Will you find a teaching post in 2021?

Posted on January 19, 2021 by John Howson

How easy will trainees find job hunting in 2021? The following predictions are based upon an analysis of vacancies for teaching posts recorded by TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk over the past four years. The raw vacancy data is then linked to the ITT census of trainee numbers produced by the DfE and based upon returns from providers.

As noted in another post on this blog, there are fewer trainees on classroom-based courses than a few years ago. This pushes up demand for trainees and returners to fill posts these trainees would have occupied. Assuming similar completion rates for trainees as in the past, and that with rising rolls in the secondary sector, if total vacancies are no worse than in 2020, and hopefully closer to the 2019 total it is possible to estimate the shape of the labour market in different subjects during 2021. However, much will depend upon how many teachers retire or leave the classroom for other jobs. If teacher stay put in larger numbers than usual, vacancies will be lower than in the past.

So, before I list some my predictions it is worth reminding those looking for teaching posts to register with the platform that provides the best opportunity for them to be pointed towards possible vacancies. I am, of course biased in favour of TeachVac, but there is the DfE site that also contains non-teaching posts, and the TES, as well as local authority job boards. Candidates might want to register with agencies and let them take the strain, but it is worth asking about their success in the geographical area where you are likely to be looking for a job.

So what might the picture for 2021 look like? Physics, design and technology and business studies teachers should still have little problem find a teaching post either during 2021 or for January 2022.

On the other hand, history and PE teachers will continue to find that there are more candidates than there are vacancies across much of England. The ability to offer a second subject might be worth thinking about in any application. Teachers of geography will also likely to find job hunting challenging later in the year.

This year, teachers of art may struggle to find teaching posts, especially as the year progresses, as there are considerably more trainees than in recent years. Teachers of RE and biology may also face similar challenges in job hunting as 2021 progresses towards the start of the new school term in September.

The outlook for teachers of sciences, other than physics, is likely to be similar to the situation in 2020, with teachers of biology unable to offer other sciences at most risk of finding a teaching post challenging as the progresses.

Mathematics and IT/Computing teachers should find plenty of choice of jobs early in the year, but possibly not as much choice as in recent years.

It is difficult to predict the market for teachers of languages other than English in Britain’s new post-EU membership world. At present, it looks as if across England there is a good balance between supply and demand, but there may be regional shortages if vacancy levels increase. On the other hand, if vacancies decline, there could be a surplus of teachers of some languages, notably Spanish.

Teachers of music are likely to find enough vacancies for trainees unless there is an inflow of ‘returners’ from outside of the profession as a result of changes in the wider labour market for those with music qualifications and a teaching background.

Each month TeachVac updates information about overall vacancies in the monthly newsletter. Details can be found at: https://www.teachvac.co.uk/our_services.php

London graduates flock to teaching

Posted on January 7, 2021 by John Howson

Data released today by UCAS for applications by December 2020 to graduate teacher preparation courses revealed a big jump on the numbers over the figures from the same time in the previous year. In the London region, the number of applicants domiciled in London increased from 1,580 in December 2019, to 2,550 in December 2020. The number of applicants in London this year exceeded the combined total of applicants in the North East and Yorkshire and The Humber regions wanting to become a teacher.

Although there were increases in applications across all age categories, only 400 more undergraduates have applied, compared with 900 more in the 25-29 age group. More than 500 extra applicants in the 40+ age group had applied by December 2020, compared with the number that had applied in December 2019.

Although there were more applicants for primary courses, bringing the number to the highest December level since 2016/17, there was an even larger increase in applications for secondary courses. These increased from 15,950 in December 2019 to 22,730 on the same date in December 2020. Overall, applications increased from 29,330 in December 2019 to 41,520 in December 2020.

As a result of the increase in applicants, many secondary subjects registered totals for ‘Place, Conditionally Placed or Holding Offers’ in December 2020 that were double levels seen in December 2019. Only in geography and English, among the larger subject areas were the increases significantly more subdued. In business studies, a traditionally difficult to recruit to subject, offers increased from a paltry 10 in December 2019 to more than 100 in December 2020. This may be the first year for some years that this subject recruits sufficient trainees to meet government expectations.

