Tag Archives: teacher preparation

Physics still a major concern

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Just how bad is the situation in Physics this year when it comes to applications for teacher training?Before answering that question it is worth recalling the situation in the spring of last year.  During March last year I reported on this blog that on the 15th March 2013 only 4% of the ‘salaried’ School Direct places for Physics were shown as ‘unavailable’, as were just 6% of the ‘non-salaried’ Physics ‘Training’ places. That was a total of 29 places out of 572 on offer for Physics shown as ‘unavailable’, and presumably, therefore, filled in March 2013.

I thought that I would have a go at repeating the exercise this year. The unified UCAS application system makes tracking less of a challenge than the DfE system in use last year, and with a bit of cross-checking against the NCTL allocations list that appeared recently, I think I have been able to make a fair stab at the position as of 11th April, some three weeks later than last year, and without the interference of Easter.

The NCTL identified some 263 salaried and 587 tuition places available for Physics 2014 through School Direct according to the allocations spreadsheet I have used. There were also no doubt some places for Physics and Mathematics, but I have ignored those for this exercise. Allowing for some anomalies between UCAS and NCTL regarding tuition fee and salaried routes, my estimates suggest no more than 10 of the 263 Salaried places are current ‘unavailable’ – some 3.8% compared with 4% last year at a date three weeks previously. Similarly, the tuition fee route appears to have some 31 places ‘unavailable’ out of 587 – some 5.28% – compared with 6% in last year’s analysis for March. However, 13 of the 31 places ‘unavailable’ are located in just two schools, one of which has been showing ‘no vacancies’ for some time. It would be helpful if both Whitmore High School in London and Sandringham School in St Albans could share with others how they have been so successful in attracting trainee Physics teachers. But, at least the overall numbers recruited to date are slightly higher than last year, even if the percentages are similar because of the extra places available through School Direct, albeit the total is just 38 this year compared with 29 at a point three weeks earlier in 2013. However, thanks to a Rumsfeldian ‘known unknown’ there are a 100 or so Salaried places, and slightly more than 300 tuition fee places that might have been filed in schools awarded more than one place. Any of these places filled cannot be distinguished from the figures this year.

In view of the fact that overall the UCAS data showed that 26% of the Teacher Supply Model figure of 853 trainees (the level of suggested need) were shown as ‘under offer’ of one sort or another on 17th March it would seem likely that higher education and SCITT providers have achieved higher rates of filled places in Physics  in the current recruitment round when compared with School Direct unless the there are lots of filled places in the ‘known unknown’ schools with more than one place on offer. If it is the case that higher education and SCITT have filled a greater proportion of their places so far, and the situation does not change by the end of the recruitment round, then it must reopen the debate about the usefulness of a training model that fails to fill places available.

Now the issue, as it was last year, may well be around what is the acceptable quality of a trainee? Pitch the standard  too high, and there won’t be enough trainees, and next year some schools won’t be able to recruit a Physics teacher – assuming the TSM calculations are anywhere near correct. Pitch the standard too low, and the quality of new teachers won’t be good enough.

To my mind this is an issue where government needs to provide a clear steer to the sector so that when Ofsted calls everyone can be judged by the same standards. Otherwise, the advice to higher education must be: play safe and don’t take a candidate you think a school wouldn’t offer a School Direct place to. If that further reduces supply, so be it.

What is very clear now is that, at least in Physics, we are heading for the same outcome as last year when the required number (note not a target) wasn’t reached unless there is a swift and dramatic change in acceptances, and probably applications. This is especially as at the 17th March there were only 200 applications not covered by offers in the UCAS system, including those declined places.

 

Concerning, but with some good features

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The latest data for applications to postgraduate teacher preparation courses in England was published earlier today. As expected, the rate of applications has slowed over the month from mid-February to mid-March when compared with the previous month. The increase in applications for Primary courses was around 12%, and for Secondary courses, 14%; with School Direct faring better than higher education courses, although the actual numbers were smaller than for higher education. As courses have begun to fill, future applications will be targeted on the remaining providers with places.

Regionally, applications for courses offered by providers in London have held up strongly, registering a 17% increase over last month compared with just a 10% increase for providers in the North East. The national average was a 13% increase. As might be expected at this time of year, applications from older career changers rose faster than from those applicants still at university. Indeed, there was only a 7% increase from those aged 21 or under compared with a 16% increase from those aged over 40. The percentage of older applicants presumably reflected the fact that many final year undergraduates are now concentring on their final assessment examinations, dissertations and coursework rather than making applications for teacher preparation courses.

