Tag Archives: teacher supply

A teacher recruitment crisis in 2015?

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Yesterday this blog reported on the ITT census for 2014. Most of the trainees counted in the figures will be looking for teaching posts starting work in September 2015. The fact that there are around 1,300 fewer secondary trainees this autumn than last year is certainly an alarming statistic. However, many subjects are yet to reach the sort of shortages noted at the end of the last century when a severe  staffing crisis developed.

If we compare this year with recruitment into training in 1998/99, then that year only 52% of places for maths trainees were filled, compared with 88% this year. Similarly, in English, 89% of places were filled in 1998/99, compared with 122% this year, although the actual number of places on offer was probably less this year, so that might have made a difference to the percentages. Certainly, recruiting fewer than 1,700 trainee English teachers this year is unlikely to be enough to satisfy the demand for such teachers across England.

At least two subjects fared worse this year than in 1998/99: Religious Education filled 81% of places in 1998/98 compared with 71% this year and in music it was 81% this year compared with 82% in the earlier year. Changes in subject titles mean that direct comparisons aren’t possible for all subjects over time, but the fact is that schools cannot afford another poor recruitment year for trainees in 2014/15 if a real crisis of the level not seen since the early 2000s is not to re-occur.

Clearly, the bursaries and scholarships are helping keep up recruitment in some subjects, but once again the government taking over paying the fees for all graduate trainees would be a simple and clear message to all that there is no extra student debt burden as a result of training to be a teacher through any postgraduate route. Looking to create apprenticeships in subjects like Physics where studying for a degree requires ‘A’ level grades not achieved by some candidates might open a new route into the profession.

As a support to trainees and schools during the recruitment round I have set up a free service at www.teachvac.co.uk to allow schools to notify vacancies suitable for NQTs and for trainees to identify where they want to teach. Trainees will receive details of vacancies as they arise and schools will be kept informed of the size of the potential applicant pool and how it is reducing. The DfE suggest that 50% of main scale posts are taken by NQTs and the figure may be higher in the key January to June recruitment period. Where the 450 D&T trainees and 373 music trainees want to work may be crucial and by registering with TeachVac we will keep schools informed.

Trainees have the added advantage of a newsletter offering advice on recruitment. The December newsletter, out next week, offers trainees advice about interviews following on from the advice n how to fill in an application form in the November edition.

2015 is going to be a challenging year for schools and I hope to make it bit less stressful for heads and for trainees.

Education markets and teacher quality

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When I studied economics at the LSE nearly half a century ago markets were relatively simple affairs used to help regulate supply and demand through the mechanism of price. A shortage of supply forced up the price and that resulted in new entrants to the market and eventually the price came down. In labour market economics some saw wicked employers tried to find ways of holding down the price by controlling wages and working conditions and others warned of dastardly trade unions trying to force up wages through all means at their disposal. How times have changed.

Yesterday I listened to a fascinating debate about labour markets and teacher quality. The lecturer’s thesis seemed to be that even though we had difficult ‘ex-ante’ deciding what was a good teacher, good teachers were really the only thing that mattered in improving pupil performance; so all would be well if we could somehow harness market economics to handling the issue of improving teacher quality.

The thesis is interesting, especially in view of the previous post on this blog about teacher supply. The lecturer didn’t discuss whether there is a hierarchy of markets that will address issues in a particular order. If there is, I would content that markets will address any shortage issue before quality issues and only then deal with matters such as equality and other government desired outcomes.

If I am correct, then there is little practical point talking about teacher quality until the market has dealt with the supply problems.  Now the Right in society has an answer to that problem: let anyone become a teacher. In view of the lack of ‘ex-parte’ evidence on what makes a good teacher this is a seductive theme. However, I would argue that the school system in England has been trying that approach for many years by allowing anyone with QTS to teach any subject and, for instance, letting PE and music teachers teach mathematics but overall the policy doesn’t seem to have improved outcomes. But, would say the defenders of the  ‘all may be teachers’ policy, it is because these are poor teachers. The best teachers of PE and music are no doubt teaching PE and music.

