Tag Archives: teacher preparation

Gradgrind was wrong

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The peak period for diagnosis of metal health problems is between the ages of about ten and thirty. For the first third of that time schools play an import part in the life of young people. However, whether they are as responsive to mental health issues as to physical health matters is worthy of scrutiny as the Fooks lecture I attended recently in Oxford made clear.

Dr Ian Goodyer from Cambridge suggested in the lecture that we all have a checklist of what to do if we encounter a cut finger; stop the bleeding, prevent infection and find a sticking plaster. But, there isn’t the same level of immediate in-house steps to dealing with mental health matters. Of course, if the cut is deep or otherwise problematic, you seek expert help. The same is true for diseases of the mind. But, how much do we offer simple suggestions to teachers and others to look for signs of an unwell mind? Thirty years ago Sir Keith Joseph as Secretary of State for Education started the assault on universities rather than schools preparing teachers with an attack on the study of the ‘ologies. I think he especially disliked sociology, but psychology became caught up in the general attack along with philosophy and the history and governance of education. He may have had a point. However, taken to extreme the cure is sometimes perhaps worse than the disease.

As we now teach children in classes, not just the class as a whole, there is a need to know pupils as individuals and not just en-masse. This is challenging for secondary school teachers with many different groups to teach each week. I am sure that trying to do the best for every child has added to stress levels of teachers, as it is much more demanding than teaching to the average of the class.

Teachers are the only group in society working day in and day out with young people going through profound physical, emotional and psychological changes, especially during their teenage years, yet how well do we prepare them for this task?

It would be interesting to see how the different routes into the profession deal with these challenges at the present time? How far do trainees meet with school nurses and counsellors to discuss the challenges young people face during adolescence and how they respond to them. Do we tell teachers to look for self-harming, for eating disorders, and for isolation and failure to engage in class? These are arguably as important as other child safety issues, but while these receive headline attention Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services have languished as the poor relation of an under-funded part of the National Health Service. Fortunately, the Health Select Committee at Westminster has recently illuminated this dark space and Ministers in the Health Department, if not yet in education, have taken some notice.

As a man interested in numbers, I could look at the loss of productivity or the absence figures cited by Ian Goodyer in his lecture, but as a human being I see the tragedy behind the numbers and some of the effects on individuals and their families. If restoring the ‘ologies to teacher preparation saved one young person from self-harm, an eating disorder or a suicide it will have been well worth doing.

And one for the lawyers

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The recent IFS Report, discussed in the previous post on this blog, raised a number of interesting questions. It is essential that someone, whether the IFS team or another group doesn’t matter, looks into issues such as recruitment and retention and how the nation can ensure a sufficient supply of appropriately prepared teachers in the right places and willing to teach in all types of schools. Then, and only then, is it really possible to look at whether the government is paying too much to achieve that necessary aim.

However, one thought that was provoked by the fact that most new teachers won’t pay back their fees plus interest because their lifetime earnings in teaching won’t be sufficient is that they are better off than those under the former fee structure that started paying back as soon as the loan was drawn down. In effect, new teachers are paying a graduate tax for a set number of years and then the rest of the debt is cancelled. Of course, by teaching overseas they can reduce the impact of the tax even further, but potentially lose other benefits such as the chance to build up a pension fund.

However, the other thought that occurred to me after reading the IFS report, is the one where the lawyers might get involved. This is whether the government can now actually cap university recruitment to fee-paying courses? In the days when government paid fees for teachers and indeed contributed to other university funding it was easy for them to set a cap on both undergraduate and post-graduate teaching numbers. However after David Willets removed the ceiling on undergraduate numbers it is possible to wonder whether universities can actually recruit as many undergraduates to teacher preparation courses as they like: if not, why are they different to other courses pad for by the students using government loans?

