Tag Archives: teacher supply

London weighting for trainees?

Posted on by
2

Yesterday, I wrote about my initial views on the latest data about applications for teacher preparation courses starting in 2016. The data excludes Teach First, because that scheme does not report into the central admissions process. I noted that there had been an increase across the board in offers made following an increase in both applications – candidates may make up to three applications – and in applicants for courses in England.

I have now had more time to consider the data and can split the figures provided yesterday into three groups of subjects based on the evidence and trends over the past few years. There are some subjects where I expect it should be possible to recruit enough applicants to meet the number required by the government. These are in;

Languages
Physical Education
History
English
Chemistry

In the following subjects it is possible that the target will be met, but the data isn’t conclusive either way:

Music
IT
Business studies
Biology
In the following subjects, more work will be needed if the target 
is to be reached in 2016 based on the present evidence:
Religious Education
Geography
Design & Technology
Art
Mathematics
Physics.

In Art, the failure to reach the total may not mean a shortage unless vacancy levels pick up in 2017 over the levels seen in 2015 and early 2016. In English, although the target should be met, questions remain about whether the target is high enough to meet demand from all schools: time will tell.

Across both phases and all types of courses there have been increased levels of offers, with double the offer level for School Direct Salaried places in the primary sector over January 2015 and an even larger growth in School Direct fee courses in primary.

However, some of this may be due to higher percentages of offer being made. The most worrying figure is that applications by provider region for London only totalled 11,370 in January, for places in both phases, compared with 12,50 in January 2015. In reality, this means an additional 200 additional applicants in London so far this round across all types of provision except Teach First. On the face of these figures, many of the additional applicants are not making full use of their choices. Is this a sign that not providing extra funds for London trainees is beginning to have an impact on where potential teachers are prepared to train and then to work. In view of the recruitment challenge, I hope not, but it might be worth investigating this issue further. Has the growth been in applications to School Direct Salaried provision in London or for all types of courses?

We now enter the period when final year undergraduates tend to concentrate more on their end of course examinations that applying for teaching courses, so the behaviour of applicants over the next few months will be of especial interest. This is especially the case in those subjects where, unless more applicants are forthcoming, there could still be recruitment issues for schools in 2017.

 

 

 

 

More or Sooner?

Posted on by
2

There was some good news for the government today. The publication by UCAS of applications to graduate teacher training courses reveal much higher numbers than in January 2014 or January 2015. I expect Ministers and the DfE to make the most of these numbers. However, before they do say anything, they need to ask are the question: how many more applicants are there likely to be across the whole cycle and to what extent is the increase related to recruitment controls and the publicity associated with the handling of the application process?

Don’t get me wrong, every extra applicant in the process now is to be welcomed as there remains another seven months to reach the targets so often missed in some subjects over recent years.

First the headlines; There were seemingly 63,390 applications for courses in England this January compared with 60,890 at the same point last year. That’s 2,500 additional applications across both primary and secondary sectors. Interestingly, only 270 extra applications were from men whereas there were just over 1,500 more from women. The difference is probably due to the number of applications allowed in the process and whether all applicants used every possible choice. Still, these figures might spark a debate about the consequences in a subject such as Physical Education where schools like to employ both men and women.

Also of interest is the fact that in England applications are up from those in both the younger and older age-groups, but down compared with 2015 among 23 and 24 year old graduates.

Among the secondary subjects the numbers placed, conditionally placed or holding offers were pretty much up across the board. In languages it was 1,280 this year compared with 820 in January 2015. For other subjects (with the January 2015 number in brackets) it was RE 200 (130); PE 1,250 (760); Physics 150 (110); Music 150 (80); Mathematics 610 (500); History 840 (410); Geography 310 (180); English 1,070 (650); Design & Technology 350 (80); IT 140 (100); Chemistry 270 (140); Business Studies 80 (50); Biology 410 (220) and Art 270 (130).

Many of these were the sort of level seen in February 2015 so the flow of applicants over the next month will be important in considering where the outcome for the recruitment round might end up.

There is more to consider, including the changes over the different routes, but that will have to await another day; hopefully tomorrow.