Even in physics, offers increased, from 40 in December 2019 to 140 in December 2020. For some reason UCAS did not report on the gender breakdown of applicants this month, normally found in Tables A7-9 of their report. As UCAS do not report on the ethnic background of applicants, there is no further overall breakdown about the characteristics of applicants, other than their age and geographical domicile.

These numbers must be good news for teaching, although whether this number of accepted applicants in history, physical education and art and design will find teaching posts in 2022 will depend upon how many more applicants are offered places during the coming few months. I am sure that HM Treasury won’t want to spend more on tuition fees than is necessary.

All routes have seen an increase in applications, although Apprenticeships are still limited in the secondary sector to a small increase, and there were actually 300 fewer applications to School Direct Salaried courses in the primary sector in December compared with December 2019, possibly marking yet another nail in the coffin for this route?

With the new shock to the economy generated by the third national lockdown, it seems logical to assume that teacher preparation courses will experience their best year for almost a decade, and that the teacher supply crisis of recent years will now be coming to an end.

This blog was the first to call the start of the crisis and received much criticism from those in high places for doing so. It is fitting to be able to mark the start of a period of adequate teacher supply, at least in terms of numbers.

Pay Freeze: more churn?

Posted on December 17, 2020 by John Howson

As expected, the main teacher associations acted with condemnation when faced with the Secretary of State’s remit letter to the STRB, the Pay and conditions of Service Review Body for the teaching profession. In a joint statement from ACSL NAHT and NEU they said that;

The narrow remit issued to the STRB excludes the crucial and central issue of teacher and school leader pay, reflecting the Government’s unacceptable pay freeze policy. Teachers and school leaders are key workers who have already seen their pay cut significantly since 2010. With inflation expected to increase in 2021, they know that they face another significant real terms pay cut.

How might their members react in 2021? We can expect a range of reactions. Some will say, there is no point in staying with no pay rise in sight – after all will the freeze really be just for one year? Head teachers at the top of their pay band, and having endured the prospect of two disrupted school years might well throw in the towel and take their pension as that presumably won’t be frozen in the same way; at least at present. We will look at that prospect and its consequences in more detail in a later blog.

Some teachers will seek promotion to secure a pay rise, and others a more appealing post either in a different school or in the private sector where there are no requirements for a pay freeze for teachers. Yet others may look overseas or to the tutoring market that will grow to support the increase in home schooling, especially if the government looks to regulation to ensure a minimum standard of education for all children regardless of how parents arrange to provide it. All these factors could increase ‘churn’.

With a profession dominated by women, at least at the level of the classroom teacher, how they and often also their partners view job security and new opportunities will also affect the rate of ‘churn’ if there is job movement around the country.

I actually think, at least in the first few months of 2021, there will be caution, and a desire to stay put and see what happens. With a labour market in teaching heavily skewed towards the first five months of the year, we could see fewer vacancies than normal in the early months of 2021. This will impact especially severely on two group of teachers: new entrants and would-be returners to the profession.

I well recall a Radio 5 Live interview in 2011, when callers were blaming each groups for taking jobs from the other. In reality, both groups were finding it more of a challenge to secure a teaching post, especially in some parts of England.

So, how hard will it be? We don’t know yet, so this is speculation based upon past trends, but I think some teachers will really struggle to secure a post in 2021.

Now might well be the time to revive ideas of a single application form for teaching, at least for personal details. This would leave just the free text statement to be written specifically for each vacancy being sought. The DfE should consider whether sponsoring that idea from those examples currently in development and on offer might be a better use of funds than continuing with their vacancy site that one person described to me in unflattering terms earlier this week.

In the next post, I will describe a new service from TeachVac to help teachers and schools assess the market and where vacancies might be found in 2021.

Teacher Vacancy Platforms: Pros and Cons

Posted on December 7, 2020 by John Howson

In this post, I look at the three key sites for teacher vacancies in England. TeachVac; the DfE Vacancy site and The TES. Now this is not an unbiased look, because I am Chair of the company that owns TeachVac. Indeed, it might be regarded as an advertisement, so treat it in that way if you read on.

