Tag Archives: teacher supply

Reflections on teacher preparation questions

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The following is the text of a talk I gave last evening to a group put together by the SSAT to discuss teacher preparation and teacher supply questions. 

The key question must be: was Lionel Robbins wrong to remove teacher preparation from the employers half a century ago? That decision to shut small monotechnic teacher training colleges run by local authorities and the main churches and place training almost completely in the higher education sector formed the pattern of teacher preparation for most of the next 30 years.

The change was accompanied by a move to an all-graduate profession, championed vigorously by the teacher associations; at the same time there was a rapid move towards graduate PGCE training for most secondary subjects and a more gradual change away from undergraduate training for the primary sector.

During the teacher supply crisis of the late 1980s the first of the employment-based routes appeared; Licensed and Articled Teacher programmes, followed later by the GTTP and RTTP. There was then the short-lived Fast Track Scheme and again, originally a product of the teacher shortages of the early 2000s, Teach First. All these were programmes characterised by closer links with employers than the higher education programmes of the time that were student focussed in terms of who was seen as the client.

As we have seen today none of these routes has solved the teacher supply problems. There were regular teacher shortages under the pre-Robbins training regime where, of course, universities had an input and were developing their PGCE programmes before Robbins reached his conclusion about the future direction of teacher preparation courses.

Since 2010, the policy has been firmly to support the development of school-led preparation courses. I would add that one development of the 1990s not so far mentioned was that of SCIITs. Groups of schools coming together to solve teacher supply issues. Some have now graduated from being precocious teenagers into respectable Twenty-year olds. The cluster of these around the Thames Estuary is no accident of history, but rather reflects the lack of higher education institutions in that part of the world, especially on the north bank of the Thames.

As someone that spent nearly 15 years in higher education preparing teachers in Worcester, Durham and Oxford; someone who created a SCITT in 1995 and someone that spent a year at the TTA trying to advise ministers on teacher supply matters, the issue of how to recruit and prepare teachers has and still is of serious concern to me.

We need more trainees each year than the total number of those employed by the Royal Navy after the latest defence cuts. That all uniformed sailors and officers combined. Indeed, we recruit each year into teaching somewhere near half the size of the British land army. We do, therefore, need to take this issue of entering our profession seriously, perhaps more seriously than we have done in the past.

I think everyone agrees that preparation needs to be closely linked to schools. Schon’s reflective, self-critical problem solver cannot develop away from the problems they are solving. In this case teaching and learning for groups of young people grouped in what we have historically termed ‘classes’. That’s what makes teaching different from tutoring, lecturing or child-minding – all not doubt respectable occupations, but not teaching. Of course, teachers do other things as well and work with individuals, but it is not the core of their daily task.

So, here are some questions;

Would it help if entry to the profession was at the start of the preparation course? This might mean a salary for all and not just Teach First and School Direct Salaried trainees. Given the numbers, would The Treasury ever agree to this?

But what if applicants vote with their feet? In 2015, there were 15,000 fewer applicants through the UCAS scheme compared with the GTTR scheme in 2005. Indeed, there probably only 5,000 more than in the disastrous year of 2001 that saw the start of the teacher supply crisis of that period. Such numbers either leave little room for choice of candidate or create a new problem of maintaining entry standards leaving unanswered the question of who fills the empty classrooms?

The majority of trainees are still between the ages of 20-23. Not far short of half of those placed on courses in 2015 fall into this group,, almost all probably new graduates. It would be interesting to know how they chose their route into teaching. Were School Direct urban places better taken up by this group than those offered by schools in coastal locations? Does the offer of a job after training matter? If so, are the School Direct salaried route and Teach First doing better at attracting applicant to teaching than university-based programmes?

The purists among us might say, give all teacher preparation to school-based programmes, but others might take the Augustinian view that they weren’t ready to do so just yet as the risks might be too high until we have more understanding of what brings people into teaching in sufficient numbers and then helps keep them in the profession.

It is worth noting that in 2010 EBITT numbers in the DfE census were recorded as just under 6,400 whereas in 2014 School Direct (both salaried and fee routes) recruited just over 9,200 primary and secondary trainees out of the 26,000 postgraduate entrants. In 2015, this had increased to 10,252 by November of whom 3,166 were on the salaried route (1,400 secondary and 1,600 primary)

Perhaps, of even more concern to me is that in 2015, schools bid for 2,252 maths training places. In 2016 the initial allocations are for 2,171 places despite there being 500 more maths places in the Teacher Supply Model for 2016: the only subject with an increase. Fortunately, that situation isn’t replicated in other subjects, but it raises the issue of how to manage need in a market, especially where the price to providers may have been reduced.

I am sure we will explore this further issue further in our discussion along with the role of government; the different regional effects and the increased desire to open up other careers to women with no parallel drive to make professions that are staffed by women more gender balanced in their workforce.

My two nightmares are firstly that all our possible women teachers are persuaded to become bankers, engineers or even police officers now that is to become an all graduate occupation and secondly that some successful business person in China decides to set up a chain of English-style schools and scoops the whole of our trainee pool. So, perhaps I am alone in thinking the slowdown in China might be a good thing for the teaching profession in England.

