Tag Archives: teacher preparation

Big Brother

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The announcement earlier in the week of the Teacher Supply Model numbers and recruitment thresholds for teacher training in 2016/17 was rather overshadowed by the decision on a selective school expansion programme in Kent. That is an issue I have written about previously on this blog and may well return to again. However, others have already made the case eloquently about how backward a move this is in reality.

But, to return to teacher training because, despite Michael Gove’s assertion that teaching doesn’t need any preparation for the job, most of us think it isn’t as easy to walk into a classroom as in to a job in either of the Houses of Parliament.

The key message from this week’s announcement is; more maths training places; a similar number of places to this year’s training numbers in other EBacc subjects and fewer places in the non-EBacc subjects. In primary, the big growth period is now over unless there is a change in teacher numbers in employment, perhaps through more departures from the profession among young women that make up a sizable proportion of the primary school teaching force these days.

Why I have headed this blog ‘big brother’ is because, although there are no allocations this year, there are recruitment control thresholds that protect Teach First -included in the Teacher Supply Model number for the first time, at least publicly – and School Direct plus SCITT routes. As there are no published thresholds for higher education providers, they are at risk if the school routes recruit quickly above the minimum recruitment level. This is only likely to be a possibility in history, PE, primary and according to the government English – although I think that less likely.

In order to monitor what is happening and prevent over-recruitment that might stop schools reaching their minimum threshold the National College can issue compulsory stop notices on further offers to providers. This effectively bans future offers being made, although presumably allowing replacements for anyone that drops out? The College will also monitor the UCAS system on a daily basis for the number of offers being made and may also step in if regional patterns are distorted in such a manner as to risk leaving parts of the country short of teachers in certain subjects.

Interestingly, there seems little concern for the applicants in this process. I would advise applicants against booking tickets to interviews until the day before in case the provider is suddenly capped, especially if it is a university PGCE course. Indeed, it might not be fanciful to suggest that even during an interview a candidate could be told by the provider that they no longer have any places left because it has been ‘capped’.

However, for this to happen, even in most of the non-EBacc subjects recruitment in 2016-17 is likely to have to improve on that expected to be recorded in the 2015 ITT census that is to be published next month, so it will only really worry those applying in the subjects listed above where providers are likely to find it easy to recruit to the TSM number.

Finally, I have concerns about whether we really need to train 999 PE teachers in 2016-17 and only 252 business studies teachers. This is based upon the TeachVac vacancy data http://www.teachvac.co.uk were have recorded this year, but that may well be something to discuss with the statisticians.

Incentives and ageism

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This week the DfE announced the new bursary rates for trainees starting teacher preparation courses in the autumn of 2016. The headline grabbing rate is the £30,000 tax free bursary or scholarship available to a small number of Physics graduates with either a first class degree or a doctorate in the subject.

A bursary at this level amounts to a starting salary before tax and other deductions of around £40,000 after training, unless the teacher is expected to take a pay cut after training: a bizarre suggestion. Whether schools will be willing to pay such a salary in 2017 to these trainees is an interesting question. Fortunately, there probably won’t be very many of them and the extra £5,000 each it will cost the government compared with the rates this year. In the unlikely event that even 100 of the 800 or so Physics trainees would qualify, that number only means an extra half a million pounds of government expenditure. Such an amount can easily be found from the under-spend on the total amount due to under-recruitment against the Teacher Supply Model number of trainees required and the cash set aside if it was met.

The headline figure looks very much like a marketing ploy. The adverts can now say in large letters ‘£30,000 to train as a teacher tax free’ followed by an ‘*’ and in small letters ‘terms and conditions apply – read the small print’. This seems a legitimate marketing strategy, whatever you think of its dubious moral value by offering something not obtainable to the majority of those attracted by the advertising. No doubt the Advertising Standards Authority has a code of practice for this sort of activity.

One group that should be especially wary of such adverts to become a teacher are the career switchers. An analysis of the percentage of applicants offered places shows that older applicants are far less likely to be offered a place on a teacher preparation course than younger +-graduates.

Age Group Placed
21 under 58%
22 59%
23 57%
24 55%
25-29 50%
30-39 42%
40+ 39%
all ages 51%

On average half of all applicants were placed by mid-September, but this reduces from 59% of those aged 22 on application to just 39% of those in their forties or older. The older applicants are more likely to be holding conditional offers in September than younger applicants, perhaps because of issues with the skills tests?

