Select Committee poses challenging questions

Posted on September 11, 2013 by John Howson

The Education Select Committee spent just over two hours this morning quizzing both a panel of witnesses and the Minister of State, David Laws about School Direct and issues relating to teacher supply more generally. The Minister was accompanied at the table by the head of the National College, with other civil servants sitting in the row behind and occasionally passing notes forward.

As one might expect the Minister’s performance, like that of the Chairman of the Committee, was accomplished. Both were on top of their briefs, and some of the numbers that have appeared in earlier posts on this blog were exchanged during the session. Indeed, this blog even rated a mention in one interchange between the Committee’s Chairman and the Minister.

We learnt a lot about the difference between ‘allocations’ and ‘targets’ during the session, but little about how either is derived. A replacement for the 1998 document on Teacher Supply and Demand Modelling, published after a previous Select Committee Report, now looks overdue, and I hope David Laws isn’t told by the DfE that it would not be helpful to publish it. The veil of secrecy over numbers has been a real issue in hampering effective discussions this year.

If the Minister is correct, and more schools want to take part in School Direct in 2014 then, unless targets are increased, either some schools won’t be allocated places or HE will come under more pressure as more places are removed. The Select Committee didn’t press on this particular point; a pity.

Nobody reminded the head of the NCTL that he had said in January at the North of England Conference:

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 have asked my officials at the TA to work with schools, academy chains and local authorities to help them to devise their own local teacher supply model. 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.

(DfE, 2103)

However, the Minister did make plain that he saw that there was a responsibility to ensure that there were enough teachers. Sadly, nobody asked him whether that meant it was alright if the extra history and PE teachers recruited above the target set ended up teaching mathematics where there might be a shortfall.

Although the issue whether School Direct was an urban model was mentioned several times, the issue of whether it will work in the primary sector was not really explored properly. Neither did anyone really put the trainee’s needs at the heart of the debate, although the discussion on subject knowledge did make some attempts to go in that direction, but without much success.

The unified portal will do away with many of the issues around admissions that featured in the recruitment process this year, but it was worrying that both school and HE representatives said that the timescales set by UCAS might be too tight; that is a factor that will need watching.

At the end of the day, we still have too few trainees in mathematics, physics and computer science this year, and no statement about what the consequences of this shortfall might be. The next steps will be the census in November and the 2014 allocations and targets. My bet is that 2014 will be even more of a challenge than 2013, however recruitment to ITT is handled. By Easter, we will know whether or not I am right in making that claim.

Clarity ahead of Select Committee – but still not good news

Posted on September 9, 2013 by John Howson

What has become clear this afternoon is that the DfE may have faced a dilemma last autumn. With the national roll-out of School Direct being enthusiastically taken up by schools, it could either have effectively wiped-out the university-based PGCE courses by meeting the demands of schools or it could have denied schools the places they were asking for in School Direct. The DfE targets for secondary subjects did not allow the third option of satisfying both schools applying for School Direct places and keeping the PGCE going and still keeping within the targets. The extent of the problem can be seen by comparing Table 2b in the underlying data of Statistical Bulletin 32/2013 issued by the DfE on the 13^th August and Figure 1 of the School Direct management information published this afternoon by the National College for Teaching and Leadership. In practice, the DfE seems to have chosen a third way by creating inflated ‘allocations’ to try to keep higher education going, but still to satisfy the demands from schools for places. This exercise risked substantial over-recruitment against the real targets.

So what happened? Looking just at the STEM subjects, Chemistry had an allocation of 1,327 in the Statistical Bulletin, but a target of 820 places in Figure 1 of today’s document – a difference of 507. To date, recruitment has been 900 according to Figure 1, so the subject is over-recruited against target, but significantly under-recruited against allocations. School Direct, where bids totalled 422 places last November, and reached around 500 by the time all bids had been collected, apparently recruited just 260 trainees, leaving higher education to recruit the other 640.

