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
2007
34799
2008
33531
2009
50999
2010
45996
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
25-29
30-34
35-39
40-44
2007
72835
72978
62635
59165
2008
76116
74287
66577
60347
2009
79163
78305
71111
62530
2010
81723
83170
74944
64501
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
2007
53931
2008
51616
2009
63138
2010
67289
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.
Is the DfE helping dumb down the teaching profession? I ask this question, not because I think there is a deliberate policy to do so, but because, having studied the 372 jobs on the DfE vacancy site this morning, I find that 20% of the jobs listed are not for teachers. Now, if the majority of these non-teacher vacancies were administrative posts, I wouldn’t worry, and would just make the point that TeachVac has more than 1,200 teaching posts in England, so why would anyone use the DfE site?
However, I am more troubled that in a buyer’s market, schools may be creating tutoring, mentoring and other roles, at either hourly rates or below the main scale for teachers, and seeking to recruit teachers to these positions. Now, I accept that a job is better than no job in the present climate, and that schools must not waste public money, but is this the way forward?
In a post on the blog on 19th May, I suggested the idea of using newly qualified teachers without posts for September as supernumerary teachers under a government scheme that ensured schools would be fully staffed and both have spare capacity to cope with a second wave of the virus and also high rick staff not working directly with pupils. This still seems to me a better idea than hiring coaches at £20 per hour, with no national determination of standards and experience.
The two big associations of teacher preparation provides, NASBTT and UCET should by now have an idea of how many trainees are currently unemployed for September. With the job market having ground to a halt, not many are likely to find jobs in England now for the autumn. Do we want to risk them going overseas in large numbers as their only source of teaching jobs? I hope not.
The DfE issued its annual teacher workforce data for 2019 last week. As it is in a new form, I have taken time to consider the data before posting any blogs about the latest data, but retention in teaching was still a big issue up to last November’s census point.
The new form the DfE is using to present the data marks a radical rethink of the presentation of data that up to now was only just the transfer of the print based approach on-line with little by way of search capacity. This new approach is more helpful for the casual user, but less so for those looking at a range of the data collected.
Note: The author of this blog is the Chair at TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk the largest free vacancy site for teachers and schools.
New teachers are set to receive a boost to their training and development amid a surge in applications to join the classroom since the outbreak of coronavirus.
While others will comment upon the first part of the announcement, it is interesting to note that the data released by UCAS today is not as straightforward as the DfE announcement would suggest.
Firstly, much of the surge in applications came between April and May, and was not continued into June. Now this may well be because there were fewer courses left to apply to by early June, as many had closed their doors. Thus, the total increase in applicants over June last year in the order of 2,500 or less than 10%. Of these, the majority of new applicants would seem to be for secondary subjects rather than in the primary sector. The basis for this statement is an interpretation of applications data and, if true, would be helpful.
The second thing to note is that not all secondary subjects have benefited to the same degree. Arts subjects, have seemingly seen lots more offers to applicants, but both physics and design and technology seem unlikely to meet the Teacher Supply Model number unless there are many more applicants over the next two months. The same is true for modern languages. The arts subjects also have more applications in the pipeline, so offers may rise further over the next month or so.
Not surprisingly, the increase in applicants have mainly come from career changers. New graduates don’t yet seem to have switched to teaching in a big way. Thus, applicants aged 22 or under have increased by just over 500 on a base number of over 9,000 whereas there are 550 more applicants in the 25-29 age bracket. This looks especially true for male applicants, where numbers of those 21 and under have increased by around 50 applicants, but the 25-29 age-group has increased by nearly 200 applicants.
Traditional routes into teaching seem to have benefitted the most. There are new additional applications for either apprenticeships or for School Direct Salaried routes with fewer applications for the latter route in the primary sector than in June last year and barely 100 more in the secondary sector. Higher education has attracted 3,000 more applications for secondary courses compared with June last year and now attracts not far from half or all applications for secondary courses.
It is not clear whether the furlough scheme has helped restrain possible applicants to teaching from applying in large numbers while they discover what will happen once the support scheme comes to an end. If there is mass unemployment then the opening months of the 2020/2021 recruitment round should witness some very large numbers. Later in the summer we will review what happened in the period 2008-201, last time applications grew rapidly.