Not good news

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Earlier today the DfE published the census of those that started teacher preparation courses this year. For the first time in some years they have included Teach First data except for history and computing numbers in the totals. As  a result it has taken a little while to disentangle the numbers to compare with the TSM for 2015 that didn’t include Teach First numbers. You can regard the old NCTL allocations as mere flights of fancy as it is only the TSM that matters except where their use distorts regional patterns of teacher supply.

I am now having some discussion with the NCTL about how Teach First was treated in the previous published TSM figures. Since the purpose of the table below is to try to identify the size of the possible free pool of trainees that will be available to schools to recruit in 2016 I will try and replace the present table with that data once the history issue has been cleared up. I assume after two years on the programme in their allocated school any Teach First person changing school is treated in the same manner as any other teacher with QTS by the DfE and would not count as  a new entrant  to the profession. This just shows how complicated it is and how important it is that schools can know how many trainees will be available for employment in 2016.

What good news there is centres around physics -where the bursary clearly works – and languages where we don’t know the nationality of applicants. Applicant numbers are now as I predicted slightly better than last year thanks to the marketing in the summer term but won’t yield enough trainees in many subjects to meet demand if it stays at 2015 levels.

Census without Teach First

2013 census 2014 census 2015 census
Languages 1260 1105 1226
RE 370 385 386
PE 1120 1271 1230
Physics 710 661 723
Music 380 372 358
Mathematics 2310 2186 2197
History 770 786
Geography 620 601 580
English 2010 1689 1940
D&T 410 450 518
Computer Studies + IT 350 519 509
Chemistry 1100 850 961
Business Studies 200 200 174
Biology 720 766 920
Art 330 534 503

I think the basis for ‘other’ has changed so it is worth discounting that figure. Both Business Studies and Design & technology are subjects where TeachVac has recorded more demand for teachers in 2015 than there has been supply, so that isn’t likely to change in 2016 unless the demand drops as schools hire more teachers in EBacc subjects.

I will add to this blog as more of the numbers are analysed over the next couple of days.

 

Oxford ITE Conference talk

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Teacher Supply: Crisis, challenge or no problem?

1 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.

2 Introduction

2.1 The debate about whether or not there an issue in teacher supply at the present can really only be answered in terms of what it is the school system is trying to achieve? If it is to provide the highest quality education to all pupils in order to ensure that they are able to achieve the highest possible personal outcomes from schooling, then the part teachers’ play in achieving this outcome needs to be determined. Without agreed goals for the school system it is difficult to assess whether or not there is a teacher shortage at the present time.

 2.2 Crisis or Challenge?

2.2.1 There is no current definition of when a shortage of teachers or trainees might be described as either a challenge or a crisis. This lack of any benchmark has allowed language to be used in a casual and imprecise manner. In an attempt to inject some clarity into the debate, some suggested definitions are offered for both recruitment into teacher preparation programmes and for recruitment into main-scale teaching positions for classroom teachers.

2.3 Entry into preparation programmes

2.3.1 A “challenge” to the system might be described as a situation where more than 60% of applicants are offered places on preparation courses: such a figure demonstrates that there is little competition to enter the profession. A lack of competition means there is no incentive to create minimum benchmarks for entry in areas such as extent of subject knowledge or experience beyond schooling and university education.

2.3.2 A “crisis” might arise when, despite offering more than 60% of applicants places on teacher preparation courses, there are still insufficient applicants to fill all the places on offer over a two-year period. (This avoids issues over a shortfall in one year due to unforeseen events).

2.3.3 On this basis some subjects may be facing challenges and, possibly, a few are in crisis.

2.4 Entry level vacancies

2.4.1 There are no current descriptors for how to measure either a challenge or a crisis in recruitment at the level of entry grade employment in teaching.

2.4.2 A challenge might be described as a situation where there are sufficient entrants to teaching from all sources, but, because they are not distributed according to need across the country, some schools are forced to employ candidates without the skills or subject knowledge required to fully undertake the role for which they have been recruited. This could be the consequence of a shortfall in entry into training when there are insufficient other teachers available to make up that shortfall.

2.4.3 For this challenge to become a crisis, there would need to be insufficient entrants to the profession from all routes to reduce the percentage of teachers 1) with no relevant post ‘A’ level qualification teaching the subject in a secondary school, or 2) no training in the phase of primary education they are teaching (again over a two year period). The crisis could be limited to specific parts of the curriculum.

2.4.4 It seems likely that an analysis of the 2012-2014 School Workforce Census data may reveal a number of subjects where this definition of a crisis is met. It is not clear whether the DfE has the data to identify whether there is a crisis in our primary schools.

2.4.5 However, another way to consider the issue is to look further at three areas of teacher supply where the terms crisis or challenge may be used.–

  • crisis of numbers,– There needs to be enough teachers
  • crisis of location – they need to be in the right place and–
  • crisis of quality – they need to be good enough.