In the case of PGCE allocations the legal question is even more interesting. Before fees were introduced PGCE type courses were within the ‘Mandatory Awards Funding’ even though not a first degree course because this allowed for government funding, unlike other post-first degree courses and provided funding for students that had already received student support for an undergraduate degree. By keeping post-graduate teacher preparation within the same sort of fee regime it is interesting to ask whether the removal of the cap on numbers also applies to these students. If so, could universities ignore the NCTL allocations and recruit as many PGCE students as they wanted: an interesting idea.

The government view would undoubtedly be that they couldn’t do so and the NCTL has the power to allocate places. But with no power over money, the only sanction might be to refuse QTS to some students not on allocated places – but since you now don’t need QTS to teach in an academy of any description that is somewhat of an empty threat. Of course, the Treasury might have something to say, but as it seems to have agreed to uncapped undergraduate numbers how can it treat teacher education differently if it falls within the same fee regime?

As the government has exceeded the Teacher Supply Model suggested numbers with its level of allocations in many subjects, it has effectively acceded to the principle of more trainees than needed, but is trying to control where they are located through the allocations process.

Could we see a battle for the hearts and minds of future teachers by universities ignoring allocations and offering a choice to potential teachers as to where they want to train: a school or a university?

Should trainees bring benefits as well as costs?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slip of the tongue or ….?

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Last week when speaking at the Teaching Awards dinner the Secretary of State is reported by the DfE to have said:

We are attracting more and more high-quality people into teaching – and keeping them in the profession. These new teachers are getting the right training to prepare them to succeed in the classroom through School Direct, Teach First and school-centred initial teacher training – teachers in our best schools are now in the driving seat to train the next generation of their profession.

No mention of the part played by higher education and the universities either in association with School Direct, Teach First, or SCITTs, or in their own right as providers. Now, either it was a slip of the tongue or it was a deliberate snub to higher education and a message to the education world that the Conservatives will continue the drive to eradicate universities from the public face of teacher preparation.

Personally, I cannot see how the State can currently train sufficient primary school teachers without the involvement of higher education. The Sutton Trust research issued last week showed how important subject knowledge is for teachers, especially in secondary schools. I remain to be convinced that schools alone have the capacity to add value to trainee teachers in the subject knowledge domain however good they are at other aspects of preparing those that want to be teachers.

The Secretary of State’s words certainly won’t inspire any Vice Chancellor evaluating their 2015/16 allocation of ITT places to see whether or not to remain in teacher preparation and subsidise any short-term losses, especially if it seems clear the government doesn’t want universities involved. Hopefully, I am wrong and the Secretary of State will send a message to the university educators meeting in Birmingham later this week to say how much she values their contributions to teacher preparation and development: but then England might win a world cup in football.

Last week Universities UK published a report in their Funding Environment for Universities 2014 series of pamphlets called ‘The Impact of ITT Reforms on English Higher Education Institutions’ in which they concluded that:

‘It is therefore vital that universities are given a more stable operating environment, and that their key role in the training and delivery of high-quality teachers is recognised and clearly defined in the government’s future ITT strategy.’

It seems as if the DfE and the Secretary of State don’t agree with UUK’s view.

So what is the future for higher education and ITT? Will universities start to lose staff that see the writing on the wall and look elsewhere for career opportunities? Will high quality replacement be encouraged to join a sector so out of favour with government and its advisers? High quality staffing is the key to good teacher preparation programmes along with an understanding of research and practice. Once again England is going off on a new policy direction in trusting schools to provide the training of new teachers without even a nod to higher education. This is a high risk strategy.  However, just as I had finished writing this blog the DfE published a list of universities involved in early years ITT: welcome but somewhat mixed messages.

Still looking for teachers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A National Teaching Force?

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The news that Teach First with its national brand of teacher preparation is to expand into rural areas where schools are under-performing raises the interesting issue of how long two system of teacher preparation can co-exist within the same framework for teacher preparation?

