Tag Archives: teacher training

Cottage Industry or Modern Workplace

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There has been a lot of chat about the resumption of Ofsted inspections of ITT settings following the suspension during the first year of the covid crisis. In the past, ofsted has tended to see ITT providers as reaching a high standard in preparing the next generation of teachers. However, the early inspection outcomes under the new framework have ruffled feathers with some providers being judged as either Requiring Improvement or even Inadequate.

Further education provision, often seen as the overlooked child of teacher/lecturer preparation, has come in for the most concern from inspectors, with two university curses flagged as Inadequate and two Further Education based courses seen as Requiring Improvement. As a former teacher educator that doesn’t surprise me. This area of preparation often doesn’t always receive the attention it deserves.

From these first round of inspections there has only been one Outstanding grade, for a provider in South West London. Three universities have received Requires Improvement grades for part of their provisions. All are post-1992 universities with a long tradition in teacher preparation. None are in areas where there is a teacher shortage. Two other providers of courses for teachers in the school sector have been graded as inadequate. Both in the North West, an area where there is no overall shortage of teacher supply.

Is there an agenda here? Data suggests that there are too many training places in the primary sector for future needs if the intention is to match training numbers with perceived need and not to regard the training of teachers are an open choice course not related to market need. With the shambles over lorry driver numbers and other shortages, matching need for workers to supply may move up the government’s agenda in the future.

In teaching, because the government has always met the initial costs of training, whether by grants in the past or now through student loans, the Teacher Supply Model has always attempted to match the supply of teachers with expected demand: not always successfully, as this blog has noted in the past.

Adverse inspection outcomes in areas where teacher supply is less of an issue, especially in the primary sector, could be a means of flagging up courses where accreditation might be removed. It will be interesting to watch the data as it emerges from further inspection reports.

Neither of the two providers with ‘national’ in their title were rated as Outstanding. Both the mathematics/physics course that involves a large number of independent schools, and the Modern Foreign Language course were rated as Good. Surely such specialist provision ought to be Outstanding in their preparation of new teachers? No doubt they will be at their next inspections.

How do small courses manage issues such as introducing trainees to recent research and creating a balance between generic teaching skills and subject knowledge acquisition where there may be only one or two trainees in a particular subject. Additionally, how do some schools handle an introduction to diversity issues in largely mono cultural locations? In respect of the levelling up agenda, this might be an issue for courses located only in schools with strong parental support or excellent outcomes.

These are early days, but there is much discussion about the landscape for initial teacher preparation courses as there was in the mid-1970s; late 1990s and no doubt will be again in the future when change is being mooted. This blog has been in existence long enough to contain a detailed submission to the Carter Review. I will watch the future with interest.

Teachers have 70 days holiday – DfE

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Browsing through the DfE website looking for information on the new Minister of State for Schools I was diverted on to the pages about ‘becoming a teacher’- I refused to use the rather slang wording of ‘getintoteaching’ used by the DfE. Many readers will raise a hollow laugh at what follows:

You’ll get more days holiday than people in many other professions. In school, full-time teachers work 195 days per year.

For comparison, you’d work 227 days per year (on average) if you worked full time in an office.

Salaries and benefits | Get Into Teaching (education.gov.uk)

To think teachers work for 39 weeks a year whereas other office workers must toil for an additional six weeks. The DfE site says nothing about the length of the working day and the use of part of this difference in holidays as employer-driven flexitime to compensate for attendance at activities such as parents’ evenings, being present on exam results days and the days before term starts and finishes not included in the 5 days pupils are not in attendance over the 190 days of teaching. Marking and preparation at home outside the working day aren’t mentioned either.

The danger of this type of false encouragement is that new entrants either come believing it to be a fact or recognise it isn’t during their preparation course and have to decide whether they are prepared to accept the real terms and conditions around teaching and not the advertising spin put out by the DfE.

Of course, classroom management does enable teachers to acquire some useful transferable skills and with the buoyant labour market that fact will be a risk for the new Ministerial Team if other employers look to unhappy teachers to fill gaps in their workforce. But, of course, teachers unhappy with working in state schools in England need not change careers, but rather can opt for the private sector either in this country or almost anywhere else in the world.

The more marketable are teachers and their skills, the more the Secretary of State will have to worry about the levelling up agenda. Rolling out a vaccination programme with cooperative NHS staff will seem like a dream task compared with managing catch-up and staffing challenging schools.

Wish list for the new Secretary of State

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The replacement of Mr Williamson as Secretary of State probably wasn’t much of a surprise. There isn’t a manual on how to handle a pandemic, but some issue were pretty obvious from really early on. Strategic thinking isn’t easy, and UK corporate management has not always managed it, so we shouldn’t be surprised that some Ministers don’t find it a real challenge.