Readers of this blog will know that in April I revisited an article I first wrote in 1996 about Equal Opportunities in Education.
In the 1996 article, I wrote that:
“It is clear that members of some ethnic groups are less likely to find places on PGCE courses than white applicants.” I added that “These figures are alarming” and that “If graduates with appropriate degrees are being denied places on teacher training courses in such numbers, much more needs to be known about the reasons why.” During the period 2008-2011, I was asked to conduct two, unpublished, studies for the government agency responsible for training teachers. Sadly, the conclusion of both studies was that little had changed in this respect.
In the April article that also considered the issue of gender and ageism in the training of graduates to become teachers I made the following points.
Fortunately, it seems as if more graduates from ethnic minority groups are now entering teaching. Data from the government’s annual census of teacher training reveals that between 2014/15 and 2018/19 the percentage of trainees from a minority ethnic group increased from 13% to 19% of the total cohort.
Table 5: Minority Ethnic Groups as a Percentage of Postgraduate Trainees
Postgraduate new entrants
Postgraduate percentages
Trainee Cohort
Total
Minority ethnic group
Non-minority ethnic group
Minority ethnic group
Non-minority ethnic group
2014/15
24893
3178
21715
13%
87%
2015/16
26957
3873
23084
14%
86%
2016/17
25733
3753
21980
15%
85%
2017/18
26401
4113
22288
16%
84%
2018/19
27742
4917
22825
18%
82%
2019/20p
27675
5168
22507
19%
81%
Source: DfE Initial Teacher Training Censuses
In numeric terms, this mean an increase of some 2,000 trainees from ethnic minority backgrounds during this period.
Although UCAS no longer provides in-year data about ethnicity of applicants, there is some data in their end of year reporting about the level of acceptances for different ethnic groups.
In the 1996 article, there was a Table showing the percentage of unplaced applicants to PGCE courses by ethnic groups in the three recruitment rounds from 1993 to 1995. What is striking about both that table, and the table below for the four years between 2014-2017 that presents the data on the percentages of ethnic groups accepted rather than unplaced, is that in both of the tables, graduates from the Black ethnic group fare less well than do White or Asian applicants. Indeed, the overwhelmingly large White group of applicants had the lowest percentage of unplaced applicants in the 1990s, and the highest rate of placed applicants in the four years from 2014-2017.
In the original article I noted that “39% of the Black Caribbean group [of applicants] accepted were offered places at three of the 85 institutions that received applications form members of this ethnic group. Thirty-nine out of the 85 institutions accepted none of the applicants from this group that applied to them.” Although we no longer have the fine grain detail of sub-groups within this ethnic grouping, nothing seems to have significantly changed during the intervening period.
Table 6: Percentage Rate of Acceptances for Postgraduate trainee Teachers
2014
2015
2016
2017
Asian
39
47
44
48
Black
27
34
30
35
Mixed
49
56
51
55
White
56
64
61
64
Other
31
38
37
39
Unknown
46
53
48
52
Source: UCAS End of Cycle reports.
Using the data from the government performance tables for postgraduate trainees, it seems that a smaller percentage of trainees from ethnic minorities received QTS at the standard time when compared to those from the non-minority community, with the percentages of those trainees both not awarded or not yet completing being greater for the trainees from the minority ethnic groups.
Table 7: Success of Postgraduate Trainee Teachers by Ethnicity
2017/18
Trainees
Percentage awarded QTS
Percentage yet to complete
Percentage not awarded QTS
Teaching in a state school
Percentage of those awarded QTS teaching in a state school
Ethnicity
Minority
4,311
88%
6%
6%
3,014
80%
Non-minority
22,861
92%
3%
4%
17,022
81%
Unknown
706
90%
4%
6%
503
79%
Source: DfE database of trainee teachers and providers and school Workforce Census
However, the percentage reported as working in a state school was similar at 80% for ethnic minority trainees and 81% for non-ethnic minority trainees. As there are no data for trainees working in either the independent sector or further education institutions including most Sixth Form Colleges, it isn’t clear whether the overall percentage in teaching is the same of whether or not there is a greater difference?