School spends £60,000 on recruitment advertising

Posted on by
2

Teacher recruitment received a mention in the House of Commons yesterday. During Education Questions two Labour MPs asked the Minister, Mr Gibb, about whether there was a problem? Chris Leslie from Nottingham cited a school that had spent over £60,000 just on advertising costs. The Minister replied that it wasn’t necessary to spend that kind of money as there are many free recruitment sites. He didn’t list any and apart from TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk it isn’t clear what recruitment sites are free to both schools and teachers, apart, perhaps, from some local authority, diocese or academy trust sites.

As I received an email over the weekend from a governor of a primary school that had spent £8,000 on advertising for a headteacher, the sums are mounting up. Our philosophy at TeachVac is simple, cash should be spent on teaching not on recruiting teachers. The more schools, teachers and trainees that use TeachVac, the more functions we can provide alongside our present advice to schools about the size of the current pool of trainees looking for secondary teaching posts.

Expanding the information about recruitment may be vital to schools as the Future leaders Trust have brought out a Report today called ‘Heads Up’ http://www.future-leaders.org.uk/insights-blog/heads-up-challenges-headteacher-recruitment/ about the challenges of recruiting new headteachers. I was privileged to be asked to contribute to the report, and was delighted to do so, since I spent more than a quarter of a century tracking headteacher vacancies.

Being a head can be a great job but, like any leadership position, it has its challenges and it behoves those responsible for schools to recognise that fact and ensure that enough people want to take on the challenge. With more schools and increased numbers of executive heads there will be a demand for even more school leaders. In our increasingly nationalised school system I hope that someone somewhere is ensuring a sufficient supply of new candidates across the country. I commend the work that the Future Leaders Trust is doing to help with finding the next generation of school leaders.

My guess is that we now need between 2,000-2,500 new head teachers each year: that’s a big ask, especially in the primary sector. The DfE and National College have a good tradition of looking backward at what has happened; they now need to be able to project forward to anticipate problems before they arise. It is all very well the Minister saying the DfE isn’t burying its head in the sand and citing overall teacher numbers, but he didn’t, presumably because he couldn’t, state that there was no problem staffing certain subjects or in some parts of the country.

Next week will see the publication of the first figures for recruitment into teacher preparation course for 2016. As this is the third year of the current admissions system we will have a good idea of how recruitment is going this year, especially in the subjects where recruitment controls have not yet been activated. I am hoping for an improvement over last year and the year before partly because of increased marketing activity, but the recent Income Data Services report on pay might put off some would-be teachers with large loans to repay.

Don’t Panic?

Posted on by
2

This has been a good week for TeachVac (www.teachvac.com) the free to use recruitment site that I helped establish. Not only did it receive a mention in The Guardian on Tuesday – in Fiona Millar’s piece about recruitment challenges – but it also featured on BBC Breakfast TV on Wednesday morning. As a result, I have been on a number of local radio stations at various times this week following their picking up on one or other of the pieces in the national media.

So, what is the situation for September 2016? A trend we at TeachVac noted in December and have seen continuing in January is a larger than expected number of advertisements in the three key EBacc subjects; English, mathematics and the sciences. One of the problems of pre-recording media interviews several days in advance is that percentages change and it is important not to over-estimate. Thus the 40% increase that is being used in some quarters was actually an under-representation of the change between this year and last during the first two weeks of January. Of course what we will not know for several months is whether the increase is a genuine increase in demand or just a change in behaviour on the part of some schools that have brought forward recruitment, perhaps on the basis of anticipated need rather than an actual vacancy in order to start the process early. Now that some academy chains have changed their dates for resignation to the start of term that may also be an influencing factor.

Whatever the reason, or reasons, we are still seeing more advertisements than in 2015. This makes the fact that TeachVac is free to schools, teachers and trainees ever more important. After all, TeachVac was established to help reduce the cost of recruitment. If the free to use model works for Twitter, why not for teacher recruitment?

The team at Teachvac regularly has schools phoning us and asking, ‘can the process of advertising a vacancy really be that simple and free as well?’ The answer, of course is yes. If you don’t believe it and haven’t  yetseen the demonstration video on the site, then I urge you to have a look and tell the remaining schools, teachers and trainees that still haven’t signed up to do so.