In the end the discussion last night about teacher quality came down to the –X- factor. What is it that makes a good teacher rather than how markets can help achieve improved teacher quality? There were some in the audience that no doubt would have been happy with the definition of a teacher from the 1840s offered by the National Society that:

It is not every person who can be fitted for the office of schoolteacher. Good temper and good sense, gentleness coupled with firmness, a certain seriousness of character blended with cheerfulness, and even liveliness of disposition and manner; a love of children, and that sympathy with their feelings which experience alone can never supply – such are the moral requirements which we seek in those to whom we commit the education of the young.

Although they might not be bothered about the need for ‘a love of children’.

I am also reminded of the more recent quote from the Newsom Report previously quoted on this blog that:

“In the primary and secondary modern schools teaching methods and techniques, with all the specialized knowledge that lies behind them, are as essential as mastery of subject matter. The prospect of these schools staffed to an increasing extent by untrained graduates is, in our view, intolerable.”

It is just as intolerable today and I speak as someone that started their teaching career as an untrained graduate in an inner city comprehensive school.

Of course we must strive to identify and improve teacher quality, but no teacher means there is no quality to measure and that is the fundamental problem facing policy makers today.

Three cheers for Open Government

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Yesterday the DfE published the most detailed explanation of the Teacher Supply Model (TSM) that underpins decisions about how many new entrants to the teaching profession are needed each year. The new document is the most detailed any government has released to the general public in almost a quarter of a century. Unlike previous publications, this new one is interactive and allows interested parties to interrogate the assumptions used within the Model. It also provides forward assumptions into the 2020s for teacher supply needs. Anyone interested can find the manual and accompanying spreadsheets at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-supply-model

The publication came about as a result of an exchange between David Laws, the Minister of State, and the Education Select Committee during one of their hearings into the issue of teacher supply and training. The Minister agreed to make the Model public and has now made good on his promise. The document is not an easy read, but the general principles are relatively easy to grasp for anyone interested in how the DfE works out the number of teachers required to enter teacher preparation programmes each year. I am sure that there will now be an informed debate on the subject

I am delighted that the current version of the TSM has reverted to calculating separate numbers for all the main curriculum subjects in secondary schools rather than just the EBacc curriculum areas with other lumped together in a composite pool.

The new Model has been used to calculate the ITT allocations for 2015 that were also announced yesterday. (More about them in another post) The good news is that the allocation for English has increased substantially. I had been puzzled, as I think had been others, about why the previous allocation figure was so far adrift of that for mathematics when both took up approximately the same amount of curriculum time in schools. That issue has been rectified for 2015 and will no doubt be welcomed by head teachers that have struggled to recruit teachers of English.

Although the data are somewhat daunting at first glance they do help those that take the time to work through them understand the potential implications of the growth in the school population over the next decade. Teaching is probably going to be a recession-proof occupation for at least the next 20 years in most parts of the country. However, that does mean that the Model shows the continuing need to recruit large numbers of new entrants to the profession. What the Model doesn’t do is identify what happens if recruitment to training falls short of target for a number of years. One solution would be to add in the shortfall to future targets, but that can inflate targets to unsustainable numbers. Such a process also doesn’t take into account of the fact that schools must cover lessons and do so be using various recruitment methods, including in the past hiring teachers from overseas.

In previous versions of the Model changes from year to year were subject to a smoothing process. That prevented too large a change from one year to the next for the benefit of providers of teacher training. That seems to have been removed. The solution still seems to be to over-allocate numbers, so that the risk at the end of the course still lies completely with the trainee that has to find a teaching post. Solving that concern is not something the TSM can do.

What’s a trainee teacher worth?

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Earlier today the DfE and NCTL announced the bursary arrangements for 2015/16 graduate entrants to teacher training. These arrangements apply to almost all graduate entry routes except Teach First. Interestingly, gone is the uplift in amounts for trainees working in schools with high percentages of free school meals that existed in previous years. On the other hand new subjects are now eligible for bursaries, including religious education. There is still, however, a pecking order with some subjects attracting higher amount than others regardless of where the trainee obtained their degrees. Physics, chemistry, maths and IT/computing graduates with doctorates or first class honours degrees will be paid £25,000, whereas geographers and design and technology trainees with the same level of degree will be paid only £12,000 despite probably being in scarcer supply than either chemists or mathematicians at the present time.

