Tag Archives: teacher supply

Design and Technology: End of a road?

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The end of the second week in January is usually a bit early to be making predictions about the state of the teacher labour market for September. However, in the case of design and technology, the signs of a really difficult job market for schools have been there for some time, and certainly since the publication of the DfE’s Census of Trainees in December 2021. Those signs are now backed up by early data on jobs being advertised.

Using exclusive data from TeachVac, based upon an analysis of recorded job adverts in the first two weeks of January 2022, there are sign of an early increase in demand for such teachers.

Datejobs 2015jobs 2016jobs 2017jobs 2018jobs 2019jobs 2020jobs 2021jobs 2022
Week 110251916792958
Week 220525047417167164
Week 320877787103156123
Week 440110120105183244183

Source: TeachVac

Now, this may just be prudence on the part of schools in bringing forward vacancies, rather than a growth in real demand for such teachers. We won’t know the answer to that question until at least the end of January, and possibly not until even the end of February.

However, with this level of vacancies it is possible to demonstrate by matching vacancy levels to the potential supply of new entrants into the profession for September 2022 that schools may have to rely upon sources of supply other than new entrants much earlier in the recruitment round for September than they might either expect to or like the idea of doing.

TeachVac’s exclusive formula suggest that the ‘free’ pool of new entrants is already lower than at any point at the end of Week 2 of the year since at least 2015.

Date 20152016 2017 201820192020 2021 2022
Week 1368412.5371217219343580231
Week 2363399356201202312561178
Week 3363381.5342181191270533
Week 4353370321172131226503
Vacancy index – lower the number the more challenging filling vacancies will be

Source: TeachVac

The data also shows that compared with 2020 and 2021 the pool is lower than at the end of January by last Friday and week 2. Should the end of January 2022 number be lower than the end of 2019 number, then the remaining recruitment round may be grim for schools looking to recruit a design and technology teacher of any description.  January 2023 vacancies don’t even bear thinking about.

Schools that have signed up for TeachVac’s new matching service at  TeachVac Reports – The National Vacancy Service for Teachers and Schools can have access to this type of data for a range of subjects.

What are the implications for schools unable to recruit qualified design and technology teachers? Staffing the curriculum is the obvious problem. What are the longer-term effects of young people not studying this subject? That’s for others to say, and the DfE to act as it sees fit.

‘A drop in the ocean’

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Much has been made of the government’s campaign to recruit ex-teachers back into the classroom as supply teachers to help out during the latest phase of the covid pandemic.

Here is the actual wording from the DfE about the success of the campaign by early January 2022:

Findings

• There were at least 585 ex-teachers coming forward to either Teach First, or 47 of the estimated 400-500 teacher supply agencies, between the 20th December 2021 and 7th January 2022.

• Of this total, over 100 expressions of interest have been reported by Teach First.

• A further 485 sign-ups of ex-teachers were reported by the 47 supply agencies who responded to the DfE survey.

• Given this survey response only covers a small number of agencies, this will not reflect the true total as other agencies not surveyed, or which did not respond, are likely to also have had sign-ups, and the call for ex-teachers to return is still ongoing. The true number of sign-ups since the call was launched will be larger.

Number of ex-teachers coming forward to join the school workforce (publishing.service.gov.uk) 12th January 2022

Interestingly the government doesn’t so far seem to have spent much money on the campaign. In answer to a written Parliamentary Question Robin Walker, the DfE Minister replied that:

As of 5 January, the spend relating to marketing and communications in support of the national appeal for former teachers to return to the profession is £3,882.69. This amount consists of:

  • Design work for a toolkit of assets to be used by partners of the department: £2,227.80.
  • Paid Search Advertising: £1,654.89.

Written questions and answers – Written questions, answers and statements – UK Parliament

To their credit, the government recognises that the 485 sign-ups don’t account for the whole total. Now assuming the 10% response rate can be grossed up, the national figure might be around 5,000. (The DfE footnote to editors said that ‘We estimate this number of responses represents around 10% of the agencies operating in the market. This figure is based on estimates provided by trade bodies. Agencies will vary in size and so this figure should not be taken as an indication of market share.’)