Applications for Primary courses have now topped the 18,000 mark, similar to the level seen at this point last year for the GTTR Scheme. However, once the School Direct applications are taken into account (there was a separate application scheme for those places last year) then applications are probably still behind where they were at this point last year.

By these set of figures, around 10,300 of the 15,000 or so primary places have been the subject of an offer, although only 940 of these were unconditional offers. The majority of conditional offers will no doubt be subject to the passing of the Skills Tests. Assuming even a modest margin for unsuitable candidates, there will be the need for at least 20,000 applicants to fill all the places on offer. That is around another 4,000 applicants, or probably some 1,000 a month, so the rate of application would need to halve from the level of the past month before worry might turn to concern. Even so, 20,000 applicants require a 75% acceptance rate. Assuming the current 2,000 per month last for the next five months, the maximum time possible that would generate would be some 28,000 applicants. The conversion rate would then reduce down to a healthier figure in the 50-60% range.

Outcomes for secondary subjects remain challenging to determine from the data as published. However, it seems likely that at least some of the subjects that failed to fill all their places last year are heading in the same direction this year as well. Physics and design & technology are the two subjects where there must be the most concern, whereas history and physical education will again be over-subscribed; possibly significantly. In the middle are a range of subjects where the outcome on these figures is too difficult to tell. Some will recruit sufficient trainees; others might not.  Much will depend upon how the schools offering School Direct places respond to the applications they receive. By the next set of data in May the position will be much clearer, but there will be little time to take any action to deal with a shortfall.

Teacher Preparation – Allocation for 2014/15 – The direction of travel

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Although the NCTL only published outline figures today for the 2014/15 ITT allocations to allow schools and universities time to confirm that they will be taking up the places offered to them, the direction of travel is clear. Once again there has been over-allocation against need as modelled by the statisticians. The over-allocation is in the order of 18% compared with 13% in 2013/14, and is probably largely in the secondary phase. This over-allocations has allowed 16,200 places to be allocated to universities, although once the likely 9-10,000 primary places have been factored in, the secondary total is likely to be around 6-7,000 places, compared with 9,300 last year. Hence the decimation of courses not rated ‘outstanding’ in some subjects and in some parts of the country. Had the over-allocation not taken place, it seems likely that secondary provision in higher education would have all but disappeared if the real target was around in the 14,000-15,000 range of required places for the secondary sector. We won’t know for sure until the detailed allocations are published sometime in the future. However schools are already advertising their School Direct places on web sites three weeks before the admissions system goes live.

The next issue is whether the guarantee to ‘outstanding’ providers will be repeated in 2014 for the 2015 allocations. If not, and School Direct recruits to target, then higher education will disappear from direct provision in most secondary subjects. Universities will, of course, be free to work with schools as partners in School Direct, and the NCTL notes that 10,800 of the School Direct places are delivered in association with universities. Overall, universities have a hand in the delivery of 82% of the provisional allocations, either directly or in association with schools. However, that percentage is undoubtedly lower for the secondary sector.

What is clear is that the divide between secondary and primary phase training is now sharper than at any time in the past 50 years. It seems likely that universities with large primary numbers, especially undergraduate numbers, can continue to cope with a mixture of smaller secondary allocations and association with schools through provision of School Direct training. Those universities with no primary provision plus secondary courses with fewer than 150 places must be at a genuine risk of exiting teacher preparation as their programme will probably not be financially viable.

The long-term challenge for the government is to ensure a stable and high quality secondary teacher preparation programme that will be able to deliver the number of trainees needed when the secondary school population rises sharply towards the end of this decade, and on into the first half of the 2020s. The immediate challenge is to ensure the new and untried admission system works effectively, and that as many trainees as are needed are recruited in the 2013/14 round. That will be no small challenge.

Teachers are not born but made

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I want my doctor to stand up every time I enter the surgery; take my blood pressure at every appointment, and write clearly in handwriting I can read. Actually, delete the last requirement since doctors all use word processors these days, and replace it with a requirement to write in language I can understand. This should be part of all their basis training. Now, I would never presume to impose training requirements on doctors, because as a lay person I have views, but not the expertise to do so, but I do expect them to be trained, and GP training can take four years.