Schools that enter vacancies into TeachVac for secondary main scale teachers are told the current state of the ‘free pool’ of possible applicants. TeachVac issued its first alert of 2016 this week when the ‘free pool’ in English slipped below the two thirds level. If advertisements continue at this rate there won’t be enough new entrants to ensure all vacancies can be easily filled throughout the year. Not a problem yet, but it could become the autumn for schools looking at vacancies in January 2017.

At TeachVac, we believe this early warning can help when timetables are constructed as it provides early warning of potential challenges. The changing position is updated regularly in the TeachVac monthly newsletters and other Reviews we publish. Schools, local authorities and other interested parties, such as subject associations and teaching schools, can access more detailed information for a small fee.

My assessment of the 2016 recruitment round, at least for secondary main scale teachers, where the data is richest, is that the increasing school population is starting to affect demand and the under-recruitment into preparation last September will cause issues for some schools in some subjects. Perhaps that’s why the train to be a teacher advert made an appearance on Channel 4 last evening. But, more about recruitment for 2016 at the end of the month when new figures will appear from UCAS.

Fig leaf look a bit threadbare

Posted on by
1

It didn’t take long for the national press to take up the issue of teacher supply in 2016. The Observer, a paper that has carried several stories about teacher supply over the past few months, including covering my evidence to the Select Committee in last Sunday’s edition, has highlighted the concerns of Sir Michael Wilshaw about recruitment in coastal and deprived areas expressed in his annual report. The reporters also highlight Labour’s issues with the DfE statistics, including both the inclusion of Teach First numbers being included in the annual census of trainees and the presentation of vacancy numbers based on data collected in November. http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jan/02/ofsted-row-ministers-extent-teacher-shortages-michael-wilshaw

As Sir Michael Wilshaw demonstrated in his last annual report, even the DfE figures, collected at the most favourable time of the year, have been going in the wrong direction over the past few years. It is not the fault of civil servants that the only data they collect comes from a census taken in November, but the fig leaf that this provides Ministers with now looks ever more threadbare.

How can you operate a National Teaching Service if you do not know the annual demand from schools for teachers? I am interested to know if anyone has yet seen the parameters for the working of this service. As schools are already recruiting for September 2016, if the government doesn’t enable the service soon it will have an even more challenging first year of operation than might be necessary.

Who does the government have that is capable of running such a service anyway? How much will they pay the teachers; will they only recruit existing teachers, perhaps from Teach First; will it just be secondary schools offered such teachers or will primary and special schools be included; will such teachers be offered only to academies or will all schools be able to bid for such teachers? Who knows, if you do please let me know where I can find out the details.

If the Observer didn’t actually talk to Sir Michael before writing their story, but just based it on comments in his annual report, they might want to ask him about progress at GCSE in areas where recruitment is challenging. TeachVac’s preliminary investigation of 2015 GCSE 5A*-Cs results including English and mathematics, compared with 2014, suggest that in London more schools performed less well in 2015 than 2014 than did better. Now, nationally, there was an overall decline of half a per cent in this figures, so some schools doing worse than last year was to be expected. The fact that overall more schools did in London worse raises questions about whether teacher supply problems might have contributed to the outcomes, even if schools have tried to protect examination classes.

Of course, since the DfE don’t believe there is a crisis in teacher supply anywhere in the country they will have to come up with a different explanation if it is true school performance in London has faltered compared with some other parts of England.

Teacher recruitment in 2016

Posted on by
2

How will schools looking for teachers in 2016 fare? Teacher supply was a common theme of discussions in the autumn term of 2016, so I thought I would share some preliminary analysis regarding the start of the 2016 recruitment round. Schools signed up to TeachVac, our free recruitment site that costs schools nothing to post vacancies, receive more detailed information thorough our monthly newsletter. To find out more visit http://www.teachvac.co.uk

In addition, secondary schools receive the unique update on the size of the remaining ‘free pool’ of trainees every time they upload details of a main scale vacancy. At present, this is the national picture since the NCTL seem reluctant to reveal regional data in any meaningful form, despite in 2014 telling me that they had hoped to do so in 2015. The data on regional provision in the priority subjects that they have produced is challenging to map against the actual census numbers in some subjects. As the key census table also has gaps that appear to be filled in another table, I have a word of caution about the data in the public domain. No doubt some enterprising MP will ask questions or the Select Committee will elicit the actual data from the DfE as part of their inquiry. If so, we will update the information in TeachVac.

