ITT: not all plain sailing

Posted on March 25, 2021 by John Howson

Normally during a downturn in the economy, and the associated rise in unemployment, teaching does well as a career choice, and applications for places on graduate teacher preparation courses surge; they only peak when the labour market shows signs of picking up again.

The trend during the pandemic of the past year has been slightly different to this pattern. Yes, overall applications, and applicant numbers are up, as commentators that just look at the overall numbers have noted. However, for those more concerned with the details, the picture is more nuanced.

In primary, applications have not yet reached the peak seen in the 2016/17 round, and are some 5,000 or so below that level, and only 8,000 applications above the low point reached in March 2020 before the full extent of the current pandemic had become clear. There may be a warning here about the desirability of becoming a primary school teacher among the group that society has relied upon to ensure an intake of high quality new teachers each year. The public data doesn’t allow for any further comments, but someone should be taking a look at the detailed data.

It is in the secondary sector that the outcome is more nuanced. Three subjects stand out for concern. In biology, overall applications are down on March 2020, by around a thousand, to 2,360. While there will be plenty of chemistry trainees this year, with applications double what they were in March 2020, physics, as a subject, seems unlikely that it will meet its target for the year unless applications pick up in the second half of the year. As a result, any shortfall in biology may leave school struggling for science teachers for September 2022, if demand return to more normal levels next year.

In geography, applications are down by around 300 this year on last, meaning offer levels are not much above the low levels seen seven and eight years ago. However, with ever more history trainees competing for jobs, schools will be able to replace geography teachers with humanities teachers. Whether their quality of subject knowledge will be acceptable is an issue for others to debate.

Design and technology, the ‘ugly duckling’ and neglected child of the school curriculum is a real and serious concern. Applications by mid-March were just 760, compared with 820 at the same point in 2020. That’s application and not applicants. As a result, offer levels are at their lowest point for March for any year in the last decade.

I would content that design and technology is an important subject, and the DfE needs to address where the future stock of teachers is to come from? An urgent look at the details of applicants and why only 190 offers have been made is needed. In reality, this could be a few as 100 actual applicants offered places on design and technology ITT courses by mid-March.

Nearly half of the growth in applicants can be found in the London and South East regions. Whether this means that some rebalancing of ITT places might be required, as these are the two regions with the greatest demand for teachers, is no doubt a matter for active discussion. It would be foolhardy to leave places unfilled in other parts of the country whilst turning away acceptable applicants from London, especially as London often produces a higher percentage of BAME trainees than other parts of England.

Next month the blog will consider the different routes into teaching, and how they are faring and also revisit the issue of the age profile of applicants.

More good news: but not for all

Posted on February 25, 2021 by John Howson

Regular readers of this blog will know that the last Thursday of the month is the day that UCAS provides updated details of applications to postgraduate teacher preparation courses managed through their system. The numbers for February mark the half way point in the cycle between course commencements and thus represents a good time to make a judgement on what is happening in the marketplace for trainee teachers.

It is not surprising that with the economy facing the challenges resulting from the covid-19 pandemic that teaching appears a more interesting profession to pursue for graduates than when unemployment is low, and the economy is booming. However, there are not similar outcomes across the whole gamut of subjects.

This blog has used as a measure the number of applications classified as falling into one of three categories ‘Placed’, ‘Conditional Place’ or ‘Holding offer’. This is a more refined measure than using the gross total of applications, not least because each candidate can make several applications.

The news this month is that the numbers in these three categories are generally well above those for February in recent years. However, there are some exceptions to this general observation.

In geography, biology and design and technology numbers in these categories are below the same level seen last year. Geography suffered from over-recruitment a couple of years ago, and numbers placed and holding offers have been controlled more carefully since then.

Now applications for places in biology and physics courses are on the increase, there is less incentive to recruit large numbers of biology trainees, so caution here is understandable. Design and Technology is a subject that regularly struggles to fill places, and the current nature of the pandemic may not have produced large numbers of potential teachers in this subject area.

Although applicant numbers are increasing, there has not really been a surge. Compared with February 2020, there are some 4,300 more applicants this year. These additional applicants are spread across the country, although 1,100 are domiciled in London and a further 1,200 in the South East, leaving the remainder to be spread across the remaining regions.

Applications are up from those in all age-groups, including both career changers and new graduates, producing little shift in the percentage composition of applicants by age-group compared with last year.