By contrast to Teach First, School Direct, apparently also favoured by government, is a devolved, school controlled, training route where individual schools can decide from year to year whether to train teachers or not depending upon local circumstances. So long as they can ensure trainees reach QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) Schools with School Direct places allocated to them have considerable autonomy.

In many senses the two routes – School Direct and Teach First are at opposite end of the spectrum in relation to national control and management of the process and outcomes of teacher preparation. Caught between the two are the universities, and their tried and tested model of training that has consistently been well evaluated by Ofsted, but is irrationally unpopular in some political circles.

How much longer this range of different approaches can continue is a moot point. There seems to be a growing feeling at Westminster that schools need help to improve and, having created a decentralised model that diminished the role of local authorities, schools have in some cases become too isolated. It may well be that the lessons learnt from the improvements in London schools over the last decade show that the cohesive nature of the borough system, with its four yearly election cycle, has meant that the rhetoric about local authorities no longer having a key role to play has been ignored across most of the capital in a manner that hasn’t happened outside London. However, it may be that even in London it is the Directors of Children’s Services that have often provided the glue that holds the service together rather than local politicians, and it is directors that have helped the head teachers create the turnaround, especially in the primary sector.

In my view, the Cabinet system of government has been unhelpful for education as it has reduced the number of local politicians involved in the education service. The removal of the local authority presence on academy governing bodies has also broken the link between communities and bodies responsible for functions other than education, leaving heads sometimes not understanding the role of the school in the community. I wonder whether the re-introduction of a committee structure into local government that allowed greater democratic oversight to schooling might not be a bad idea. I am supported in that view by the fact that a parish council in Oxfordshire announced this week that it wants to open an academy without as far as I can tell any reference to the county council: local democracy in action?

On the other had I read today in the press that the president of ASCL seems to favour schools being allowed to used unqualified teachers despite his members turning their noses up at many applicants to the School Direct Salaried route with the freedoms it confers to schools in both the selection and training of new teachers. Perhaps, he is worried that with expansion of Teach First the idea of a national teaching force that can be deployed at the behest of government into under-performing schools might have moved a step closer.

It would surely be the height of irony if an organisation whose director of research once ran a right wing think tank posed a solution for teacher supply, training and employment that runs contrary to market principles: but didn’t the Chancellor say in Leeds earlier this week that markets don’t always get things right. Perhaps the day of the fully autonomous school is once again under scrutiny. If so, taking control of the teaching force might be an interesting place to start.

What’s wrong with career changers?

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An analysis of data provided by UCAS yesterday on applications to teacher preparation courses, and offers made to applicants, suggested that this year recruiting to teacher preparation courses will be even more of a challenge than last year. There is now a risk that unless the 5,000 applicants with interview requests outstanding or awaiting offer have a different success rate to those applying earlier in the year even primary courses may not meet their targets across England.

By 16th June some 23,000 applicants had been placed, conditionally placed or were holding offers against a target in excess of 29,000 graduates, excluding Teach First. With no more than 10 weeks to go before courses start, and the skills tests to pass, not to mention the school holidays, it will need an unprecedented effort to hit the targets in all subjects even at the lower level indicated by the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model; the NCTL allocations in many subjects are just pie in the sky now.

Bearing in mind that these are places on courses for those that want to become teachers ,the conversion rates on the different courses are interesting:

PRIMARY TOTAL OFFER
HE 23%
SCITT 28%
SCHOOL DIRECT 24%
SD SALARIED 15%
   
SECONDARY TOTAL OFFER
HE 19%
SCITT 22%
SCHOOL DIRECT 16%
SD SALARIED 12%
All applicants 20%

School Centred courses appear to have made a higher percentage of offers to applicants than other routes. In primary, the School Direct training route has made the same percentage of offer to applicants as higher education, but in secondary courses higher education has made a higher percentage of offers despite having seen its number of places decline compared with last year.

