Tag Archives: teacher preparation

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.

Ship no longer looks as steady

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The publication today by UCAS of the end of cycle report for the 2014 teacher training admissions scheme has produced some interesting new data that raises questions about some of the assumptions in my previous post. You can find the report in full at: https://www.ucas.com/sites/default/files/utt_eoc_2014_eoc_15_03_27.pdf

As this was the first round of the new system it may be dangerous to read too much into the data, and there is no guarantee that this round will be exactly the same as the last one, but if it is then we really do have to start taking the matter of teacher supply seriously.

One key statistic from the UCAS Report was that over the whole cycle 52% of applicants secured a place. As we know, acceptance rates were higher for university courses than for school-based provision. What we didn’t know was that acceptance rates declined the later a person applied in the cycle. Now some of that may be due to courses becoming full between an application and consideration by the course provider. However, I doubt that was responsible for acceptance rates as low as 46% towards the end of the cycle. UCAS note in the report that the former GTTR Scheme had a 43% acceptance rate in 2013, so despite the lower acceptance rate on school-based courses universities do seem to have either had better quality applicants or been willing to take more risks with those that did apply to prevent a greater shortfall in new teacher numbers.

The report also notes that by the end of February, 71% of applications had been received. On that basis the 28,000 or so applicants in the system by mid-March 2015 this year might be joined by another 8,500-9,000 applicants this year during the remainder of the cycle. That would mean more than 4,500 acceptances still to come once all the 28,000 had been processed.

As a result, the missing 5,000 applicants by mid-March 2015 compared with mid-March 2014 may mean a drop of 2,500 in numbers recruited through the admissions process. That’s a scary number and might possibly take recruitment down to no more than 26,000 Trainees. For those that really want to worry, and feel like sleepless nights, I recommend a look at Figure 39 on page 46 of the UCAS report. This shows that acceptance rates fell away sharply after May last year. Now some of that may be due to courses becoming full, but if so there is a need to devise a trading system of spare places to be able to offer candidates in subjects where the overall total won’t be met a place. Just over allocating, the system used by NCTL at present, doesn’t seem to be working.

Whether some courses would remain viable at current levels is a matter for consideration. I wonder whether the NCSL ITT group that met earlier this week have yet discussed safety measures for ensuring providers can stay in the market or whether they are just prepared to let market forces decide where provision is delivered.

Because the admissions system is new, comparisons with previous years are not really possible except on the overall number of applicants. UCAS recorded 54,015 applicants. That is probably the lowest number of graduates applying for teacher training since 2008 when the number was 51,616 through GTTR. Realistically, the overall number was higher that year because the employment-based routes didn’t recruit through UCAS. The last time the number dropped below 50,000 was probably early this century.

Has the ship steadied?

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Data released from UCAS this morning shows that total applications for postgraduate teacher preparation courses still lags behind the same point in 2014. By mid-March 2014 there had been over 102,000 applications from more than 33,500 applicants. This year at roughly the same mid-moth point in March applications were around 85,500 and applicant numbers were approaching the 28,000 mark. In terms of applicants, the gap has widened by around a further 200 applicants during the mid-February to mid-March period. With around 34,000 places on offer there are still not enough applicants to fill every place, even if all were suitable.

Higher education seems to be bearing the brunt of the reduction, with applications down from more than 53,000 in 2014 to fewer than 40,000 in March 2015. That said, although applications to SCITTs have risen, but there are more of them this year, applications to School Direct are down in both categories. The reduction is not a localised issue, but appears in all age groups and across all regions of England. This will make the downward trend more of a challenge to reverse in the remaining period of the recruitment round as it is difficult to know where to focus advertising to gain the most effect. We must just hope that the TV advertising campaign makes a difference by next month.

Although at this stage of the year interpreting ‘offers’ under the system that allows multiple offers to be made is more difficult than in the past, it does seem that in the primary sector the total number of ‘offers’ currently in the system is down on the same point last year by  possibly as many as 400 candidates.

The situation in the secondary sector is more challenging to unravel because of the manner in which UCAS present the statistics. However, it seems likely that there may be slightly more ‘offers’ in the system than at this point last year. The anxiety is that they may not be in the traditional ‘shortage’ subjects but in languages, where there seems to have been a large increase in applications, and possibly in physical education. Physics and mathematics have probably reached a level that is sustainable with present bursary and scholarship arrangements if applications continue at the current rate, but the numbers won’t be high enough to meet the level of training places allocated. In many other subjects, demand still remains at levels that are worryingly low and will be insufficient to improve on recruitment totals from last year unless the ratio of acceptances to applicants is altered, especially on School Direct where relatively more applicants weren’t offered places than on other types of course in 2014.