The inclusion of a gender category of ‘unknown or Prefer not to say’ makes annual comparison on this factor impossible, but it seems likely that there has been little change and perhaps that men have even lost a little ground on women in percentage terms.

In terms of routes into teaching, School Direct (Salaried) remains the big loser in the number of applications, especially in the primary sector. All other routes seem to have benefited, although the rate of offering places on the Apprenticeship route seems to be slow when compared to other routes. In view of the government’s plans for teachers, the higher education sector remains resilient, and is still the choice for more applications than any other route into teaching.

As places fill, we can expect applications to reduce. However, of more interest is how the wider graduate labour market will recover from the pandemic and what effect that recovery will have on applications to teacher preparation courses.

Pick a teacher by computer

Posted on February 8, 2021 by John Howson

There’s a story on the BBC news site today about AI being used by some companies in their staff recruitment process. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55932977 Well, that’s nothing new. Maybe that it is just that the technology has become jazzier and snazzier that it used to be.

Way back in the 1980s, I recall a US company telling me it could select who would be a good primary school teacher on the basis of a few questions answered over the telephone. They told me it worked for selecting ice-hockey players, so would work for primary school teachers.

In the mid-1990s, during my brief period as a government adviser, I headed off another challenge to abolish interviews for all aspiring teachers, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Success was due to being joined in support by a prominent HMI of the day. Together we made the case for interviews, even though it was both time-consuming and costly.

I would not want the DfE to suggest the automated route for teacher selection be used by the new Institute of Teaching its role in both initial teacher training preparation and professional development. Imagine being judged as to whether you could be funded for a professional development course on the basis of playing a computer game.

Well, I suppose, if you think about the concept, it not all that different to how some schools and local authorities still select pupils for secondary schools at age eleven. Interestingly, we haven’t heard much about deprivation and the pandemic on the selection of pupils at age eleven, especially in the Home Counties that still cling in some areas to the Victorian notion that pupils’ life chances can be determined at age eleven.

Of course, when there are a lot of job applications, as during a recession, there is a tendency to use tactics to save time in the recruitment process. In the early days of postcodes, I recall two headteachers behaving differently. One rejected every application with a postcode as being pedantic: the other rejected everyone without such a code as not being thorough. Candidates had no idea which approach was going to see them through the next stage.

Still, the increase in applications for teaching posts, reported recently by NfER, is something this blog predicted at the start of the pandemic. Interestingly, vacancies for teachers so far in February are higher than they were in January, but the total for the year is still down on last year.

Judging by the vacancies on the DfE site, support staff vacancies are down even more than those for teachers. I suppose there is less need for classroom assistants and cover supervisors while pupils largely remain at home. Senior posts, such as those for finance officers and business managers are still cluttering up what is badged as a teacher vacancy site.

Despite persuading a few morel local authorities to link their job boars to the DfE site, it still carries far fewer vacancies than TeachVac www.teachac.co.uk and is of no use to teachers that want a post in an independent school.

ITT applications looking good for September

Posted on January 28, 2021 by John Howson

Compared with January 2020, applications for postgraduate teaching courses through UCAS have increased by almost a quarter based on my analysis of the published January 2021 data.

Interestingly, the lowest growth rate has been in applications from those potential new graduates aged 21 or less, where the percentage increase has been just 14%. However, this age group still comprises a significant proportion of the overall total. The biggest increase has been in the group aged 24, where the increase on 2020 is some 32%. It was almost as high, at 29%, in the 30-39 age group. This suggest that new graduates are not yet seeing teaching as a safe haven in a stormy sea, whereas older graduates, perhaps either furloughed or even made redundant, are considering teaching as a career choice in greater numbers than in recent years.

There are regional differences in the increase in applications, with the North East, where teaching jobs are always in short supply, witnessing an increase of only nine percent in applicants. London, with the most active graduate labour market, has seen an increase on 2020 of 39%, from 2,320 in January 2020 to 3,220 in January 2021.

Compared with previous upturns in applications to train to teach, this year has seen a different trend to that in the past, with a 27% increase in the number of applications for secondary courses compared with just a 24% increase in applications for primary courses. In the past, the growth in the number of applications for primary courses has often exceeded that for secondary courses.

There remains far more interest in postgraduate apprenticeships in the primary sector than in the secondary sector, although even here numbers are low, and have not offset the decline in applications for School Direct Salaried places in the primary sector.

The higher education sector has seen a smaller increase in applications in the primary sector than either SCITT or School Direct fee courses, although overall there are still more applications for higher education based primary courses than for any other route.