Anyway, we have a new Secretary of State, and here are some of my top issues for him to consider.

Consider raising the free transport age for students from 16 to 18. The leaving learning age has now encouraged staying-on, and it is time to help the levelling up agenda by ensuring 16-18 year olds receive the same treatment in terms of transport as when they were at school. There would be a cost, not least because some 16-18 year olds attend further education colleges some distance from their homes, but the present arrangement affects the choice some 16 year olds make about what to study.

Finally remove the ability of schools to handle their own in-year admissions and create a common local scheme, as for September admissions. This would help both parents and local authorities ensure a place for children forced to move during a school year. Schools might also review their induction arrangements for such children to ensure they aren’t overlooked and set up to fail.

Take a long hard look at the teaching profession in the light of the market review. Make objectives clear. Can we construct a system than ensures enough teachers in the right places for all schools using a preparation route appropriate to the individual, whether they be a school leaver; a new graduate or a career changer. Encourage more under-represented groups into teaching and ensure the preparation course is financially fair to all and not a burden to some while others receive a salary.

Make the term teacher a reserved occupation term so that those banned from teaching cannot still use the term. teacher

Make a teaching qualification less generic. For a start, make it the right to teach either primary up to eleven or secondary not below eleven, and abolish the ‘middle’ level route. In the longer term make it more specific in relation to subjects and specialisms within the primary sector. And do something about qualifications and staffing for the growing SEND sector where there are often more unqualified teachers than in other sectors. At the same time review training numbers for educational psychologists and other allied professions that support our children and their schools.

Look at what funding might do to small primary schools now the birthrate is falling. Decide whether keeping schools in rural communities is a sensible idea or whether government is prepared to see many closures as school become financially non-viable due to restrains on per pupil funding.

There are no doubt many other issues, not least the future of expensive public examinations at age 16 and the content of a curriculum for the 21st century in a multicultural society, along with issues about school meals, uniforms and the developing gender agenda.

School Funding: looking for savings

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Either schools are under-funded or they are not. They certainly say that they are. The IFS Briefing Note  https://ifs.org.uk/publications/15588 lends credence to that view.

But what do they do about it? As a business owner, I need to use my resources in the most effective manner. Schools it seems to me can afford to complain about their funding while still spending in a manner that doesn’t bring a sensible return on the outlay.

Let’s take recruitment spending. And let’s narrow that to spending on teacher recruitment by secondary schools – the most lucrative part of the market for the private sector. This is also an area where I know quite a bit about how the market works having established TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk some seven years ago as a job board for teaching vacancies and where I am still the current Chair.

Now, using TeachVac’s extensive database, we can calculate that the average secondary school recruits around eleven teachers a year. Some recruit fewer, and new schools may recruit more in their first few years.

Some teachers are easy to recruit, such as history teachers or teachers of physical education. Other teachers, such as teachers of business studies or physics, are difficult to recruit at any time, and virtually impossible to recruit for a January vacancy unless a school is exceptionally fortunate.

So, let’s assume over a five year period, a third of vacancies a school may advertise are easy to fill; a third a bit of a challenge and a third very difficult. How do you spend your cash wisely as a school to meet your staffing needs?

Many schools and MATs take out a subscription to an on-line platform that can run into a six figure sum each year. That’s a lot of cash to spend on an easy to fill job and even more cash for a job you cannot fill. So, maybe the cash pays for the third of vacancies in the middle group, possibly an average of 4 vacancies a year. Is that value for money?

TeachVac can fill those vacancies at much less cost to schools, and so can the DfE vacancy site. With TeachVac a school doesn’t have to do anything other than put a job on its website. TeachVac matches candidates looking for the type of vacancy and can report on the size of the market.

With the DfE site, a school must enter the job and hope it can be seen among the plethora of non-teaching posts cluttering up the DfE site.

The DfE site also has the disadvantage of only offering state school posts, so teachers that want a teaching post regardless of whether it is in the state or private sectors probably won’t bother to use the DfE site. TeachVac doesn’t suffer from this constraint.

TeachVac is reviewing its services to ensure better value for money for schools. After all, out technology costs a fraction of historical costs of advertising and at TeachVac we have always thought these saving should be passed on to schools. Do tell us what you think.

Shortage of lorry drivers: what about the shortage of physics teachers?

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As schools across England prepare to return for the start of a new school year, are complaints about shortages of teachers with specific subject knowledge hitting the headlines? Sadly, no. A shortage of lorry drivers may make the national headlines, as this is an area where there haven’t been shortages in the past and the public can see the results in terms of empty supermarket shelves. But nothing has been said about a teacher supply crisis in certain subjects.