So what has changed in the profile of graduates training to be a teacher during the twenty years or so between 1997 and 2019? The percentage of trainees from minority ethnic groups within the cohort has increased. However we know their chances of becoming a teacher are still lower than for applicants from the large group of applicants classified as White as their ethnic group.
Ethnicity and Leadership
For some twenty years I compiled an annual report on the labour market for senior staff in schools. At the turn of the century questions about the ethnicity of candidates were included. In the report on the 2005-06 school year I wrote:
‘Two other issues we have highlighted over the past few years, where we believe urgent steps need to be taken are the recruitment of senior staff from ethnic minorities and for faith schools. We are especially concerned about the almost complete absence of appointments in the Special school Sector of any staff from amongst the ethnic minorities. … although the position seems to be a little better in the Primary and Secondary School Sectors, we are not convinced that enough is being done to recruit senior staff from amongst these groups.’
12th Report Labour Market for Senior Staff in schools 2005-06 prepared for NAHT and ASCL.
That was a typical comment of the period.
The NASUWT also commissioned a report into Black and Ethnic Minority Teachers from a team at the University of Manchester that was published as The Leadership Aspirations and Careers of Black and Minority Ethnic Teachers in January 2009. The text is available on Researchgate at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242575423_The_Leadership_Aspirations_and_Careers_of_Black_and_Minority_Ethnic_Teachers The key message from that study was that at that time ethnic minority staff did not perceive the teaching profession to be inclusive. It would be interesting to know whether such feeling were still prevalent today.
The is no doubt that progress differs across the country, with some areas more forward in both understanding and tackling the issues that other areas where they have been seen of as less concern. Hopefully, the issue will once again see discussion and action to ensure all teachers are treated equally. However, that begs the question of what is meant by equally?
In many ways the data produced yesterday by UCAS about applications and acceptances for postgraduate teacher preparation courses is now merely academic. I will be very surprised if the current pandemic doesn’t see a sharp increase in applications to train as a teacher during the rest of this admissions round. Indeed, in some subjects, there is already some evidence of a recovery in offers from the levels of the last few months.
So, first the good news. There has been a surge of offers in Business Studies, art and music. These are welcome, but not yet enough to ensure these subjects will recruit sufficient trainees this year. Offers in physical education are also above last year, but don’t rate being classified as a surge. Most other subjects are still tracking where they were at this point last year. However, geography offers are below last year’s numbers and that might be a concern if the numbers don’t recover over the next few months. The real issue is with Modern Foreign Languages. Here, published offers are well down on last year. Some of this may be due to the method of reporting the data in this subject area, but it remains a concern.
On applications, the overall total for England is startlingly similar to March 2019; 63,820 this year compared with 63,570 in March 2019. However, applications for primary courses are down on last March; from 28,670 to 27,870; somewhere around 250-300 less applicants in all probability. This means that applications for secondary subjects are up from 34,600 last March to 35,940 this year: in excess of 400 new additional applicants, many in the arts subjects.
Higher education has around 400 few applications for primary courses, whereas there are 130 more applications for primary PG Teaching Apprenticeships. School Direct Salaried is the other route to have seen a significant decrease in applications.
On the secondary side, all routes have seen an increase in applications, although for the School Direct Salaried route it is only some 60 extra applications in total to bring the number to 2,130.
As far as the age of applicant is concerned, there are small increases in those in the 24 age-group and the 40+ age-group, and a small fall in those aged 22. All other groups have similar numbers to March last year. There is also little change in the gender balance of applicants when compared with March 2019. This year, 7,260 men have applied compared with 7,140 last year. For women, the numbers are 17,800 this year compared with 17,740 in March 2019.
I expect applications to increase sharply over the next month or so in response to the pandemic. I send my best wishes to everyone working in both schools and teacher education at this difficult and challenging time.
When the late Frank Dobson managed to secure bursaries for trainee nurses, David Blunkett failed to do the same for trainee teachers. However, postgraduate trainees did have their fees paid, and undergraduate trainees were no worse off than any other undergraduates under the tuition fee regime introduced by the Labour government.