Even worse off will be RE graduates with a 2:2 degree as, despite the shortage of trainees, they won’t receive anything. The same goes for the many primary, history and English trainees with similar degrees. There are some shortage subjects, such as business studies, that once again seem to have been overlooked, whereas it is at least arguable whether there is a shortage of classics teachers in state-funded schools but they qualify under the languages heading. As a result such trainees will receive £15-£25,000 depending upon their degree class.

Once again there is no recognition for trainees on bursaries of the differential cost of living in and around London although those training in adjacent classrooms on the School Direct salaried route do receive such differentials to mark the fact that there are different salary bands for teachers.

One of the risks of this market-based approach, an approach not favoured by the army when deciding whether to pay gunners at Sandhurst more than future armoured regiment officers or those destined for the infantry, is that some candidates may hold off applying in the hope that the amounts paid in future years will be even better. However, hopefully, this is balanced by those for whom the cash makes a difference when deciding whether or not to train as a teacher.

Personally, I would favour paying the fees for all trainees with degrees as to expect those who take a subject degree and train as a primary teacher to pay up to £9,000 more in fees than those that opt to train as part of their first degree seems a bit unfair.

As the period between now and February is vital in setting the basis for the success of recruitment to training in 2015 it is to be hoped that the announcement about funding taken together with the recently announced recruitment campaign are successful in attracting more applicants of a suitable quality into teaching than in recent years since the prospect of a third year of under-recruitment at a time when pupil numbers are rising is not a prospect that anyone wants to contemplate.

Still looking for teachers

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As of Sunday three-quarters of the undergraduate teacher training courses in England were still in ‘clearing’. That was just over 30 courses. What was interesting was the large number of church universities that weren’t in clearing. Indeed, even if you exclude the University of Durham from the list of church universities, despite the historical association between its teacher education college and the Church of England, more than half the list of institutions not in clearing were church universities, with Reading, Leeds and London Metropolitan Universities being the three exceptions.

From a quick look through the clearing courses, secondary design and technology and some of the sports Science courses related to teaching, as well as primary teacher training courses are looking to fill their remaining places. Of course, the clearing lists don’t tell anything about how many places are still available. Is it one at each institution, a tiny percentage of the overall total, or a more substantial number? Perhaps how many courses are still in clearing in a couple of weeks time will provide a better indication of what is happening?

With the skills tests to pass, and most courses starting around the 15th of September, although one or two start at the beginning of the month, there is little time to spare, especially  with the bank holiday to be taken account of as well.

How far the switch of numbers resulting from some providers returning places, and the National College having had to reallocate them in the early summer to different providers, has led to so many institutions offering at least one teacher training place in clearing cannot be ascertain from the raw figures. However, as I have constantly said in the past, we need to ensure the best possible candidates are recruited into teaching.

The DfE is undertaking a study into recruitment and retention, and it might be helpful if they evaluate as a part of that study whether there are differential retention rates from the different types of training. We do need to know the true costs of all training routes if some have a lower retention rate than others.

If we assume a training cost of £10,000 per student per year allowing for expenditure not currently recovered through fees, then a five per cent difference in retention rates might cost several million pounds extra in training. For this reason alone, it is worth monitoring the different routes. However, since one route is never likely to be able to supply all the need for new entrants, it may be necessary to accept some differential wastage rates; but work to reduce them.

Nevertheless, if the main reasons for leaving the profession are retirement and for family reasons, it is worth looking hard at those other cases where some malfunction in the system has caused a person to quit the profession that they trained for. Teachers are a precious resource; we cannot afford to discard them lightly.  

Losing the teacher supply battle

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This time last year I raised the question of whether we would recruit enough trainees to become teachers in 2014, in a post dated 1st June 2013, and headed ‘Missing the Target is a Known’. Sadly, I have to make the same prediction for the 2014 round that now has but three months to run before the majority of courses start in September.

