Tag Archives: teacher employment

Special Offer from TeachVac: £400 for all teaching jobs

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TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk has launched its early bird rate card for 2023/24. Subscribing schools pay one fee for all their vacancies to be listed on TeachVac from June 2023 to the end of August 2024. Sign up your school today.

TeachVac is offering 15 months of matching all vacancies for one fee of just £500 for a secondary phase school, discounted to just £400 for early payment.

Primary schools pay £75, or just £50 for the one yearly payment if made now.

Nine years of experience and extensive use of AI allows TeachVac to offer all schools; both independent and state schools this offer which is substantially cheaper than other recruitment routes.

For groups of schools and agencies there are special rates.

Schools using agencies can benefit from the agency rate if their agency is registered with TeachVac.

Why use TeachVac?

As the leading monitor of the labour market for teachers – NfER used TeachVac data in their 2023 annual survey of the labour market for teachers and both tes and SchoolsWeek also consult TeachVac when they want information about the labour market for teachers – TeachVac has unrivaled data on the job market.

Schools that use TeachVac’s vacancy matching service can access information that enables them to assess the state of the market for new entrants including monthly updates on this blog.

Recruitment for both the January and September 2024 rounds are going to be challenging, parlty because of a shortage of new entrants into the profession in a wide range of secondary sector subjects.

If you need more information or would just like to chat about the offer from TeachVac then email the team at enquiries@teachvac.co.uk or telephone 01983 550408

More ITT census data

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London appears to have fared better than the rest of England in terms of the percentage decline in trainee numbers. That said, there isn’t yet time to investigate any a regional breakdown by subject.

Postgraduate new entrants by region
2021/222022/23Decrease in trainee numbers% Decline
South East4,4293,039-1,390-31%
Yorkshire and The Humber3,2242,368-856-27%
West Midlands3,2512,417-834-26%
South West2,1771,679-498-23%
East of England2,4991,932-567-23%
North East1,178935-243-21%
East Midlands2,0951,666-429-20%
North West4,3453,473-872-20%
London6,8955,715-1,180-17%
England30,09323,224-6,869-23%
Source ITT Census

Since some parts of the South East region already have limited access to trainees in some subjects, the overall decline in trainee number sin that region must be of concern.

Of more interest to schools is the likely open market numbers after removing those on the high Achievers (Teach First) programme and on apprenticeships or the salaried route where the trainees may be committed to a particular school. Assuming that 5% of the remainder don’t end up in state schools for any one of a number of reasons; this may be an underestimate in some parts of the country, the ‘free market’ pool of trainees likely to be looking for a September 2023 teaching post looks something like the following table

SubjectOpen Market
Mathematics1467
English1214
Modern Languages600
Biology495
Physics366
Chemistry644
Physical Education1295
Other387
Design & Technology372
History950
Geography523
Computing304
Art & Design440
Religious Education249
Music228
Drama304
Business Studies164
Classics52
Source TeachVac analysis

Should this table be anywhere near correct, then there will be shortages in many subjects from quite early in 2023. As mentioned in the first of this series of posts, schools might do well to ensure that they can retain staff. Paying large sums to try to recruit teachers may just be a wate of money.

Although all ethnic groups have seen a decline in trainee numbers since 2019, the decline has been most obvious in the ‘White’ group where there are around 5,000 fewer trainees this year compared with 219/20. Most other ethnic groups have seen only a small decline in trainee numbers since 2019.

Ethnic Group2019/202020/212021/222022/23
Asian2,8403,3782,8622,752
Black1,0541,4271,1591,027
Mixed8561,060900820
Other346495447406
White22,21026,32421,56317,394
Source ITT Census

Part of the reason for the decline in ‘White’ trainees may be the reduction in the number of trainees needed for the primary sector where this group has dominated in certain parts of the country.

More worrying is the loss of young graduates coming into teaching. These are the potential leaders of tomorrow. Although undergraduate numbers are up; postgraduate numbers are nearly 800 below their pre-pandemic level

Aged under 25
2019/202020/212021/222022/23
Postgraduate Total14,56417,45515,73612,281
Higher Education Institution7,5619,2527,9096,351
School Centred ITT1,6932,2092,1982,012
School Direct (fee-funded)3,5914,3044,2092,709
School Direct (salaried)578540255205
Postgraduate Teaching Apprenticeship3776225193
High Potential ITT1,1041,074940811
Undergraduate4,4175,4485,5115,350
Total18,98122,90321,24717,631
Source ITT Census

Higher education seems to have bene most affected by this decline in interest in teaching among new graduates and those in the early years of their careers. This year, the number of men entering teaching as graduates fell to 7,155 well below the 9,229 of 2019/20.