TeachVac is in the process of filing its accounts for the year to June 2020 with Companies House. The DfE doesn’t file accounts, and the TES has filed accounts up to the end of August 2019, with a forward comment about the possible effects of the covid pandemic in the year to August 2020.

All three sites cost teachers nothing to use during the last year. However, the DfE site only offers vacancies in state schools, and only a proportion of those schools. TeachVac estimates that in 2020 the DfE proportion of vacancies for teaching posts never rose above 40% of the vacancies open to teachers across both state and private schools. So, the DfE is worthwhile if you only want a job in a state-funded school. Both TeachVac and the TES offer vacancies in state and private schools, although TeachVac doesn’t cover all private schools with pupils below the age of eleven. The TES coverage depends upon those prepared to pay to advertise vacancies on their platform.

Both TeachVac and the DfE site have no direct financial cost to schools. However, the DfE site does require schools to input vacancies into the site. This is optional for TeachVac, and most schools are happy to rely upon the automatic vacancy collection process operated by TeachVac. The TES has a number of options, all require schools to pay for their vacancies to appear on the TES job site and be matched with teachers.

TeachVac also offers users a monthly newsletter on the state of the market for teachers.

The operating cost for TeachVac in 2019/20 was just £1.10 per vacancy processed. Neither the DfE nor The TES publishes a similar figure, but the TES accounts would suggest their cost per vacancy is much higher than that of TeachVac. To find out the cost of the DfE site would need a parliamentary question.

So, are teacher associations, governors and school business managers and those responsible for local authorities, diocese and MATs recommending TeachVac as the most cost effective means of displaying and matching vacancies? Of course not.

Are they recommending teachers to use Teachvac, some are, others aren’t. Course leaders preparing teachers are now recommending TeachVac as a place for trainees to look for their first vacancy. Those trainees are sticking with TeachVac to find subsequent jobs and promotion opportunities.

I am proud of the achievements of the TeachVac team in driving down costs of vacancy advertising. Next the team will start to look at other parts of the recruitment journey to see if there are saving to be made in other areas as well.

Incidentally, if anyone wants to sponsor the TeachVac site, my investors are always open to discussions.

Little or Large?

Posted on December 1, 2020 by John Howson

The DfE is once again showing signs of wanting to progress its review of the Initial Teacher Training (ITT) market, first announced nearly two years ago as a part of a Recruitment and Retention Strategy, if an article in SchoolsWeek is to be believed. https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-to-reboot-itt-market-review-to-slim-down-sector/.

Does it make sense to slim down the teacher preparation market sector to a smaller number of providers? Well, certainly, those providers that shut up shop at the end of June and leave the heavy lifting of recruitment over the summer to others might be considered as not fully participating in ensuring that all places on teacher preparation courses are filled.

With the DfE aiming to take over the application process, it may also make sense to have to interact with fewer larger providers in order to more easily manage the market.

On the other hand, as NASBITT has pointed out, the ITT sector is performing exceptionally well. Ofsted inspections have 99% of providers rated good or better. On this basis, it seems odd that any DfE officials should think too much provision is of poor quality, especially without providing the evidence for that judgement.

As NASBTT makes clear, smaller SCITT providers very often serve a very specific need in recruitment cold-spots and rural/coastal communities. Often, in the past, larger central providers did not manage to service the needs of schools in these areas, which is often why the smaller providers emerged in the first place in order to to fill the gap.

Smaller local providers can also meet the needs of career switchers that are unwilling to move long distances to undertake their course to become a teacher. This was, after all, the thinking behind the School Direct Salaried Scheme and its predecessor Employment-based routes of the past thirty years.

Large providers in the wrong place don’t meet the needs of the market and the DfE has always wrestled with the need for both quality provision and the recruitment of around 35,000 trainees each year that are willing to train to meet the needs of all schools.

Perhaps, any review might focus on those schools that find recruiting NQTs a challenge and explore how within a market system of recruitment, schools can recruit their fair share of NQTs?

