 15^th of September, although one or two start at the beginning of the month, there is little time to spare, especially with the bank holiday to be taken account of as well.

How far the switch of numbers resulting from some providers returning places, and the National College having had to reallocate them in the early summer to different providers, has led to so many institutions offering at least one teacher training place in clearing cannot be ascertain from the raw figures. However, as I have constantly said in the past, we need to ensure the best possible candidates are recruited into teaching.

The DfE is undertaking a study into recruitment and retention, and it might be helpful if they evaluate as a part of that study whether there are differential retention rates from the different types of training. We do need to know the true costs of all training routes if some have a lower retention rate than others.

If we assume a training cost of £10,000 per student per year allowing for expenditure not currently recovered through fees, then a five per cent difference in retention rates might cost several million pounds extra in training. For this reason alone, it is worth monitoring the different routes. However, since one route is never likely to be able to supply all the need for new entrants, it may be necessary to accept some differential wastage rates; but work to reduce them.

Nevertheless, if the main reasons for leaving the profession are retirement and for family reasons, it is worth looking hard at those other cases where some malfunction in the system has caused a person to quit the profession that they trained for. Teachers are a precious resource; we cannot afford to discard them lightly.

Apocalypse Soon?

Posted on October 3, 2013 by John Howson

Recently BBC Television has been running a series about films and their music. One of the trailers was from Apocalypse Now and showed the choppers scything through the sky on their way to attack Viet Cong positions to the accompaniment of the music of Richard Wagner. Interestingly, according to his wife, the current Secretary of State for Education is a big Wagner fan. However, it is, perhaps, a coincidence that the Wagnerian sense of the end of the world that is so often conveyed by the use of the term Gotterdammerung might just now be applied to what seems to be happening in the world of teacher training.

In my last post on the topic of teacher supply I promised not to write about this issue again until the time of the ITT census in November and, in terms of reviewing the 2013 round, I hope to stick to that resolution. However, the world moves on apace, and the next four weeks will be of vital importance for the future shape of teacher training in England. Bids for 2014 control numbers, as targets are now called, will be collated from a “snapshot” taken by the NCSL on the 11^th October. It is rumoured that the outcome will be presented to Ministers on the 14^th October. Certainly, schools requesting School Direct places had to have notified the NCSL of initial requests by the 23^rd September. Other providers, although they weren’t given a deadline in the recently published methodology document, would have been well advised to have made bids by now, even though final re-worked targets won’t be available until early in 2014, and changes by anyone allocated any sort of place can be made right up until the start of August 2014.

Although the NCTL announced that allocations would be published in November; it is difficult to see how, if the Select Committee hold another evidence session with the Minister in late October, the figures won’t, at least at the headline level, be in the public domain by then.

The key issue is whether the “control numbers” represent a realistic expectation of the number of training places needed in each phase, and secondary subject. In Physics and Mathematics, where there is to be no restriction on recruitment, this is not a factor, but anything could happen.

If schools bid for more than the 9,500 School Direct places of 2013 in the 2014 round (minus the 1,640 Mathematics and Physics places that are uncapped making 7,860 bids within the secondary control envelope), and that envelope is not increased, then that leaves less than 4,000 places for other providers including higher education. As SCITTs and other non-higher education providers accounted for around 900 “control envelope” secondary places in 2013 (excluding Mathematics and Physics), and might be expected to bid for more for 2014, that could leave as few as 3,000 places available for higher education across all subjects within the envelope. If the “control envelope” doesn’t increase at the same rate as bids from schools for School Direct then even the 3,000 places might be generous.

After allowing for the guarantee to ‘outstanding’ providers from the Secretary of State that he issued in June, it is difficult to see how the denominational promise is going to be satisfied in secondary and if it is, whether there will be any places left for providers not judged ‘outstanding’. Apocalypse Soon could then become Apocalypse Now and an apt description of what could well happen to teacher education in higher education over the period between now and Christmas.

Has Michael Gove failed to learn the lessons of history?

Posted on July 2, 2013 by John Howson

There is a view currently fashionable among political analysts that cabinet ministers should stay in the same post for several years, preferably after having shadowed the portfolio in opposition or presumably worked as a junior Minister during any longer term period of government. This view is based upon the fact that Ministers who stay in post longer are thought to be more competent, and thus better at their job. It’s a point of view, but not one I necessarily subscribe to. Firstly, it presupposes ministers are competent at their jobs, and not appointed for other more political reasons, and secondly, not all minister enjoy the routine tasks associated with running a department of state at Westminster.

All this is by way of introduction to a discussion about how well the provision of teacher training is working now that the DfE has taken its oversight in-house after nearly 20 years operating through an external agency.