As I commented in the two previous posts today about the ITT census, these are challenging numbers for the government and very worrying for schools.

Cost savings

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Does your school have a recruitment strategy related to saving money, while still recruiting teachers in the most cost-effective manner?

Perhaps you just employ a firm to do it all for you?

Staff turnover is inevitable, promotions, retirements and a teacher’s partner’s career move all lead to resignations, not to mention time out for maternity leave and other caring roles taken by teachers. So, the first question is – how many resignations were for other reasons, and could they have been prevented?  Of course, you might have made a wrong appointment and be pleased to see the teacher depart, but how hard will they be to replace?

The next question is then: will the recruitment cost of the new teachers exceed the retention cost of keeping the current teacher? The answer might be different as between a teacher or physics and a teacher of history. One is likely to be easy to replace, even for a January appointment, while the other post will aways be both expensive and risky in terms of finding a replacement.

Having identified likely turnover, do you just take out a blanket subscription or look to a plan how to spend the cost of recruitment. There are three main groups of vacancies:

Those vacancies that an advert on the school website and a bit of social media will fill easily.

Those where you might as well employ a specialist recruitment agency on a ‘no appointment no fee’ basis if there is no interest in the job on the school’s website after a couple of days. Schools can be certain that the vacancy will have been noticed and passed onto others. If there isn’t someone in the wings just waiting to teach food technology at your school, then you need help finding a teacher of the subject.

The third group of vacancies are those that fall between these two extremes, where knowing your local and regional market is important in deciding how much to spend on recruitment advertising.

A secondary school with ten vacancies in a year; one straightforward; one really challenging and eight of average challenge might consider that whatever it does it will still have to pay for the search for a teacher for the challenging post, but need not pay for the straightforward to fill post.

The question to ask is ‘how much should our school pay to advertise these average vacancies in the present climate?’ Can there be added benefits such as the management of the process of recruitment as a part of the package? Do you know how many possible candidates any recruiter has for your level of job in your area?

Finally, do you know what the labour market looks like for the period when you will be recruiting? If your recruiter tells you, what is the evidence base that they are using?

If you have read this far, you may know that I am Chair at TeachVac, a job board that from October will charge schools for vacancies based upon how successful the site is in making matches with interested possible applicants. At present there is a £250 offer for unlimited annual matches for secondary schools, and £50 for primary schools regardless of size. There is an alternative pay by match scheme. Check out more at https://www.teachvac.co.uk/misc_public/TeachVac%20Brochure.pdf

Supply Teachers left out in the cold

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Last May, on this blog, I suggested that NQTs without a job could be hired as supernumerary staff to help schools with pupils that had fallen behind in their education during the first lockdown. Now we are into a new period of lockdown where schools are struggling to operate two parallel learning systems; one for pupils in schools – and there are many more of those – and the other for those still remote learning. As a result, if we really want to ensure high quality schooling for all, there seems to be good reason to boost the staffing of schools, lest the overload on the existing staff of trying to manage two distinct learning regimes at one time causes the system to collapse.

Intelligence is reaching me that although teachers on long-term supply contracts could be furloughed, they are often not being offered that option, possibly because employers are now required to pay National Insurance and Employer Pension Contributions. So, the risk is that instead of a win-win situation, we have the opposite where both teachers and schools lose out, and pupils’ education also suffers: all for the want of a small amount of cash.

Where a supply teacher is replacing a member of staff, then that contract should be honoured. During the autumn term supply teachers in parts of the country were reporting even less work than normal. When schools are fully staffed for September, the first part of the autumn term can be a lean time for supply work. However, I was told of one local authority where demand was higher than normal, as high attendance rates meant staff self-isolating needed to be replaced.