With schools so heavily involved, and would-be trainees needing to pass the Skills Tests before starting their course, anyone that hasn’t applied by mid-July, effectively at some point during the next six weeks, will probably struggle to find a course unless the NCTL makes it clear to providers that they should recruit right up to the wire, as many universities have always had to do when recruitment was challenging.

The auguries for recruiting new trainees are not good. Recently the Association of Graduate Recruiters said that nine out of ten graduate employers still have vacancies for this autumn, with businesses in engineering and IT particularly suffering. Recruiters, they added, ‘cannot find enough quality candidates’. So the golden years of the recession, when a surplus of good quality graduates flowed into teacher preparation courses at the point in the demographic cycle when rolls in secondary schools were falling, and demand for teachers was declining, is over. We need more teachers and they are becoming harder to recruit.

My current predictions based upon data released this week by UCAS from the unified application process is that the following  subjects may well miss the lower of their DfE Teacher Supply Model figure or their NCTL allocation:

  • Biology
  • Design & Technology
  • Geography
  • Mathematics
  • Music
  • Physics
  • Religious Education

The jury is still out on Chemistry, but science overall is likely to face some sort of shortfall, if only because of the serious shortage of physics trainees. Although English will meet its target, I still do not believe we are training enough teachers, and governors still tell me that they are facing challenges recruiting such teachers in some parts of the country. It is significant that the TES job site has around 250 main scale positions for teachers of English today, but only around 200 for teachers of Mathematics.

Many of the subjects in the list where I expect shortages of trainees this year, were also subjects where there was a shortfall last year, so the warning that I and others made this time last year may been heeded, but has not been dealt with, unless you consider hiring unqualified personnel as the solution.

This year, there is also some nervousness about recruitment to primary ITT courses in some parts of the country. A shortfall there would be a real disaster, especially as schools with cash reserves will undoubtedly start upping the salary they are prepared to pay in the new de-regulated world of teachers’ pay and conditions. From there, it is but a short step to abandoning the principle of free schooling so parents can top up school coffers to help attract teachers through better pay. How that will affect the notion of fairness and equity only time will tell.

 

Minister hides his light under a Select Committee

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I needs must start this post with an apology, and a confession. Despite my interest in teacher supply and training, I missed the Minister for Schools announcement about the changes to the Teacher Supply Model. By way of mitigation, I would point out that the announcement appeared in a reply to the Education Select Committee following his appearance in front of the Committee in February to talk about underachievement by white working class children, and has seemingly been documented as DfE supplementary evidence to that inquiry. For those of you having difficulty finding what he said, the link is http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/education-committee/underachievement-in-education-of-white-working-class-children/written/7989.html

What is of interest is David Laws updating of the Committee about the Teacher Supply Model. After all the usual platitudes about how well the Department and NCTL are doing on teacher recruitment and retention, and that School Direct is proving popular on the basis that schools have been signing up for places, David Laws confirmed to the Committee that the Teacher Supply Model was being redeveloped, and that the replacement is expected to be ready by autumn 2014; presumably in time to run the numbers for teacher preparation courses starting in 2016. The Minister didn’t say whether the work on the Model was being done entirely in-house or whether the DfE had convened a group of experts to help with the necessary changes.

However, that may not matter because the Minster also told the Committee that the new Model would be available online, as previously recommended by the Committee, and advocated by myself since I first appeared in front of a Select Committee to discuss the modelling of teacher supply in 1996.

David Laws went further by stating that publication of the Model will enable public examination of the assumptions and working of the Model to help estimations of future teacher demand and projected ITT recruitment. Furthermore, he told the Committee, worked up examples will be included in the online model. This is good news, as it will help the current debate about why so few teachers of English are needed when fewer pupils are being taught by teachers qualified in the subject.