Come the recruitment crisis of the Millennium, and the training grant appeared, backed by additional payments of Golden Hellos to some trainees. These moves, alongside an expansion of the employment-based routes through the Graduate Teacher Training Programme helped expand trainee numbers for a few years. Whether there would have been a new recruitment crisis had the financial firestorm of 2008 not emerged is an interesting issue for debate.
However, as first predicted by the blog in the early part of 2013, a new crisis of recruitment into teaching did finally emerge, even though some Ministers were reluctant to admit its existence at first. At the same time, the revolution in education in England, started under Labour and prosecuted and extended by Michael Gove when he was Secretary of State for Education, saw not only the development of the academy and free school progamme, but also a determined switch away from higher education institutions the main trainer of teachers towards a school-led model.
Indeed, at one point it seemed as if the Coalition government might create a situation where universities, and especially the Russell Group universities involved in teacher education, ceased to have direct responsibility for the preparation of future generations of teachers. The issue of recruitment controls and the fate of the history preparation programme at the University of Cambridge probably marked a watershed moment.
Anyway, Mr Gove moved on, to be succeeded by a succession of relatively short-term holders of the officer of Secretary of State for Education. None seemed to have an abiding passion for the future shape of the school system and its teachers.
So, what has happened to the different routes for preparing graduates to become secondary school teachers?
Secondary PG
2013/14
2014/15
2015/16
2016/17
2017/18
2018/19
2019/2020
HE
7318
7193
7105
7965
7913
SCITT
1270
1794
1970
2435
2452
SD Fee
2646
3181
3822
4307
3870
4170
4678
SD Salaried
1244
1197
1475
1409
1080
905
677
Teach First
1107
953
895
760
1215
Grad Apprentice
0
0
0
20
43
The move towards a school-led system has continued, but not at any great pace. Indeed, numbers on the School Direct Salaried route, the de facto successor the GTTP programme has fallen away by this year to only around half of the peak level reached in 2015/16. The new Graduate Apprenticeship Route has yet to make any real impact on numbers, and even SCITTs have failed to recruit many more recruits after their growth spurt up to 2018/19. Only the School Direct fee route seems to be in good health, although even on this route the growth has not been spectacular. Indeed, higher education is still the one dominant route.
Does this plethora of routes make it more difficult to attract new entrants to teaching or perhaps offer choices? I debated this in my evidence to the Carter Review, posted elsewhere on this blog. However, it seems more likely that singling out graduate trainee teachers for financial punishment makes teaching seem the least desirable public sector employment opportunity.
This blog has been resolute in calling for the return of a training grant for all graduate trainee teachers: I see no reason for changing that view now, especially since nurses are once again receiving financial help from the government.
As many readers of this blog will know, the DfE is planning a new digital application service for prospective trainee teachers. Apart from being trendy, I am not sure what the word ‘digital’ adds to the title, as surely nobody would create a new paper-based application service these days.
Now, I have had my differences with UCAS over the present system, introduced when I sat on a Committee representing ITT interests as an independent member. Some of my concerns seems to be being replicated by the DfE in designing their system. However, I have a much more fundamental concern than the design of the system about the DfE’s proposal. UCAS isn’t a government body. Instead, it is owned by its members. The new system will transfer ownership of the postgraduate application process for teaching to the government.
Is that change of ownership a good idea? Certainly, it will directly save both candidates and the providers of courses money as, like the DfE teacher recruitment service, it will be free at the point of delivery. It am sure it will also be well designed.
However, ownership of the process will then be in the hands of politicians and not the providers. Imagine a future government that recognises the need to balance supply and demand for teachers across the country and closes off courses when sufficient applications have been received, but before providers have made their choice of applicants. This could force later applicants to choose from the remaining courses that are short of applicants. Now, in some ways this is similar to the recruitment controls imposed upon the sector a few years ago. Any such regulation might reduce the freedom of providers to select candidates. You could envisage other interventions.
The DfE team running the service will need to know a great deal about the complexities of the teacher preparation market. If it is an in-house set-up at the DfE, what oversight will there be? Is there to be an advisory board or some other form of governance structure or will the system just be run by a changing stream of civil servants, supervised by a senior policy officer and just keeping ‘in contact’ with the providers?