Sadly, in Mathematics, Physics, and Biology, despite the target being well below the allocation figure, the target has not been met. In Physics the shortfall is 43% against the target; and in Mathematics, 22%. In Biology it is just 6%. However, these percentages do not reflect the actual numbers who have started courses; that number may be greater or smaller than those released today.

Indeed, in no subject was the allocation met, although in business studies it was missed by just one recruit. However, the target in this subject is apparently higher than the allocation in August, although that may have something to do with classification. Less clear is the Religious Education position where the target is shown as 450, but the allocation in August was 434 for postgraduate courses. Somewhere another 16 places have been added since August when they have been subtracted in most other subjects.

I have suspected for some time that the allocations were above the level required by the DfE’s model, and have hinted as much in earlier posts. More than 40,000 trainees did seem an excessive number to train.

More interesting is how successful School Direct has been.

SUBJECT	Target	School Direct	School Direct % of Target
ENGLISH	1500	850	57%
HIST	540	290	54%
PE	780	350	45%
CHEMISTRY	820	260	32%
MUSIC	390	90	23%
GEOG	620	140	23%
MATHS	2460	510	21%
MFL	1550	320	21%
BIOLOGY	740	150	20%
ART	340	60	18%
OTHER SUBJECTS	1200	200	17%
PHYSICS	990	130	13%
IT/CS	570	70	12%
RE	450	50	11%
BUS STUD	230	20	9%
SOC STUD	180	10	6%

School Direct works in subjects where there are lots of high quality applicants looking to train as a teacher. At the other end of the scale are subjects where either the schools didn’t bid for many places, as in Art & Design or recruitment is a real challenge, as in Physics.

These are the subjects where School Direct faces it greatest challenges for 2014, and where the DfE/NCSL seemingly still cannot do without higher education.

What is also clear is that the DfE cannot repeat this same exercise this autumn for 2014 recruitment. It will have to make it clear how many trainees are needed according to the model. Otherwise students will be paying £9,000 in fees without knowing whether they are a target or an allocation, and totally uncertain about their chance of securing a teaching post. That won’t attract many takers in an improving graduate job market as the risks are too high.

More news on teacher supply

Posted on September 9, 2013 by John Howson

Shortfalls in graduate recruitment to teacher training courses have been reported today. Figures released this morning by the GTTR arm of UCAS when compared against government allocations for teacher training released in August show a likely undershoot in almost all subjects. The worst subjects, where the shortfall may well be around 50%. are Computer Science and Design & Technology both subjects largely shunned by the schools participating in the government’s alternative School Direct Scheme for training teachers. Even in key subjects, such as Mathematics, the shortfall is likely to be in the order of 20%. In Physics it is potentially around 30%.

If the new government School Direct Scheme has also experienced challenges in recruitment we could be looking at the worst outcome for teacher supply for more than a decade. It is time for the DfE to publish the data on acceptances through the School Direct Scheme so the Select Committee can have the full picture when it meets on Wednesday.’

These figures do not include any ‘no shows’ when courses start because candidates are holding places on more than one route or as a result of those who fail the pre-entry literacy and numeracy tests. The actual figures may be even worse when the DfE takes its census in November.

The UCAS data can be found at:

http://www.gttr.ac.uk/documents/stats/2013_gttr_applicant_figures_october_to_august_exceptional_england.pdf

	OUTCOME
SUBJECT	Shortfall against target
ART	13
BIOLOGY	-27
BUS STUD	17
CHEMISTRY	-148
CITIZEN	-8
D&T	-260
DRAMA	48
ENGLISH	-158
GEOG	-75
HIST	3
IT/CS	-321
MATHS	-384
MUSIC	-18
PE	-21
PHYSICS	-191
PHY WITH MATHS	0
RE	-39
SOC STUD	-18
MFL	-12

The DfE allocations for 2013 can be found in DfE Statistical Bulletin 32.2103 issued on 13^th August in Table 2b of underlying data.