The issue of numbers can be further sub-divided into numbers in training, and numbers in the profession, as already discussed. A shortfall in training numbers will create a shortage in the profession, which will become compounded if the problem lasts for several years and will lead to problems with middle leadership after about 5-10 years.

2.5 Crisis of numbers.

2.5.1 In order to have enough teachers, we need to train enough in each subject area because, according to DfE modelling, the existing teachers, returners and “churn” (teachers moving schools) will only make up 50% of those needed. The government uses the Teacher Supply Model and ITT allocations to help recruit potential teachers into training, setting levels that will provide an adequate supply of teachers once those that complete training and enter teaching have been added into the overall mix.

2.5.2 Considering just the trainee numbers, TeachVac’s http://www.teachvac.co.uk data reveals that some subjects have an overabundance of trainee teachers compared with the number needed, some have just enough and some are woefully short.

Analysis of vacancies advertised against trainee numbers as at 21st October 2015 –since start date 1st January 2015

Group ITT Number left % left

21 Oct

 % left 13 Nov
Art 534 193 36.24 34
Science 2277 285 12.52 9
English 1689 -84 -5 -9
Mathematics 2186 439 20.08 17
Languages 1105 256 23.17 20
IT 519 -46 -8.86 -11
Design & Technology 450 -161 -35.8  

-38.9
Business 200 -173 -86.5 -92
RE 385 4 1.17 -4
PE 1271 864 68.02 67
Music 372 36 9.81 5
Social Sciences 113 -96 -84.96 -91
Geography 601 -28 -4.66 -7
History 786 210 26.78 25

Source TeachVac

2.5.3 As a guide, at the end of the recruitment round having + or – 5% of trainees left in a subject or phase within primary still looking for a teaching post would be the aim; a shortage of trainees of between 5% and 10% compared with advertised need would be a challenge and a shortage of more than 10% could be construed as a crisis. This situation can arise either because of issues with the Teacher Supply Model or because insufficient trainees are recruited to meet the number suggested in the Teacher Supply Model.

2.5.4 In some subjects the opposite situation can occur, where the numbers of trainees are too high. Again this may be due to either over-recruitment against identified need from the Teacher Supply Model or a mis-match between need and reality in the recruitment round.

2.5.5 More than 5% of trainees above need, but less than 10% too many is a warning, more than 10% too many trainees means that there will be a significant number of trainees who will not be able to find a job, anywhere in the country, yet will be saddled with a significant additional student debt.

2.5.6 A quick summary suggests that at the end of December, the following will be the case for 2015 as a result of the numbers trained in 2014/15:

Numbers Crisis – Business Studies, English, IT, design & technology, Social Sciences and possibly Geography

Numbers Challenge – Science, Music, RE

Numbers Correct – Languages, History and Maths (but see later)

Numbers over-supply – PE and Art

Some Crisis subjects are a whole year’s cohort behind, but PE is at least a year’s cohort ahead of itself.

2.5.7 The recruitment round might be considered to cover vacancies for September and January and to follow the calendar year (there are few vacancies advertised for an Easter start). At the current time there are already more vacancies than available trainees in subjects such as English, IT, Design & Technology, Business Studies, Social Science and Geography. Once their contribution to the teaching of humanities was added in to the total, there were insufficient RE trainees and probably insufficient trainees in history. By the end of the recruitment round it seems likely that the sciences (overall) and music will be added to the list. This would leave mathematics, languages, art & design and PE as the only subjects where trainee numbers will have been sufficient across the whole recruitment round.

2.5.8 It seems likely that had the government not increased employer pension and National Insurance contributions in 2015 then the number of vacancies on offer might have been even greater since schools would have spent the money on extra staff in some, if not all, cases.

2.6 Crisis of location.

2.6.1 I believe that most trainees tend to look for a job either in their home area or around their training location. This tendency gives rise to a potential crisis of location if the distribution of training places does not reflect local needs. As the geographical allocation numbers were not published by the DfE in the past, it has been very difficult to ascribe the term challenge or crisis to any subjects. The exception is Mathematics where there is widespread anecdotal evidence of shortages yet the overall numbers look satisfactory. On that basis it might seem as if Mathematics has a “location crisis” in some areas.

2.6.2 An analysis of the published vacancies for entry level teaching posts tracked by TeachVac between January 2015 and mid-October 2015 suggests that there are marked regional differences in the average number of advertisements placed for such posts by schools in different regions of England.

Average number of jobs advertised per school

North East North West Yorkshire & the Humber East Midlands West Midlands London East of England South West South East
4.56 4.37 4.92 5.21 4.46 7.15 6.97 4.36 5.98
Source TeachVac                

2.6.3 The vacancies counted by TeachVac include those posted by both state-funded and private schools. It is noticeable that London, despite the presence of Teach First, has recorded the largest number of vacancies per schools with the East of England and the counties closest to London within that region a close second. There are issues with individual schools in areas such as coastal locations, but these have not been sufficient to affect the regional average.