This term, has been shambolic, but the basic point needs to be reiterated, if schools need to run two systems to teach all pupils, either physically or remotely, then the funding arrangements need to make this possible. There is only so much goodwill that can be drawn upon. Supply teachers offer a pool of teachers that can help, but they must be funded.

There is also the more general issue of pay for supply teachers. This has never been good, especially where agencies need to make a profit on what they can charge schools. The teacher is the loser in this market, especially where there are several companies competing to cut prices to schools to secure work.

Indeed, supply teaching is a very cyclical business, and one with high fixed overheads for those companies operating on a traditional model. When schools are fully staffed, as they will be for the next few years, it is even more difficult to make money, and I expect to see some consolidation across the industry, and less work for teachers, especially in the primary sector where rolls are also falling.

I have long wondered why teachers don’t form cooperatives and take over the market themselves. They could also offer tutoring, where hourly rates are often higher than for classroom teaching, despite being one to one and not having to handle a whole class of pupils. A good cooperative could also offer coaching, mentoring, professional development and even adult learning, but it requires someone with an interest in running a business to set it up.

But, if you leave it to others, then what you get is what they are prepared to give you.

Pay Freeze: more churn?

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As expected, the main teacher associations acted with condemnation when faced with the Secretary of State’s remit letter to the STRB, the Pay and conditions of Service Review Body for the teaching profession.  In a joint statement from ACSL NAHT and NEU they said that;

The narrow remit issued to the STRB excludes the crucial and central issue of teacher and school leader pay, reflecting the Government’s unacceptable pay freeze policy.  Teachers and school leaders are key workers who have already seen their pay cut significantly since 2010.  With inflation expected to increase in 2021, they know that they face another significant real terms pay cut. 

How might their members react in 2021? We can expect a range of reactions. Some will say, there is no point in staying with no pay rise in sight – after all will the freeze really be just for one year? Head teachers at the top of their pay band, and having endured the prospect of two disrupted school years might well throw in the towel and take their pension as that presumably won’t be frozen in the same way; at least at present. We will look at that prospect and its consequences in more detail in a later blog.

Some teachers will seek promotion to secure a pay rise, and others a more appealing post either in a different school or in the private sector where there are no requirements for a pay freeze for teachers. Yet others may look overseas or to the tutoring market that will grow to support the increase in home schooling, especially if the government looks to regulation to ensure a minimum standard of education for all children regardless of how parents arrange to provide it. All these factors could increase ‘churn’.

With a profession dominated by women, at least at the level of the classroom teacher, how they and often also their partners view job security and new opportunities will also affect the rate of ‘churn’ if there is job movement around the country.

I actually think, at least in the first few months of 2021, there will be caution, and a desire to stay put and see what happens. With a labour market in teaching heavily skewed towards the first five months of the year, we could see fewer vacancies than normal in the early months of 2021. This will impact especially severely on two group of teachers: new entrants and would-be returners to the profession.

I well recall a Radio 5 Live interview in 2011, when callers were blaming each groups for taking jobs from the other. In reality, both groups were finding it more of a challenge to secure a teaching post, especially in some parts of England.

So, how hard will it be? We don’t know yet, so this is speculation based upon past trends, but I think some teachers will really struggle to secure a post in 2021.

Now might well be the time to revive ideas of a single application form for teaching, at least for personal details. This would leave just the free text statement to be written specifically for each vacancy being sought. The DfE should consider whether sponsoring that idea from those examples currently in development and on offer might be a better use of funds than continuing with their vacancy site that one person described to me in unflattering terms earlier this week.

In the next post, I will describe a new service from TeachVac to help teachers and schools assess the market and where vacancies might be found in 2021.  

Covid-19 and teacher supply

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How many additional teachers will be chasing the reduced number of teacher vacancies as a result of the covid-19 pandemic? The general thesis has always been that in a recession teacher vacancies reduce, as those in work postpone their departure either into retirement or for other reasons such as starting work outside of teaching. More former teachers may also be attracted to seek working in teaching once again as they are made redundant from their former jobs.

Looking back at the period between 2007 and 2010 that spans the period just before the last shock to the economy and the period where the economy leveled out and I first started predicting that there would be teacher supply problems again in 2013, soon after starting this blog, the following trends emerge.