Now, we don’t know the geographical spread of these new supply teachers. We don’t know whether they are willing to work in both primary and secondary schools. We don’t know whether they will work five days a week or just for a couple of days.

We can assume that like other teachers the normal stock of supply teachers are affected by covid in the same way as the rest of the population. The 2020 School Workforce Census identified that there were 11,574 ‘occasional teachers’ in schools at the time of the census. So, and additional 5,000 to the stock is clearly a useful number. But, with a teaching force of 461,000 it only takes just over one per cent of the workforce to be absent due to covid to use up the whole of the possible new recruits to supply teaching.

Could the government have done more. Certainly, the cash spend seems low compared to other campaigns. What of unemployed history and PE teachers that completed training last summer, but couldn’t find a teaching post. Has the government worked with training providers to identify those still wanting to enter teaching and offered some support to help them do so even on a temporary basis?

No doubt as this term unfolds more information will become available about how successful the government was at helping schools to stay open, and the part the national campaign played in achieving that end compared with the actions taken locally by schools, Trusts and Local Authorities.

Recruitment 2022: a rough ride to come

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Can you tell anything about the 2022 recruitment round for teachers in England based upon just four days of vacancy data? One of the advantages of a job board such as TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk is the it has sufficient cumulative data on vacancies that can be allied with data about the numbers of teachers on preparation courses to be able to provide some helpful comments on the labour market, even after just four days of data.

For those that are sceptical of such a claim, consider sampling theory. A simple example is to assume a bowl of soup. A small spoonful will tell you whether or not the bowl if full of hot soup. Now scale up to a vat size container. Will a small sample tell you the same answer for the whole? Now purists might maintain that the bottom of the vat could be hotter than the top; I would agree. Taking that comment to vacancy data means that the comments for England as a whole might well include differences across the regions. Such an objection is true, and that is why each month TeachVac produces regional data for most secondary subjects and the primary sector. But it doesn’t invalidate sampling as a useful tool.

Anyway, back to our sample of 2022, and what I think it tells schools about the recruitment round this year. The first point is that it confirms what was being said at the end of 2021, appointments for September 2022 will be more of a challenge almost across the board as the 2020 bounce in interest in teaching as a career drops out of the supply side.

How bad will 2022 be? Well, nothing of concern in art, PE and history. Indeed, schools might well be starting to consider whether they can make use of an extra history teacher and perhaps an extra PE teacher to make use of the best of the trainees with second subject expertise in the pool of jobseekers.

At the other end of the scale, the usual suspects of design and technology where there will be real issues with recruitment have been joined this year by geography, modern languages and English. In the case of the latter two subjects this is partly because of the number of trainees on courses that will either already have placed them in the classroom or make it likely that they won’t be looking on the open market for a teaching post. Independent schools should take especial note of this fact when considering how easy it will be to recruit a teacher.

Most of the other subjects have seen the size of their ‘free pool’ decline this year compared with 2021, and that will have implications for January 2023 appointments. Such vacancies may be hard to fill in many subjects in those parts of England where recruitment is a challenge; namely London and the Home Counties.

Schools that have signed up to TeachVac’s £1,000 maximum annual recruitment package will receive regular updates on the state of the labour market, including local knowledge. On registration, and at no cost, schools receive a detailed report on the labour market.

Recruiters tell me that TeachVac is ‘too cheap’ to succeed because nothing that cheap could be any good. My principle in founding the job board was to show that recruitment advertising need not cost a lot of money. I still believe that to be true. Do you?

TeachVac welcomes new tes owners

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This is an interesting way to start 2022. Just three years since the tes last changed hands, its ownership looks to be on the move again. This would make the third set of owners of the tes since TeachVac was set up in 2013 to challenge the high cost of teacher recruitment in a changing world, where technology should have been driving down costs and thus reducing prices to schools. www.teachvac.co.uk According to the press release 86c854e3-7a1d-4402-9f20-32868488d2c6 (gcs-web.com) dated the 7th December the new owners should be the current management team at the tes and ONEX, a Canadian Venture Capital Group. My best wishes to them.