I haven’t been able to look at the data by the different routes into teaching as it isn’t published by UCAS. As there are no details of ethnicity published by UCAS in the monthly statistics, it isn’t possible to see whether there are still differential rates of places being offered to different ethnic groups as has been the case at some points in the past.

In the new slimmed down civil service, I do still hope that someone somewhere is paying attention to these figures and asking questions that probe what may lie behind the numbers: are older graduates just not up to being teachers or is their knowledge, despite boosted by time in the real world, not up to modern degree standards. Surely that cannot be the case since degrees are supposed to be easier than they were a generation ago. Certainly there are more First Class degrees awarded that in the past. A fact that will cost the government more in bursary payments.

Is the lack of a London allowance affecting teacher training numbers in London?

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What is happening in London? The data released by UCAS yesterday on applications and applicants for graduate teacher training courses as at the middle of September – after most courses will have started – shows that the data for applicants with a domicile in London seem way out of line when compared with the data for applicants domiciled in other parts of England.

According to the UCAS data, only 39% of applicants domiciled in London have been placed on a course. This compares with a national average of 51%. By contrast, 16% of applicants with a London domicile were shown in the data as holding a conditional offer, compared with a national percentage of 11%. In the North East, the conditional offers were 8% of those applicants domiciled there; half the percentage in London.

Now it is perfectly possible that providers that recruited applicants domiciled in London were less good at informing UCAS that applicants had been converted from a conditional offer to a confirmed place. Indeed, I hope that is the case. The alternative and more worrying scenario is that the conditionally placed total represents candidates that weren’t going to take up the place offered to them earlier in the year and failed to meet all the conditions such as the pre-entry skills tests without informing the provider that they weren’t going to take up their place.  Were that to be the case, then there might only be around 3,500 trainees in London, outwith Teach First, on courses that started this autumn.

As that’s both primary and secondary trainees, the figure must be of concern. As schools in London have advertised a similar 3,500 vacancies for secondary school classroom teachers so far in the 2015 recruitment round  according to TeachVac (www.teachvac.co.uk), the number of secondary trainees would need to be more than half the trainee total to ensure sufficient entrants to the London labour market in 2016, if vacancies are at a similar level next year. With pupil numbers on the increase, it seems unlikely that vacancies will fall very much unless London schools’ budgets are restricted next year.

As we don’t know the spread of offers between subjects among London providers, it is impossible to tell whether certain subjects might be even more adversely affected by these figures. They certainly need further investigation. Now it may well be that the large-scale operation of Teach First across London is having an effect on the market for training places in the capital. As we know, from TV programmes, such as ‘Tough Young Teachers’, Teach First has its own approach to preparing teachers. However, unless it has the same retention rate as other programmes that presumably aim to train career teachers, any programme seen as a short-service approach to teaching as a career could affect training numbers when pupil numbers are on the increase.

Let’s assume a normal training programme places 75% of its teachers in post: say 75 out of 100. By the end of year 1, 20% leave, taking the number down to 60. If a further 15% leave at the end of year 2, that means 51 are still teaching. However, if the figures were 80% for the entry rate and 10% leaving at the end of each year, there would be 57 still remaining at the start of year 3. How does that compare with Teach First over a similar period from entry to summer school to start of year 3 of teaching?

Fortunately, as a result of a PQ in the House of Lords, we know that the 2014 cohort for Teach First was 1,387 at the start of the Summer Institute. By the end of year 1, some 1,272 gained QTS. However, the government dodged the part of the question from Lord Storey that asked how many entered teaching the following September. As not all of the 1,272 are in London, we cannot really complete the comparison except to say that if all Teach First were in London they would have needed to lose just under 600 trainees between year 1 and entering year 3 of teaching to match the hypothetical figures for other training provision.

The point of this discussion is that any route that retains fewer teachers over the first three to five years of teaching than the norm just adds to the recruitment problems. This is something that should be monitored to allow for the most cost-effective training provision that best meets the recruitment needs of schools in London, especially if there are fewer trainees entering in the first instance than there are places on offer.

Acceptances increase to meet recruitment challenge

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Many years ago I wondered what would happen if women stopped applying to become teachers. The policy aim over the past has witnessed attempts to reverse the decline in applications from men while no doubt hoping that applications from women continue to underpin the total number of applications.