More from the land of the White Rabbit

Posted on September 8, 2013 by John Howson

Yesterday The Guardian newspaper published some figures about recruitment to teacher training for this September. I am not sure whether this was based upon a leak or data provided by the DfE but given solely to The Guardian newspaper as I have not been able to locate the figures anywhere on the DfE web site. Either way the numbers, as they appeared in the newspaper, are a challenge to interpret.

Take the total shown as accepted for Physics, the subject of a recent post on this blog. According to The Guardian some 560 people have been accepted to study as Physics teachers. This it is claimed fills 57% of the target of 990 places. Eagle eyed readers will already be wondering about the use of the term target as the DfE has recently been using the alternative word ‘allocation’ to account for the number of training places available. Anyway, leaving that matter aside, according to the Statistical Bulletin published by the DfE on the 13^th August, there were 1,143 Physics places issued to providers. That’s 153 more than the number quoted in The Guardian. So is the real number 560 of 1,143? This would be 49% filled, not 57% as quoted in the paper. Either way it is a big fall from the 925 Physics and Physics with Mathematics entrants recorded in the ITT census last November.

There are similar issues with the numbers quoted in other subjects. Mathematics is cited as having 1,910 accepted candidates for 2,460 places when the DfE Statistical Bulletin showed 3,054 places or 2,929 if undergraduate numbers are excluded. Last November, 2,635 trainees were recruited, so we have apparently lost 700 possible Mathematics teachers in one year; that’s about one for every five schools.

The claim that 90% of secondary places have been filled is dubious in the extreme. I am very curious that Chemistry apparently has a bumper crop of applicants as that is not what I am hearing. Even in primary, where there should be no issue in filling places, word is reaching me of anxiety in some quarters about the outcome of the pre-entry tests. It is to be hoped that the Select Committee will be able to sort the numbers issue out on Wednesday when they quiz the Minister. But, the definitive point of reference will be the ITT Census in November. By then we will also know how enthusiastic schools are about taking up all the places in School Direct for 2014.

Physics crisis looms?

Posted on September 3, 2013 by John Howson

Yesterday the GTTR revealed that only 757 people had applied to train as Physics teachers across England, Wales and Scotland through the GTTR Scheme by the 26^th August. Last year, at the same time, the number was 995, or some 24% more than this year. Given the well documented problems with School Direct, or at least well-documented on this blog, the number of new Physics teachers likely to exit training next year may well be substantially fewer than at any point since the sciences were split into separate component subjects some years ago.

Assuming a 75% conversion from application to acceptance, based upon past history from GTTR Annual Reports, that would mean around 550 Physics trainees across the UK against an allocation of just over 600 places in England alone. As there are 495 places available through School Direct in the recent DfE Statistical Bulletin, and early in August School Direct still had more than 350 of these places shown as available, we may be looking at a shortfall of at least a quarter and possibly a third in the number of trainees against the allocation in England alone. Of course, the DfE may have over-allocated this year on the assumption that the first year of School Direct would be challenging as the Scheme coped with handling nearly 10,000 places out of the close on 40,000 total training places available across England.

What might the government have done differently? The main issue probably centres on the Subject Knowledge Enhancement courses. In recent years, as the range of degree subjects has expanded in higher education, candidates for teaching have frequently come forward with some but not sufficient subject knowledge. The Enhancement courses provided a valuable route to increase a candidate’s subject knowledge to a point where they could be accepted for training. Whether the DfE thought that there was a reservoir of suitably knowledgeable candidates waiting to train through School Direct or just wanted the cash for other purposes the scheme has been allowed to wither on the vine: it should be re-started with immediate effect.

Should the government have increased the bursary? There is a danger in doing so that trainees take a dip in earning when entering the profession if the bursary is too high compared with the starting salary for new teachers working outside of London. However, abandoning national pay scales may well see starting salaries increase next summer in ‘shortage’ subjects as schools compete in the market for scarce resources.