Anyway, using the data that is available we can assume that Teach First trainees will be in classrooms and unavailable to fill vacancies, other than as qualified teachers at the end of their programme, and that School Direct Salaried trainees are also likely to be hired either by the school where they are training or another local school without an advert appearing.  As a result, these trainees can be discarded from the pool of trainees available to schools unable to access these programmes. In addition, it is worth reducing the remaining number by five per cent to allow for those that don’t complete their training programme on the higher education, SCITT and School direct fee routes.

Taking all these variables into account, the picture is broadly similar to this point in 2015. There are unlikely to be enough trainees in the ‘free pool’ to satisfy demand in business studies; design and technology – despite slightly better recruitment than last year; English – where we have concerns that the distortion produced by both Teach First and the School Direct Salaried numbers may make it difficult for schools in some parts of the country to recruit a teacher –this is a subject where the regional breakdown of recruitment into training would be especially helpful. Although the mix of science teachers may not be what schools need, the total of trainees may be sufficient across the country, even if not regionally. The same is true in mathematics.

In PE, art and probably languages, there should be sufficient trainees to meet demand. In other subjects, we need to see how schools will schools respond to curriculum changes and funding pressures before making a judgement. However, geography, music, IT and RE schools seeking teachers may struggle towards the end of the year, if 2016 follows the pattern of 2016.

Regionally, despite the presence of Teach First together with the School Direct Salaried places, we expect schools outside these programmes to struggle in London and the Home Counties when it comes to recruitment of main scale teachers. As these are the parts of the country with the greatest concentration of independent schools, the demand for teachers from these schools is an additional pressure in the marketplace.

Teachvac has a new service this year that allows us to provide advice on salary levels offered in the marketplace. This is not yet a free service, but the team are happy to discuss details with anyone interested. 2016 looks like being another interesting and challenging year for teacher recruitment.

 

Wrong direction

Posted on by
Reply

I pointed out recently that in the recent autumn statement there was a determination to drive down procurement costs in education. This is presumably so that more of the dwindling funding in real terms can be better used to support teaching and learning. It was, therefore, disappointing to read the research issued yesterday by Lucy Powell, the Labour shadow Secretary of State and her excellent team of researchers, that spending on supply teachers had risen to more than £1.3 billion pounds a year in 2013/14.

Now spending on supply often falls into one of two categories; either daily supply expenditure to cover absences and or support over a longer-term for unfilled vacancies. According to the data Labour have used, academies have seen a larger rise in spending on supply teachers than the remaining maintained schools. Without looking more closely at the type of schools that became academies during the period between 2011/12 and 2013/14 and the effect of the changing financial year from April to March to September to August, when a school moves from being maintained to being an academy, it is difficult to do more than note the figures and that the overall increase for all schools is around half of that for academies. Nevertheless, an increase of a fifth across the sector won’t help schools meet the government’s stated intention to drive down procurement costs.

If it can be shown that the majority of the rise is due to staffing difficulties, then this is another piece of evidence of a staffing crisis, a crisis that Mr Gibb, the Minister, was reluctant to acknowledge when he appeared before the Select Committee last week. Even the Chief Inspector recognised the concerns in his recent Annual Report even using the data from the Annual Workforce Census undertaken in November; not a noted time for high levels of vacancies.

Of course, the Treasury will benefit, since presumably 20% of the £1.3 billion spent on supply teachers is VAT and no doubt a large proportion of it finds its way into HMRC coffers. Perhaps this could then be re-cycled back into education spending.