A compromise might be for the DfE to engage with a few larger providers – perhaps NASBTT could even be one of them and UCET another – and these wholesalers of places would then handle the smaller units actually undertaking the training. There are some examples of national providers in the past, of which The Open University was perhaps the most well-known. Indeed, might this be an opportune moment for that University to reconsider returning to providing initial teacher preparation courses across England?

What the DfE must not do is undermine recruitment to the profession at this extremely sensitive moment in time. The ITT core content framework has only just been rolled out, as have the expectations under the new ITE inspection framework. As NASBTT point out, providers need time to embed and consolidate this before any further changes are thrust upon them. If it isn’t broke, be careful about how you fix it.

No Tsunami of Applications

Posted on November 26, 2020 by John Howson

Earlier today UCAS released the first data on the 2021 recruitment round for postgraduate teacher preparation courses. The data are for applications up to the 16^th November. Last year the data were for Monday 18^th November 2019. In addition, there are applications through the DfE’s new service for which no data are yet available.

Now, it is always dangerous to read too much into the first month’s figures, but thirty years of looking at the numbers does allow me to make some observations.

Firstly, the increase in applicants domiciled in England, from 6,290 in 2019 to 7,420 in 2020, does not include large increases in applicants from the younger age groups, and is skewed towards applicants domiciled in the London Areas.

Change in applicant numbers by age of applicant

Age 2020 round 2021 round change

21 and

Under 1510 1550 40

22 970 1040 70

23 630 730 100

24 420 570 150

25-29 1200 1490 290

30-39 940 1160 220

40+ 620 890 270

All 6290 7420 1130

Source UCAS Reports A 2019 and 2020 November data

For example, in the North East, applicants in November 2019 totalled 380. This November, the number is 390. In London the total was 890 in 2019, and is 1,300 this November. Similarly, in the South East Region, the increase is from 910 to 1,150. So, over half of the increase in applicants is accounted for by just two regions in England.

Although early days, should we be concerned that the number of male applicants aged 21 or under, final year undergraduates, has dropped from 360 last November to 300 this year? One to watch as the number of men over 40 applying has increased from 160 to 250. Overall, there are just fewer than 200 more male applicants this year compared to last year at this point in time.

More applicants means more applications, and the total increased from 17,840 in November 2019 to 21,710 this November. Again, as expected, London has done well, with an increase from 2,740 applications by last November to 4,120 this November. In the North East applications only rose from 1,090 to 1,110.

Both primary and secondary sectors have benefitted from the increase in applicants. Applications for primary sector courses are up from 7,980 to 9,890, and for secondary courses, from 9,860 to 11,790.

All types of provider have seen increases, but one of the smallest increases is in secondary SCITT applications, up from 1,320 to 1,360.

Almost all subjects have seen an increase in applications – data on applicants by subject isn’t published in the main reports.

Arts and humanities subjects has seen some of the largest increases in applications. Even Physics has 240 applications this year, compared with 180 at this point in 2019. Art has seen applications double from 240 to 540, and even Design and Technology has 190 applications this year compared with 140 in November 2019. But, this might mean an increase an applicants from 50 last year to no more than 70 this year. Still, an increase is to be welcomed.

How long will this increase in interest in teaching last? There has been an article in SchoolsWeek recently suggesting it might be short-lived. After the start of the financial crisis it took just three years before teaching was starting to struggle to attract applicants to the profession. This time, with the pay freeze, who knows? More thought when the next set of data are published.

Sunak’s blunt axe

Posted on November 20, 2020 by John Howson

The media is full of stories about a probable pay freeze for public sector workers, to be announced by the Chancellor next week in his Spending Review. The freeze might last for up to three years, and end in the run up to the next general election. Interestingly it is almost a century since the famous Geddes Axe was on public expenditure was announced in 1922. (cmd 1581) for anyone interested.

So what might be the consequences for schools of what I suppose we ought to call Sunak’s chainsaw to bring the technology up to date? Might there be winners and losers?

The consequences for teachers will depend upon the approach chosen, but the winners and losers may well be the same whatever method is used. It is worth saying that the government doesn’t employ many teachers, and since it made the pay scales advisory, rather than mandatory, it might be dependent upon the actions of individual schools and Trusts to achieve its goal. Local Authorities can sit on the side lines, as budgets are devolved to schools and it is Schools Forums that will have to wrestle with the consequences of any announcement on their local areas.