How will the government react next year if those schools that failed to recruit through School Direct go looking for a new Physics teacher? Should such schools have equal parity in the market with schools that didn’t participate in School Direct? Should the DfE introduce some form of rationing, as the former Ministry of Education did for teachers emerging from training in the immediate post-war years through the annual Circular Number One?

How are we going to create a world-class education system without sufficient teachers? And, if you think there is a problem in Physics try looking at Design & Technology and Religious Education, neither of which are subjects where Schools have shown much interest in becoming involved in the training process.

Allocation of a target

Posted on August 18, 2013 by John Howson

Civil servants don’t use words by accident. So, when the recent Statistical Bulletin (DfE, 32/2013) was headed ITT- Allocations, you can be certain that they aren’t ITT targets in the way they used to be. The last ITT census of 2012 foreshadowed the change by containing ‘targets’ for most subjects, but ‘maximum permitted allocations’ in four subjects – ICT, Design & Technology, Business Studies and Citizenship. This change has now seemingly been adopted for all subjects.

The Statistical Bulletin helpfully defines the allocation of ITT places as setting the limits on training availability to ensure the appropriate supply of newly qualified teachers. The Bulletin’s text continues with the clarification that ‘Sufficient numbers are allocated to ensure enough teachers are trained, but avoiding excessive provision which may lead to employment difficulties and over-burden public finances.’ However, according to the Bulletin these allocations are then set as ‘targets’ by subject – and presumably phase – by the DfE and NCSL, and these targets are then allocated to particular courses and schools after bids and informed by the Teacher Supply Model (TSM) operated by DfE statisticians, and generally not shared outside the Department. The TSM determines the optimum number of ITT places in England in order to match future teacher supply with future teacher demand as closely as possible. The Bulletin notes that whilst allocations are guided by the TSM outputs, they have to address variable recruitment patterns, viable provision issues and regional differences. New policy decision may also lead to new allocations of places.

How often the TSM is run, and what smoothing of output is currently taking place, isn’t generally shared with the wider community. More than twenty years ago I suggested that the TSM be made public in the same manner as the Treasury shared the economic models it used to forecast future trends in various indicators such as inflation and interest rates. Since then much has happened to economic debate, but little has happened with sharing the TSM except for a couple of papers in response to Select Committee Reports. However, before the appearance of the Statistical Bulletin, one might be forgiven for thinking that this really didn’t matter now. After all, the head of the NCSL told the North of England conference in January 2013 that:

So either the Statistical Bulletin is correct and the DfE is still setting allocations nationally, if not targets, and Mr Taylor’s approach has been rejected by Ministers or the Bulletin is a last manifestation of a system to be replaced by local decision-making.

The middle way between the two, and the most likely, is that the DfE and the Treasury set the overall national number based upon the TSM output, and how much the Treasury is prepared to allow in student loans and bursaries, and this global total is bid for by schools, with HEIs and others taking up what left after this process has happened. However, this begs a lot of questions, not least what happens to the places schools return during the recruitment rounds, as happened this year. And, who is responsible for managing any overall shortfall in recruitment into training under such a devolved system?

By way of example, take what has happened to global allocations between November 2012 and August 2013, History places have increased from 686 to 811, whereas Computer Science numbers have declined from 853 to 780. Why has it been necessary to smooth the global targets in these subjects; what policy changes have taken place demanding more history teachers but fewer computer science teachers? The rationale for these and other changes in global allocations haven’t been made clear to those I have asked about them. Overall, as the Bulletin observes, 1,199 extra places have been added to the ITT total between November 2012 and August 2013, making a total of 38,902 places plus Teach First, or more than 40,000 overall for 2013-14. That’s probably a record for England alone. Whether all 40,000 trainees will find a teaching post only time will tell. What worries me most is that many who had taken on the burden of an extra £9,000 in tuition fees may be at the back of the queue when jobs are being advertised next spring.