The failure of governments over many years to train enough teachers in some curriculum subjects no longer hits the headlines, but remain a genuine problem for schools. Today’s figures, from UCAS that relate to applications for course that start in September this year, and will provide the new teachers for September 2022 vacancies, make disturbing reading.

Those that follow the regular monthly reporting of this data on this blog will not be surprised at the numbers revealed in these figures, almost the last to be provided by UCAS before the DfE takes over the application process for the 2022 recruitment round.

The short-lived Covid boom in seeking to train as a teacher is well and truly over. Applications between July and August this year for secondary subjects were the lowest since 2016.

July Aug increase
20153110
20162990
20174080
20185320
20195450
20206270
20213180
  

This decline is not due to places being filled. Across the board, in the subjects this blog has covered over the years, only Chemistry is reporting a larger number of those applications with offers and that’s probably due to a change in the bursary arrangements. However, the increase in chemistry trainees in no way offsets the reduction in applications with offers in biology. Across the three key sciences, applications with offers are down by nearly 1,000 on this point last year. This blog can confidently predict that there will be a shortage of physics teachers again in 2022.

Another bellwether indicator is the change in the number of male applicants. At 12,470, this is approaching 2,000 fewer than in August last year.  Fortunately, the fall in the number of women applicants is smaller in percentage terms.

If there is a spark of good news in these figures it is that more applicants in London have been offered places than last year. The percentage of applicants in London either ‘placed’, ‘conditional placed’ or ‘holding an offer’ increased from 61% last August to 66% this August. That means two thirds of applicants across both primary and secondary courses have effectively been accepted onto a course. It would be interesting to see the data by subject for courses in the capital. Even this good news comes with a possible caveat. Will Teach First find it harder to place students in London schools if it is competing with other providers for classroom space?

The government may solve the crisis lorry drivers by arranging more driving tests and even releasing army HGV drivers to work for selected companies, but the staffing crisis in our schools is going to continue into 2022 and beyond. Without a change in policy, there won’t be much levelling up in physics teaching and design and technology is in danger of disappearing from the curriculum in any meaningful way unless more teachers can be trained.

Next month we will report on the last monthly figures from UCAS and reflect upon nearly 30 years of following the trends in applications for teacher preparation courses by graduates. Thank you for reading.

August lull in teaching jobs

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The announcement that vacancies across the economy have picked up will be good news for those teachers unable to find a teaching post. As is normal, August is a quiet month for teaching vacancies, although there are some new vacancies still being posted every working day, as those registered with TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk can testify.

Of course, with many of their administrative staff working term time only contracts, schools in some cases will be saving jobs for the return of those staff who can then post them on the school website and elsewhere.

The return of jobs in the wider economy is likely to affect recruitment into teaching as a career, especially if the bounce in wage growth were to continue while wages in public sector positions were affected by a government imposed wage freeze. The first real evidence on how the wider economy is impacting upon teaching as a career will come with the new recruitment into ITT season, although that will be further complicated by the new arrangements controlled by the DfE. Data should be available by late autumn.

Evidence from TeachVac shows that it is growing in use as a platform for teachers looking for teaching jobs and still has many more teaching jobs on offer than the government site run by the DfE. Registrations at https://www.teachvac.co.uk/ continue to grow

Mutterings about the changes to the ITT curriculum and the degree of DfE control over the sector may have an impact, especially if some universities decide to offer ITT outside the government envelope and continue with research and professional development activities as their main focus.

Although the country will need to train fewer teachers in the years to come as the fall in the birth rate impacts on schools, the system cannot withstand too high a degree of uncertainty and reorganisation with there being some effects on the labour market for teachers. No doubt the private sector will be watching carefully what happens as it still draws on the government funded university sector for many of its new teachers.

A look back at history

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Eight years ago this month I wrote a post on this blog pointing out my concerns that not all places on ITT courses were likely to be filled that year. My views made it into some national newspapers and resulted in me writing the blog post that I reproduce below. We still have issues with teacher supply in key subjects, but we do possibly have a review of how we train teachers. Whether the outcome will be more trainees filling gaps in schools where they are needed is still an open question.

Scaremongering!

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So now I know I am officially a scaremonger. A DfE spokesperson, helpfully anonymous, is quoted by the Daily Mail today as saying of my delving into the current teacher training position that there was no teacher shortage, adding: ‘This is scaremongering and based on incomplete evidence.’

