Tag Archives: teacher training

Can we afford Carter?

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Sometime, probably in January, the Carter Review is likely to publish its report into teacher preparation. There are four possible scenarios the Review might suggest; open the market to competition based either on the present fees or on direct funding from government; return to the option of fee-based higher education as the main provider topped up by employment-based schemes at the margin; require all training to be under the control of employers; abolish the need for qualified teachers and let schools employ anyone they think will be suitable and allow them to arrange what preparation they think will be necessary within possibly some national guidelines.

As the review was established by Michael Gove when he was Secretary of State the last must be a more likely outcome than the second, with the first and third options or variations of them are possibly perhaps the most likely outcomes. The first option might see a wholesale exodus of universities, especially if private companies sought to drive down the price of preparation below the current £9,000 fee level. The government would then have to decide whether price or quality was the main driver for expenditure. For a 40 week course, the £9000 fee equates to £225 per week per trainee or less than £50 per day. So schools might want to consider the real costs of such a scheme especially if they need to use supply cover at times. The income would also need to cover marketing, admissions, administration and other overheads including a contribution to senior staff salaries.

The third option could effectively relieve the DfE of the training costs and let schools hire interns and pay for their training costs from school funds. Schools could choose to do it all themselves; work together in groups as SCITTs have been doing for more than 20 years; or hire outside contractors – including possibly higher education – to provide MOOC courses.

Although superficially an attractive proposition, this third option is risky, especially if many schools decided to try and buy experienced teachers in the market rather than bother to train new ones. We have already seen with School Direct far fewer trainees this year in schools than in HE in several subjects. This option would require someone, presumably the NCTL, to ensure sufficient trainees or risk a recruitment crisis of the levels not seen since the 1960s and early 1970s just as the school population is growing rapidly. Of course, if schools don’t need to follow a National Curriculum, except in English and Mathematics this doesn’t matter. Schools can drop subjects they cannot staff. Is it necessary to teach everyone music or art or computer science? Surely, schools will be able to recruit enough primary teachers locally so as not to need to rely on the remaining undergraduate programmes in universities.

All this is, of course, mere speculation at this stage, but it would be surprising if the Carter Review didn’t come up with some radical proposals given its genesis. The option that cuts government funding, thus making the DfE look virtuous with the Treasury, might seem attractive but it will need to be tested against the wider government policy initiative of narrowing the gap between educational outcomes of the more wealthy in society and those living in poverty, especially on the large social housing estates in our cities and town.

Where is the quality control on School Direct?

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Two things struck me about the section of the Chief Inspectors Annual Report that dealt with the preparation of teachers and I have reproduced the relevant paragraph below.

Standards of initial teacher education (ITE) in England are high. Ofsted inspects two types of ITE partnership: higher education institutions (HEIs) and school-centred initial teacher training (SCITTs). Ofsted does not inspect the School Direct training programme for new teachers, although visits to schools involved in School Direct often form part of the inspection of HEIs or SCITTs. At their most recent inspection, 98% of ITE partnerships were judged good or outstanding.                                        Report of Chief Inspector 2014

Firstly, HMCI doesn’t inspect School Direct although his inspectors obviously come across trainees on both the fee-based and salaried routes in the courses of their inspections. This raises the obvious question, if not the responsibility of HMCI then who does have responsibility for quality control over both of the School Direct routes and how is such quality control administered? However, the HMCI did comment in the summary part of his Report that ‘inspectors saw much good practice but highlighted some concerns about the quality of training, particularly on the secondary School Direct (Salaried) route.’

The second interesting point is that in the areas of teacher preparation where HMCI does have responsibility for inspection some ‘98% of active partnerships were judged good or outstanding. ‘ This includes the provision led by higher education institutions that are so out of favour with the government.

The HMCI also joined the chorus of concern about teacher supply, noting the fall of 17% between 2009/10 and 2014/15 in entrants into teacher training and especially the seven per cent shortfall this year that this blog has already commented upon when the ITT census appeared at the end of November.