In education it is different; perhaps because everyone went to some sort of school, commentators of all descriptions feel free to pronounce not only what training is needed for teachers but that no training is needed at all. Teachers are born they conclude, and don’t require to be made. Speaking from personal experience that view is just plain bunkum. Let me remind you what was said 50 years ago:

“In the primary and secondary modern schools teaching methods and techniques, with all the specialized knowledge that lies behind them, are as essential as mastery of subject matter. The prospect of these schools staffed to an increasing extent by untrained graduates is, in our view, intolerable.”

Now I am perfectly sure that anyone with the appropriate subject knowledge can teach after a fashion in private schools where parents and children want to succeed, and classroom management isn’t an issue. But even in the selective school I attended in the 1950s and 1960s there were untrained graduate teachers that couldn’t control classes. I recall one sixth form teacher prevented from starting a lesson by the ‘A’ level group placing the desks between the window wall and the door so that he was effectively barred from entering the classroom. Insubordination was not uncommon, and often vicious and personal in its manifestation. Untrained teachers often didn’t have any skills to combat this until they learnt them on the job over time; some learnt faster than others; and some never learnt them at all.

In January 1971, I embarked on my own career as a teacher by joining the staff of Tottenham School in Haringey. I was an untrained graduate persuaded to fill a casual vacancy by a head desperate to have a full staffroom that January. Frankly, I taught nothing to anyone for the first two terms. I had no skills, but lots of subject knowledge I couldn’t pass on to the pupils. Gradually, over the next five years I acquired the skills so that I believe that I could eventually teach any group of pupils and also manage the other parts of a teacher’s role to the level required in those days; a much lower standard than is required today. Along the way I resorted to all sorts of interesting control techniques such as Friday afternoon films played backwards through the projector as a reward for good behaviour, and punishing whole classes for the poor behaviour of a few pupils. I noticed that many of the trained teachers made much better progress than I achieved with pupils, but the lure of a salary was too great rather than a return to college for another year.

Interestingly, when I started working in teacher education in the 1980s I found the same lack of training for tutors. There was no training in classroom observation or understanding of how to be an effective trainer of adults as opposed to teacher of children.

Teaching is not an easy profession, not because it is difficult to acquire the subject knowledge, but because it is a challenge to pass that knowledge on to the next generation. Parental pressure to learn may help with some children but except where the school can threaten to remove the pupil that alone is not enough to bolster a graduate armed with subject knowledge and nothing else or to support them in the classroom and in their wider responsibilities for young people across 190 days of the year.

More than 150 years ago this was recognised by those recruiting teachers for elementary schools, and also by Dickens in his novels where teachers and educators receive something of a mixed press. Let me end with a quote from The National Society Annual Report of 1842 about selecting trainee teachers:

It is not every person who can be fitted for the office of schoolteacher. Good temper and good sense, gentleness coupled with firmness, a certain seriousness of character blended with cheerfulness, and even liveliness of disposition and manner; a love of children, and that sympathy with their feelings which experience alone can never supply – such are the moral requirements which we seek in those to whom we commit the education of the young.

This was the criteria from which they wished to add the training, recognising even then that these qualities alone were insufficient to make good teachers. It seems that some will never learn.

What does a ‘Qualified Teacher’ mean to Mr Clegg?

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What does being a ‘qualified teacher’ mean in Nick Clegg’s mind and how far will his guarantee go? Will he go further than the need for just a teaching qualification and guarantee parents that he will work towards a profession where teachers are not only qualified in teaching, but also qualified in what they are teaching?

To be a successful teacher requires a range of different qualities but, at least in the secondary sector, there ought to be a minimum level of subject knowledge equivalent to two years of an honours degree. Anyone without this basic level of knowledge should be offered Subject Knowledge Enhancement courses to allow them to acquire sufficient knowledge before they complete their teacher preparation experience. Even those with the requite degree may still lack expertise in areas of the school curriculum in their subject, and ways should be found to allow them to continue to acquire such additional knowledge. Any programme leading to Qualified Teacher Status should be restricted to preparation for specific subjects and phases rather than continue to be generic as at present, where a teacher with QTS can teach anything to anyone at any level of schooling. The fact that more than 20% of those teaching some Mathematics in our schools do not have a qualification above ‘A’ level in the subject may explain why many children neither enjoy the subject nor do well in it.

Qualified Teacher Status should be restricted in the subjects and phases where teachers are allowed to practice.