2.7 Crisis of quality.

2.7.1 Quality is a very subjective area and yet everyone can see the difference between good and poor quality.

2.7.2 For trainees, there are two further aspects. Firstly, if there are too few applicants, then there is little opportunity to select the ‘best’ candidates. This can be measured by the application to training place ratio. From a measurement point we could say that between three applicants per place and two applicants per place would be a challenge and fewer than two applicants per place would be a crisis. The second trainee measure is that of completion – poor trainees will be less likely to complete their course and enter teaching. This issue can be exacerbated by the funding methodology used by the government and, this year, by the recruitment controls methodology.

3 Leadership Vacancies this section was omitted from the talk

3.1 Since the abolition of a compulsory qualification for headship – the NPQH – it has been difficult to know objectively, in advance, whether the number of aspiring head teachers meets the likely demand. Now that the bulge in retirement numbers has passed, the demand for head teachers should have returned to a figure more in line with long-term demand. However, a number of factors, including the creation of new schools such as Free Schools, UTCs, Studio Schools and new academies, as well as Executive Heads of multi-academy trusts, has probably increased the demand for head teachers to a level above the long-term trend, especially in the secondary sector.

3.2 Over the past quarter century, a number of factors have affected the labour market for new head teachers. Faith schools, and especially Roman Catholic schools within that group of schools, have consistently found it more of a challenge to recruit new head teachers than community schools. This may have been partly a reflection of the changing nature of society in England.

3.3 More generally, any school that has one or more factors from the following list may have experienced greater difficulty in recruiting a school leader;

  • size – both very small and very large;
  • limited age range – infant, junior or middle compared with primary or secondary;
  • single sex schools;
  • limited section of the ability range;
  • some specific types of special schools where relocation is necessary due to the small number of such schools;
  • time of year vacancy occurs if outside the key January to March period;
  • unusually low salary;
  • performance, especially on Ofsted inspections but also in examination or key stage results.

3.4 Finally, geography can play a part. In regions where house prices are higher than average this may restrict the number of applicants willing to move into the area but permit outward movement from possible candidates for headship. There has also been concern about areas with limited hinterlands such as coastal fringes of England. Areas where there may be limited scope for work for a partner may also be less attractive to potential head teachers. There are exceptions to these rules, but the occasional outstanding new head does not provide a solution to any specific problem.

4 The root causes of the lack of supply of teachers

4.1 Assuming that no issue is taken with the modelling undertaken by the DfE to determine the number of training places and 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
  • The development of teaching as an international career and of schooling in the UK as an export industry. Both offer opportunities to teachers that can reduce teacher numbers available for state-funded schools.

5 Action the government could take to tackle teacher shortages

5.1 The government has a considerable body of evidence from previous teacher supply crises to be able to understand what actions they can take that may or may not work to solve any teacher supply crisis, even though they do not directly employ any teachers – at least until the National Teaching Force comes along. There is also evidence on the issues affecting teacher supply from the work of the School Teachers’ Review Body and the research undertake for them by the Office for Manpower Economics in connection with several of their Reports. This body of evidence could enable the DfE to consider the success or otherwise of previous attempts to solve each crisis.

5.2 However, in an age when investment in higher education is the responsibility of the individual, rather than the State, it seems perverse that a large number of individuals should have to bear the cost of their training as a teacher, with the added risk of no guarantee of a job on successful completion of the course. Simple economics suggests that although this may pose less of an issue when the private sector is not hiring graduates, it is an issue when the graduate recruitment market is buoyant, as it was after 1997 when tuition fees were first introduced, and applications from graduates to train as teachers slumped.

5.3 For instance, in 1997–98 some 1,540 of the mathematics teacher training places were filled, but 830 remained un-filled. The following year, the number of unfilled mathematics places increased to 1,080 and the number of those entering teacher preparation courses declined from 1,540 to 1,190. The eventual solution to the recruitment problem was the introduction of the training bursary in 2000.

5.4 The continual changes to the level of bursary funding, and the relative financial attractiveness of different teacher preparation routes, makes for a muddle that may make it more difficult to attract new entrants to teaching, especially when the economy is growing. Teaching cannot be seen just as a safe haven career in times of economic uncertainty if England is to have a world-class teaching profession. Teaching needs to be able to recruit high quality entrants in boom times as well as in times of recession.

5.5 There are other solutions to deal with any shortage of teachers. These include ensuring a better transition from preparation to employment that reduces wastage of qualified entrants. This ought to be easier when schools, as employers, control a greater proportion of the training than providers that do not employ teachers, such as universities.

5.6 At present, the balance of new entrants to other entrants to main scale vacancies is estimated by the DfE at around the 50:50 mark, according to evidence provided in the past by the DfE to the STRB. If there are insufficient new entrants, more could be spent trying to attract other qualified teachers either from those not working or nor currently working full-time or from teachers from either within the EU or elsewhere in the world. The DfE currently has a pilot programme underway for attracting returners in EBacc subjects.

5.7 Should there be insufficient teachers, schools have the option of changing the curriculum offer to reduce time spent on particular subjects – although there will need to be an increase in other subjects if the total time taught doesn’t alter. Re-training of teachers through programmes such as the suggested TeachNext concept and attracting new groups through programmes such as the Troops to Teacher scheme can also help at the margin in dealing with shortages.