Regular readers of this blog will recognise that I have expressed some concerns about the new School Direct system that has replaced the former employment-based Graduate Teacher Programme and at the same time has been significantly expanded as part of a wish by the Secretary of State to transfer training from the university sector back to schools. To save new readers the chore of trawling through my previous posts I have summarised the relevant bits below:

This is what I wrote in March about the state of recruitment this year;

For the purposes of this blog I reviewed the data provided on the DfE web site regarding the total number of places on School Direct, and how many remained available at the middle of March in two subjects. Physics was chosen because it has traditionally been a ‘shortage’ subject, and even those not offered a salary can claim relatively generous bursaries. By contrast, history has not been regarded as a shortage subject, and those not on the salaried scheme may find little by way of financial support to help them through their training.

The results when I looked on the 15^th March were that only 4% of the ‘salaried’ School Direct places for Physics were shown as ‘unavailable’, as were just 6% of the ‘non-salaried’ Physics ‘Training’ places. That’s a total of 29 places out of 572 on offer for Physics shown as ‘unavailable’, and presumably, therefore, filled. In history, the position was better, with a quarter of the 336 places shown as ‘unavailable’, and presumably filled.

Now it is too early to be sounding alarm bells but, with the Easter holiday fast approaching, schools probably won’t be holding many more interviews until sometime in April. By the end of that month there will be just four months before the new school year when the School Direct candidates will be expected to start their training. By now Teach First has usually closed its book to new applicants, but this year even that programme is still accepting applications in the sciences, mathematics, computer science/ICT and English.

Taken together, the fact that the three leading routes used for preparing teachers are finding this a challenging recruitment round means that the government must take notice and, if necessary, action.

Now it may be that School Direct partners are just slow in notifying the DfE that they have accepted candidates. It may also be that they are used to recruiting teachers for September largely between March and May, and don’t appreciate the fact that training places have generally been organised earlier in the year than that. Schools may also be expecting a higher standard from potential applicants than higher education has sometimes been able to demand. Whatever the reasons, we will not produce a world-class education system unless we have enough teachers. johnohowson.wordpress.com 19^th March 2013

Early in May after the government posted data about applications to School Direct. I commented that;

The government released data today that showed around 20,000 applicants had made more than 64,000 applications to become a teacher through the new School Direct route. That’s around seven applications per place, and well above the ratio for the university teacher preparation courses, where applications through GTTR for postgraduate courses rarely hit the level of four applications per place except in very popular subjects such as History, Physical Education, the Social Sciences and Drama. However, since GTTR measure applicants rather than gross applications so on that basis School Direct is probably doing little better than GTTR in terms of applicants per places available. But, without a breakdown of applicants as well as applications by subject and phase to School Direct it is impossible to be sure.

With so many applications to choose from you might expect School Direct to have filled all its places by now, just as Teach First has already closed its door to applicants for this year. But, you would be wrong, if data from the DfE web site is correct. Over the Easter weekend only between 7% and 45% of the salaried places were filled, depending upon the subject, and there was a similar percentage range of places filled on the non-salaried training route. With so many applicants, this means that only between two and nine per cent of applicants appear to have been offered places on School Direct so far. This is a much lower proportion than for the courses offered by universities through GTTR.

The obvious questions that arise are whether there are better applicants for the GTTR courses than School Direct or are perhaps admissions tutors in universities being more generous in making offers than their colleagues in schools? Take Chemistry as an example: on the School Direct Salaried route, 11% of the places were filled by Easter, and that represented just four per cent of applicants being offered places. On the School Direct Training Route nine per cent of places were filled, and just three per cent of applicants had been offered a place. By comparison on the GTTR courses 46% of the applicants had been offered a place although this was down on the 51% accepted at the same time last year. Given that it is unlikely anyone without the basic academic degree class bothers to apply, it seems odd that so many applicants have yet to be offered a place through the School Direct programme, especially as applications have been arriving since the autumn.

However, there is still about three months to go, so all is not yet lost, but the government will need to keep a close eye on whether schools are being slow at interviewing applicants that applied sometime ago or whether schools have decided the quality of the applicants are not good enough. There is certainly no guarantee that a flood of high quality applicants will turn up at the last minute, and too many empty places could cause staffing problems for some schools next summer. A teacher supply crisis in the year before a general election would be embarrassing for the government that made much of the large number of applicants to the School Direct programme in its announcement today. No doubt the lack of a similar announcement about the numbers accepted was an oversight that will be quickly rectified. johnohowson.wordpress.com 8^th May 2013

On the 1^st June, I commented further that;

… earlier this week I worked out that less than a quarter of training places in Chemistry on the School Direct route were being shown as filled on the DfE web site compared with about double that figure for the higher education routes in the subject.