When the Providence Group bought the tes in 2018, I expressed surprise at the purchase, so I am not now surprised that after slimming down the business by: exiting the supply teacher market; ending coverage of the further education sector; shifting its office functions out of London and axing the print edition among other changes, Providence finally put the business up for sale.

Based on the cost structure of TeachVac, there is a profitable company lurking inside the tes, but not while it is saddled with a large slug of overhanging debt that needs to be serviced. The terms of the expected change of ownership are not revealed in the press release, but too much debt will cripple the success of the new venture. Still, it is good to see the management team taking a share of the risk, and bringing at least a part of the ownership back into the UK from North America.

Today’s Sunday Telegraph business section has an article by Matt Oliver discussing the problems the tes faces when government tries to do the same job through its own free web site for vacancies. This blog discussed such an issue in relation to both TeachVac and the TES in April 2019 DfE backs free vacancy sites | John Howson (wordpress.com) I am sorry that Matt Oliver didn’t either mention TeachVac or try to speak with me about the way the market operates, as other journalists have done on a regular basis.

Perhaps either the Education Select Committee or the Public Accounts Committee at Westminster will use Matt Oliver’s article as a reason to mount an inquiry into the teacher recruitment market. After all, the later, using National Audit Office data, called for the DfE to reduce the cost of teacher recruitment: the very reason that TeachVac was established and has flourished. Does Nationalisation always work? | John Howson (wordpress.com)

This blog has always asserted that schools have been paying too much for recruitment advertising and has been prepared to back that judgement with the development of the successful TeachVac job board. The apparent lack of interest on the part of professional associations and others connected with education to address the means of removing unnecessary expenditure from schools by slashing recruitment advertising costs has been an enduring disappointment to me. Perhaps 2022 with be the year that all this changes?

Half of secondary ITT applicants in just 3 subjects

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The latest data on ITT applications, published by the DfE before the holiday break, revealed that just three subjects accounted for 49% of applicants to secondary ITT courses. Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2022 to 2023 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK (apply-for-teacher-training.service.gov.uk) The data are for applicants up to the 3rd December 2021.

SubjectTotalPercentage
Art and design3783%
Biology5525%
Business studies2832%
Chemistry5094%
Classics621%
Computing3093%
Design and technology2432%
Drama3523%
English153713%
Geography3853%
History10579%
Mathematics138512%
Modern foreign languages5685%
Music1912%
Other5645%
Physical education283224%
Physics3073%
Religious education2312%
11745100%

Source: DfE

English (13%); Mathematics (12%) and Physical Education (24%) together accounted for 49% of applicants, with PE accounting for nearly a quarter of the overall total!

So far, the TV advert being aired on one of the Freeview Channels doesn’t seem to be making a big impact in drawing in applicants in many subject areas, with most subjects recording in the region of 1-3% of the total.

The good news is that Physics applicants accounted for three percent of the total, but that is a third of the percentage of applicants for history. So, there is a long way to go to reach the totals needed to fill vacancies in September 2023 and January 2024 when these applicants will be job hunting.

Visit http://www.teachvac.co.uk for teaching posts across England in both State & private schools

In the run up to Christmas, the BBC ran a story about the likelihood of ex-teachers helping out in the classroom if the covid pandemic lays low large numbers of teachers in January. Covid: Doubts that ex-teachers will return by January – BBC News REC The Recruitment and Employment Confederation expressed the view that a backlog of DBS checks might hamper any return to the classroom even if ex-teachers were willing to do so.

The BBC story didn’t consider the many PE and history teachers that graduated from ITT in the summer and are already BDS checked and have not found a teaching job. An emergency scheme to offer them temporary employment ought to have been put in place already to ensure time wasn’t wasted, but the DFE doesn’t seem to be able to manage the market in such a manner. Of course, in former times, local authorities would have taken such action, but they have neither the cash nor the motivation to do so these days.   

£30,000 starting salary for teachers by 2022?

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The DfE has published the letter it writes each year to the STRB (School Teachers Review Body) about it view of the pay levels for teachers and school leaders. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-teachers-review-body-strb-remit-letter-for-2022?utm_source=HOC+Library+-+Current+awareness+bulletins&utm_campaign=e1c61ffa7d-Current_Awareness_Social_Policy_E_20-12-2021&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f325cdbfdc-e1c61ffa7d-103730653&mc_cid=e1c61ffa7d&mc_eid=ae5482b5b9 This year, there is mention of recruitment issues and teacher supply as a factor for the STRB to consider.