The number of teachers available for work increased. At that time the General Teaching Council for England registered teachers each March. Their data for those listing ‘supply teacher’ as their role increased as follows:

Supply Teachers
200734799
200833531
200950999
201045996

That was an increase of some 11,000 teachers or a 36% in supply teachers between March 2008 and March 2010. Between March 2008 and March 2009, the increase was even greater at 50%. In that recession, some were no doubt precautionary re-registrations to allow for the chance to work as a supply teacher if necessary.

The increase was mostly among teachers between the ages of 25 and 44

25-2930-3435-3940-44
200772835729786263559165
200876116742876657760347
200979163783057111162530
201081723831707494464501

The largest increase was in teachers in their late 30s, where numbers increased by 20% between 2007 and 2010. At this distance we cannot tell how much of the increase was down to delayed departure for the profession and how much due to re-entrants seeking to work once again in teaching?

At the same time, the numbers wishing to be teachers also increased as the figures from the UCAS GTTR Scheme, taken from their 2010 annual report make clear.

PGCE applications
200753931
200851616
200963138
201067289

This was a 30% increase between 2008 and 2010.

Might we witness the same sorts of increases between 2020 and say 2024? We won’t know about the ‘out of work ‘ teachers, because with no GTCE to collect the data, the only possible source will be increased registrations with the main teacher associations or from universal credit or Labour force data for those declaring themselves as ‘teachers’. However, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland may be able to provide comparative data from their GTCs.

Applications to train as a teacher will be easier to track. With better knowledge among potential applicants of the costs of training and possible changes to the bursary arrangements, we might not see such a large increase in applications to teaching in this recession unless unemployment really does hit 10% of the workforce. Then any concerns about working with children might be outweighed by the opportunity to secure a job at all.

Whether MATs and standalone academies will use the change to the supply situation to review wage levels and conditions of employment is not yet known, but there seems no reason why schools should pay large sums to recruit teachers using traditional paid advertising, except in rare circumstances.

More facts about the teaching profession

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Those of my generation will remember the verse from the folk song about ‘where have all the young men gone?’ Written by the great Peter Seeger in the 1950s and, so Wikipedia informs me, based on a Cossack song and an Irish lumberjack tune, it became one of the most covered and well known of political folk songs of its generation.

I was reminded of the line when looking through the detailed tables in the DfE’s Workforce Statistics for 2018, published earlier today. Among men under the age of 25 there are just 3,159 working as classroom teachers in secondary schools across England compared with 2,005 working as classroom teachers in the primary sector.  Surprisingly, that’s better than a generation ago. In March 1997, the DfE recorded just 900 male primary school teachers under the age of 25 and 2,070 in that age group working as teachers in secondary schools. So, net gains all round and proportionally more so in the primary sector.

However, if you also look at the 45-49 age grouping for the number of men working as classroom teachers, the numbers are dramatically lower. In the primary sector, down from 8,215 classroom teachers to just 2,053, and in the secondary sector, from 23,602 to just 7,882, in the years between 1997 and 2018. Overall male teacher numbers fell from 31,000 to 25,311 in the primary sector between 1997 and 2018, and in the secondary sector from 90,100 to 64,513 during the same period.

The differences at more senior levels are not as easy to discover as less attention was paid in the 1990s to the gender of head teachers. However, I suspect that men have more than held their own in head teacher appointments, especially in the secondary sector, where women still from only a minority of the nation’s head teachers.

The proportion of non-White teachers in the profession remains small, especially in the more senior leadership posts. Whereas some 15% of classroom teachers are not White British, along with 10.3% of assistant and deputy heads, and some seven per cent of head teachers, these numbers fall if White Irish and other teachers classified by the DfE as from ‘any other white background’ are included. BAME percentages fall to less than 10% of classroom teachers and little more than four per cent of head teachers. Many are, I suspect, located only in a few distinct parts of England.

Overall numbers of entrants to the profession were static in 2018 compared with 2017, but this masked a fall in full-time entrants that was balanced by an increase in part-time entrants. The number of full-time entrants was at the lowest level since 2011, and must be some cause for concern, especially with the secondary school pupil population on the increase. Also of concern is the fact that the percentage of entrants under the age of 25 was at its lowest percentage since before 2011, when the workforce Census started, at 26.4% of entrants.

The profession cannot afford to lose any of its youngest teachers. A future post will look at trends in the retention of teachers.