5.8 On the demand side, group sizes in schools may be altered, subject to the capacity of classrooms to handle larger groups. The use of new technology to alter the instructional method could have profound implications for the supply and training of teachers in the future. Although wide scale use of the internet has now been around for almost two decades, the impact on teaching and learning in schools is probably very limited in its effects on the model of teacher-pupil interaction.

6 The Future of teacher supply up to 2020 and beyond

6.1 The key driver of teacher supply issues during this Parliament will be the increase in pupil numbers. The primary school population started increasing some years ago, and will continue to increase through the life of this parliament. The secondary school population fell nationally through the last Parliament as the effect of a decline in the birth rate during an earlier period worked through the system. However, from a low point in 2015, the secondary school population will increase through the whole of this Parliament and probably most of the next, assuming two fixed term parliaments. By 2023, the STRB estimated, based on DfE evidence, that the secondary school population would be 17% higher in 2023 than in 2014 (25th Report page 29).

6.2 Any reduction in numbers entering training or increase in numbers leaving the profession, for whatever reason, would obviously add additional pressure on teacher supply. In a market based system those schools with the ability either to pay more or to offer a more attractive teaching environment would probably suffer less than schools where teaching was more demanding, pay lower, or the school located in an area where teachers either did not want to live or could not afford to do so.

6.3 Teaching has become an increasingly feminised profession in both the secondary and primary sectors. Although the percentage of men entering the primary sector has probably stabilised, fewer men now train as secondary school teachers than a generation ago. The extent of any drive to make graduate careers more widely available to women than in the past could have an impact on the interest shown by women in teaching as a career. Recent data on applications by graduates to train as a teacher has shown a faster decline in applications from women than from men. This has resulted in an overall decrease in applications of several thousand and a resulting increase in the percentage of applicants accepted onto teacher preparation courses.

7 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.

 

 

 

Reclaiming Education – conference talk

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What follows below is the written text of the talk I gave on Saturday at the Reclaiming education conference. The string of conferences and other talks I am giving between Saturday and the end of the month has rather restricted my time for other posts. After the event, I will upload the text of the various talks to this blog and report on the ITT census, hopefully on Thursday.

We are facing the largest increase in pupil numbers since the 1970s that even under normal circumstances would put a strain on the system in terms of producing enough teachers to meet the demands of the labour market. But;

With salaries uncompetitive in comparison with those for graduates a year after they have completed their degrees;

the pressure to teach every child to the maximum of their potential increasing workload;

a workforce with the largest number of women of childbearing age since maternity leave was introduced;

a housing market that makes it unattractive for teachers to work in large parts of the south of England and

a teacher preparation system lacking a long-term agreed plan that will guarantee places where they are needed to meet the requirements of schools

there are significant challenges if we are to continue to improve our school system. Additionally, the lack of a coherent governance system probably doesn’t help.

Of course, if you are a PE teacher that trained in the North East you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. You may well not have a teaching job, and if you do, it may well not be teaching PE or only for a part of the week. Even so, this is not just a problem of London and the South East, although that’s where it is at its worse; possibly in parts of Essex and Hertfordshire and other authorities where the out-dated funding formula affects the funds schools receive.

The DfE policy decisions that underpin the Teacher Supply Model will force secondary schools towards EBacc subjects and away from the other curriculum areas as despite rising pupil numbers training targets have been reduced for 2017 for almost all non-Ebacc subjects.

In primary, the situation is even more challenging. If the TSM figure is too low, as many seems to think it is,  then by 2017 there may be recruitment difficulties that no National Teaching Service will be able to prevent. There is will almost certainly be more problems with equality issues in the profession as a result of the recruitment controls being used this year. I am on record in my blog wondering whether they might be imposed in PE before the end of this month in view of the number of applications already in the system. (see recruitment controls 2)

Of course, the export industry that is using UK trained teachers to teach children from other countries won’t be affected by a teacher shortage so long as they can put up the fees to pay higher salaries to attract teachers.

In the end it will be an understanding of economics that will solve the problem of teacher supply. When something is in short supply you either ration it or allow the price to rise to a level that satisfies demand. I cannot see this government wanting to ration the supply of teachers into the market; at least not directly. In some ways the distribution of training places, and especially those through school direct, could be seen as a form of rationing, but a very crude one.

However, if price is used – and we can see the pricing of physics graduates has increased for 2017 with the rise to £30,000 in a small number of bursaries. Although I see that more as a marketing exercise to create a headline for the advertising campaign rather than a real attempt to tackle the problem. I think that will come later if greater efforts on the part of government and NCTL don’t pay off.

I expect that next week when the ITT census is published we will learn that there are more trainees in 2015 than in 2014, but not I think enough to meet the TSM targets in many subjects. Still, the government is likely to announce any increase in EBacc subject recruitment as good news and I suppose it certainly isn’t bad news. Whether achieving increased trainee numbers by allowing around 50%+ of all applicants to be offered places is a good idea is something we can debate later.

So, on to solutions.

Well, better marketing is clearly stage 1 of the process and that is now happening.