Over the past few years, and especially during the recession, the numbers of both women and men applying for teacher training as graduates increased. Now they are both back on the downward path.

Compare three years – applications from graduates to train as teachers

Men      Women          All applicants

2001                       12,906   27,989             40,895

2005                       18,822   40,321              60,143

2015                       15,170   30,290              45,460 * To 17th August

Now the 2015 number will increase a bit and it doesn’t include applications just for Teach First, but then the earlier numbers didn’t include GTTP, Fast Track and any other schemes that didn’t recruit through the central admissions system, including the Open University.

So, it seems that this year we are not yet back to the level of 2001, but applications are down by close to a quarter on a decade ago. That means there are 10,000 fewer women applying and three thousand fewer men. In percentage terms applications from men a down by close to a fifth on a decade ago whereas those from women are down by a quarter.

But, someone reading this is bound to ask, didn’t you say there were more acceptances in some subjects this year than last? How can that be?

The answer is, of course, that the offer to application ratio has increased. At the August data point last year, across the system as a whole, some 60% of applicants had received an offer of one kind or another. At the same point this year, the percentage had increased to 64% of applicants being made an offer. Interestingly in London, the area where the labour market is at its most challenging for schools, only 57% of applicants were shown with an offer. However, this increases to 67% for offers made by providers in the South East. In the North East it is 65%.

It would be interesting to know whether the additional costs factors associated with living in London have meant applicants have turned down a chance to train in the capital’s schools or whether it possibly the effect of Teach First taking the best of possible candidates as they can offer a salary? Either way, it is noticeable in a search yesterday on the UCAS system showed that the UCL-Institute of Education still posted vacancies in more secondary subjects than were full. Incidentally, 28 universities were still in Clearing yesterday for undergraduate primary teacher training and 40 of the 149 postgraduate courses training primary school teachers in London still showed vacancies.

Now it is possible that this year will mark the turning point of the economic cycle, with the slowdown in the Chinese economy putting the brake on graduate recruitment in 2016. However, it still leaves schools to weather the 2016 recruitment challenge and, based upon these figures, together with the growing school population, that is not likely to be easy for schools unless an economic collapse brings in a flood of returners.  However, it seems the DfE has a plan – recruit overseas.

Farewell Mr Taylor

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So, Mr Taylor is following his mentor Michael Gove to the Ministry of Justice, presumably to head up the Youth Justice Board. The YJB was one of the success stories of the coalition, presiding over a dramatic fall in both the numbers in youth custody and in offending rates among young people. I hope that Mr Taylor, if indeed that is his new role, will help continue the trend towards both further reducing offending and the rehabilitation of those that do commit crimes. He might start by looking at the staffing challenges faced by the schools that produce the greatest numbers of young offenders.

Meanwhile The Secretary of State has the task of either finding a replacement or reorganising the whole training and professional development unit within the DfE. Could the name of the National College now disappear from sight as Mr Taylor’s job is handed to one or more civil servants to manage? This would take us back to the position last seen in the early 1990s before the Teacher Training Agency was created to oversee the reform of teacher training that took place under Kenneth Clarke.

Personally, I hope that there will still be an identifiable lead on teacher training and development. Sir Andrew Carter must be an obvious choice for the job after his report earlier this year. But, it might be good to have a woman in a senior position. Perhaps either an executive head or one of the CEOs of an academy chain might fit the bill, especially if it is a chain with a good record on both recruitment and professional development. Alternatively, someone running an organisation such as Teach First might be considered.

However, the salary level could be unattractive to many if the post falls within the new strict guidelines on public sector senior pay. No doubt a secondment could overcome even that problem.

Whoever takes over, whether an outsider or a career civil servant, will have less money to play with and will no doubt be expected to focus more on the recruitment and initial training part of the brief than on professional development that will no doubt be devolved to schools as a means of cutting costs? Such a dangerous move might really affect middle and senior leadership development over the next few years but probably won’t have any immediate impact on the political landscape.

Regular readers of this blog with know what my agenda is for whoever takes on the role. Convincing the Treasury that expecting trainee teachers to pay fees is not helpful would be my number one ambition for anyone taking on the job.