Well the first thing to note is that I haven’t said that there is a teacher shortage, just that training places are not being filled: not the same thing. Indeed, I have said a teacher shortage is less likely than in the past in the near future because Mr Gove has mandated that qualified teachers from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the whole of the USA can teach here as qualified teachers with no need to retrain. With an oversupply of teachers in parts of both Canada and Australia that should prevent any short-term problem developing even though another part of the government isn’t very keen on importing workers from abroad, presumably including from within the Commonwealth and a one time colony.

More serious is the charge of using ‘incomplete evidence’ in reaching my conclusions. If the DfE has figures to show that more places will be filled this September on teacher training courses than I am predicting, then please will they share them with the wider community, if not, will they please justify what they mean.

It could be that they take issue with my colleague Chris Waterman’s assessment of the number of those likely to be taught Mathematics by unqualified teachers. However, it is worth noting that earlier this year the DfE produced its own evidence to show that 17.9% of the Mathematics hours taught to years 7-13 were led by those with ‘no relevant post A Level qualification’. That was some 85,000 hours of instruction. Assuming each class of pupils has six hours of contact per week that makes more than 14,000 classes already being taught by unqualified staff, and with no programme in place to improve their qualifications if they are intending to teach the subject for a period of time. If each class has only 20 pupils, the total number of pupils already being taught by teachers with no measurable post A Level qualification in Mathematics can easily be worked out. It is also worth pointing out that the DfE showed that in November 2012 less than half of those teaching Mathematics had a degree that could be classified as a Mathematics degree, with 23% having a PGCE as their highest Mathematics qualification and a degree in another subject, hopefully with lots of applied mathematics as a apart of the degree.

As Chris Waterman has rightly pointed out the raising of the participation age to 17 this September and 18 a year later should increase the demand for Mathematics teachers as the Wolf Report endorsed the now widely held view that more youngsters should continue to study Mathematics until the age of18.

The government has taken a bold gamble with teacher education: moving training to schools; introducing pre-entry tests in literacy and numeracy; raising the cost of training in many subjects to £9,000 for fees plus living costs. It is important that there is a credible debate about how these changes are working.

After all, in 2010, Mr Gove promised 200 teachers of Mandarin would be trained each year, and although some providers such as the London Institute offer it as an option I doubt that target was ever reached. It is time for a radical overhaul of teacher preparation to really meet the needs of a 21st century education system.

Eight years on and who really cares about the qualifications and subject knoweldge of those that teach all our children across England?

More doctors: fewer teachers?

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The news that the government may be raising the cap on places at medical schools for trainee doctors is surely a good outcome for society, but may be a concern for those that are involved with teacher preparation courses.

Both are areas of funding where the government keeps close control over the supply of places. As has been discussed in previous posts on this blog, the recent market review into ITT by the DfE plus a falling birth rate and a reducing school population due to outward migration and an increase in home schooling, has raised the spectre of reductions in the number of primary teacher training places likely to be sanctioned in the short-term by the DfE, and a likely reduction in the number of secondary places once the decade reaches its midway point.

If the DfE has to find more funds for training more doctors, might it be tempted to bring any reduction in teacher preparation numbers forward to start in this autumn’s announcements for 2022 entry? Higher Education might like the reduction to be in postgraduate provision, but the DfE could make more top line savings by reducing undergraduate primary numbers. However, it seems likely that students not offered places on undergraduate course might still decide to attend university and enter teaching through the postgraduate route.

One consideration should be determining which route provides the applicants that best meet the needs of the sector? For instance, how do the ‘A’ level points scores of undergraduates starting primary teacher preparation courses match the scores of their postgraduate colleagues starting such courses.

The regular annual performance profiles might also offer some indications of the type of courses the DfE would possibly favour if there are reductions in places on offer. However, that will also be determined by the DfE’s priorities in terms of quality and other factors, such as employment outcomes and no doubt the contribution to the ‘levelling up’ agenda.

The takeover by the DfE of the postgraduate recruitment process from UCAS adds another uncertainty into the mix. Will the data be available from the DfE, as it has been from UCAS, and before that the GTTR (Graduate Teacher Training Registry), weekly and then monthly data that allowed seasoned ITT watchers to predict the outcome of the recruitment round as early as February or March of each year?

If it isn’t forthcoming, the answer might be regular monthly FOI requests until civil servants understood the message about the need for transparency in data that is best described to the Office for National Statistics as management information rather than statistics.

Teach First trainees have already started their courses, and many other providers will be gearing up for a start early in September. As ever, I wish the staff and the trainees well, and hope that those embarking on a career as a teacher will enjoy the experience of what can be a wonderful, but at times challenging career. Every bit as good as being a doctor, even if not as well paid.