The government has clearly accepted the need for a £30,00 starting salary for teachers outside London, with presumably higher rates within the pay bands governing the salary ranges for teachers in and around London. The letter from the DfE states that:

I refer to the STRB the following matters for recommendation:

• An assessment of the adjustments that should be made to the salary and allowance ranges for classroom teachers, unqualified teachers and school leaders to promote recruitment and retention, within the bounds of affordability across the school system as a whole and in the light of my views on the need for an uplift to starting salaries to £30,000.

The cliff edge created by the boundary of the national pay scale and London scales is of importance to many county authorities around London such as Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. Too large a gap and schools in those areas will face significant recruitment challenges for teachers at all levels from the classroom to the head’s office.

I am not sure why the DfE mentions capital spending in the letter as that is not within the remit of the STRB. However, the DfE does acknowledge that:

Teacher quality is the most-important in-school determinant of pupil outcomes. That is why, in June, my department announced over £250 million of additional funding to help provide 500,000 world-leading teacher training opportunities throughout teachers’ careers. We recognise that alongside this training and development, we also need to reward the best teachers as well as provide a competitive offer that attracts top graduates and professionals into the profession. It is therefore right that additional investment in the core schools’ budget is in part used to invest in teachers, with investment targeted as effectively as possible to address recruitment and retention challenges and, ultimately, ensure the best outcomes for pupils.

Of interest to TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk is the following.

Considerations to which the STRB should have regard

In considering your recommendations on the 2022/23 and 2023/24 pay awards, you should have regard to the following:

 a) The need to ensure that any proposals are affordable across the school system as a whole;

b) Evidence of the national state of teacher and school leader supply, including rates of recruitment and retention, vacancy rates and the quality of candidates entering the profession;

c) Evidence of the wider state of the labour market in England;

 d) Forecast changes in the pupil population and consequent changes in the level of demand for teachers;

e) The Government’s commitment to the autonomy of all head teachers and governing bodies to develop pay arrangements that are suited to the individual circumstances of their schools and to determine teachers’ pay within the statutory minima and maxima.TeachVac has recorded more than 64,000 vacancies for teachers during 2021, including a record number of vacancies during December 2021. The STRB might like to review the cost-benefits of the different recruitment methods in use at present and comment on their benefits to both teachers and schools.

After all, reducing recruitment costs paid by schools to a minimum will help release cash to pay for higher salaries while increasing the autonomy of headteachers and governing bodies. Perhaps there should be a Recruitment Czar?

Boom in Teaching Vacancies this December

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Are schools starting the recruitment process for teachers required for September 2022 early this school year? Data from TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk would certainly seem to suggest that something is happening that is different to usual.

A look at recorded vacancies for December 2021, up to yesterday, the 17th, compared with the same period in 2019 – the last year before the covid outbreak distorted the labour market for teachers – does suggest some schools might be bringing forward their recruitment process, possibly in case of any lockdown in the New Year? Talk in social media about the leading paid for recruitment platform putting up subscription rates, if correct, might also have had some influence on behaviour.

December recorded vacancies by TeachVac
Subject20192021Percentage +/- (The nearest whole %)
SEN244692%
Primary46577366%
Business437165%
Humanities203260%
Design & Technology8413156%
RE385955%
Leadership20230350%
Music385647%
History426043%
PE628435%
Total2192287631%
Art364319%
Languages10112019%
Geography62678%
Science2913096%
IT79813%
Mathematics273271-1%
English241225-7%
Total2192287631%
Source: TeachVac

Interestingly, the two big departments in secondary schools of English and Mathematics have not followed the general pattern of increases of, on average, about a third. Both of these subjects have recorded falls when compared with December 2019. Might it be that with a greater proportion of trainees on school-based courses, schools feel that they can recruit for the trainee pool without the need to advertise in the open market? Such an approach may say money, but not on a fixed cost subscription package.