Make teaching an attractive career. This helps retention and probably involves doing something about workload. What are the workload implications for teaching children as individuals rather than as classes, especially in the secondary sector?

As some of you know from my blog, I am not an enthusiast of the present system of bursaries that I think is difficult to market and inequitable. I would prefer a return to the pre-2010 situation of abated fees and a training grant for all entrants to the profession. After all, if it is good enough for cadet officers at Sandhurst, it should surely be good enough for trainee teachers wherever they train.

Without sufficient teachers in training not only will schools have to spend more money on recruitment until they have all switched to TeachVac our free service that matches school needs with teachers and trainees job requests. Why pay private companies and their profits when you can use a free service set up by those that understand the needs of the teaching profession.

Finally, shortages in training now have consequences for years to come. If we take D&T as an example:

In 2012 there were 1,200 trainees –about 103% of TSM need. This means about 500 remaining after 5 years, enough to satisfy the demand for heads of department and other middle leaders in the subject. In 2015 there were around 450 entrants to the profession meaning around 150 are likely to remain by 2020; not enough to provide an adequate supply of middle leaders.

Recruitment Controls on ITE part 2

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Earlier in the week I estimated it might be some time next week when recruitment controls would be introduced in PE. I speculated that the university providers in the North West might be the first to receive the email from the NCTL imposing these controls. After looking at the data issued today from UCAS at, https://www.ucas.com/sites/default/files/dcs_03_05nov2015.pdf I am inclined to think that by the end of this week HEIs across the country may be told to put on the brakes and some schools may also be receiving warnings that the position in their region is such as to bring recruitment under close scrutiny. Controls across the board in PE may not be far off being imposed.

Viewing the UCAS data showed some 1,035 applicants are already in the system looking for a place on a PE programme. However, as this is from the table that measures applicants by course type, UCAs staff have confirmed to me that some applicants have applied to more than one route leading to over-counting in relation to actual applicant numbers.  As another UCAS table shows applicants at 670 and that number is the more accurate figure for the number of bodies that have applied. Even so, this means that within a short period of the admissions process opening applicants for more than two thirds of places have applied to train as a PE teacher.

That’s applicants, not applications. As the Teacher Supply Model figure for 2016 showed only 999 places required to be filled – forget the 2,166 places allocated as that number is now irrelevant – there are already more applicants than trainees needed in the system: would that it were so in Physics as well where, despite the generous bursaries and scholarships, there are only around 30 recorded applicants already in the system.

I am sure that there will be a rush by HEIs that don’t have any safety net under the present system, unlike the School Direct providers, to make offers as fast as possible before they are capped. Now with the demand for both men and women to teach the subject this may pose some problems for schools in 2017 if there is a considerable gender imbalance as a result of a large number of early offers being made.

One solution might have been to create a closing date, as there used to be in primary, to allow all applicants that applied by that date to be considered. It wasn’t a perfect solution, and was open to abuse, but it did neutralise the benefit of an early application and allowed the best candidates from a time period to be recruited. Still, it is too late to do anything like that now.

As expected, English, history and primary have attracted significant numbers of early applications, but not in the same league as in PE. It seems that even the prospect of £9,000 and no help with living costs isn’t putting of applicants to train as a PE teacher. Interestingly, we don’t have a breakdown of the age profile of those that have applied to see whether it mainly undergraduates or career changers that form the bulk of those that applied when the admissions system opened. My hunch would be more undergraduates than thirty somethings.

I am not sure how often I will look at these figures because of the time it takes, but possibly once a month. Daily figures are a long way from the situation in 2013 when even publishing the data in August revealing a possible crisis meant big trouble for the writer of this blog. But then the world didn’t know what they know now about teacher supply.

i am also grateful to UCAS staff for drawing my attention to the need to be clear about applicants and their choices and individual applicants as a body of individuals.

Recruitment Controls

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How soon before recruitment controls are introduced into PE teacher recruitment for 2016? I guess the answer lies in whether the initial burst of applications recorded in the data already published by UCAS is followed many more applications or whether this initial rush is replaced by a more steady flow of applications.

In view of the fact that the Teacher Supply Model predicted a need for around 1,000 trainees in PE in 2016, but the NCTL allocated many more places than the TSM figure – indeed proportionally more than in any other secondary subject – the need for controls will almost certainly come sooner rather than later. With applications to all routes already topping the 1,000 mark (applicants can make up to three applications and they may not all be in PE) and recruitment floor numbers specified for the School routes it seems likely that some university courses will be the first to receive the email imposing recruitment controls and curtailing any more offers.

The present three application system makes the whole exercise more of a challenge to understand than it would have been under the former sequential application system where applications and applicants could be more easily matched together. However, it does offer more choice to applicants, albeit that they may find themselves having to attend more interviews than under the former system.

The other subject where it looks as if recruitment controls might become necessary is history; always a popular subject. I am not sure about what might happen in primary now that the bursary rates have been reduced. Will this put off some applicants who might have been prepared to train to teach at the former bursary rates or are there really lots of graduates that see primary teaching as the career of choice? The next few weeks will clearly show the pattern that develops and whether or not the bursary reduction has affected recruitment.