In addition to the comments about teacher preparation, the HMCI Report also has two interesting maps showing on one the distribution of Teaching Schools and on the other the index of multiple deprivation by decile of deprivation. The two maps make clear the problem of rural deprivation and the relative lack of Teaching Schools in parts of the north of England and the South West. Even more striking is the fact that there are less than a dozen such schools in an area bounded by the A1 to the west and the Wash and Humber to the north and south. The greatest concentration of such schools appears to be in London and the South East. This raises the question of why, if London schools are doing so well are those in the South East performing less well, with the highest placed authority only ranked 60th out of 150 local authorities on the Percentage of primary pupils attending either good or outstanding schools. Secondary schools did better, with seven authorities in the top 50 nationally, albeit that three of these had selective secondary systems.

Of course, one must be a little cautious about the statistics in any HMCI Report because the sample of schools inspected may not correspond to the population overall. This can especially be true where atypical schools in small unitary authorities are inspected. We will have to wait until next year, and the new government, to see what the effect, if any, of the introduction of ‘no notice’ inspections has on outcomes.

A teacher recruitment crisis in 2015?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And one for the lawyers

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The recent IFS Report, discussed in the previous post on this blog, raised a number of interesting questions. It is essential that someone, whether the IFS team or another group doesn’t matter, looks into issues such as recruitment and retention and how the nation can ensure a sufficient supply of appropriately prepared teachers in the right places and willing to teach in all types of schools. Then, and only then, is it really possible to look at whether the government is paying too much to achieve that necessary aim.

However, one thought that was provoked by the fact that most new teachers won’t pay back their fees plus interest because their lifetime earnings in teaching won’t be sufficient is that they are better off than those under the former fee structure that started paying back as soon as the loan was drawn down. In effect, new teachers are paying a graduate tax for a set number of years and then the rest of the debt is cancelled. Of course, by teaching overseas they can reduce the impact of the tax even further, but potentially lose other benefits such as the chance to build up a pension fund.

However, the other thought that occurred to me after reading the IFS report, is the one where the lawyers might get involved. This is whether the government can now actually cap university recruitment to fee-paying courses? In the days when government paid fees for teachers and indeed contributed to other university funding it was easy for them to set a cap on both undergraduate and post-graduate teaching numbers. However after David Willets removed the ceiling on undergraduate numbers it is possible to wonder whether universities can actually recruit as many undergraduates to teacher preparation courses as they like: if not, why are they different to other courses pad for by the students using government loans?

In the case of PGCE allocations the legal question is even more interesting. Before fees were introduced PGCE type courses were within the ‘Mandatory Awards Funding’ even though not a first degree course because this allowed for government funding, unlike other post-first degree courses and provided funding for students that had already received student support for an undergraduate degree. By keeping post-graduate teacher preparation within the same sort of fee regime it is interesting to ask whether the removal of the cap on numbers also applies to these students. If so, could universities ignore the NCTL allocations and recruit as many PGCE students as they wanted: an interesting idea.

The government view would undoubtedly be that they couldn’t do so and the NCTL has the power to allocate places. But with no power over money, the only sanction might be to refuse QTS to some students not on allocated places – but since you now don’t need QTS to teach in an academy of any description that is somewhat of an empty threat. Of course, the Treasury might have something to say, but as it seems to have agreed to uncapped undergraduate numbers how can it treat teacher education differently if it falls within the same fee regime?

As the government has exceeded the Teacher Supply Model suggested numbers with its level of allocations in many subjects, it has effectively acceded to the principle of more trainees than needed, but is trying to control where they are located through the allocations process.

Could we see a battle for the hearts and minds of future teachers by universities ignoring allocations and offering a choice to potential teachers as to where they want to train: a school or a university?

Should trainees bring benefits as well as costs?