Now, as I have maintained before that difference in acceptances could well be because of schools requiring higher standards than universities from their would-be trainees. If so, then there is little more than three months left to find the trainees to fill the remaining places at a time when the market for graduates appears to be reviving. If the schools and universities haven’t selected from those who have already applied, why should those who apply now be any better in calibre? An analysis of application patterns over recent years has shown that once the rush of applications from finalists who haven’t yet thought about life after university is over there are relatively few other applicants as the summer months pass by. Now, this year may be different, but it is difficult to see why it should be if the overall market for graduates is better than in recent years, as those yet to make a decision about their future have more choice than in recent years, unlike their colleagues in many other European countries. johnohowson.wordpress.com 1st June 2013

These comments come from a single researcher working alone and unfunded and reveal the possibility of a crisis unfolding that will potentially cause a shortfall in teachers seeking to enter the profession in the summer of 2014. With the resources available to the government, anything less than a complete understanding of the situation seems like a dereliction of duty.

At the end of June I conducted a full review of the availability of places as shown on the School Direct web site. This has led me to consider the likely outcome for different subjects.

Those subjects where all places are likely to be taken up in 2013

Primary

Art

Business Studies

Those subjects where there is some risk in one route of not all places being filled

English – both routes

Music – training route

Physical Education – training route

History – training route

Those subjects where there is a substantial risk of a serious shortfall against places available (33%+) in one or both routes

Modern Languages

Biology

Design & Technology

Chemistry

Religious Education

Mathematics

Computer Science

Physics

Geography

Coming, as this outcome does, after several years when recruitment to teacher training has largely not been an issue, the present situation is a wake-up call for all concerned, and ministers must take urgent action if we are not to see a re-run of the crisis in teacher recruitment that occurred in the early days of the Blair government. There are two months left before the training courses start, so all is not yet lost. However, if my predictions prove accurate, some schools are going to struggle to recruit teachers next summer: good news for recruitment agencies, but probably not for some pupils. And, as I have said before, this is no way to create a world-class education system.

Birds of a feather

Posted on June 17, 2013 by John Howson

Nothing I have read so far about the Social Mobility Commission Report into access to Russell Group universities that was published earlier today has mentioned the need for state schools to be able to access the best teachers. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/206994/FINAL_Higher_Education_-_The_Fair_Access_Challenge.pdf

The present gap between state and private school pupils’ access to this group of universities is certainly dire in many cases, but unless we can adequately staff our state schools it won’t improve. On top of that problem there is the unspoken issue of revision classes and private tutoring often used when some parents are concerned that their child’s school may not be delivering the grades required for entry to a particular university.

Much has been made by some commentators of the fact that state school pupils study the wrong subjects for entry to Russell Group universities, but this doesn’t seem to be an issue in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland where, Edinburgh University apart, the Russell Group institutions generally meet or exceed their state school targets. Leaving aside for a moment the Oxbridge issue, there seem to be a group of Russell Group universities that stand out as being the farthest from their benchmarks; Bristol and Durham in particular, followed by Exeter, Newcastle and a group of London institutions that includes Imperial, UCL and LSE. Although Leeds isn’t in this list, the size of the university means if it did more to attract state school pupils it could also make an impact on the shortfall.

It is to be hoped that these state school pupils that don’t make it Russell Group universities do still attend a university, and that they are rewarded with teaching that stretches their able minds. Then there is the issue, touched on in the Commission’s report, of what happens after university. If employers only attend Russell Group universities looking for new talent, then unequal access to these universities is certainly acting as a filter. But, as the Report identifies, requiring upfront fees for postgraduate study can also be a powerful barrier where private sector employers require a post-graduate qualification. Of course, the egalitarian Mr Gove has solved that problem in education by allowing some schools to take into teaching those with no training at all. But, in reality, that is a different argument. There is also the question of how instrumental candidates from state schools are in selecting both ‘A’ level subjects and degree courses. It is no doubt better to be employed with a degree from a local university than both a NEET and a Russell Group graduate. However, the evidence of the need for state school pupils to achieve higher grades to obtain entry clearly suggests that something unfortunate is going on in England. The Commission might like to republish its findings with just students domiciled in England included: the position then might be even starker than at present.

As I hinted earlier, the need to continue to ensure a supply of sufficient teachers for all schools is a necessary condition if even the present situation is to be maintained, let alone improved. Regular readers will know of my fear in that respect. If they come true, who attends what university still be a matter of even more concern in 2020, and probably well into the next decade.

Ethnic minority teachers: some progress, but where are we heading?