As a government function, the application service will always be subject to Ministerial oversight and direction. Whether that is a ‘good thing’ or not will depend upon your views about services run by government. Certainly, as a public service, there should be more data available than is currently the case with the UCAS service.
As Ed Dorrell of the Tes remarked at the NABTT Conference, during his talk on teacher supply, Ministers don’t like talking about a crisis, and my analysis of the data that year certainly landed me in hot water, as anyone that reads the August 2013 posts on this blog can discover.
Whatever I think, the DfE is presenting the new system to the sector. I just hope it is a gift worth receiving.
Earlier today I was the guest of The National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT) at their annual conference. I suspect the fact that TeachVac sponsored their Administrator of the Year Award in the summer may have had something to do with the invitation. Curiously, the Awards didn’t rate a mention in Emma Hollis the Executive’s Director’s Review of the Year.
Anyway, NASBTT has grown from a small organisation, representing a few SCITTs in an out of favour section of the teacher preparation sector, to a dynamic orgnaisation now commanding a growing influence in the market for training teachers.
At the conference, Emma Hollis outlined five key priorities for 2019-20, which includes NASBTT playing a pivotal role at the forefront of Initial Teacher Training (ITT) policy formation..
Emma Hollis told the more than 150 delegates attending the conference how “the world of education is ever shifting and the wider political upheaval has meant that, perhaps even more so than usual, there has been uncertainty about the future”.
Emma highlighted how NASBTT is represented on the Department for Education (DfE) Initial Teacher Education (ITE) curriculum content advisory group, which has drafted new guidance that will underpin the training programme for new teachers, starting with the core content for ITT and leading into the Early Career Framework (ECF).
Secondly, NASBTT is part of an ITE advisory group which is supporting Ofsted as it designs its new framework for the inspection of ITE, aligning it more closely with the Education Inspection Framework for schools. “
Thirdly, NASBTT is prioritising subject knowledge enhancement for trainee teachers – creating a Subject Knowledge and Curriculum Design toolkit, teaming up with a range of subject specialists including Vretta, and its innovative Elevate My Maths online programme.
However, Emma emphasised a wider issue. “NASBTT members remain concerned about the difficulty of training teachers ‘in depth’ in all subjects within the timeframe of teacher training,” she said. “It is particularly unclear exactly how much subject knowledge is expected of primary teachers.I would add especially as once QTS is granted a teacher may still be asked to teach anything to anyone regardless of their level of knowledge and expertise.
Fourthly, and linked directly to the need for ongoing professional development for subject knowledge enhancement, and other areas, is the ECF delivery mechanism. To this end, NASBTT has established a professional framework for teacher educators to be launched later this year through their new Teacher Educator Zone.
My thought was about the trainees that don’t take up a job until January, how will the ECF work for them? For, as this blog has pointed out in the past, if the market works properly, the most able trainees are employed before those that fared less well on their preparation courses, and they surely need support the most support, even if they start later in the year.
NASBTT’s fifth – but by no means least important – priority for the next 12 months is in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of trainee teachers. Emma pointed out that “The prominence and importance of mental health and wellbeing is growing in schools – both for pupils and school staff.”
I would add that both teacher preparation courses and the first years of teaching can be very stressful times. The courses demand a degree of concentration and effort not always recognised, and certainly not rewarded in the case of all trainees, especially those preparing to be primary school teachers.
Finally, I have watched NASBTT’s growth over the years, and wish it well for the future. As the organisation grows, so will both its confidence in dealing with government and the range of challenges it will face. I wish it well for the future.
Will the promise of a possible cut in tuition fees held out in the recent Augar Review harm applications to teacher preparation courses, especially those courses for postgraduates?
Due to an accident of history, postgraduate teacher preparation courses with a higher education component are still usually linked to the student fee regime, at least in England. This anomaly has worked well for course providers in recent years, as they have mostly been able to charge the full fee or something close to that amount.
Although not generous, in terms of the cost of running these courses, the fee has generated more income than was possible during the period when the fee income meant that it was almost impossible to cover the cost of running a course from the income received and university management would every year have to write off deficits, often amid suggestions that teacher education would not survive. Apart from in one or two institutions, it did survive, as it has survived the Govian era of regarding higher education as part of ‘the blob’.