The increase in primary vacancies, against a scenario where the sector is facing falling pupil numbers at the entry age group in many parts of the country merits further investigation. However, it is no surprise to see both business studies and design and technology so close to the top of the table. The recent DfE ITT Census contained grim news for schools wanting to recruit teachers in these subjects for September 2022. Wise schools will start recruiting as soon as possible. No doubt any surplus teachers in these subjects can be hired out to other schools within a MAT for a fee.

The growth in posts on the Leadership Scales is interesting. Does it herald the start of a boom in such vacancies, as the pressures of the last two years finally take their toll on headteachers who have told their governing bodies that they will be leaving in the summer?

I will be starting compiling the TeachVac Annual Reviews for the whole labour market and for Leadership posts during 2021 next week, with a view to publication early in 2022.

TeachVac continues to break records in recruiting new applicants; in matches made and in hits on the web site. TeachVac should record some 64,000 vacancies for teachers in 2021; far more than the DfE site. www.teachvac.co.uk

Schools are now signing up to the TeachVac 2022 package that costs £100 to register and £1 per match against a school’s vacancies with a ceiling of £1,000 plus VAT including the registration package, after which all further matches in 2022 are free. Full details of how to registration interest can be found at TeachVac Reports – The National Vacancy Service for Teachers and Schools and registration comes with a free report.

More on November 2021 ITT applications

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November is only the start of the cycle of applications for September 2022, so it is important not to read too much into the data published recently by the DfE. However, traditionally heavy recruiting subjects such as history and PE appear to be doing well as usual. English also did well in the first month. There were also good early outcomes in art; music; mathematics; design and technology and business studies. Physics; geography and computing might be seen to be at the number expected, whereas religious education; biology and chemistry had a weak start to the round. Even allowing for the different method of recording the data for applications for modern languages courses, it may well be that these are not as healthy as might be hoped. The loss of data about individual subjects means little can be said about the subject than that bald fact. Drama, a subject not previously covered on this blog, appears to have had a good level of applications and offers.

As to the geographical breakdown of applicants, we now have data for The Channel Islands – 5 applicants-, – the European Economic Zone – 78 applicants, and the Rest of the World – 589 applicants, of whom 92 were already unsuccessful – about 20% of all unsuccessful applicants so far.

If the numbers from the regions not included in the UCAS count are removed, the total looks very similar to the November 2020 total, after allowing for the extra time period this year. Applications are significantly up from the Eastern Region and The South West, but little different after allowing for the longer time period in the other regions of England.

Applications for primary courses are above the figure for November 2020, but applications overall for secondary courses are the same as last year (UCAS Table B8). In effect, with the extra few days included this year compared with 2020, this might be a real decline, but it is very early days.

School Direct salaried courses continue to attract fewer applications. These may have switched to Apprenticeships, where significant growth over 2020 has been recorded.  Higher Education has recorded virtually the same number of applications as last year, and there were modest increases in School Direct Fees route applications and good growth in SCITT applications. However, all these are not measured against any changes in places on offer. There is also no breakdown by sector: an unhelpful omission.

Overall, there seems little difference from the same point last year. It is to be hoped that the remainder of the recruitment round does not progress as last year, since the 2021 ITT census has some alarmingly low numbers of trainees currently on course to enter the labour market in September 2022. There is now nowhere for the DfE to hide. As they control the application process, they cannot be unaware of progress towards the number of places they want filled, both regionally and in the different phases and subjects. They can also put pressure on providers to work faster in dealing with applications.

Approaching 40% of candidate by provider region are in London, the south East or Eastern Regions. This is in line with where demand is in the labour market for teachers. However, a portion of that demand each year is from the private schools.

It will be February before a real picture emerges for September 2022, but I would already be worried about the outcome for some subjects.

Applicants for ITT in 2022: A first look at the DfE data

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My thanks to NASBTT for pointing me in the direction of the first DfE statistics for Teacher Training applications. This is for those wanting to train in 2022/23; courses mostly starting next September. These graduates will enter the teaching labour market in September 2023.