Please Keep Recruiting

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The latest data on applications by graduates to train as a teacher was published earlier today by UCAS. The good news is the gap between the total number of applicants this year and the number recruited at this point last year is still being closed; it is down to just under 3,400. The gap closed by around 15% in the last month, but time is running out to eradicate it completely by the time courses start in just over a month from now and the total is still some eight per cent below the 2014 figure.

The more depressing news is that only physical education, history and languages among secondary subjects will probably manage to meet their target as set by the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model. All other subjects will probably fail to make the target number unless there are a significant number of last minute offers. In geography, music and business studies it looks as if the position is even worse than at this time last year. In several other subjects, an increase in the TSM number for last year means even with the improved offers the shortfall may be greater than experienced last year.

Of as much concern is that there are still a large number of conditional offers in the system. As most graduates should now know their degree class it may be that health, criminal checks or skill test results are still awaited. Even in history, the majority of offers are conditional, so the level of possible dropout is crucial.

The DfE has today also updated is key messages for School Direct – not please note for teacher preparation courses – to entice more graduates to be trainees. I thought that I would share the messages with readers;

Messages to use to recruit to School Direct Updated 30 July 2015

1. A great teacher can earn up to £65,000 as a leading practitioner
2. Get £25,000 tax-free to train to teach
3. Teachers start on a salary of between £22k and £27k
4. Teaching is a career for achievers. Three-quarters of new teachers now have a 1st or 2:1 degree
5. Teacher training is better than ever before
6. Good teachers are in demand, and there are excellent employment prospects
7. Get young people inspired by the subject you love
8. Inspire young people to fulfil their potential
9. Change a young person’s life for the better
10. Help young people to realise their ambitions
11. Go home each day knowing you’ve made a difference

All worthy sentiments, although I was told to avoid ‘get’ as it was considered slang. May be it isn’t so offensive nowadays.

The other interesting figure is the fate of the salaried route in School Direct where conversion rates remain much lower than for other routes into teaching. Indeed, the secondary salaried route may yield fewer trainees than the former Graduate Teacher Training Programme that it replaced did in some of the years when it was in operation.

Applications are still down in all regions and all age groups, with London some 600 applicants down on this point last year. Applicants from the over-40s seem to be holding up better than from any other age group.

So, please carry on recruiting through the holiday period: we need the applicants.

Counting the Pounds

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In a couple of weeks the Cabinet member with responsibility for schools in Oxfordshire will be asked to revoke a decision by a maintained school to open a sixth form. Had the school been an academy it could just have decided not to run any post-16 courses. The reason given for the application to revoke the change of status is that the school cannot operate a viable sixth form with the present level of income it would generate from likely pupil numbers. Presumably the school didn’t want to cross-subsidise a sixth form from revenue received for younger pupils: a position I applaud. Assuming the decision is approved, pupils will still face the need to change schools at sixteen and will continue to have to pay for their transport that has up to now been free because they either walked to school or were bussed by the county council.

This change of heart for financial reasons set me wondering about the economics of School Direct in London. With income for next year fixed at £9,000 per trainee on fee based routes, how likely is it that schools are going to be able to cover their costs?
A cohort of 20 trainees paying fees would bring in £180,000 to run the course, but let’s assume a school has recruited three trainees in each of five subjects bringing in £135,000. Now how you spend that money is critical. But, assuming that a head of department in each subject provides 20% of their working week (about 20% of teaching time per week) in each subject to work with trainees. This would come to just over £60,000 if the heads of department are on the top of the upper pay band and also receive a middling TRL and taking into account the recent increases in National insurance and pension contributions schools have faced . In some subjects the TRL will be less, but in Science, mathematics and English it would be more. Now, also assume there is a course leader to do all the recruitment and the rest of the teaching and administration for the course on a similar salary of £60,000 including on-costs. This takes the teaching staff costs to £120,000. Add in £20,000 for administrative staff. After all, it is not economic to use a teacher to do the paperwork. Then there is another £10,000 for marketing, resources and miscellaneous costs and the total comes to around £150,000.

Now, I suppose you could reduce the time for the course leader and farm out some of the teaching to a university with lower salary costs because they are located outside of inner London and can spread their overheads across a larger number of trainees. However, university central overheads can be higher than those in schools – Vice Chancellors earn more than head teachers – so there may not be as much of a saving as would be hoped for by taking this option.

