Tag Archives: teacher recruitment

 Pool for profit

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As we come to the end of another school year I have been reflecting upon the state of teacher supply. TeachVac the recruitment site free to both schools and teachers is now one year old. I seems incredible that the team started only started work on the concept last July.

In September, the TeachVac site will be extended to cover the primary sector, still for free, and will handle vacancies at all levels from classroom teacher to head. Future developments may include a portal for support, administrative and technical staff since they now comprise such a large percentage of the workforce and the addition of vacancies in the many international schools across the world that recruit teachers qualified in England. One of the issues is whether the latter group of schools should benefit from free access to the TeachVac site in the same way as schools across England: discussions are still underway.

There is now widespread acceptance that the teacher recruitment market is becoming more challenging. However, there are still those that see the solution as letting anyone walk in off the street and start teaching. There is another group that believes that anyone with subject knowledge can teach. A read of any Ofsted report of a school with a large number of unqualified teachers would probably provide some cogent reasons why that is not the case. Indeed, Ofsted inspections might usefully report on unqualified teachers as well as how well NQTs have been trained. But, a full discussion of the issues relating to un-qualified teachers will have to wait for another post.

More interesting is the debate about whether the recruitment market for teacher is changing? In one respect, the market may just be responding to changing conditions: a move from a glut of teachers to widespread shortages. In another respect, making trainees spend even more time in schools may curtail their enthusiasm for job hunting while in schools, especially if they are aware that their services are in demand and they can afford to wait.

Historically, many local authorities operated ‘pool’ systems on behalf of primary schools in their locality. New entrants filled in a single application form and were interviewed; those successful were offered to schools looking for teachers.  In the days when local authorities had budgets this was a free service, but it always had a cost attached to it even if it was hidden.

These days some recruitment agencies are offering trainees, and indeed all teachers, the chance to complete a single application form and the agency will find them a job that matches their needs. They will then, in some cases, charge the school a fee for finding a teacher. They may also negotiate the best salary possible for the teacher. All right and proper in a market situation. It saves applicants time and effort, although they lose the personal touch an application tailored to an individual school brings, and it can save schools money where several adverts may be necessary to recruit a teacher.

This approach comes as a shock to secondary schools used to advertising every vacancy in a national marketplaces. I would, you will not be surprised to know, advocate that schools do still advertise their vacancy for free on TeachVac and they then decide whether they have received any applications. In easy to recruit subject such as PE recruitment might be straightforward, but those looking for a physics or business studies teacher for January 2016 or even during August for September 2015 might find that using outside help could eventually be a cheaper solution.

Warning lights flashing amber

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The publication today of the 2014 School Workforce Census data by the government https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2014 allows a review of the key indicators about the staffing of schools across England To this new data can be added the re-publication of the ITT data for courses in 2014-15, first published last November. The latter showed that only 93% of primary and 91% of secondary courses were filled when measured against the demand identified using the Teacher Supply Model. These numbers don’t appear to have changed since last November when they were first released.

According to the School Workforce Census, the number of vacancies reported by schools in November was 1,030. This is 280 more than in the previous year, although as one might expect from a census taken in November, the absolute figure as a percentage of the workforce has only increased from 0.2 to 0.3. Still, it is at its highest since the census moved to November in 2010 when it stood at just 380 vacancies.

The other key indicator of possible recruitment challenges comes from the percentage of lessons taken by those without a relevant post-A Level qualification in the subject. These percentages have increased for pupils in Years 7-13 in maths by 2.8%, so that only 79.8% of pupils this year were being taught the subject by a teacher with a relevant qualification. In English, the increase was 1.8% to 83% and in the sciences it was 1.2%, so that only 86.4% of pupils were being taught by a qualified science teacher of any description in November 2014.

The other indicator is the use of unqualified and temporary teachers. The number of unqualified teachers increased between 2013 and 2014 from 16,600 to 20,300 and is now the highest number recorded since the census moved to November. However, some of the increase may be due to the manner of recording those on Teach First and School Direct in schools. The number of temporary teachers increased from 13,500 to 14,100 and is above the 2010 figure of 12,200. Since sickness absence taken by teachers showed a slight decline, the increase in the number of temporary teachers is another possible indicator of staffing issues.

As this blog has regularly reported, the acceptances for entry into training in 2015 will not be sufficient to meet the requirements of the Teacher Supply Model, so we now know that recruitment for some schools, especially in and around London, but not exclusively in this area, will again be a challenge in 2016.