Let’s assume that it is the National Funding formula that is frozen at current levels for three years, without even an uplift for inflation. Unless the rules are changed, schools can decide how much of their budget to spend on salaries and whether to protect teachers over other employees? Schools in areas where there is still high employment might ask parents to increase their contributions to school funds to buy items to release cash for salary increases. Such a move won’t help the ‘levelling up’ agenda.

Who might win under a pay freeze? We might see the shortest upturn in teacher recruitment on record if maths and physics graduates identify better job prospects in the private sector once again. New entrants considering teaching or nursing, not an unusual choice for some school leavers, might opt for the latter profession if NHS workers are exempt from any pay freeze. So long as the down turn in the birth rate continues, a reduction in the supply of new primary sector teachers might be manageable. But only for a short period of time, and it will have consequences in a few years’ time on leadership appointments

Teachers that change jobs might be offered more pay, so firms involved in recruitment might benefit if teacher ‘churn’ increases as a way to gain a pay increase. As my previous blog post showed, there are ways to overcome such an outcome, but it will need more than just announcing a pay freeze.

Schools with rising rolls, and especially those with generous parents, will benefit, whereas those in areas of high unemployment and low incomes might see their best teachers enticed away to other schools or even overseas if the global economy improves on the back of successful vaccines.

Private schools, assuming they can recruit pupils, will also benefit as they won’t be forced to raise fees to pay their teachers more if state school teachers’ pay is frozen.

The ‘levelling up’ agenda might be the biggest casualty of a crude one-size fits all pay freeze. After all, it was only a few years ago, in 2014, that the Social Mobility Commission proposed a 25% pay increase for teachers working in schools in deprived areas, during a previous period of pay restraint.

Should the Chancellor work out how to include the ‘levelling up’ agenda in his announcement without totally removing schools’ autonomy over the budgets, I would be happy to reconsider my views.

More thoughts on school funding

Posted on October 25, 2020 by John Howson

Earlier this week I listened to the head of a leading group representing private schools tell us how much they saved the State, Their assessment of the amount was based upon the fees they received from parents.

Now, of course, the figure quoted was probably an exaggeration as even if it didn’t include income from overseas students, and the sector is a significant export earner in normal times, then the fees received for pupils resident in this country are higher than the State would be prepared to pay to educate these young people, except in the case of SEND places in specialist schools.

Even allowing for these caveats, if the unemployment associated with the pandemic really does slow down the economy, then, inevitably, some parents may decide that private schooling is something they can no longer afford. There will be bursaries and scholarship and grandparents will offer help, but every child that switches from the private sector to the State sector creates winners and losers and is an additional cost to the State.

Schools that gain pupils will receive extra funding in the fullness of time. However, unless the overall pot of cash increases, there will be less for everyone. With school rolls overall still increasing, especially in the more expensive to fund secondary sector, this possible demand for extra cash could not come at a worse point in the demographic cycles. Any switch to funding for vocational skills, and especially for the Further Education sector, will also make finding additional funding for schools more of a challenge for the Secretary of State in his talks with The Treasury. With pressure to pay the least well-off in society more, increasing teachers’ pay rather than that of support staff may well be a real challenge unless class sizes increase and teacher numbers are reduced.

So, how might schools react? Finding saving won’t be easy, but here are a couple of suggestions. Firstly, and not surprisingly, cut back on recruitment costs. The DfE vacancy site isn’t doing the job it was set up to do. As a result, the profession should create a working party to attack the recruitment costs with the aim of saving schools perhaps £20 million a year. A really effective scheme could save even more.

Secondly, take the profit element out of supply teacher costs. Thirty years ago, local authorities were inefficient and uncoordinated in carrying out this function for schools. Costs have been driven down, but market economics has created a business with a profit element. Removing this element by either taking it back in house or creating a fixed price model could again help save cash for schools.