Possibly the course doesn’t need a full-time admin person and the marketing budget can go. Perhaps, you can reduce expenditure to around £120,000, but what sort of preparation would you be offering trainees? Even so, there is little margin for error. If even one trainee either doesn’t turn up or leaves very soon after the start of the course, then the school might have a shortfall to cover from its other income.

I should be interested to hear from schools how they are managing in London on this level of income? Clearly, outside of London, the lower salary costs might make it more likely schools can operate effectively at this level of income, even with smaller numbers of trainees. However, as London needs the largest number of new teachers each year, despite Teach First, the economics of teacher preparation in the capital must be a matter for concern.

Time for radical solutions

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Secondary schools across England might well have been facing much greater issues over staffing their timetables for September than they are but for the syphoning off of cash into increased National Insurance and pension contributions.  While that decision to boost government finances may be a relief to both the Treasury and the DfE, since it both diminishes the size of any crisis and provides so much needed cash for the government, it doesn’t mean that there is any reason to relax.

As this blog has shown, 2016 is likely to be as challenging a recruitment round as was 2015, if not more so. At TeachVac,  www.teachvac.co.uk the free recruitment service, the average secondary school in London had placed more than six advertisements for classroom teachers since the start of 2015 and the end of June: some schools have placed many more.

This blog has long recognised that something has to be done to alleviate the growing pressure on staffing and the associated recruitment issues. At the start of 2015 I advocated a return to a ‘no fees’ policy for graduates, with the State once again paying the fees of those graduates opting to train as a teacher. So far, the government has been resistant to this proposal.

What else might be done? We know that there are a few subjects, physical education and history being the main ones, where there is some over-capacity emerging from training programmes. There is a need for a programme of post-training subject knowledge enhancement that might help some of these teachers secure employment in another subject. After all, they have shown a desire to become a teacher and undergone a training programme, often at considerable expense to themselves. Do we just abandon them to their fate or try to harness their potential?

We know that IT and business studies teachers are both in short supply. How about a one term conversion course to equip some of these teachers with subject knowledge. They have the knowledge to teach for their existing training so most of the time could be classroom based with some days spent turning the new knowledge into practical experience teaching classes. The whole program could be university or school-based.

I wonder if there is an IT company that might sponsor a group of 25 through a pilot programme as it is difficult to see what new steps the National College are taking to help reduce teacher shortages. Indeed, it is surely time for a management change at the top of that organisation if it once again fails to deliver as many trainees as a required having been warned of what was to come two years ago.

If the troops to teacher model has proved its worth, it is surely time to roll it out to a wider group of potential career changers or create a whole new programme to encourage teaching as a second career. For those with really long memories, we might even call it the TASC programme.

Some good news

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The May data for applications through the UCAS system by graduates seeking to become a teacher was published earlier today. There is some qualified good news for the government, but it is heavily qualified. Overall, the gap between applicant numbers has narrowed since April by some 640 applicants. However, it still stands at 4,640 and the clock is ticking down towards the end of the recruitment round.

That’s the sum of the good news. Total offers of all types for secondary courses in England, and all these figures are for courses in England, total around 11,100 against a DfE number set through the Teacher Supply Model of just under 18,000 graduates required to enter training as a secondary teacher in 2015, after allowing for the small number of remaining undergraduate places. So, we are about 6,500 trainees short of what is required or just under 40%. As a result, the secondary share of the 9,000 applications currently awaiting interview or a decision by a provider, will need to come up trumps if the gap is to reduce much further.

Secondary subjects fall into three groups. There are the three subjects: Languages, History and Physical Education where the DfE number of trainees required will be met easily, and there will probably be too many trainees for all the vacancies in 2016. The second group of subjects are those where offers are better than at this point last year but are still likely to be insufficient to meet the DfE number as identified by the Teach Supply Model. These include subjects such as Physics, Mathematics, English, Design & Technology, Chemistry, Biology and Art. Finally, there are five subjects where the DfE number required to enter training almost certainly won’t be reached and the current position over the number of offers appears worse than at this stage last year. These subjects are: Religious Education, Music, Geography, IT/Computer Science and Business Studies.

So, unless far more applicants can be converted into trainees in the period between May and the start of courses in the autumn than was the case last year, the training shortfall in the secondary sector is heading into a third year of under-recruitment against need. This begs the question of what happens to those shortfalls in reality. Returners or overseas teachers are the obvious alternatives along with re-designing the timetable to reduce teaching time in shortage subjects or ask less well qualified teachers to step into the breach and hope that Ofsted doesn’t come calling.