I published a blog earlier in the week with suggestions for how to tackle the training shortfall and it is clear that regardless of the Bill currently going through parliament, all schools, whether or not they are academies, will find progress challenging if they cannot recruit appropriately trained staff.

Had the census still been taken in January, as it used to be, then the 2016 data might make more worrying reading. But, the time for action is now, not when the growing size of the problem overwhelms the government and its Regional Commissioners.

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.

Teacher recruitment and retention in the headlines again

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Yesterday, the adjournment debate in the House of Commons, proposed by Louise Haigh the Labour member for Sheffield Heeley, was on the issue of the recruitment and retention of teachers. Ms Haigh is already showing an interest in this important area for schools and has asked a number of PQs on the topic as well as initiating this debate. Today the Sutton Trust has published a research report called ‘Teaching by Degrees’ that seeks to consider the university backgrounds of state and independent school teachers.

I am grateful for a mention by Ms Haigh in the debate, as well as a mention of TeachVac by another Labour member who had attended the recent SATTAG seminar I spoke at in Portcullis House. The unusually large number of interventions during the adjournment debate last night – this is how other MPS show their strength of feeling on the issue – there were interventions 16 during the half hour debate at the end of business on a Thursday, including from MPs from the north of England that might normally already have been on their way back to their constituencies by then. Such a large number of interventions must have alerted the Minister, Mr Gibb, to the seriousness of the issue. Indeed, one wonders when it will feature as one of the opposition day debates. An earlier post on this blog recalls that last autumn a debate on teaching say the first appearance on the Order Paper of a difference in policy between the Lib Dems and the Tories over teacher qualifications.

In that respect, it is interesting to read the Sutton Trust research report that suggests more Oxbridge graduates are now teaching in state schools. Given the period covered by the research included the recession that probably isn’t a terribly surprising observation. Of more concern is the methodology used in reaching such a view. The main vehicle used was to collect data for the state funded sector was the NfER Voice Survey. Now, this is a survey stratified by types of school and various other variables such as grade of respondent, but I cannot see anything in either the Sutton Trust to NfER explanations of the methodology to suggest it is also stratified by the age of the teacher and their length of service in the profession. Without that data it is unclear to me whether the classroom teachers are a spread of recent entrants and those with longer service or some other distribution across the profession.

My view is that to detect changes in entrants to teaching it would have been better to have used the UCAS/GTTR records of applicants to teaching. This could have identified the degree awarding body of entrants and any changes over time could easily have been identified. The key question is surely, not what has changed over the past decade but what was the impact of the recession and is any impact now fading in terms of the source of new entrants to the profession. It is important to know, for instance, whether the decline in the past two years in applicants to become maths and Physics teachers reflects any change in the degree patterns away from Oxbridge graduates. Otherwise, the Sutton Trust research doesn’t help policy makers grappling with the issues raised in the adjournment debate yesterday.

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.

Teachvac moves forward

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Teachvac http://www.teachvac.co.uk the free site where schools and trainee teachers can register and be told about vacancies for classroom teachers in secondary schools has taken the first step towards enlarging its scope while remaining a free service to both schools and teachers.

Originally launched this January, Teachvac developed to understand the market for trainees both by tracking vacancies and by recording where trainees were looking for vacancies. The site is now able to handle registrations from any teacher looking for a mainstream classroom post in a secondary school across both the maintained and private sectors. The TeachVac site will still track the requirements of trainees, but will also consider the characteristics of other teachers seeking this type of vacancy. In the future, the site will expand to include promoted posts and take in both the primary and special school sectors.

For those curious about how the site works, there are demonstration videos on both the teacher and school registration pages. The Teachvac site is now gearing up to handle the large increase in vacancies expected between now and the end of April. Schools that register receive notification of the state of the market in the subject where they post a vacancy. Each month a review of the trends over the previous month is published.

There is a growing body of data  from Teachvac about the trends in this part of the Labour market that will be of interest in the debate about teacher recruitment. Why, for instance, are so many PE teachers being trained and why did the Teacher Supply Model seemingly underestimate the need for teachers of English for a number of years? There is currently no formal mechanism to discuss these issues with government in any formal sense. I hope that after May the new government will rectify this deficiency.

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.