Next month the figures will be affected by the Easter break and, although this is less of an issue in these days of electronic applications, it is still a factor to be taken into account. Thus, the next set of data that can form a realistic comparison between 2014 and 2015 will come in May, after the election. The data will no doubt be an early headache for the new Secretary of State, assuming we have one by then.

Jam tomorrow

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Even assuming the first entrants into David Cameron’s new maths scholarship programme that he announced today start their degrees this September, they won’t be available to teach until either September 2018 if they are allowed on TeachFirst or 2019 if they follow a traditional one-year teacher preparation programme.

Even though we might need more maths teachers by then, especially if the next government goes for a requirement that all 16-18 year olds study a maths course of some description, it is still a curious choice of subject to highlight for extra support. At present, mathematics isn’t anywhere near the worst subject in terms of teacher supply. Indeed, in TeachVac it probably won’t be flagged as an amber warning subject until today. That’s well behind, business studies, IT, design and technology, geography, English and social studies; all subjects where we have been warning schools of shortages in 2015 for some time now. See www.teachvac.co.uk for more details.

As the government is also in the process of re-training other teachers to become maths specialists it isn’t clear why there is this focus only on mathematics. There is even a risk that if it forces some physics teachers to have to teach other sciences rather than maths alongside physics it could have a negative effect on recruitment into physics. If the government intends to introduce a compulsory course in English for 16-18 year olds then monitoring teacher numbers in that subject is equally vital to monitoring maths  teacher numbers as shortages of teachers of English may be as severe in some parts of the country as they are for maths teachers.

Teacher supply will be the number one crisis facing whoever is Secretary of State after the election and a piecemeal approach to the problem may attract headlines but won’t produce enough teachers in every subject to allow schools to make progress on the Attainment8 measure.

In two weeks we will see the current recruitment figures for trainees for graduate courses starting in September. They will be the last numbers likely to feed into the general election debate. If they remain poor, as seems likely, teacher supply may be the only issue in education to make waves during the campaign despite the many other policies that need discussion.

Another manifesto for teacher education

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Yesterday the Million+ group of universities launched their Manifesto for Teacher Education in a dining room at the House of Commons. The Chair, the VC of Staffordshire University was flanked by two leading teacher association officials and Labour and Tory party speakers, albeit the Labour member of their education team was Welsh and the ATL speaker was bilingual and had taught in Wales: the debate was wide ranging.

The manifesto itself highlights the need for teachers to have an academic and professional qualification and seeks to restore the pre-eminence of universities in both the preparation of new teachers and in their professional development throughout their career. The manifesto view that Osfted should inspect all providers is sensible, as it the promotion of a workforce that represents society as a whole. Adding a point about the Teacher Supply Model and a need for regional variations in demand to be taken into account is an interesting development and reflects a wider concern about allocations. Especially where targets aren’t being met.

There was a point when the Tory speaker challenged the need for a teaching qualification albeit starting his remarks by saying that there were fewer unqualified teachers now than there were a few years ago. A bit like a position of ‘wanting to have your cake and eat it.’ This led to a debate about whether HE lecturers should also be trained and, at least from me, a question about whether that applied to FE teaching staff as well?  Most seemed in favour of preparation for all that teach at whatever level.

The elephant in the room that nobody addressed, despite a direct question from me, was about whether graduates training as teachers should be expected to pay fees? This isn’t mentioned in the manifesto either. Despite their recent announcement, the Labour speaker didn’t mention anything about whether trainees would be expected to pay fees. As regular reads know, my position is clear, there should be no fees for graduate trainees preparing to be a teacher by whatever route they choose and the present position is discriminatory. However, I have yet to win Lib Dem support for this position.

On the teacher supply position it was humbling to be referred to by two of the speakers as a leading authority. However, I had many years of following the trends and TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk was set up to collect data about the interface between training and employment and thus help improve the modelling of where teachers need to be trained.

The fact that it also offers a free service bring together vacancies and trainees looking for jobs is a bonus that will shortly be extended to all classroom teachers in secondary schools and if discussions underway are successful eventually to the primary sector and to include all promoted and leadership vacancies as well. Next month we hope to publish data on where trainees are looking for vacancies; and just as importantly, where they aren’t. This could provide a lively debate about the very regional needs Million+ highlighted. At present, secondary schools in Yorkshire and the Humber have posted around a third fewer vacancies per school than schools in the South East of England. Despite the presence of TeachFirst, London schools aren’t far behind their neighbours in the South East in seeking new teachers. This is something Million+ will need to bear in mind.

Divide by three

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The government’s new TV advertising campaign to attract entrants into the teaching profession cannot come soon enough. Data released today by UCAS shows that at the halfway point in the recruitment cycle the grim picture I highlighted when the January data emerged has not improved; in some cases it has even become worse.