As regular readers know, one way for schools to cut spending on recruitment is to use our free TeachVac site www.teachvac.co.uk that is now approaching the end of its first full-year. I think it fair to say, even before the final numbers are collated, that Teachvac has posted more main scale secondary vacancies in its first year in operation than any other site achieved when a start-up.

Now, TeachVac offers a full service for all schools, still for free, we are looking to double that number in 2016. Local authorities, dioceses and academy chains with vacancy circulars can post vacancy details also for free and receive tracking data about the state of the job market in 2016. Give the TeachVac team a ring on 01983 550408 to learn more about how to sign up for free or visit the web site and watch the videos.

In a year when teacher supply became headline news, the TeachVac team are helping an increasing number of schools cut the cost of recruitment. If you know a school or teacher not signed up, give them a Christmas present by telling them about TeachVac.

The Select Committee and teacher supply

Posted on by
3

Yesterday morning was an interesting experience. I spend forty minutes alongside three other leading authorities on teacher preparation and supply appearing in front of the House of Commons Education Select Committee. This august body was taking evidence about the current state of recruitment into the profession and employment opportunities for teachers.

As might be expected, the general tone from everyone, except the Minister in the final session, was gloomy with the emphasis on targets not met and the challenges schools face when looking for new teaching staff. The Minister was right to emphasise the increased number of teachers in the profession, but along with the data on entrants to training he must ensure civil servants provide clarity on the basis for the figures. Did his comparison with last year exclude or include Teach First numbers in both sets of numbers he quoted. It would be unhelpful if 2014 data didn’t include Teach First but 2015 did, since the comparison wouldn’t have been based on a similar measure. This can be checked when the transcript appears.

What is also interesting is the data revealed in an answer Lord Nash gave on the 7th December to a written question in the House of Lords. From that information it is possible to identify success against target for the four key routes into teaching; higher education; SCITTs; School Direct fee and School Direct salaried. The rates are important because some of the routes into teaching provide more trainees for the free pool of job hunters that aren’t necessarily going to be snapped up by those responsible for preparing them for the profession than do other routes.

There is an interesting debate to be had around any route that is especially selective in its entry standards and then offers employment to all those on that route into teaching. This would leave others schools not so fortunate with a much more limited access to the trainee market. One solution would be for all schools to become involved in training. However, it only matters if some routes are better at filling the places allocated.

The table shows the percentage of allocated places filled in 2015 as reported in the answer to the PQ

  HEI SCITT SD – Fee SD – Salaried
Total 88 65 54 70
Primary 104 77 71 89
Secondary 77 57 45 56
English 142 57 60 82
Mathematics 72 51 34 47
D&T 42 47 31 77
History 108 82 85 79
Geography 93 40 38 45

On the basis of the figures in the table, there is a risk that recruitment controls in history and English might create a shortfall in 2016 with knock-on effects on the teacher labour market in 2017 if the same pattern were to develop as last year.

The effects of the controls will need to be watched very carefully in case school recruitment doesn’t take over from higher education courses once they have been capped. Recruitment controls rely upon applicants wanting to enter teaching by any route and not being wedded to a university course. Should that not prove the case, and there was a discussion about how far trainees were now prepared to travel to study to enter the profession during the Select Committee session, further action might need to be taken quickly.

Of course, allocations aren’t the TSM number and are set high in some subjects, but why did schools only manage to fill a third of their allocations in design & technology. In mathematics, might the bursary provide a better return to some candidates than the salaried route in terms of effort and cash on offer?

Hopefully, as the recruitment round for 2016 unfolds there will be room for dialogue between the DfE and other partners, even if it might have to be managed through the Select Committee.

My evidence to the Select Committee can be read on their page devoted to the inquiry at: http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/education-committee/supply-of-teache rs/written/24299.html

Recruitment Controls 4

Posted on by
2

They say that there is nothing like a bit of publicity to help the marketing along. Recruitment to teaching preparation courses hasn’t been short of that this autumn. First, there was the furore, anxiety, concern – insert your own choice of word – over the salary quoted in the television advert. Although the salary isn’t the main concern for many would-be teachers there are no doubt some that do need to be reminded that it isn’t a reason to ignore a career in teaching, even if the squeeze on public sector pay does make it a less attractive reason that a few years ago. This is despite what the DfE says about the still attractive pension arrangements for teachers.