Job market starts to hot up

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By the end of February the recruitment site TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk had recorded just over 4,000 vacancies for secondary classroom teachers since the 1st January 2015, including more than 1,500 during February despite the half-term holiday period.

These are vacancies suitable for trainees, returners and those moving schools, but not seeking promotion. As the DfE have a rule of thumb that 50% of these vacancies go to trainees, this means that around 2,000 trainees may have found a job by now. As there were around 13,000 trainees at the time of the ITT census in November that probably leaves just over 10,000 left in the pool after allowing for those that won’t complete the training year.

As I have suggested from last autumn, not all subjects are faring the same. The trainee pool was probably down to below two thirds by the end of February in English, business studies, design and technology, social studies and computer science. Next week, mathematics, history, geography and the sciences as a whole will probably join the list. Business studies may fall below 50% left in the pool and next week, and there have already been more vacancies recorded in the South West than there are trainees in that subject.

With the bumper recruitment months or March, and especially April still to come, I expect some schools to face recruitment challenges in these subjects.

On the other hand, PE, music and art have seen relatively few vacancies so far this year and in PE some trainees may struggle to find a post, especially if they are not especially interested in vacancies across a wide geographical area.

London and the counties around the capital have so far seen the largest percentage of vacancies relative to the number of schools in the regions even though Teach First is active in London. By contrast, the North West has seen comparatively few vacancies posted by schools so far this year.

TeachVac is free for both schools and trainees to use and offers a range of data analysis to anyone interested in the labour market for teachers in England on a real-time basis.

TeachVac will soon be expanded to allow registration by returners and teachers moving between schools as well as adding promoted posts to the vacancies on offer. However, it will remain free to both schools and teachers allowing substantial savings over other recruitment routes. The video demos on the TeachVac site show both schools and teachers how to operate the TeachVac system. All that is necessary for schools is to know the difference between their URN and their DfE number when they register.

In return, schools that register vacancies receive a real-time update on the state of the market in that subject where it is one of the main curriculum subjects tracked by TeachVac.

If you know of a trainee or teacher looking for a teaching post in England, whether in the state or private sectors, or a school wanting to post a vacancy for free, do point them to www.teachvac.co.uk

Grim news on teacher training

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The first figures for applications to teacher preparation courses starting in September 2015 were released by UCAS earlier today. As far as providers in England are concerned, applications overall are down from 71,980 to 60,890 a drop of around 11,000. Assuming every applicant makes the maximum possible of three applications, this would be a drop of more than 3,500 applicants compared with the same point last year. In fact the drop in applicants domiciled in England is actually 4,540 compared with last year. This suggests not all applicants use their full number of possible applications; presumably some are location specific and can only apply to providers in particular areas. The decline in applicants is reflected across the country and in percentage terms is greatest for higher education courses, where applications are down from 43,000 to 32,000 between January last year and January this year. This is despite the application process opening earlier than last year and running more smoothly, so that the number of applicants placed is running about a month ahead of last year in most subjects. However, some of the fall in higher education applications will have been due to reduced government allocations, especially in the popular subjects.

The decline in School Direct is not as marked as for higher education, but with more places allocated to that route any reduction in numbers must be a worry. Applications to SCITTS are actually above where they were last year, but again that reflects greater provision and a significant number of new SCITTs having joined the system.

Any drop of this magnitude must be of concern even at the start of the recruitment round, especially as it reflects a decline in applications from all age groups, with both new graduates and career changers seemingly not applying in such large numbers as in the past.

The January numbers reflect the size of the cohort that knew they wanted to enter teaching and applied in the early stage of the recruitment round. An analysis of more than 20 years of applications to teacher preparation courses by graduates suggests to me that in those years when the economy is doing well it has proved almost impossible to reverse any early decline in applications without significant inducements to train. The exception was the year that the bursary was introduced in the March when applications rose subsequently.

The figures issued today explain why I started the campaign for the government to once again pay the fees of graduates entering training by whatever route. Unless the government either agree to pay the fees or offer some other solution then I fear that we are headed not just for the seven per cent shortfall of last autumn’s training numbers but possibly a shortfall of 10% of even more this year.

The government may point out that offers are up on January last year, but that is only because the system is operating a month ahead of last year.

A failure to recruit trainees in 2015 will mean an even greater job crisis in 2016. With more pupils in schools by then that must not be allowed to happen.