The interesting outcome is the apparent low percentage of offers to career changers applying for the School Direct Salaried route where offers appear below the totals achieved in many years under the former Graduate Teacher Programme. Only around one in eight applications to the secondary courses have been accepted. This means that only 910 applicants have been placed, conditionally placed, or were holding an offer on the 16th June for secondary School Direct Salaried places. In primary the total is 1,500 offers.

It is worth exploring whether this means that career switchers are less suitable for teaching, despite their greater experience than new graduates, and older graduates applying for the other routes? The NCTL should also make clear whether any salaried places have been returned by schools and re-allocated to other routes following the recent requests for providers of all types to take additional places in many subjects and the primary phase.

It is also worth noting that the DfE/NCTL decision to allow all legitimate bids in physics and mathematics doesn’t seem to be working. As a result, it is important to know whether it is distorting the regional picture with more places being accepted in some parts of the country than others.

The Royal Society paper on Vision published yesterday recognised the need for more teachers. These figures show that in the areas they mentioned this isn’t happening. Time for plan B?

 

Teacher training transfer window opens

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As I hinted in a recent post, things are seemingly not going to plan in this year’s recruitment round for teacher preparation courses. If they were, then today’s announcement from the NCTL would not have appeared offering as it does additional places to providers with courses that are full. http://www.emcsrv.com/prolog/NCTL/Additional-HEI-places-available-for-2014-guide.pdf What is interesting is not so much the list of secondary subjects reproduced below, but the fact that places are also still up for grabs for non-specialist primary trainees.

According to the NCTL places are available in the following subjects:

  • biology
  • citizenship
  • classics
  • computer science
  • design & technology
  • engineering
  • geography
  • health and social care
  • modern languages
  • music
  • religious education
  • primary mathematics specialist and
  • all non-specialist primary

And the NCTL will continue to allocate places on request for all physics and maths courses, as it has done all year.

It remains to be seen how responsive schools and universities will be at this stage of the year to the invitation to top up courses that are full.

What this move by the NCTL will mean for the regional distribution of places is not clear. In the case of geography, often a bellwether subject in terms of charting recruitment challenges, most regions of England have six or seven schools showing no vacancies today on the UCAS web site and would thus be eligible to take on more places. Helpfully, there are nine such schools in London, and 12 in the south East where teachers are often needed in greater numbers.

Two of the four universities that would be allowed to recruit more trainees are in the North East, where there appear to be no schools with their full allocation. The other two universities that could bid for more places are one each in London and the South East according to the UCAS public site.

It is surprisingly to see primary places being offered in June as historically almost all courses are fully recruited by now; many with waiting lists.

What the announcement does to the government’s intention to transfer more training to schools will not become clear until the autumn, when it will become clear how many places have been taken up, and by what providers. If these places need to be filled, and are not, then next summer some schools may struggle to recruit new teachers in a wider range of subjects than I was predicting only a couple of weeks ago.

Can teaching schools create a universal model for teacher preparation and development?

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I must confess that the National College’s initial evaluation of Teaching Schools had passed me by. I don’t know whether it was because it appeared around Easter time or because it was inserted into the government’s publication list other than at the top where new publications usually appear. Nevertheless, it merits consideration by anyone interested in both ITT and CPD in schools as a means of raising standards. The full document can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/302659/RR332_-_Teaching_schools_Evaluation.pdf

The authors included a former general secretary of ASCL, and a well-known thinker on education policy, have published this report as part of a longer government backed study that commenced in 2013, and continues to 2015. There is much to ponder in their interim conclusions. In this piece I will concentrate on their discussion about initial teacher education and School Direct. The authors accept that, as is well known, last year there was little difficulty filing the primary places on offer but that there were challenges recruiting to the priority secondary subjects.