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The IFS Report on The Costs and Benefits of Different Initial Teacher Training Routes published on Monday makes for interesting reading. On the face of it, paying all trainees a salary might be less expensive for government than paying bursaries to some but not others and trying to reclaim the fees that the government used to pay anyway, from some, but not all, trainees.

The IFS study has shown that the costs of training differs according to the route chosen and the nature of the trainee, but that many costs are not fixed but rather variable in outcome, dependent upon factors such as the quality of the trainee and how much input they require during their preparation period as well as how much government must pay to attract them into the teaching profession.

Generally, the costs of preparing a teacher can be divided into student support (fees and bursaries on some routes and salaries on others); training costs, and finally marketing and recruitment costs.

On the other side of the ledger is the benefit a trainee can bring, especially towards the end of their course when they may require less supervision. However, since they could acquire more skills if the training cost was regarded as a fixed cost this might push up standards rather than trying to quantify a benefit from a trainee. Herein lays the issue at the heart of the IFS research; should schools be expecting to reap benefits from trainees?

I am sure that those that think teaching is a profession where you don’t need training will regard the cost of some routes as too high and will try and focus on the benefits of early immersion in the classroom. However, as anyone that has watched the recent spy on the wall documentaries about schools will know some teachers need more help than others at the start of their careers and that such help comes at a price.

The other part of the IFS study that concerns me is the manner in which views of teachers about trainees are turned into numbers. Although the responses aren’t large for the different routes I would have liked to know, if this approach is going to be used, whether trainees in subjects where recruitment is easy returned more positive feedback from the schools than subjects where trainees were more of a challenge to find. In relation to School Direct I am not sure at this stage whether there has been any attempt to quantify the cost to the school of an unfilled place and to set this off against an overall sum for the route.

Traditional higher education providers may set the threshold for entry into training at a lower level than schools offering the newer routes. This will undoubtedly increase the cost of their training, but if taking risks provides sufficient teachers and only recruiting certainties doesn’t then, although the cost of training may be lower, the cost to education may be higher unless, for instance, teachers were prepared to teach larger classes.

At first glance the IFS study provides a good basis for further thinking by policy makers, but there is still a great deal of work left to do. For instance, what are the longer-term costs of programmes with lower retention rates in the profession; and are different routes better at attracting future leaders?

Good news for English

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On Tuesday the National College published the allocation for teacher preparation courses starting in 2015 ahead of the opening of the recruitment round through UCAS next month. The good news is that after several years of concern that the allocation for English was below what might be expected the allocation for 2015 entry has increased by around 600 to 2,348 while the underlying estimate of need has increased by almost 1,000 to 2,253. This increase is as a result of changes to the Teacher Supply model highlighted in the previous post on this blog.

Overall, the allocations show a continued drift towards school-led provision although the direction of travel in the secondary sector wasn’t as great as it might have been because of an increase of more than 4,000 in the total of places allocated.  The Salaried Route on School Direct hasn’t seen a large expansion, with 4,589 of the 4,712 bids being accepted. The growth has mainly been in the tuition fee route where 8,437 secondary and 4,623 primary places have been allocated. SCITTs account for 3,663 places, and HEIs of all descriptions 22,244 or almost half of the 43,516 places allocated.

Schools have more places than HE in Art, Chemistry, computing, design & technology, drama, English, geography, history, mathematics, music when SCITT numbers are included, PE and Physics. HE has more places than schools in Biology, business studies, classics, other subjects and Religious Education. The last is despite the large number of faith-based secondary schools.

Of course, everyone has to recruit to these places and the concern must be with so many more places to fill some parts of the country will fill places all their places whereas others won’t. In those circumstances the mobility of future trainees will be of vital importance. Through the TeachVac system I am pioneering a means of collecting that information starting with the current secondary trainees. More information can be found at http://www.oxteachserv.com/teachvac/  and current trainees can already register job preferences for where they will be looking for jobs when recruitment starts in the New Year. More details in a future post, including our first view of the current job market using our new recording system.