Interestingly, although there has been a good spread of applications across the different regions of England, there are far more applications to courses and schools in the North West than in other regions. This might mean recruitment controls might be more likely in that region than in some others if this trend continues in the early part of the admissions round; we shall see, and universities will no doubt be watching the admissions figures on a daily basis until the trends become clearer.

An end to vocational courses in secondary schools?

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I wonder at what point the national employer organisations will wake up to the current trends in the staffing of vocational subjects in our secondary schools. The recent announcement of the bursary levels for those entering teacher preparation courses in 2016 show the removal of the bursary from design and technology students with a 2:2 degree; it was previously £4,000 for such students. This is despite the collapse in trainee numbers in recent years.

Now TeachVac, our job board for teachers, http://www.teachvac.co.uk has recorded far more vacancies in the subject than there are trainees this year, so cutting the bursary is somewhat odd.  Even odder is the absence of Business studies from the bursary list. This is despite TeachVac showing far more vacancies than there were trainees in 2015, with shortages reported almost across the country.

Despite the likely increase in teachers’ salaries in 2016, the funding for School Direct salaried places in design and technology, along with many other subjects, has been held at 2015 levels; a cut in real terms.

However, the effect isn’t ’s severe as it is in primary, where the funding per School Direct salaried trainee has be reduced by between a third and 40% depending on the location of the school. Along with the cuts in the primary bursary, this seems like a high risk strategy that is presumably based on an improvement in recruitment in 2015. Changing the rates from year to year can cause a yo-yo effect that isn’t helpful to either training providers or schools that recruit NQTs. TeachVac staff will be monitoring the UCAS data for evidence of the effects of these changes on the primary sector now we also handle primary vacancies as well as secondary ones.

Returning to the issue of staffing secondary subjects that might feed through employees to the wealth creating part of the economy in the future, I wonder whether the cutbacks are because Ministers only really care about the EBacc subjects and don’t understand the value of early encouragement to think of the value of design and technology for careers in manufacturing, textiles, electronics, the catering and food trades and many other possible jobs not yet imagined.

Perhaps there is a policy to direct such ‘applied’ subjects to 14-18 studio schools and UTCs leaving other secondary schools to concentrate on non-vocational science and art subjects for those wanting to enter higher education at eighteen? This might be a back-door method of creating a selective school system for the 14-18 age group, with most of the new schools being aligned to the further education sector. Of course, it could all be a mistake, and the next ITT census, due out later this month, will show my worries about recruitment in these subjects are a mere chimera.

Along with these subjects that are obviously out of favour, both art and music and the humanities other than pure history and geography don’t seem to feature in the forward thinking of this government. I wonder it is time to ask what the government is trying to achieve with its teacher supply policy for the remainder of this parliament. Perhaps it knows something about the health of the economy we don’t.

Teacher Supply in 2017

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The National College recently published details of the 2016 entry to teacher preparation courses starting in the autumn of 2017 and I commented on the data in an earlier post. Here are some further thoughts about how the decisions might affect the labour market for teachers in 2017. Now, I know that is a long way off and we still haven’t had the ITT census for 2015, but these numbers matter.

The first big change, as I noted in the previous post, is the inclusion of Teach First in the Teacher supply modelling process. This change cuts around 2,000 entrants from the total but will allow the government to claim that it has provided sufficient teachers if recruitment continues at the level we expect to see when the 2015 figures are published. Now the last time a government did this sort of thing was when it incorporated the old GTTP and other employment-based numbers into the modelling process and provided a single figure. In that respect, Teach First has always been an anomaly. When the numbers were outwith the published planning process there was always a risk that the government would train too many teachers. Indeed, between 2010 and 2014 Teach First may have led to some over-supply of teachers. Since that isn’t the case now, the incorporation of the numbers can save the government’s blushes, and won’t actually reduce the intake into training. It will just remove empty places from the system. The problems will arise when teaching once again becomes a more attractive career for graduates.

As in the past two years, the National College has allow bids for more training places, especially from schools, than the government statisticians seem to think we need. There are higher allocations except in mathematics and design and technology where allocations for 2016 are down on the 2015 figure; this despite there being more mathematics places required by the Teacher Supply Model than last year. Perhaps schools have decided that it isn’t worth making the effort when there just aren’t the quality candidates looking to enter teaching in their area. The following list shows the relationship between the level of allocations and the Teacher Supply Model for secondary subjects. For this list, it is possible to imagine where recruitment controls might be applied first.

allocations as % of TSM
Physical Education 217%
Geography 215%
Physics 215%
Computing 211%
History 210%
Drama 209%
Music 209%
Chemistry 204%
Business Studies 200%
Religious Education 198%
English 165%
Biology 160%
Modern Foreign Languages 158%
Art & Design 157%
Mathematics 135%
Design & Technology 116%
Other 107%
Classics 57%

Interestingly, if anyone wants to start a classics course there still seems to be places unallocated. 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. On the other hand, those with maths courses seem highly unlikely to be subject to any recruitment controls at these levels.