In the secondary sector, there is less of a gap between the increases seen by the different routes, with higher education applications up by a quarter; SCITT applications increasing by 30% and School Direct Salaried courses increasing by 47% on January 2020, albeit from a very low base. School Direct fee courses experienced the smallest increase in applications, at only 24%. To some extent, these changes in applications in the secondary sector are driven by the mix of subjects applicants are seeking to teach and the availability of courses with place still available.

Among the main secondary subjects the number of applications shown as ‘placed’, ‘conditional placed’ or ‘holding offer’ is up on last January in most subjects. Exceptions are biology and geography, where for both subjects the total is down on the January 2020 number. For geography, this may be due to very high levels of offers in recent years leading to over-supply. In biology, with more applications for chemistry and physics, providers may not see the need to be as generous as in past years with offers to biology courses in order to ensure a sufficient supply of science teachers.

In physics, mathematics, design and technology, chemistry and business studies, the offers are at high levels than for any January since before January 2014. However, in design and technology, it is doubtful, even at this level, whether the required number of trainees will be recruited to satisfy the labour market in 2022. There must also be a doubt about the final outcome for physics numbers

Next month marks the point in the annual cycle where predications about the outcome can be made, based upon past trends, can normally be made with some degree of accuracy. Whether that will be the case this year, I am not sure, but check back in a month’s time to see what I say.

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.

Teacher Shortage over: well almost

Posted on October 1, 2020 by John Howson

The latest data from UCA about postgraduate ITT numbers for September provides a first view of what the outlook for the year is likely to be. The September data will provide the basis for the likely supply of teachers into the labour market for September 2021 and January 2022 vacancies.

In view of the shock to the economy administered by the covid-19 pandemic, it is not surprising that there were nearly 7,000 more applicants in 2020 than in 2019. Up from 40,560 to 47,260 for those in domiciled in England. The number placed or ‘conditionally placed’ increased from 28,500 to 33,800. This is an increase of around 20% on last year.

The number of applicants placed increased across the country, although in the East of England the increase of only 120 was smaller than in the other regions. In London, the increase was in the order of an extra 1,000 trainees placed on courses compared with 2019.

More applicants from all age groups were placed this year, although the increase was smaller among the youngest age group of new graduates. This might be a matter for concern. Over, 2,000 more men were placed this year, compared to 4,500 more women. This is proportionally a greater increase in the number of men placed.

There was much more interest in secondary courses, where applications increased by nearly 14,000 to more than 81,000. For primary courses, the increase was near 6,000 to just over 53,000. The difference may be down to the date the pandemic struck home, and the availability of courses with places still available at that point in the cycle. Many primary courses will already have been full by March.

Higher education seems to have been the main beneficiary of the wave of additional applications. Applications to high education courses increased from 55,000 last year to nearly 65,000 this year. Applications for apprenticeships reached nearly 1,600 and there were 1,800 more applications to SCITT courses. The School Direct fee route attracted nearly 6,500 more applications. However, the School Direct Salaried route only attracted 200 more applicants this year, and the number placed actually fell this year, by around 300 to just 1,470. Does this route have a future?

In most secondary subjects, more applications are recorded as placed this year than last. Geography, languages (where classifications have changed) are the key exceptions, with fewer recorded as placed than last year. Even in physics, there has been a small increase on last year. However, the increase in design and technology is not enough to ensure the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model (TSM) number will be reached. This is also likely to be the case in physics, chemistry and mathematics. Fortunately, in the sciences, there are far more biology students than required by the TSM number.

I am also sceptical as to whether all the history and physical education trainees will find teaching posts in their subjects next year, because the excess of students placed to the TSM number is such that it is difficult to see sufficient vacancies been generated even in a normal year. If fewer teachers laves than normal, then the excess may be significant and these trainees might well want to look to any possible second subjects they could teach.

At this point in time, it looks as if 20202/21 round will start with a significant increase in applications over the numbers at the start of the last few years: we shall see.

Still not enough trainees

Posted on September 2, 2020 by John Howson

By Monday 17^th August some 45,210 people had applied for postgraduate teacher preparation courses through the UCAS Scheme. This was an increase of 6,000 on the number recorded in August 2019, for these courses in England. This represent a 15% year on year increase. However the number is still well below the record levels of more than 60,000 witnessed during the previous recession caused by the banking crisis. No doubt, this is in part due to the fact that it wasn’t until March that the world was turned upon its head.