It will be interesting to see whether the same pattern will be repeated in 2014, since using School Direct to provide a local trained teaching force was cited as a reason for participating in at least one case. The report noted that:

“In some case study TSAs Teaching School Alliances), there are examples of strategic planning work that addresses the needs of local schools when allocating School Direct trainees. For the Hallam TSA, School Direct has enabled them to build leadership capacity in local Catholic schools from ‘the start of the supply chain’ (strategic partner). It has also given them the autonomy to improve the supply of high quality teachers in Religious Education (RE). It is noted that recruitment and succession planning of RE teachers are ‘a crisis in church schools’. It is, however, too early to report successes yet”

As the Report also notes, the relationship between teaching schools and higher education is evolving at present. Some TSA have strong links that pre-date the present drive to employer-led training for teachers – a return to the pre-Robbins Report position – that have survived the change in circumstances. Indeed, for some universities, it is possible to dump the bits of training they don’t want to do as well as the administrative tasks and still be paid for the teaching they do better than schools with the bonus of the university charging the faculty a lower overhead. Much no doubt depends upon whether the TSA sees training merely as ‘coaching’ or recognises that anyone entering the profession needs far more than just some lesson plans and a few tips on how to manage behaviour. No doubt the new review Gove has ordered will have something to say about this topic.

The Report notes some challenges for the future, including what the authors see as the biggest challenge – one that is strategic in character – namely how sustainable is the whole teaching school concept in the medium term. As they note, there are concerns about how easily public policy can change.  Even more worryingly, they note that Teaching Schools appear to have been doing the softer working around support and development but not been able to hold to each other to account (or other schools in the alliance) if performance and progress starts to slip in a school. This is a vital issue that must be addressed if quality in training and development is not to be compromised. Ofsted will have to pay particular attention to this aspect of School Direct and the other programmes operated by teaching schools.

There is much else of interest in the report, and I would urge anyone interested in this field to download and read the whole report.

Why keep a dog and bark yourself?

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The quote at the head of this piece came into my mind when I read the announcement by Michael Gove that he was establishing an independent review of teacher training courses led by a Surrey Primary head teacher with 26 years experience in one school. The DfE gave the aims of the review as:

  • define effective ITT practice
  • assess the extent to which the current system delivers effective ITT
  • recommend where and how improvements could be made
  • recommend ways to improve choice in the system by improving the transparency of course content and methods

Now these seem suspiciously similar to the task of Osfted inspectors when they look at teacher training provision. So, will the review team just read Ofsted reports, collate the findings, and publish a Report? In view of the time frame; a Report by the end of the year, from a group yet to be established, means that it will be interesting to see what more they can achieve.

Were I to commission a review it would have had terms of reference something like: consider the nature and content of the teacher preparation scheme needed to deliver an effective and improving school system that measures its performance among the best in the world for the range of children it serves while competing for entrants in a thriving labour market for those who after training will teach a diverse range of subjects and ages of pupils in many different types of schools.

The Gove review will need to consider what the purpose of choice is within training? We don’t need choice about standards. We may offer choice of course that is different for new graduates and older career switchers but we may also like both groups to train together. The Review might also ask why we don’t offer methods to allow teachers post-entry to retrain for different subjects or phases.

However,, perhaps the central question that any Review will need to address, if it is not to be a superficial endorsement of current policy directions, is how do we ensure sufficient teachers in the right places to drive the school system forward when an improving economy makes teaching seem less competitive to some new graduates as a career choice than other possible options? And once trained, how do we ensure they are recruited where they are needed?

As a primary head teacher, I hope that Mr Carter takes a long hard look at both the PGCE for primary teachers and School Direct in the primary sector, as well as Teach First’s primary offering, even if it is not actually included in his formal remit. Are there enough high quality applicants to sustain the pressure of a 39 week course that puts them in the classroom almost from day one? If not, how can we achieve such performance from the 20,000 trainees we need each year to create an improving school system?

On the secondary front, there are almost as many issues to consider, but I doubt course content and methods are really an issue except, perhaps, to see where subject knowledge fits into the picture.

Finally, the Review might like to comment on whether QTS should remain unspecified after the preparation phase or be more linked to specific subjects and phases of teaching.