 

Fewer younger trainee teachers?

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Digging down into the details of yesterday’s DfE publication of the ITT census it seems as if the drift away from teaching as a career by young first time graduates has continued this year. The percentage change isn’t significant by itself, but if it forms part of a trend, then it will be worrying since new graduates have been in the past been a very important source of new entrants into the profession: those that remain also provide the bedrock of future leaders in ten to fifteen years.

This year, the percentage of postgraduate entrants under 25 fell to 50% of the total, while those over 30 increased to 24%. The latter are mostly career switchers and likely to be location specific when it comes to looking for teaching posts. Now, the percentage of older trainees has been higher during the dark days of some of the previous recruitment crisis periods, and losing under-25 is not unexpected as the cohort falls in size. However, it is a bit early in the demographic cycle affecting higher education to see a decline at the new graduate level at this stage. If it were to continue, then in three to four years’ time there might be a real issue if planning for how these missing entrants could be replaced has not taken place. To this end, last week’s announcement of funds to attract career changers is a welcome move. However, it is not just classroom teachers we need, but also the leaders of tomorrow.

There is mixed news on the gender profile of new entrants this year. Some secondary subjects have attracted more men, notably mathematics, where the percentage of males topped the 50% mark again, after falling to 49% last year. Overall men accounted for only 39% of secondary applicants this year although there were more, due to the overall rise in trainee numbers: 6,270 this year compared with 5,945 last year. In the primary sector, men accounted for 19% of trainee numbers, down from 20% last year, meaning 185 fewer men this year than last. Worrying, but nowhere near as bad as it was in the late 1990s when I think that the percentage was heading towards single figures. Still, it is not a good gender balance.

Perhaps not surprisingly, computing had one of the largest percentages of men in the cohort: some 68% of trainees, although that was down two per cent on last year. However, that was topped by Physics, where 71% of the 575 trainees were men this year. This means there were only around 170 women on teacher preparation courses to teach Physics this year. If there is sufficient demand from single sex girls’ schools, then a female NQT in physics might be a rare sighting in a co-educational school next September.

There is better news about the ethnic background of new entrants into teacher preparation courses, with 18% of postgraduate trainees and 12% of undergraduate new entrants being recorded as from any minority ethnic group. These are the highest percentages in recent years, and possibly since records were first collected about ethnicity. However, the DfE doesn’t reveal how many trainees did not provide this information.

In my next blog I will discuss trends across the different types of providers and the balance between school based courses and the more established partnership arrangements led by higher education and most SCITTs.

 

Déjà vu

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The traffic light colours of Green, Amber and Red have become a popular method of distinguishing degrees of concern or providing a warning as we saw recently with the Met Office descriptions of the snow and ice events. TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk has always used such a system to warn of shortages in the labour market for classroom teachers in the secondary sector.

Today, TeachVac has just issued its first Red warning for a subject this year. It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that the subject concerned is Business Studies. The DfE’s Teacher Supply model seems to consistently underestimate the need for such teachers by schools. Additionally, in 2017, the failure to fill 20% of the places on offer to trainees has only exacerbated the situation.

The Red warning means that in TeachVac’s estimation schools anywhere in England could from now onwards struggle to recruit a teacher of Business Studies. This challenge will extend right through to January 2019 and the start of the new recruitment round. With Business Studies applications for 2018 teacher preparation courses already only tracking the 2017 levels, 2019 isn’t looking any more hopeful at present.

At the same time as TeachVac issued a Red warning for Business Studies it is within days of issuing an Amber warning for English classroom teacher recruitment. Here again, with 10% of training places unfilled in 2017, TeachVac will shortly be warning that some schools could start to face challenges in recruitment. There are fewer trainees on school-based preparation courses for English this year. As a result, demand in terms of advertised vacancies may well be greater than in recent years, when some schools employed School Direct trainees without needing to advertise vacancies. TeachVac expects recruitment to be especially challenging in areas where the pupil numbers are on the increase, namely London and the Home Counties.

If this all feels horribly familiar to regular readers of this blog, then they are correct. On the 8th March 2017, budget day last year, I wrote almost exactly the same post about the 2017 situation. Those that haven’t read it might like to compare the two posts.