The 2020/21 recruitment round may well see much high numbers of applicants right from the start of the cycle later this autumn. There are also Teach First numbers to be taken into account, although they don’t publish regular figures on total applicant numbers.

Every region of England witnessed increases in applicant numbers over 2019, with more than 1,000 additional applicants in the South East, and 1,500 in London: good news for both regions. There were also more applicants from all age-groups, as well as from both women and men.

As many of these new applicants have arrived relatively late in the recruitment round, and while schools and universities have been enduring ‘lockdown’, it is, perhaps, not surprising that ‘conditional placed’ numbers are up on last year, whereas, in some cases, ‘placed’ numbers are down.

For instance, for men in the age 21 and under category, there were 340 placed this August compared with 400 in August 2019. However the conditional placed number this year was 760, compared with 530 in August 2019. The number of applicants in this age group increased from 1,300 in August 2019 to 1,450 this August. While four of the seven age-groupings for men recorded fewer placed numbers than last year, only two age groups, the youngest and oldest groupings, for women recorded placed numbers below last year. This may give credence to the suggestion that male applicants for teaching tend to apply later on average than women.

School Direct seems to have suffered this year, with fewer placed applicants for both primary and secondary courses, and quite markedly fewer for School Direct Salaried places. This year only 610 applicants have been recorded as placed against 890 last year. Conditional placed numbers for School Direct Salaried this year are 1,550, compared with 1,710 in August last year. No doubt funding arrangements and school closures have affected this route more than some others.

Some subjects have seen significant increases in the number of applications. Art and design has increased to 3,570 this August compared with 1,890 in August 2019. Business studies, a shortage subject, now has 1,720 applications compared with 770 in 2019. By contrast, geography only has 3,740 applications this year compared with 4,380 last year at this point in time.

Mathematics has seen an increase from 8,600 to 11,000 applications, but only 770 of these are placed and with just 1,750 holding a conditional place it seems less than likely that the Teacher Supply Model number will be reached. The same is true for physics, where applications are up from 2,220 to 2,450, but only 550 are recorded as either placed or conditionally placed: not sufficient to meet the requirement.

So, 2020 looks like being better than recent years, but not yet a great year. Hopefully, the 2020/21 round will see all places filled. Since secondary pupil numbers will still be on the increase, this will be important to ensure adequate staffing for our schools.

Looking back

Posted on July 15, 2020 by John Howson

One of the joys of using WordPress is that site owners are told details of the various posts being read each day. Now the blog is several years old, it helps to remind me of what I wrote often many years ago. One visitor recently picked up on a post I wrote for a conference in Oxford almost five years ago, in November 2015.

The full post can be accessed at: https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2015/11/18/oxford-ite-conference-talk/ but I thought it was worth some of the salient points once again seeing the light of day.

Overview

1.1 Over the past half century teacher supply has been through a number of different cycles during which there have been short periods of over-supply interspersed with longer periods of shortages. Within these macro cycles there have been other periods where particular subjects or parts of the country have been affected by more local supply problems.

1.2 Since 2013, the recruitment into teacher preparation courses has become more challenging as numbers enrolled have declined. This would likely have been the case despite the fact that this period also witnessed a shift towards a more school-led approach to teacher preparation programmes. The development of new programmes has been a feature of periods of teacher shortage from the Articled Teacher scheme of the late 1980s through the SCITTS of the 1990s to the GTTP and Teach First of the early years of this century and now the school-Direct programmes.

1.3 With a significant increase in pupil numbers over the next few years it seems likely that staffing schools will become a serious problem over the next few years. We will know more on Thursday when the 2015 ITE Census is published by the DfE. I expect some improvement over last year as a result of the better marketing campaigns, but still insufficient new entrants in many subjects to meet the Teacher Supply Model numbers that historically have been seen as targets. The NCTL allocations merely blur the understanding of numbers needed, but may have helped keep higher education alive in teacher preparation. Without such over-allocation against the TSM in 2014, as I pointed out to the Minister, the loss of most English and history places from higher education would have made many more vice-chancellors question the viability of their PGCE courses.

Now we are at the start of another cycle of teacher supply, with shortages likely to be replaced by unemployment among qualified teachers seeking to return to teaching and newly qualified teachers affected by the significant short-term drop in vacancies since March 2020.