Still, Augar poses new threats. In the short-term, probably the 2019-2020 recruitment round, will would-be teachers postpone applying for courses until the issue of a fee cut and changes to the interest rate on student debt are decided.
Any such reduction in applications would be a worry since noises from Whitehall now suggest that the government’s planned spending review may be delayed because of the change of Prime Minister.
Hopefully, those concerned with policy on teacher education will have raised the issue of the effect on recruitment of a possible future cut intuition fees with DfE civil servants. However, until their political bosses (is that a non-sexist word?) take a decision, there may be little that can be done in the short-term, except monitor what happens to applications and even that may be easier said than done next year.
I also hope that those on the teacher education side are talking both to civil servants and to the teacher associations about what happens to funding if fees are reduced to say £7,500? Will the shortfall from current levels of funding be made up by the government, and will that mean closer monitoring of recruitment again?
Course providers will need reassurance that the cost of running their courses will be covered if fees are reduced for students. If not, will we see further changes in the landscape, with some schools unwilling to participate for anything less than the current level of funding, especially with the pressures on school budgets at present?
Of course, I favour a return to the situation where all fees for post-graduate courses are paid by the government, and training to be a teachers doesn’t require an increase in the level of debt to the individual, especially if the length of time repayments must be made is also increased by ten years as Augar suggested.
With probably another five years of increased secondary training targets to come before the bulge of pupils passing through secondary schools can be provided with sufficient teachers, even if not the right mix of subjects, anything that deters new entrants should be avoided. A delay by applicants awaiting a decision on lower fees might end up as a loss of a number of potential teachers to the system.
The data on those placed either firmly or conditionally together with those holding offers for post-graduate teacher preparation courses starting this autumn was published earlier today by UCAS.
Overall, the level of applications is down again at 83,560 on 20th May compared with 85,370 on 21st May last year. However, that overall total marks a downward shift in applications for primary, by just over 2,000 and an upward move in applications for secondary subjects, by about 600 applications. This is where the picture starts to become more complicated
Record levels of applications in biology; English; RE and history have more than offset declines in PE – by a substantial number to only 6,000 – mathematics – some 300 fewer applications – and Art – 200 fewer applications. In each case, divide by three to estimate the change in applicants, as UCAS don’t provide that data in the monthly numbers.
In terms of placed applicants and those holding offer, Computer Studies; mathematics; physics and art are all at record lows for the recruitment rounds since 2013/14 for this month of the cycle.
Next month’s figures should start to record how new graduates feel about teaching; especially those that have so far done nothing about finding a career. The good news is that applicant numbers in the youngest age group; these will be new graduates, are holding up at similar levels to last year.
However, those in their Twenties are still not looking to teaching as either a first or second career choice. Numbers aged 22-29 are seemingly down in all age groupings. However, those, mainly career switches over 30 are still showing an increasing interest in teaching.
Applicant numbers are down from applicants domiciled in most regions of England. Those domiciled in London, where pupil numbers are growing fast in the secondary sector, number only just over 5,000, with around 300 fewer placed or conditionally placed applicants this year. Staffing the capital’s state schools should really be an issue for the STRB when considering teachers’ pay and conditions.
In the secondary sector, School Direct is still losing ground to higher education and SCITTs in terms of its share of applications. How the Augar Report, published today, plays out for postgraduate teacher preparation courses may well affect these figures in the next few years.
A languages teacher with five years of fees (four year degree plus one year teacher preparation course) could be faced with debts of £117,000 according to a chart in the Augar Report. With no difference in repayments between those earning Inner London salary and those in high cost areas on the national salary scale this is an issue the STRB needs to confront in their discussions on teacher supply.
Applications from m n are declining at a faster rate than form women, with around 240 fewer applications from men compared with only a decline of 170 in applications from women. UCAS only report gender as a binary choice. In England, the decline is from 8,910 male applicants in May 2018 to just 8,650 this year, of whom there has been a welcome increase in the number of those 21 and under conditionally placed, from 680 to 750.