 However, it is in preparing teachers for the primary sector that I believe that most attention needs to be paid. The present post-graduate course attempts to cram the equivalent of a quart into a pint pot. Many curriculum areas receive scant attention, and there is no guarantee that the time in school will effectively dovetail in developing the time spent on the programmes outside the classroom. It is time for a thorough overhaul of how primary teachers are prepared. In the first instance, the undergraduate training route should be replaced by a wider first degree programme that would prepare graduates to work in a range of services including youth and social work as well as teaching. The specific training to be a teacher would be entirely postgraduate. Such a new degree would prevent undue early specialisation among those entering university straight from school.  It would also avoid the bizarre situation created by the Coalition whereby graduates wanting to become a teacher are subject to a minimum degree standard, except in Mathematics and Physics, but no such standard is imposed on undergraduates. As with the secondary sector, where there are already virtually no undergraduate teacher preparation courses, graduates of the new courses would not be licensed to teach at any level in the primary school, but would be certificated to teach at a particular Key Stage.

Overall, graduate training would be on a two year model leading to a Masters degree with the possibility of appropriate credit against the subject components of secondary subject training for those with appropriate honours degrees.

Teacher Training, and especially training for primary teachers, needs a radical overhaul. All teachers should be expected to study to a Masters level.

For too long the nation has under-invested in its teacher preparation programmes because politicians have never really been convinced of the need for such courses. If this is the first step on the road to a fundamental reappraisal of what we want form qualified teachers, then it is a welcome move. But, if Mr Clegg is just embarking on a bit of marketing then it will be an opportunity lost.

Exclusions need watching carefully, especially in the primary sector

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Recent figures from the DfE* showing data relating to exclusions by schools in 2011/12 reveal a picture where exclusions are happily still lower than a few years ago. Sadly, the downward trend of the past few years has been reversed and, particularly in the primary sector, there has been an increase in exclusions. However, who you are, and where you live, still plays an important part in your risk of being excluded. Boys aged 14, from an Irish Traveller heritage background, and living in one of the most socially deprived parts of the England will face many of the risk factors associated with membership of one of the groups more likely to be excluded: boys are far more likely to be excluded than girls. This isn’t to say that every boy meeting these criteria will be excluded, but for some the risk may well be greater than for others with different profiles. However, by diagnosing the groups most at risk, schools can often put policies in place to minimise the need for exclusions.

For some reason the Hampshire Coast has a reputation for containing special schools with above average rates of fixed term exclusions. This year, The Isle of Wight, Southampton and Portsmouth fill three of the four top spots for fixed term exclusions from special schools. Brighton and Hove comes two places lower. Whether there is something about the sea air, or it is the fact that they are all relatively small authorities with large areas of deprivation isn’t clear from the statistics. The Isle of Wight Council received a stern letter from Ofsted this week for a failure to effect school improvement policies on the island. No doubt Southampton and Portsmouth will also have to convince the inspectors that it isn’t their fault that so many of their most challenging children are disruptive.

Southampton and the Isle of Wight also take the top two places in the secondary school list of authorities where schools have the highest levels of fixed term exclusions, although in this case Portsmouth and Brighton and Hove are lower down the table, but both are still uncomfortably near the top. Hartlepool and South Tyneside, again small coastal authorities, have the lowest levels of fixed term exclusions in both the secondary and special school lists.

Reading, Medway and Portsmouth top the primary sector list, with Tower Hamlets and Richmond upon Thames having the lowest percentages of fixed term exclusions in the primary sector.

As a councillor, I am especially concerned that Oxfordshire is in the top third for secondary school fixed term exclusions, and has above average levels of such exclusions from the special school sector.

Since behaviour management is the topic many new teachers often cite needing more of during their preparation courses some attention might be paid to how they are trained to deal with behaviour leading up to exclusions especially since many of these fixed-term exclusions are for persistent disruptive behaviour. However, it will be interesting to see how the changes to the 14-18 curriculum will affect exclusions among the most numerous group of excludees, boys in that age bracket. Will Science, technology and vocational schools help re-engage these young men with the purpose of education or just add a further stopping point on the road that for too many leads to a life of anti-social behaviour and, too often, crime.

But it is the primary sector, with its rapidly increasing pupil numbers, that should concern policy-makers the most. The reasons for exclusion of these younger children need to be considered, and any feedback on what can help prevent them being excluded should be circulated to all concerned. If necessary, more emphasis on understanding disruptive behaviour will need to become a part of teacher preparation programmes, especially if it is shown that new teachers face unacceptably high levels of disruption without all the skills necessary to deal with them.

*https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/permanent-and-fixed-period-exclusions-from-schools-in-england-2011-to-2012-academic-year