Already in 2018, TeachVac has already also issued an Amber warning for Design and Technology. This is partly because only a third of places on teacher preparation course in this subject were filled in 2017. This meant total trainee numbers, including forecasts at the time of the DfE’s census, only amounted to some 303 trainees this year. Such a number is less than one trainee per ten secondary schools, even assuming all trainees both complete the preparation year and then want to teach in a state funded secondary school. Within some of the subjects that make up the Design and Technology family, the situation may be even worse: TeachVac is monitoring the spread of expertise requested within adverts, something nobody else even attempts to do to the same degree.

However, in this recruitment round, we do not expect any significant issues recruiting teachers to fill primary school vacancies. But, as the previous post have indicated, 2019 might be more of a problem, unless applications pick up over the next few months.

 

 

Most trainees teach close to where they train: no surprise there

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Last week the DfE published the fourth in their series of publications about teacher supply. Entitled, ‘Analysis of teacher supply, retention and mobility’ it can be accessed at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/682892/SFR11_2018_Main_Text.pdf Like the three earlier publications, it takes the School Workforce Census and the ITT Performance Profiles as the main sources for its data. As the authors make clear, this publication ‘aims to generate new insights, be an accessible resource to stimulate debate, improve the public understanding of our data, and generate ideas for further research, rather than to provide authoritative answers to research questions.’ (page2).

Much of the ground the document covers will come as no great surprise to those familiar with this field. However, there is a welcome aspect to this series of documents showing after many years of official neglect and even disinterest that these concerns are now finding more favour with the DfE as part of understanding the issues around the labour market for teachers. However, as our own TeachVac’s recent report into turnover of school leaders in the primary sector during 2017 shows, there remains much more work to be undertaken before the labour market can be fully understood.

Key features of the analysis by the DfE are that post ITT employment rates stand at 85% for the latest cohort where data is available, up from 75% for the 2009/10 cohort. However, the DfE still cannot count entrants into the independent sector; FE or Sixth Form Colleges so probably around 90% of postgraduates may enter some form of teaching after qualification.

Perhaps, not surprisingly, SCITTS have higher employment rates than HEIs. I suspect this is because more HEI trainees are likely to end up in teaching posts not covered by the DfE methodology and SCITT can offer teaching posts directly to their trainees. The existence employment outside the state funded school sector is given extra credence by the low outcomes on the employment measure for some pre-1992 Universities with only trainees in secondary ITT subjects.

Also, of no surprise given the distribution of ITT places, especially in the primary sector, is the fact that the North West region has the lowest outcomes for employment and the East of England the highest. A higher percentage of primary trainees end up in the state sector than do secondary trainees, again not really a surprise.

Most trainees start to teach close to where they train and then are more likely only to move locally. This means that many teachers may spend their careers in the same region. In 2015, possibly because of less competition from returners and a great number of vacancies than in 2010, a year during the recession, the distance travelled by new entrants was shorter. Young male graduates from HEIs were likely to move further than trainees from SCITTs.

Interestingly, teachers were more likely to move to schools with the lowest two Ofsted grades. This may be because such schools might shed staff after an inspection creating more vacancies than in schools with better ratings.  Overall, a part time female primary teacher has a 94.7% chance of moving 50 kilometres or less compared with 82.1% for a full-time male secondary teacher. Again, this is probably not surprising given that the former may have a stake in a community and a partner with employment locally. Their choice may be between either a local job or no job, whereas a male secondary teacher may be motivated to choose on a wider set of criteria including type of school and salary on offer.

The DfE conducted some interviews as a part of this work and recruitment difficulties featured as more of a concern than retention, with great concern over some secondary subjects: again, probably no great surprise.

Along with the recent work by NfER in the field of teacher retention, this study is worth reading and although the DfE support the value of a national teacher supply model, as indeed I do, there may be some benefit in evaluating whether some regional rebalancing of teacher preparation places might be appropriate.

However, if trainees cannot be recruited then, however, good the modelling, the outcome will always be that some schools will be unable to recruit the teachers they need and deserve. With rising pupil numbers driving demand for teachers, any shortfall in recruitment into training is eventually likely to affect school and pupil outcomes.

On Thursday, the next set of UCAS data on recruitment to training for 2018 will be published. The data will be watched closely and reported on this blog.