TeachVac updates website with vacancy counter

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Teachers can now see at a glance how many vacancies TeachVac has each day. www.teachvac.co.uk The site displays an overall total and the number of vacancies in some key subject areas and the primary sector. Of course, as it is August, vacancy numbers are low, so there is also the total for the year to date.

TeachVac is geared to the needs of teachers. As a result, it only carries teaching jobs. The DfE vacancy site, for instance, has both teaching and non-teaching vacancies. Earlier this week 146 of the 262 vacancies listed on the DfE vacancy site weren’t teaching jobs. Many were for Teaching Assistants, but there were also a plethora of other types of job. There were 110 teaching jobs plus six duplicated jobs. So, less than half the vacancies were for teaching posts. By comparison, TeachVac had 507 live teaching jobs listed by schools across England on the same day

Teachers want a site where they can receive the widest possible range of teaching posts that meet their needs both in terms of location and sills. I am proud of the achievements of TeachVac during the years since it was set up to demonstrate a new way of linking teachers with the jobs they were seeking, whether as a newly qualified teacher; an existing teacher changing schools or seeking promotion of someone wanting to return to teaching.

TeachVac is recording record monthly visits and ‘hits’ on the website as the message spreads among teachers and schools. At this time of year, schools are looking to renew existing deals with other listing services. They should ask whether the price represents good value for money.

TeachVac has also enabled me, as its Chair, to produce blogs using the data, such as the recent posting about whether there are fewer jobs or just fewer re-advertisements? As that post mentioned, a unique job reference number would provide much better data about the functioning of the labour market for teachers. I have campaigned, so far without any success on that issue as with the issue of making the term ‘teacher’ a reserved occupation that can only be used by those with Qualified Teacher Status.

If you haven’t tried TeachVac yet, then please do so. The team on the Isle of Wight would love to have your feedback.

Teacher Supply Model more important than ever

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Those readers that have browsed my recent posts will know that teacher education is facing one of those turning points in its history. Regardless of the policy approaches towards how teachers are prepared there are going to be implications on the sector from the downturn in pupil numbers.

The decline in the birth rate is already being felt in primary schools, with many admitting fewer pupils this September than for some years. Lucky the schools with a new housing estate being built in the catchment area. The DfE has estimated that by 2026 the overall population in the primary sector is projected to be 4,345,000. This is 302,000 lower than the actual figure in 2020 (4,647,000). Such a rapid reduction has serious implications for those that prepare new teachers for the profession.

Taking a teacher to pupil ratio of 1:30 that would mean there would be a need for 10,000 fewer teachers. Now real pupil teacher ratios are much better than that figure, so perhaps the drop might be 4,000 over the period 2020 to 2026. Assuming teacher departure rates don’t alter significantly, and that newly trained teacher are preferred over returners to the classroom, then a drop of 1,000 in training numbers might be an interesting starting point for any discussion.

Of course, the Teacher Supply Model can much more accurately process these changes and identify what the actual requirement for new teachers is likely to be. However, it seems that there will be a reduction in primary training numbers.

The decision must be where and what type of training; school-based or higher education? Course based or salaried? Across all providers or supporting either large or small providers? These are the policy questions that must rapidly be answered. For the longer the delay in reducing training targets, the worse the cut will be if the Teacher Supply Model has really abandoned any idea of smoothing reductions over a number of years and takes any change in the year that they occur.

The latest three year postgraduate numbers for Primary ITT places from the Teacher Supply Model were 12,975 in 2018/19; 13,003 in 2019/2020 and 11,467 in 20201/21. Now, the TSM only covers postgraduate teacher supply. Some providers with both undergraduate and postgraduate provision have, in the past, when there have been reductions in places, kept their undergraduate numbers and reduced postgraduate numbers. The rational for such a move is less based on relative quality of applicants than the fact that undergraduate courses generate more fee revenue than postgraduate courses and are relatively less expensive to deliver. This will be especially true with the latest set of proposals discussed in previous blogs.

Whether the current government will be willing to tolerate any change in quality of applicants due to how providers react to a fall in places available is an interesting policy question that merits some discussion. From the point of view of The Treasury, one-year courses cost the government less in student loans than undergraduate courses, but if those students displaced from undergraduate teacher training courses take other degrees and then a postgraduate teacher qualification, the overall cost can be higher.

By the middle of the decade, the secondary sector will be facing the dilemmas associated with falling pupil numbers, but since recruitment even in regulated subjects such as physical education has been at record levels, enforcing changes there might be even trickier than in the public sector. That is if the present market review hasn’t fundamentally altered the shape of teacher preparation provision in England.