In passing, it is worth noting that, if the economy were suddenly to turn downward, and the National College didn’t impose the recruitment controls, then the Treasury would be faced with close to £180 million pounds of unnecessary tuition fee costs. That doesn’t seem likely at this point in time.

Incentives Part 2

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On the 3rd October I posted a blog about the new bursary rates for 2016 headed ‘Incentives and ageism’. In that post I suggested the DfE would run an advert saying in large letters ‘£30,000 to train as a teacher tax free’. Well today in the Metro newspaper the advert ran with the words ‘Receive up to £30K tax-free to train as a teacher’. Apart from the added, but probably redundant, ‘receive’ I got pretty close with my wording. The DfE advert goes on to say ‘you can earn up to £65K as a great teacher’. The predicted ‘*’ appears at that point in the advert. The asterisk refers readers to the phrase ’conditions apply’ at the foot of the advert. To find out what they are requires a visit to education.gov.uk/teachconditions Presumably, this then tells you that unless you are a Physics graduate with a First Class degree or a PhD, you cannot received the £30K tax free sum.

I saw this advert on my way to speak at a Policy Exchange event on the future of the teaching workforce. Details of the event and a speaker list can be found at http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/modevents/item/the-future-of-the-teaching-workforce and I hope an account will be published in due course. As the TES were present, I assume it will also be reported by them.

It was interesting the number of those present that thought the fees of graduates training to be teachers should be paid by government. Fee abatement for graduates is a campaign this blog started way back in January and I am delighted to see it gaining traction. Some present though that we should once again offer to pay off the undergraduate fee debt for teachers that work in state schools for a number of years; perhaps at 20% per year. I suspect that schools could already do that if they so wished to offer it as an incentive to work in their school.

The House of Commons Education Select Committee are now taking evidence on the state of teacher supply following a letter they have received from the Secretary of State after her latest appearance in front of the Committee. It is interesting to try to define the difference between a ‘challenge’ and a crisis’ in both training and recruitment into the profession. It might be possible to have one without the other.

There was an acknowledgement at the Policy Exchangeevent of the regional nature of the problem of recruiting teachers and that, as this blog has commented on several occasions, the solutions are also likely to be regional or even local. New entrants to the profession don’t often travel far, although according the NCTL Annual Report more than 6,000 have come from overseas: more about this in another post, I suspect, once I have chased up the data.

On the regional note, it looks as if the situation on parts of the East of England is now almost as bad as in London in terms of recruitment. TeachVac now has an average for 2015 of more than seven classroom teacher vacancies per school in both these regions.

Big Brother

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The announcement earlier in the week of the Teacher Supply Model numbers and recruitment thresholds for teacher training in 2016/17 was rather overshadowed by the decision on a selective school expansion programme in Kent. That is an issue I have written about previously on this blog and may well return to again. However, others have already made the case eloquently about how backward a move this is in reality.

But, to return to teacher training because, despite Michael Gove’s assertion that teaching doesn’t need any preparation for the job, most of us think it isn’t as easy to walk into a classroom as in to a job in either of the Houses of Parliament.

The key message from this week’s announcement is; more maths training places; a similar number of places to this year’s training numbers in other EBacc subjects and fewer places in the non-EBacc subjects. In primary, the big growth period is now over unless there is a change in teacher numbers in employment, perhaps through more departures from the profession among young women that make up a sizable proportion of the primary school teaching force these days.

Why I have headed this blog ‘big brother’ is because, although there are no allocations this year, there are recruitment control thresholds that protect Teach First -included in the Teacher Supply Model number for the first time, at least publicly – and School Direct plus SCITT routes. As there are no published thresholds for higher education providers, they are at risk if the school routes recruit quickly above the minimum recruitment level. This is only likely to be a possibility in history, PE, primary and according to the government English – although I think that less likely.

In order to monitor what is happening and prevent over-recruitment that might stop schools reaching their minimum threshold the National College can issue compulsory stop notices on further offers to providers. This effectively bans future offers being made, although presumably allowing replacements for anyone that drops out? The College will also monitor the UCAS system on a daily basis for the number of offers being made and may also step in if regional patterns are distorted in such a manner as to risk leaving parts of the country short of teachers in certain subjects.

Interestingly, there seems little concern for the applicants in this process. I would advise applicants against booking tickets to interviews until the day before in case the provider is suddenly capped, especially if it is a university PGCE course. Indeed, it might not be fanciful to suggest that even during an interview a candidate could be told by the provider that they no longer have any places left because it has been ‘capped’.

However, for this to happen, even in most of the non-EBacc subjects recruitment in 2016-17 is likely to have to improve on that expected to be recorded in the 2015 ITT census that is to be published next month, so it will only really worry those applying in the subjects listed above where providers are likely to find it easy to recruit to the TSM number.

Finally, I have concerns about whether we really need to train 999 PE teachers in 2016-17 and only 252 business studies teachers. This is based upon the TeachVac vacancy data http://www.teachvac.co.uk were have recorded this year, but that may well be something to discuss with the statisticians.