However, the fact that David Laws then went on to offer the Committee data from as far back as 2009-10 about teacher stocks and flows as if this is the latest available to the DfE raises considerable concern in my mind about his understanding of the function of planning. And there may be revealed one of the serious issues in the debate about whether we should be planning teacher training or leaving it to the market as Mr Taylor of the NCTL would seem to prefer. As I have pointed out in the past, information gleaned at one stage of an economic cycle may not be helpful in planning for another stage, so using information about teacher flows during a recession, and the deepest post-war recession there has been, may not be helpful in projecting training numbers needed in 2016, when the economy is still hopefully motoring forward, unless that is teacher supply is entirely disconnected from the wider economy.

Finally, it will be interesting to see how the teacher supply model copes with shortfalls in recruitment to training. Exposing this issue, and making sure it is debated, is a key feature that will make the current discussion about creating sufficient teacher numbers different from past periods of teacher shortage. This letter to the Select Committee has placed one more brick in the wall.

 

Never mind the quality, feel the width

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The announcement today by Ofsted that it proposes to change the inspection framework for ITE partnerships from May, effectively immediately after the 13 week consultation period ends, http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/proposed-revisions-framework-for-inspecting-initial-teacher-education-consultation-document suggests there is still no answer to the basic question; who is in overall charge of teacher supply policy?

In a year where there are already insufficient trainee teachers in some subjects, making it harder to enter and then to pass the preparation period risks making that situation worse. If that happens, who will teach the children in those schools that cannot recruit a teacher; and will these schools be in the leafy suburbs or the inner cities?

It is now time someone took overall control of how we train and then offer employment to teachers. Are schools and higher education departments of education agents of central government or independent operators in market-based environment working within a regulatory framework?

For design and technology students, a subject area of key importance where the government had difficulty securing enough training places for 2014, presumably because recruitment had been so poor in 2013, the notion of changing the ‘standard of professional dress’ needed in the kitchen or workshop might be open to debate. Will such teachers now need one set of clothes for when they are with their tutor group, and another when they are actually teaching? Will this promote a return to the use of academic gowns as cover-ups for shabby suits, patched elbows, and no doubt the ties that male teachers will be required to wear at all times.

More seriously, providers have no control over where their former trainees find a teaching job. Many years ago I questioned the problem of trainees that learnt their craft skills in a cathedral city, but ended up working in an inner city. The cultural and other shocks for the successes of our education system learning to work as teachers with the whole range of learners have been brought home very clearly in the two recent TV series. Preparing teachers for the ‘real world’ in its many manifestations is a key part of training, but at present using their skills and qualities to best effect as they emerge during training isn’t part of the deal.

Are Ofsted really pointing to a disconnect in the profession between training and employment that has affected the primary sector ever since training was taken away from the employers and moved to higher education, where training for selective schools and the independent sector already mostly took place to the extent that there was any training at all.

Ofsted, do at least seem to be on the side of the need for a training requirement; otherwise what’s the point of the framework? However it isn’t clear whether they support the notion of any school-based trainees teaching from day or accept the need for some initial input such as the 30 days offered by Teach First. What may be more important is how trainees in schools with few behaviour-management issues are prepared for more challenging situations where they might eventually want or be required to work? Is training entirely in one school a good idea, or does a period in more than one school enhance and deepen the experience of learning how to become a teacher?

It seems to me that changing the framework for inspection without clear ministerial guidance on the training process, and its link to employment, is like putting the mobile phone before the mast to update the cart before the horse analogy.

You cannot penalise a provider that has no control over where a trainee takes a job unless you make it an absolute requirement as to what needs to be covered during the training period, and make that the same for all providers.

Ofsted, the NCTL through the DfE, and the employers of teachers, all need to sort out a framework for producing both enough teachers, and teachers of high quality so that we can move the school system forward. At present, what is emerging is a muddle that might have serious consequences for teacher supply at a time when the school population is rising rapidly.