This is the first year that the DfE are running the application process instead of UCAS. The statistics cover only applications to courses in England. Teach First applications and any application made directly to a provider are excluded. The DfE totals include deferred applications for 2022/23. The data in this report is applications from the opening of the application round on the 12th October to the 22nd November 2021. The last round of UCAS data in November 2020 was for applications up to 16th November. The DfE data are up to a slightly later date than the UCAS data for last year.

Data are reviewed by this blog either as overall totals or, in the case of subjects, for those recruited, those with an offer with conditions and thus pending and those applicants that have received an offer. Next month deferrals will also be included in the totals for subjects in this blog. Applicants awaiting provider decisions and those unsuccessful are not included in the subject data. It is not clear whether applicants that have withdrawn are excluded or counted as unsuccessful by the DfEl.

The DfE makes the point that direct comparison to previous UCAS data is not directly possible because UCAS would double count where an applicants applied for a course with multiple subjects such as French and German. Languages have always had this issue, as has science where there was a science category as well as categories for the separate subjects in the UCAS data. However, for the majority of subjects there should be a close read across between the UCAS data and the new DfE data.

Looking at the data at the headline levels, the DfE has managed a good start to the process. Applications overall are 8,831 compared with 7,420 for England in last year’s Table A4 from UCAS. Applications total 22,946 this November, compared with 21,710 last year – Table B4: a slightly smaller difference. However, allowing for the extra time this year compared with last year for the data point, there would seem to be little difference in either table compared with last year.

The DfE has helpfully included new categories for the overall picture, including the number of withdrawals and the number of offers declined. How that works for the Table 2.1 isn’t clear. Does the ‘declined an offer’ mean that the candidate declined all offers or could they decline an offer and accept another and would they then be double counted in the total of candidates.

Looking at candidates – a much better term than applicants that could always be confused with applications – where the DfE are using more categories than UCAS used to do, it isn’t clear whether withdrawals or rejections are included or not in the total? However, as the totals for Tables 2.1 ad 4.1 are the same, they must be included somewhere?

The breakdown of candidates by age and sex has been dropped but the totals retained. Allowing for the extra time period, the balance seems similar to previous years. The next post on this blog will consider the geographical picture and the state of play by subject.

Fewer Asian recruits to PG Teaching courses this year?

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How well is the teaching profession doing at increasing the number of trainees from different ethnic groups in England? The government first started considering this issue in 1997, when Baroness Morris, then a junior Minister at the Department, hosted a conference in Stratford, East London to discuss raising involvement from minority groups, at the instigation of the then Teacher Training Agency (TTA).

Two reports in the next twelve years charted the progress being achieved. Now ethnicity data in included in the annual Initial Teacher training Census conduced by the DfE. Progress has been better with some groups as the following table for the current cohort and the previous 2019/20 cohorts makes clear.

2019/202021/22
Asian ethnicity31963608
Black ethnicity11171372
Mixed ethnicity9711103
Other ethnicity378538
Total ethnicity groups56626621
White ethnicity2649526724

Source: DfE ITT Census additional tables accessed 13th December 2021

In these three cohorts, the proportion of the White ethnicity Group has reduced from 82% to 80% of the total. Trainees of the Asian Group make up the largest ethnic group followed by the Black group that contains those of both African and Caribbean ethnicity. Over time, as society become more multi-cultural those reporting as of ‘mixed’ ethnicity are likely to grow significantly.

One significantly under-represented Group is that of ‘gypsy and travellers’ -the Group that perform worst in education attainment- with just five recorded postgraduate trainees, albeit that is better than the three of last year and the four of the year before.

It would be interesting to view this data by both geographical region and by subjects, as there are likely to be substantial differences.  Interestingly at the aggregate level on postgraduate courses, Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani trainee numbers fell this year. This may, in part be due to the new category of ‘not stated’ introduced this year. The number of African trainees increased, but those identified as Caribbean fell back from the high recorded last year.

The numbers recorded as either Irish or Scottish on postgraduate courses are negligible. Presumably, the fee regime makes studying to be a teacher in England unattractive to these groups of graduates.

The good news is that there are nearly 8,000 trainees in the London Region, usually a significant area for recruits from ethnic minorities. This is also an area with a high demand for teachers as TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk regularly notes in its newsletters.