Curiouser & Curiouser

Posted on August 15, 2013 by John Howson

Now I may have done the DfE something of a dis-service with my last piece about scaremongering. Almost as I was writing it the DfE were publishing a Statistical Bulletin https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/229468/SFR_ITT_allocations_August_2013.pdf about ITT allocations and the changes from last November. This has allowed me to update my data about current trends to be much more accurate.

After looking at all the routes, including those that don’t recruit through nationally managed schemes, I still stand by my view that the targets are unlikely to be met this year. However, whether the targets are too high is another matter. For many years the employment-based routes weren’t subject to targets in the same manner as the traditional higher education and SCITT programmes were. After they were added to the targets overall numbers were quite rightly reduced to take account of the falling secondary school population. This year, it seems as if some employment-based providers that either lost out in the School Direct allocations or wanted another route have created some new SCITTs. These providers have acquired nearly 600 extra places since November, a similar number to the increase for the whole of the HE sector. Interestingly, by contrast, School Direct has only grown by 1.5%, or 145 places, since November and there has been a switch from the Salaried Route to the less expensive Training route of 5%. The undergraduate route has remained static at just under 6,800 places in some tables and 6,400 in others. Either way this route now accounts for less than a third of trainee primary school teachers.

ISurprisingly, Computer Science, a one-time favourite of the Secretary of State actually has now a reduced number of places in the August totals compared with November’s target. The decrease is of 73 places, close to a 10% reduction. Design & Technology also seems to have suffered a similar fate. What the Business Secretary will make of his Education colleague presiding over reductions in the sort of subjects that are key for the nation’s wealth producing industries I don’t know, but the fact the Statistical Bulletin doesn’t point these reductions out might be worthy of note in itself. By contrast, both history and PE have gained an additional 100 places each. Both subjects will have no difficulty filling these extra places as they are the two subjects where applications through the GTTR route in 2013 are above last year. Filling the extra places awarded in Mathematics and the Sciences may not be possible this year, and it does go to show why managing the whole recruitment cycle efficiently is important.

Finally, for some reason that is even less clear than in the past, Teach First numbers are excluded from consideration in the Bulletin. As Ministers keep announcing that it is an ever more important route into teaching, excluding the data from a discussion on ITT allocations seems bizarre to say the least. If there is nothing to hide, then I see no reason not to include Teach First data in the overall statistics. At the very least it would allow potential trainees to see the total numbers being trained. But then we don’t know the numbers being recruited without any training. How that total will be tracked is another interesting challenge for the sector.

Scaremongering!

Posted on August 14, 2013 by John Howson

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 21^st century education system.

STEM subjects lead retreat from teaching

Posted on August 7, 2013 by John Howson

In March 2010 I talked to the UCET (University Council for the Education of Teachers) Research and Development Committee about reading the runes on what might happen to teacher supply. My final slide predicted the next teacher supply crisis would be in London in September 2014.

Now I may have been premature in the arts and humanities subjects because of the time the economy has taken to recover from the battering it took after the banking crisis of 2008, but the latest evidence seems to suggest that in the STEM subjects I was right to be concerned. An analysis of the two key routes into training that are covered by DfE targets – School Direct and Higher Education/SCITTs suggests that unless there is a late surge in acceptances recruitment to STEM subjects will be down on recent years.

The following table is based upon data collected over the period 2-5^th August, i.e. last weekend.

Current acceptances 2013 AUG
COMPARED with the 2012 TARGET			SUBJECT
-113			ENGLISH
-844			MATHEMATICS
-146			BIOLOGY/ GEN SCI
-235			CHEMISTRY
-411			PHYSICS INC PHYSICS WITH MATHS
-452			ICT
-465			D&T
-183			MFL
-31			GEOGRAPHY
170			HISTORY
8			ART & DESIGN
-51			MUSIC
79			PE
-127			RE
-29			BUSINESS STUDIES
-65			CITIZENSHIP
130			OTHER

The advent of pre-entry skills test in numeracy and literacy makes it less likely than in previous years that there will be a significant number of last minute entrants. Indeed, it might help matters if the government suspended that requirement for this year while it sorts out the common admission framework for next year. At present, we don’t know how many candidates may be holding more than one place, and we also don’t know the level of ‘no shows’ when courses actually commence. Of course, these figures will be boosted by those national providers such as the OU that don’t reveal their acceptances as part of the national monitoring arrangements, but that won’t eliminate the shortfall.