Along with allocations to schools and higher education, the NCTL have also published figures for Teach First allocations for the 2015 to 2016 academic year. They have been allocated 2,000 places; three-quarter in the secondary sector with numbers ranging from 430 in English and 308 places in mathematics down to 15 in design and technology.

Primary allocations nationally total 20,072 for 2015, slightly less than the 21,870 that were the total allocations last year. With half the primary allocations in HE going to undergraduate places there will be around 14,000 trainees on one-year courses in schools and HE plus the 2012 entrants to undergraduate courses that will have amount to around another 6,000 trainees making around 20,000 new primary teachers in 2016.

The next key data will be the ITT census in November when we will know the full extent of recruitment for this year. By then we will have started to analyse the state of the job market and can begin to make forecasts for recruitment into schools in 2015.

Three cheers for Open Government

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Hard, but fun’

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I was encouraged by the PGCE student that tweeted yesterday, ‘first week hard, but fun.’ Hopefully, that student will feel the same way at the end of their course. The tweet set me thinking again about the eternal question of the positive effects of good teachers. There’s a body of literature out there that tries to quantify how much value a good teacher adds to pupils’ learning compared with a bad teacher. This sometimes encourages those bright sparks in think tanks to conclude we should sack all teachers that don’t achieve at least average gains over a defined time period for their students or use some such similar measure. Alternatively, and much more seductive, is the thesis that we should award performance related pay, merit pay or bonuses to such teachers.

The trouble with some of these thinkers is that they don’t live in the real world where issues of supply and demand complicate the picture. Physics and history are the two extremes of the supply-demand continuum at present. So, how much more do we pay a poor physics teacher than a poor history teacher just to be there? Alternatively, do we drop the subject for those pupils where we cannot recruit good enough physics teachers? Is a good biology teacher teaching physics better value than a less good physics teacher? In England, apart from entering training, and presumably when selecting middle leaders, subject knowledge is of limited value in some respects because anyone can be required to teach any subject to any pupils.

Leaving aside factors from outside the school, such as absence rates that can affect progress, most obviously in early years, but often throughout a pupil’s schooling where there is not good home support, there are also in-school factors affective performance. ‘I am sorry you have to teach in the temporary classroom or your pupils come straight from PE on a Monday, after drama on a Wednesday and their third lesson of the week is last period on a Friday afternoon’. No doubt really good teachers can overcome each and all of these challenges, but how to encourage the rest of the profession faced with those circumstances is a dilemma. Professional development, both personally inspired and intuitionally formulated can help, and the relative lack of spending despite the lack of experience of much of the teaching profession at the current time must be something of a worry.  Rather than focussing on how to reward teachers differently it might be more effective to help them understand the evidence on what works. Technology exists, and is used by many teachers to ask how to deal with problems. Rather than offering CPD on what we believe is needed perhaps a small fraction should be spend on responding to teachers’ needs.

Nest year, through an adjunct of the Teachvac (www.teachvac.com) web site that collects data on students and jobs, we hope to ask trainees what they need by way of extra training once they have secured their first teaching post and know they type of school where they will be working and exactly what they will be teaching.

In the meantime, best wishes to all that have started their training this autumn; may you enjoy your time in the teaching profession.

Trainees needed, even in the North East

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Yesterday The Guardian carried an article about the impending teacher shortage that was kind enough to quote some figures from the research I have undertaken. You can read the full article at http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/30/teacher-shortage-in-2020s  Various BBC local radio stations have picked up on the story, and I am once again being asked to do interviews down the phone. In preparing for the one on Radio Tess tomorrow morning I thought I would check the position in the North East regarding the number of teacher preparation courses still with vacancies as of today by looking at the UCAS web site. It is irritating that whereas the DfE site last year showed the number of places, and the number still available, UCAS this year only shows whether the provider has a vacancy at present or not.