Normally, in past years most primary PGCE places have been taken up by now. This year, applicants are holding 7,610 offers compared with 8,540 at the same date in 2014. Now, because of the new, expensive and unhelpful admissions arrangements, candidates may hold a number of offers for a period of time. Thus, real acceptances this year could be less than 3,000, including candidates required to meet conditions such as passing the skills tests. In 2012, there were 18,700 applicants for primary courses at this point in time, whereas if we assume the current 37,000 applicants have all made their possible three applications then there may be fewer than 12,500 applicants for primary courses are in the system. That’s a big drop in four years.

The picture is little better in secondary where many of the subjects that under-recruited last year aren’t doing much better this year. The total of offers are higher than at this point last year in languages; PE; art; and probably in IT and Chemistry. They are basically the same as at this point last year in Physics; mathematics; history; English; business studies; and biology. Most worrying is the fact that current offers are probably below last year in RE; music; geography and probably design and technology. The concerns over the future of the arts in schools are probably not mis-placed and no doubt potential teachers in these subjects are picking up on the messages.

With School Direct closing down applications in many cases during July, there are less than 20 weeks to turn around the current situation. A TV advertising campaign may not be enough: Fees should be either abolished for all trainees or guaranteed by the government. Increasing bursaries that are tax free risks trainees being paid more after tax and NI than the mentors helping train them in the schools. It also risks trainees having to take a pay cut on entry into the profession, especially if the £25,000 bursary is grossed up from the time spent in training to an annual salary.

There is a rumour that the NCTL is handing out more places to providers willing to take them. That is not a sensible move at this stage as it risks destabilising the sector. Providers that cannot fill enough places to make ends meet and cover their costs might just pull out. This is especially true of small primary school providers put in jeopardy by the current drop in applications. The government should look at possible safety net arrangements for providers faced with a shortage of applicants but serving parts of the country where their disappearance would cause real supply problems.

Unless teaching can attract career changers, and so far only 10,000 of the 24,600 applicants are over 25, then there will be few new applicants from now until after final exams finish in May or June. That will be too late to redeem recruitment failures earlier in the cycle.

 

Labour’s sexist jibe

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This blog has been relatively quiet lately, partly because there have been few new numbers coming out of the DfE over the past month, and partly because the launch of TeachVac has been taking up a lot of my time. On that front, the team at TeachVac have now issued an amber warning in respect of English and Business Studies because we believe there will be insufficient trainee numbers to meet the demand from schools during this recruitment round. Design and Technology may join this list of subjects with such a warning this week if current trends in the advertising of vacancies continues.

As more trainees and teachers sign up for the matching service we are able to start identifying parts of the country where problems may be especially acute later in the recruitment round. The team at TeachVac have also identified that, as expected, independent schools and selective schools are more likely than other schools to advertise for teachers of the separate sciences rather than a teacher of science. As TeachVac is free to schools and trainees, all schools can try both and see what happens without fear of having wasted their money. For anyone unsure about the process there are helpful videos on both the schools and teacher pages demoing the system: just visit www.teachvac.co.uk and hit the demo button.

TeachVac is a long way from members of religious orders as teachers: one of the issues of the moment. I cannot think why Labour’s Mr Hunt – does he really want the job he is doing or is he just going through the motions – talked or nuns and ignored the many men in Roman Catholic orders that have given their lives in the service of education throughout the world.

Until the early 1970s, the Roman Catholic Church along with the Anglicans and free churches in this country ran a number of training colleges for those wanting to become teachers.  By the way, Mr Hunt, the term training college went out of common use when university departments took over most of the colleges in the 1970s in a bid to improve academic standards for would-be teachers. Previously, there were some teachers that learnt on the job, and they weren’t restricted to members of religious orders as I have pointed out in relation to my own career history in education. Now there may be some untrained teachers left in the independent sector, and no doubt many parish priests that come into Roman Catholic schools haven’t had any formal training in teaching, but in the state-funded sector I am sure Ofsted would have commented if it had come across a large group of untrained staff acting as teachers.

The withdrawal of religious orders from headships in the primary sector over the past 30 years I have been studying the issue has undoubtedly been one of the reasons why Roman Catholic schools, especially in the primary sector, have struggled to recruit head teachers from the laity in sufficient numbers. The selfless devotion of those that take vows often allowed them to tackle the burden of headship with single-minded devotion. No doubt they were also willing to go where asked regardless of the type of school or its location. Teachers with families, partners and other community ties don’t have such freedom and it has affected the supply of head teachers in recent years. To date, we have seen no results from the government’s national leader scheme announced in the autumn of 2013 to overcome this problem. No doubt time will tell if it can succeed.