The second area where there has been some publicity has been over the issue of recruitment controls. On October the 27th, when the allocations were announced, this blog pointed out that far too many places had been allocated to PE providers and that “PE and history course providers on the other hand seem almost certain to be subject to recruitment controls, at least in some parts of the country.” And so, despite the government denial of early November, it has come to pass. And to that list must be added English and primary phase courses for postgraduates.

Now, the oxygen of publicity may have brought new applicants or it may just have inspired potential applicants to hurry up with their application and, no doubt, to bombard their referee with a request to fill in the reference forthwith. Indeed, I wonder if a dilatory tutor and their institution might find at least a grievance, if not something more serious, filed against them if a student missed the opportunity of being considered for a place on a course because the reference was delayed without due reason.

I think some universities may have been slow to take on board the implications of recruitment controls as laid out by the NCTL in their original explanation and may now be facing the consequences. My anxiety, despite what some DfE and NCTL officials may think, was never with the universities, but for applicants.

As the government is the purchaser of teacher preparation courses, they have the right to determine what method they use to purchase places. After all, it is QTS they are purchasing and to that universities offer their own establishment based qualification.  For applicants, it is more of a challenge, especially if they don’t know from one day to the next whether a course will be even able to interview them.

This state of affairs could have been prevented by creating a closing date by which all applicants that had applied would have been considered and any recruitment controls applied at that stage.  That would have prevented a first come first served approach that neither encourages quality in selection nor accepts that some applicants may have legitimate reasons for applying later in the recruitment round.

Still, we must not forget that beyond the subjects with recruitment controls there are a whole host of other subjects where recruitment remains a challenge. How much of a challenge would be easier to assess if the daily UCAS figures had a number for the total of applicants disaggregated from their number of applications. It is important to know whether recruitment controls are affecting the number of choices applicants make at the start of the process.

Recruitment Controls 3

Posted on by
9

The news that recruitment controls have been applied to higher education recruiters of PE shouldn’t come as a surprise to any reader of this blog. On the 5th November, I wrote:

‘Earlier in the week I estimated it might be some time next week when recruitment controls would be introduced in PE’

So, it was a little surprising that rather than issue a warning civil servants apparently said on the 13th November

It has been two weeks since recruitment for 2016/17 began through UTT and we are pleased to report applicants are showing an interest in ITT. However, whilst recruitment is looking healthy – especially in some of the popular subjects such as Physical Education (PE) and Primary – there is no need to panic as we are not close to stopping recruitment just yet.

We have heard fears of recruitment controls being implemented in the coming weeks and recruitment being stopped altogether and wanted to reassure you that NCTL will announce whenever recruitment has reached around 50%, 75%, 90% and 95% of national recruitment controls. There will be no unexpected or immediate instruction from NCTL to stop recruitment.

Well, I don’t know what you interpret those two paragraphs to mean, and I am sure my blog comment didn’t lead to the line about rumours, but it seems disingenuous to put out such a statement and introduce controls a week later with no advance warning. I am sure it was just a lack of familiarity of the speed with which applications can arrive in our new electronic age compared with old days of postal sacks winging their way to UCAS at Cheltenham that forced the hand of civil servants.

Still, it does raise the issue of ‘Wednesbury reasonableness’ it anyone wanted to mount a judicial review. Is it reasonable to offer candidates three choices but to be able to cut off some of these after a person has booked an expensive train ticket or should an applicant be able to expect the same rules for all of their choices?

It is not for me to answer that question, but it would surely have been better to introduce controls alongside a fixed application date. This would have allowed all applications by that date to have been considered and if the overall total exceeded the point at which controls would need to have been introduced the course providers could each have been told how many offers they could make and would, presumably, have selected the best rather than the fastest to apply as has now happened. The current system also discriminates against late applicants and if it can be shown that it has favoured certain groups over others that won’t help defend a charge of it being a reasonable system.

Whether it is reasonable to use public money to favour certain types of provider is also a question for the lawyers. But, I hope that a better and fairer scheme will be devised for next year.