The 2015 piece went on to discuss possible typologies for whether the sector was facing a ‘crisis’ or a ‘challenge’. Both are terms still used without any agreed definition as to the difference between them. The original post offered some suggested definitions.

The post concluded that the root causes of the lack of supply of teachers was:

4.1 Assuming that no issue is taken with the modelling undertaken by the DfE to determine the number of training places and also that the deterioration of the percentage of teachers teaching a subject that have a post ‘A’ level qualification in the subject they are teaching indicates a lack of supply, then the root causes may be regarded as: insufficient recruitment into training; undue levels of early departure from the profession; a growing school population and the development of teaching as an international career and schooling in England developing as an export industry.

The final point was a new factor not present to the same degree is presently in affecting teacher supply. Will the present pandemic see a return to the United Kingdom of a large number of teachers currently working overseas? There are arguments that can be put forward for views both for and against the proposition that these teachers will return in large numbers. However, it is too early to tell.

The conclusion in 2015 reflected the changes the teacher preparation scene had undergone over the previous five years since the arrival of the Coalition government in 2010.

Conclusion

7.1 The various routes into teaching have been undergoing a fundamental politically driven change from a higher-education based system to a school-led system. This change has occurred as the economy has shifted from recession into a period of growth. It is not yet clear how far the changes in training routes may affect the attractiveness of teaching as a career. Indeed, salary and other associated benefits such as work/life balance and pension arrangements may be of more significance in recruitment into the teaching profession.

7.2 What is certain is that to create a world-class education system, we need not only world-class teachers but sufficient of them in the right places and right subjects with a willingness to become the school leaders of both today and tomorrow.

The final point remains as valid today as it was in 2015. The question now is, will it be easier to achieve than in recent years, thanks to the change in our economic circumstances as a nation?

Covid-19 and teacher supply

Posted on July 12, 2020 by John Howson

How many additional teachers will be chasing the reduced number of teacher vacancies as a result of the covid-19 pandemic? The general thesis has always been that in a recession teacher vacancies reduce, as those in work postpone their departure either into retirement or for other reasons such as starting work outside of teaching. More former teachers may also be attracted to seek working in teaching once again as they are made redundant from their former jobs.

Looking back at the period between 2007 and 2010 that spans the period just before the last shock to the economy and the period where the economy leveled out and I first started predicting that there would be teacher supply problems again in 2013, soon after starting this blog, the following trends emerge.

The number of teachers available for work increased. At that time the General Teaching Council for England registered teachers each March. Their data for those listing ‘supply teacher’ as their role increased as follows:

	Supply Teachers
2007	34799
2008	33531
2009	50999
2010	45996

That was an increase of some 11,000 teachers or a 36% in supply teachers between March 2008 and March 2010. Between March 2008 and March 2009, the increase was even greater at 50%. In that recession, some were no doubt precautionary re-registrations to allow for the chance to work as a supply teacher if necessary.

The increase was mostly among teachers between the ages of 25 and 44

	25-29	30-34	35-39	40-44
2007	72835	72978	62635	59165
2008	76116	74287	66577	60347
2009	79163	78305	71111	62530
2010	81723	83170	74944	64501

The largest increase was in teachers in their late 30s, where numbers increased by 20% between 2007 and 2010. At this distance we cannot tell how much of the increase was down to delayed departure for the profession and how much due to re-entrants seeking to work once again in teaching?

At the same time, the numbers wishing to be teachers also increased as the figures from the UCAS GTTR Scheme, taken from their 2010 annual report make clear.

	PGCE applications
2007	53931
2008	51616
2009	63138
2010	67289

This was a 30% increase between 2008 and 2010.

Might we witness the same sorts of increases between 2020 and say 2024? We won’t know about the ‘out of work ‘ teachers, because with no GTCE to collect the data, the only possible source will be increased registrations with the main teacher associations or from universal credit or Labour force data for those declaring themselves as ‘teachers’. However, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland may be able to provide comparative data from their GTCs.

Applications to train as a teacher will be easier to track. With better knowledge among potential applicants of the costs of training and possible changes to the bursary arrangements, we might not see such a large increase in applications to teaching in this recession unless unemployment really does hit 10% of the workforce. Then any concerns about working with children might be outweighed by the opportunity to secure a job at all.

Whether MATs and standalone academies will use the change to the supply situation to review wage levels and conditions of employment is not yet known, but there seems no reason why schools should pay large sums to recruit teachers using traditional paid advertising, except in rare circumstances.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: teacher supply