Posted on June 16, 2013 by John Howson

In the autumn of 1997 the new Labour government held three conferences designed to raise awareness about the need to recruit more teachers from ethnic minority groups. Over the following 15 years the TTA, and its successor the TDA, continually tried to encourage more recruits into teaching from among students with an ethnic minority background. Their success was mixed. As the following table shows, students from a White background were more likely to be accepted into teaching than were those students from minority backgrounds, at least as far as courses for graduates to train as a teacher were concerned.

Applications and acceptances by ethnic grouping – UK domicile UK degree 2007-2010
Ethnic Group	Applications	Accepted	% accepted	% of the total accepted
Asian	14,787	3,176	21.40%	6%
Black	6,008	905	15.00%	2%
Other/Unknown	9,441	2,475	26.00%	5%
White	147,833	48,359	32.70%	88%
Total	178,069	54,915

Source: The Author

As a result, it has been estimated that if there were thee hundred graduate would-be teachers; 100 each from the Asian, Black and White groupings: 24 of the white group, 14 of the Asian group, and just nine of the Black group would be likely to fulfil their aspiration of teaching in a state funded school classroom. Even in the sciences, where shortages have been the greatest, out of three hundred would-be science teachers there would be 34 White teachers, 17 Asian teachers and 11 Black teachers.

This suggests that is a need to understand why this discrepancy between the groups arises, especially so since with School Direct decisions now being made at the level of the individual schools. There is evidence that even when students from an ethnic minority have gained QTS they find it more of a challenge to secure a teaching post.

A second concern is that when ethnic minorities do secure teaching posts they tend to do so in areas where there are large numbers of pupils from ethnic minorities in the schools. A study of the 2012 School Workforce Survey revealed 115 schools where two thirds or more of their teaching staff were from ethnic minority groups. Overwhelmingly, these schools were in London. Of the 31 local authority areas with at least one school that had two thirds or greater ethnic minority staff, 23 were London Boroughs, and only Birmingham among the other eight authorities outside of London had more than two schools where the staffroom was comprised of more than two thirds ethnic minority teachers. The London Borough of Brent had by far the largest number of schools; 28 in all that met the two-thirds criteria. Many of these schools, along with those in other authorities, were primary schools, including the school I attended for six years as a primary age pupil, but there were some secondary school in the list. The other London Boroughs with more than five schools with high concentrations of staff from ethnic minorities included; Ealing; Hackney; Lambeth; Newham; Tower Hamlets and Haringey.

This concentration of teachers from ethnic minorities in a small number of schools raises the issue of whether this might increasingly create schools that are monocultural in nature, and whether this is desirable in a multi-cultural society? Outside of the big cities, teachers from ethnic minorities are probably far rarer sights for white pupils than the Asian corner-shop and the Chinese, Thai or Bangladeshi Restaurant. Can this developing divide be healthy for society?

Missing the target is a known. By how much is still a known unknown.

Posted on June 1, 2013 by John Howson

This week’s Education Journal carried a piece by Chris Waterman, my co-author of the new book on Teacher Training Places in 2013. His article was entitled ‘Teacher supply: how the Rumsfeldian model is coming along’ and it considers the knowns; known unknowns; unknown unknowns; and the ‘don’t want to know questions’ around the current confusing teacher preparation landscape. I won’t rehearse the various discussions under each of the headings, save to say that earlier this week I worked out that less than a quarter of training places in Chemistry on the School Direct route were being shown as filled on the DfE web site compared with about double that figure for the higher education routes in the subject.

One thing that might help recruitment is a review of the benefits from the various routes. On some routes you receive a salary, plus pension contributions, plus pay National insurance that unlocks other State benefits, whereas on other routes you are a students and get nothing more than the right to repay the loan as a tax of 9% for the first 30 years you are in teaching. It is indeed unlikely that many students with a degree plus a PGCE will ever repay the full amount of their loans unless the government changes the rules. How long the Treasury will accept this situation is an interesting question as there are already rumblings about the long-term cost to the Exchequer. I think it would be sensible to return to a level playing field where all who wanted to become a teacher were treated in the same way. After all, the Ministry of Defence doesn’t give officer cadets destined for the infantry a different financial package to those entering the armoured regiments or the engineers. I am quite surprised that a clever lawyer hasn’t cited the Human Rights legislation to show it is unfair to fund the education of some intending teachers in one way, and those of others in another less rewarding manner.

As half-term week comes to an end, and second half of the summer term starts is slide towards the summer holidays, I am confident enough to predict that the glory days of recent years, when every subject except computer science was filling all their places for trainee teachers, has come to an end. The question is: how large will be the deficit across the board by the time courses start in September?

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: teacher education