Schools with unexpected vacancies for September and especially for January 2016 are going to find recruiting qualified teachers of some subjects a real challenge. As schools that register classroom teacher vacancies through TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk already know from the update they receive when registering a vacancy, the 2015 pool of Business Studies, Social Studies and Design & Technology trainees has effectively been exhausted already. Subjects such as English, Geography and IT/Computer Science are likely to have only small numbers of trainees currently still looking for teaching vacancies; many in specific locations.

The position in relation to primary recruitment for 2015 is more complicated, not least because of the larger number of undergraduate places. There are around a 1,000 fewer places being held by graduate applicants but, as the DfE original number required was exceeded by a substantial amount in the allocations, this may be more of a problem for course providers struggling to operate financially viable courses than for trainees when they come to seek work in 2016.

There is still time for these numbers to change with an influx of late applicants wanting to train as a teacher. That would be more good news. The potential bad news would be if some of those holding offers were also chasing other careers and decided not to take up their place. Next month the picture will be much clearer, whether or not it is rosier.

Canards

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In the 1990s when Chris Woodhead became head of Ofsted he mentioned a figure of 15,000 poor quality teachers that needed removing in an early interview. That figure became stuck in the minds of journalists and was trotted out for many years even though it wasn’t often supported by any evidence. We now have a similar situation with the 40% of teachers that allegedly quit the profession in their first year of teaching. This figure goes right back to an interview Mike Tomlinson gave, I think but haven’t checked, to The Guardian when he took over from Mr Woodhead. Recently, it gained a new lease of life when used by ATL’s general secretary at their annual conference this spring. Here’s what I wrote on May 8th

Teacher supply was an area of interest following the teacher associations annual conferences. I was surprised, and not a little disappointed, to see the General Secretary of ATL use data from 2011 – data from during the height of the recession – to discuss recruitment and staying-on rates for teachers in 2015. It may well be that in London and the South East more teachers will leave during their first year, but in 2011 the problem for many teachers was finding a job in the first place. This year the problem for some schools has been finding a teacher at all.

Although Sam Freedman and I don’t share the same political views we do share a regard for the accurate use of data and his comments at http://samfreedman1.blogspot.co.uk/ say what I think, although the statistics he mentions for secondary trainees are in Table 6 with table 5 covering undergraduate courses.

That at least two leading recruitment agencies have used the 40% statistic to support their promotional campaigns is disappointing, as I would have hoped for a little more maturity from them.  Anyhow the figure is now firmly in the public consciousness and will reappear from time to time when thoughtless commentators discuss teacher supply problems. as this is an issue likely to remain in the headlines we can expect to see the figure used regularly.

But, there is no use just moaning. We need an agenda for action on teacher supply. Here are some suggestions;

– Pay the fees of all graduate trainees from 2015 entry onwards – this will be especially helpful to career changers that have paid off previous fees and will need to repay the £9,000 as soon as they start teaching

– Look to how those training to be teachers that have links to communities can be employed in those communities and more mobile students can be encouraged to move to where they are needed.

– Make sure teacher preparation places are more closely linked to where the jobs will be. This means reviewing places in London and the Home counties – not enough – and the north West – probably too many in some subjects and sectors.

– look at trainees that cannot find a job because we trained too many of them and see whether with some minimal re-training they might be useful teachers. This applies especially to PE teachers this year – some might re-train as science teachers or primary PE specialists and art teachers if they can work in design part of D&T.

– ramp up the 2015 autumn advertising campaign spend, including an early TV and social media advertising spend that at least matches that of the MoD.

– split the teacher preparation part of the National College away from the Leadership and professional development elements and put someone in charge that understands the issues- Sir Andrew Carter springs to mind as an obvious choice.

– look at the NQT year support now that local authorities don’t have the cash to help. This may be vital in keeping primary teachers in the profession, especially if anything goes wrong at the school where they are working.

None of these are new idea, and many were in my submission to the Carter Review that can be found in an earlier post. What is clear is that the new government cannot continue with an amateurish approach that marked some of the tactics towards teacher supply during the last few years. With many thousands more pupils entering schools over the next few years we cannot create a world class school system with fewer teachers.