Anyway, the depressing news for a region that usually has no problem filling its ITT places is that apart from in History, PE, and some modern foreign languages, there are still a considerable number of providers with at least one vacancy in many other subjects. For instance 16/17 providers of places in geography have at least one vacancy: only Newcastle University has the course full sign up in this subject. That’s actually down from both universities offering places in geography that were full last time I looked a couple of weeks ago. In Mathematics, 30 out of the 38 providers still have places, and in Physics it is 23 out of 24! Even in primary, where I would have expected in most years all places to have been long filled, and there to be unofficial waiting lists, this year, 46 of the 95 providers offering graduate training courses for intending primary teachers are still showing vacancies. Of course, that might only be 46 vacancies out of several hundred places, but surely there shouldn’t be any vacancies nine weeks before the courses actually start.

No doubt the review by Sir Peter Carter that is currently under way will take cognisance of this type of data, and want to report on what is hampering recruitment this year, for we really cannot experience another year likes this next year.

Sadly, it is probably too late to do anything about most unfilled places this year as schools approach the start of the long summer break.  Nevertheless, Ministers will have to answer some challenging questions come the autumn if the current figures turn out to be the reality of the recruitment round.

In the past, the DfE has tended to treat a year once over as a disappointment, but no more, if places are not filled. I doubt that commentators will be as forgiving of any shortfall against training numbers this year as we have so many extra pupils to find teachers for during the coming decade, as the Guardian article made clear.

It is too soon to decide whether one type of programme has fared worse than another, but there may well be a debate about this once the final figures are known in the autumn.

Ofsted changes ITT inspection rules again

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The latest changes by Ofsted to the inspection of initial teacher training announced today look interesting on the surface, but may be fraught with some interesting issues.

The two stage inspection process; Stage 1 in the summer term, and Stage 2 in the autumn following the completion of training assumes inspectors will visit many more schools to see NQTs teaching in their first term than has been the case in the recent past. Indeed, they may almost take on the role of the former LA adviser dropping in to see how an NQT is progressing.

The new process raises interesting challenges for providers. For instance, the reference will take on a new role. A trainee that has only been in mono-cultural school settings teaching a specific subject might warrant a more caution reference when applying for a post in a multicultural setting dealing with many students whose first language isn’t English. Similarly, it might lead to specific subject certification, such as ‘this NQT is has only taught history during their training, and cannot be deemed to be suitable to teach humanities without further preparation’. If the school appoints the NQT, and the HMI doesn’t like the RE lesson observed because of the material used, does that reflect badly on the ITT provider? The same issue might arise where a primary trainee was appointed to teach a mixed-age class having never experienced that situation in training: does the ITT provider bear the responsibility for the observed outcome? And what of undergraduate trainees that might not normally teach in the final summer term of their course? Will special placements now need to be arranged to satisfy Ofsted?

The summer term may also be too late to observe trainees effectively, especially those in UTCs, Studio Schools, or sixth form colleges where the majority of students might be on examination leave. At the very least, these students might have different timetables to those in 11-16 schools and their primary colleagues. I would personally favour a window between February and May for the observation phase, as ITT providers should by then be indentifying those students that are making good progress, and those that need additional help to reach the required standard. That is one of the benefits of HE and SCITT provision over some forms of School Direct in that the training provider can tailor the placements more directly to the needs of the trainee.

At the end of the day, we need to train enough teachers for all schools, and if the Ofsted process does not match outcomes to training, there is a risk that won’t happen.  Of course, since academies can employ anyone, it is difficult to see how Ofsted can judge training provision against teachers seen where the ITT provider has specifically stated that the trainee is not suitable for the post. That raises interesting questions for providers going forward, and for partnership agreements with School Direct. ITT providers will want to know how they will be judged on the part of a training regime they offer where they have no relationship with the trainee, and where they eventually work. Unless that scenario is discussed, the risk to HE and SCITTs will be greater than to the same training provision offered through School Direct: but perhaps that the logic behind the change.