Teacher Supply Model: a technical description

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This week the DfE issued its response to the Select Committee request for an explanation of how the Teacher Supply Modelling (TSM) process works. It took the DfE just 20 pages of lightly argued text to explain the principles to those unfamiliar with the process. This is the third such Report in response to Select Committee inquiries into teacher supply over the past 25 years. The first, issued in 1990, and entitled Projecting the Supply and Demand of Teacher – A Technical description, ran to some 78 pages in length. The second, issued in 1998, and entitled Teacher Supply and Demand Modelling – A technical description – was even longer, at 85 pages. Both received Ministerial endorsements. The first was endorsed by The Secretary of State at the time, Kenneth Clarke, and the second by Estelle Morris, the PUS of the day. The new document is seemingly devoid of any ministerial endorsement or support.

What is clear after looking at the three documents is they manner in which the TSM process has been pared down and simplified over the years. The fact that the TSM is now only run for five secondary subjects and primary (page 23) plus a catch-all is used for other secondary subjects where the numbers are then ‘divided between other subjects proportionally according to data from recent years’ must be worthy of debate by the Select Committee. What data sources are used to establish the distribution? Is it the number of teachers in the subjects as measured by the School Workforce Survey or the amount of curriculum time allotted to each subject? The absence any overall modelling for the sciences, and a concentration on just Physics and Chemistry, is also worrying.

However, the most concerning part of the document is the single paragraph on page 20 entitled Ensuring the robustness of the TSM. The paragraph is worth quoting in full.

‘The estimates in the TSM are based closely on data trends from recent years with adjustments made from known policy changes. The robustness of the TSM is assured by sensitivity testing the model against variations in all the assumptions.’

Now the earlier documents did at least identify what some of the assumptions might be. In the new document we are told of completion rates for ITT routes in the past, but not the assumption used for School Direct that has replaced the former employment based routes into teaching. We are also told of pupil growth, and of retirements, and the outcome assumption for wastage rates of teachers leaving the profession, and for those joining both from ITT and from outside the state-funded sector. However, the comments about the success of these teachers in returning as contained in section 2.3 are somewhat opaque to say the least. Here, as elsewhere, worked examples might have added to the understanding of the process.

The modelling of wastage really identifies the whole issue with the methodology: it is essentially backward looking for its inputs. This may not matter when economic and other societal trends are relatively unchanged from year to year but it risks failing to capture major shifts in the labour market until well after they have occurred. This is why the failure to discuss the outcomes of the TSM and a range of options with the wider education community always puts the government at risk of catastrophic failure in teacher supply. The situation hasn’t been helped by the lack of a desire on the part of the wider community to systematically try to replicate the TSM for its own benefits.

The section on page 19 of the new paper dealing with stability in the ITT market and the calculation of the optimum number of ITT places seems at odds with the reality of the 2014 allocation where if Table 5 is correct the estimate of places required was 34,890, but the number allocated was  some 41,000. Now either this means that the government believed that only allocating the estimated number wouldn’t produce enough trainees or it was prepared to put the Treasury in hoc for extra fee for some 6,000 students at £9,000 a throw. What happens between now and August will be of great interest, not least to the 130 history graduates likely to be recruited above estimated need.

Missing from the document are a number of areas of importance: the policy assumptions about school budgets and the effects of the minimum funding guarantee, the  consequences of the Pupil Premium; and the possible new funding formula; the presence of Teach First, and any likely increase in the use of teachers not put through the training process informed by the TSM; the effects of shortfall in recruitment into training from year to year .This last point is covered on page 1, where it is stated, ‘undersupply is double-weighted to reflect that a future shortage of state-funded teachers would be less desirable than a future surplus’: a sensible policy option. However, it is not clear how this works in practice.

Novices to the TSM process may find the document helpful at a basic level, but, by ignoring any debate about how effective the past is as a guide to the future, and also avoiding discussions about whether the TSM is part of the process in defining ITT numbers that Ministers can then change on the advice of others, the document provides little insight to the decisions taken during the past two years about how many teachers to train. Possibly, we will learn more when Mr Taylor speaks at the North of England Education Conference next week, but a lingering doubt must remain that as he said at the same conference last year:

“In the future I would like to see local areas deciding on the numbers of teachers they will need each year rather than a fairly arbitrary figure passed down from the Department for Education. … I don’t think Whitehall should be deciding that nationally we need 843 geography teachers, when a more accurate figure can be worked out locally.