So, if the data is anywhere near accurate, schools may have to start looking for alternative sources of mathematics, science and computer studies teachers in 2014, especially in London and the South East where turnover of teachers doubled between 2010 and 2013. As teachers from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA can now teach in England with no further training needed, and as academies and free schools don’t even need to employ qualified teachers – not that any school ever did in a crisis situation – any gaps will be filled somehow. But teacher shortages are likely to make a mockery of the government’s avowed policy of closing the achievement gap between the rich and the poorest in society.

The government will also need to look carefully at the level of bursary support it provides trainees, although it is somewhat prescribed by starting salaries as there is no benefit in trainees having to take a pay cut when they finish their training on top of starting to pay back their tuition fee loans that already reduces their real incomes in many cases.

With a general election in 2015, the government cannot afford the seeds of another teacher supply crisis even if it is based upon an improving overall economy. A world-class education system cannot be built on a teacher supply crisis, and it would be even more ironic if the success of UK schooling for overseas pupils sucked the brightest and best teachers from the domestic State system at the very point where there weren’t enough to go around.

Conflicting evidence on pupil behaviour?

Posted on August 5, 2013 by John Howson

Recently I pointed out that there had been a slight increase in the level of exclusions from schools, particularly in the primary sector. It therefore came as a bit of surprise to discover the results of a survey showing that teachers in general think pupil behaviour is improving. The data for the latter comes from the NfER Voice Survey and specifically the questions asked on behalf of the DfE. The analysis can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/210297/DFE-RR304.pdf

In view of the fact that half the profession is now under thirty-five the responses by age groups were especially interesting. Teachers in the younger age groups we less likely to report that behaviour was ‘very good’, only 20% of those under 25, and 21% of NQTs did so, compared with 40% of teachers aged over 50. Now the latter category will have included a number of heads and other school leaders, so perhaps it is not surprising that they think behaviour is better than do relatively new teachers. 88% of those teachers over 50 agreed that they felt equipped to manage pupil behaviour compared with just 73% of the under-25s, and 63% of NQTs; a worrying low figure for those just out of training. 37% of young teachers didn’t feel parents respected a teachers’ authority to discipline a pupil, compared with just 20% of teachers over 50 who felt that way. NQTs were also less likely than other teachers to use force either to remove a pupil from a classroom or to break up a fight. Interestingly, male teachers stated that they were also less likely to use force that did female teachers.

Compared with a previous survey in 2008 there was an increase of seven percentage points in teachers seeing behaviour as ‘good’ or ‘very good’. As this has been a period of stable staffing in schools, it may well be that after a period of turmoil pupils in general are becoming better behaved. Alternatively, acceptance of low level disruption is now such that after a few years what is acceptable becomes different to standards expected by new entrants to the profession. I suspect that there may be a bit of both at work in the responses.

Nevertheless ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’ is the main reason for pupils to be excluded from most schools so there still remains a bit of a mis-match between the two sets of statistics. I think in this case I am more likely to accept the evidence of the exclusions, based as they are on actual events rather than the answers to hypothetical questions posed as part of a survey. But it may be that a small number of pupils spoil the good behaviour shown by the majority.

However, I am sure most schools are full of better behaved pupils than when I started teaching in 1971. In those days, the key task for a new teacher in the area where I taught was keeping the pupils contained within the classroom. As ever, the better the lesson the more chance one had of achieving that result; only then could teaching and learning begin.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: teacher training