The third, and most radical suggestion, is around the funding of teachers’ salaries. In the education governance revolution of thirty years ago, decisions about salary bills were delegated to individual schools, with each schools funding being based upon a notional average salary bill. Previously, schools had their salary bill paid for by local authorities based around a framework of school Group Sizes that generated numbers of promoted and leadership posts for each school.

These days. MATs can set salary policies for all their schools, but local authorities cannot for maintained schools. Such policies can affect wage bills, and especially the cost of promoted posts and leadership positions. Young teachers are cheap; older more experienced teachers cost more. Do we want our more experienced teachers leading our more challenging schools? Could a more logical system that took the wage bill for teachers away from schools save money? I don’t know the answer. But, the wage bill is the largest cost in education and it is worth asking the question: how can we protect the income of teachers and other school staff in a time when pressure on the public purse is immense and are their efficiencies that can be made? A notional staffing model that school could test themselves against might be a start. Now is surely time for some radical thinking around the goals we want education to achieve for Society. Depriving the deprived is not one of them.

The author is Chair of TeachVac, the job board for teachers http://www.teachvac.co.uk

School Funding webinar: some thoughts

Posted on October 15, 2020 by John Howson

Last evening I listened in on a webinar about school funding. There are three points that arise from the webinar I found interesting.

Firstly, schools regularly claim to have made all efficiencies possible. However, despite the efforts of the DfE to establish a recruitment web site, and of my own company TeachVac to provide a free service, recruitment spending by schools still runs into many millions of pounds each year.

The problems with the DfE vacancy site are that it requires action on behalf of schools to post vacancies and that it is unattractive to teachers. This is because it does not include both state funded and private schools, and teachers may want a site where they can find all vacancies, such as TeachVac, especially when job hunting is a challenge.

In March, after lockdown, I offered the DfE a free feed of vacancies for three months to include all the vacancies that they didn’t carry on their site found by TeachVac, but was rebuffed. I have heard nothing since.

According to my analysis, the DfE site is still only carrying a proportion of all teaching vacancies, and about 3-4% of vacancies on the DfE site at any one time are vacancies that are not for teachers. The teacher associations seem to have little or no interest in persuading their members to switch to a free site.

Secondly, there is the issue of small primary schools and falling rolls. The current Funding Formula may adversely affect such schools where the loss of only a small number of pupils will impact upon the bottom line of their budget. Closing such schools means children cannot walk or cycle to school, but must be transported by car or bus and this can impact on Council Budgets if free transport is required for the youngest pupils required to travel more than two miles to the next school. In Oxfordshire, there are a large number of small village schools and any closure might have an effect on transport costs for the County. Transporting pupils also adds to climate change issues.

Thirdly, Luke from the IFS mentioned the loss of relative funding for the schools serving deprived areas. He queried whether local government re-organisation might be part of the cause. This seems odd since, apart from Cornwall and Wiltshire, most unitary authorities are smaller than the shire counties they replaced.

In Oxfordshire, one issue is around a small concentrated area of severe deprivation in South East Oxford that is masked within a generally affluent County. As a result, the Funding Formula does not take account of the need of these schools, and there is little by way of mechanisms other than the Pupil Premium to assist with further funding.

To add insult to injury, such schools cannot raise funds from parents as is the case in the more well-off parts of the City of Oxford. The government has experimented with Opportunity Areas, and Oxfordshire’s Education Scrutiny Committee has wondered whether such a scheme might be useful locally. However, there seems to be no mechanism to recognise this issue and provide for additional funding for schools in these areas. I am reminded of the book written in the 1970s about school funding called ‘depriving the deprived’. Seemingly we have headed back in that direction despite talk of leveling up.

Teaching School Hubs

Posted on October 9, 2020 by John Howson

If you are involved .din bidding to become a Teaching School Hub and require data about the local teacher labour market over the past three years do make contact.

Teachvac, where I am the Chair of the board, has extensive data covering up to 30 secondary subjects and the primary sector for main scale; posts with TLRs and leadership scale vacancies. Data for 2018-2020 available on request at local authority level.

email enquiries@oxteachserv.com or contact me personally on dataforeducation@gmail.com

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: teacher recruitment