Tag Archives: teacher training

London weighting for trainees?

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

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

Languages
Physical Education
History
English
Chemistry

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

More or Sooner?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recruitment Controls 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recruitment Controls 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Incentives and ageism

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This week the DfE announced the new bursary rates for trainees starting teacher preparation courses in the autumn of 2016. The headline grabbing rate is the £30,000 tax free bursary or scholarship available to a small number of Physics graduates with either a first class degree or a doctorate in the subject.

A bursary at this level amounts to a starting salary before tax and other deductions of around £40,000 after training, unless the teacher is expected to take a pay cut after training: a bizarre suggestion. Whether schools will be willing to pay such a salary in 2017 to these trainees is an interesting question. Fortunately, there probably won’t be very many of them and the extra £5,000 each it will cost the government compared with the rates this year. In the unlikely event that even 100 of the 800 or so Physics trainees would qualify, that number only means an extra half a million pounds of government expenditure. Such an amount can easily be found from the under-spend on the total amount due to under-recruitment against the Teacher Supply Model number of trainees required and the cash set aside if it was met.

The headline figure looks very much like a marketing ploy. The adverts can now say in large letters ‘£30,000 to train as a teacher tax free’ followed by an ‘*’ and in small letters ‘terms and conditions apply – read the small print’. This seems a legitimate marketing strategy, whatever you think of its dubious moral value by offering something not obtainable to the majority of those attracted by the advertising. No doubt the Advertising Standards Authority has a code of practice for this sort of activity.

One group that should be especially wary of such adverts to become a teacher are the career switchers. An analysis of the percentage of applicants offered places shows that older applicants are far less likely to be offered a place on a teacher preparation course than younger +-graduates.

Age Group Placed
21 under 58%
22 59%
23 57%
24 55%
25-29 50%
30-39 42%
40+ 39%
all ages 51%

On average half of all applicants were placed by mid-September, but this reduces from 59% of those aged 22 on application to just 39% of those in their forties or older. The older applicants are more likely to be holding conditional offers in September than younger applicants, perhaps because of issues with the skills tests?

I haven’t been able to look at the data by the different routes into teaching as it isn’t published by UCAS. As there are no details of ethnicity published by UCAS in the monthly statistics, it isn’t possible to see whether there are still differential rates of places being offered to different ethnic groups as has been the case at some points in the past.

In the new slimmed down civil service, I do still hope that someone somewhere is paying attention to these figures and asking questions that probe what may lie behind the numbers: are older graduates just not up to being teachers or is their knowledge, despite boosted by time in the real world, not up to modern degree standards. Surely that cannot be the case since degrees are supposed to be easier than they were a generation ago. Certainly there are more First Class degrees awarded that in the past. A fact that will cost the government more in bursary payments.