Tag Archives: teacher turnover

Classroom teacher turnover in London needs watching

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Historically, the turnover rate for classroom teachers in London has tended to be higher than elsewhere in England

YearInner LondonOuter London
2016/1714.9%12.5%
2017/1813.1%11.9%
2018/1912.8%11.4%
2019/209.9%8.4%
2020/2111.1%9.6%
2021/2212.8%11.1%
2022/2312.3%10.7%
2023/2412.5%10.7%

Source DfE evidence to STRB October 2025 Data annex

In 2016/17, turnover for classroom teachers in the Inner London boroughs reached 14.9%, or around one in seven classroom teachers either leaving the profession or moving school. Three years later, in the year where covid disrupted the summer term, turnover rates dropped below 10% for the only time in the last eight years. Once the pandemic subsided, turnover quickly returned to over 12%, or one in eight teachers.

In Outer London turnover rates have followed a similar pattern to those in Inner London, but a couple of percentage points lower than in the Inner London boroughs.

By way of contrast, in the North East, during 2023/24 turnover for classroom teachers was just 7.7%, some 4.8% lower than in Inner London schools.

Leaving aside the two years where covid affected the recruitment round (2019/20 and 2020/21), the national turnover rate for all levels of posts (classroom, leadership and headship) has generally been between 9-10%, but has been falling. In 2023/24 it was 9% compared with 10.6% in 2016/17.

Rates of turnover for assistant head and deputy heads probably reflect demand side issues more than what is happening on the supply side. When school rolls are rising, new schools may be created increasing demand: falling rolls may mean posts are cutback, and demand reduced, so less turnover.

Headship turnover is very closely linked to the age profile of headteachers. When a cohort of new younger headteachers has replaced a generation that has retired, turnover is likely to fall for a few years. However, turnover tends to be within a narrow range of between 9.5-10.5% per year. There is now no discernible London effect on headteacher turnover, as there used to be many years ago when headteacher salaries were more tightly controlled.

Might we now be entering a period of stability, with lower turnover rates for classroom teachers , especially should the possible upheaval in the graduate job market created by the AI revolution coincide with the period of stable rolls in the secondary secto,r and falling rolls in the primary sector?

YearPrimarySecondarySTEM subjectsNon-STEMAll Teachers
2016/1786.3583.1%81.2%84.5%84.9%
2023/2490.0%89.4%88.0%90.2% 89/7%

The table taken from various tables in the DfE evidence to the STRB shows a consistent trend of improved retention for teachers at the end of the first year of service. However, the same tables show that there is still a job to be done to retain these teachers in larger numbers beyond their first few years of service. The government needs to be aware that teaching is now a global career, and teachers from England can easily find work overseas.

Free School Meals and staff turnover

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Is the level of Free School Meals (FSM) recorded by a school reflected in the level of staff turnover? Do secondary schools with the highest FSM percentages record more staff turnover than schools with relatively low percentage of pupils on Free School Meals?

TeachVac can compare its data on vacancies to date in 2021 with the DfE’s published information on Free School Meals. The end of May normally marks the point where most schools have completed their staffing for September, and existing staff have reached the point where they may resign at the endo of this school year.

As a result, it was relatively easy to look at TeachVac’s vacancy data for the period form 1st January up to Friday 28th May and compare staff turnover against the percentage of pupils on Free School Meals. However, staff turnover is affected by a number of features. A new school may have relatively few pupils, but be adding staff as the school grows in size. Schools in different areas vary in size, with some schools of over 2,000 pupils and some schools in rural areas with only around 500 pupils, and no post-16 provision.

In order to take account of school size, the number of pupils on roll was divided by the recorded number of vacancies recorded by TeachVac. Thus, a school with 1,000 pupils and 5 vacancies between January and May would create an index figure of 200, whereas a similar size school with 10 vacancies would have recorded an index figure of 100. The lower the index number, the greater the turnover of staff.

This method doesn’t take account of growing schools, so it could be possible for a school with few pupils on Free School meals to still record a low index score if it was growing in size. The absence of a vacancy identifying number also complicated the issue because repeat advertisements may possibly being recorded. TeachVac does its best to eliminate such adverts.

An analysis was conducted into the outcomes in terms of recorded vacancies during the first five months of 2021 for secondary schools across the West Midlands region whose data was captured by TeachVac. The region contains rural areas such as most of the county of Herefordshire and urban areas such as Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Coventry.

The first look at the TeachVac data suggests that for schools with a Free School Meal percentage of less than 20% there is little difference in the index score. The majority of schools had a score of 300 or less, suggesting relatively high levels of vacancies regardless of the percentage of pupils on Free School Meals.

For schools with Free School Meals above 20% of the school population there was a trend towards schools with higher FSM percentages having a higher turnover index score. 16 of the 20 schools recorded with a FSM percentage above 40% had turnover indexes below 250 per pupil, and most of these schools had an index of below 200 per pupil.

One caveat must be that 2021 is not a ‘normal’ recruitment cycle. In some schools there has been an element of ‘catch-up’ in recruitment following the period between March and September 2020 when most teacher recruitment slowed to almost a complete halt. It would be possible to compare the 2021 data with that for 2018 and 2019 in order to see whether there has been a ‘covid’ effect and if certain schools have been more affected? There may also be both a rural and small school effect. As some parts of the West Midlands still have selective schools that is another variable that needs consideration.

Nevertheless, this quick first look at the data from one region does raise questions about teacher supply and the issue of policy towards ‘leveling up’. Can a market-based approach to teacher supply create the improvements in outcomes for pupils if schools with high levels of Free School Meals if such schools are finding staff recruitment more of a challenge than their neighbours with lower percentages of Free School Meals?

Solutions needed to ITT crisis

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In the early days of the think tank, Policy Exchange, I once wrote a pamphlet for them entitled ‘The labour market for teachers’. This was way back, a decade ago, in 2008 when I was less active for the Liberal Democrats than I am today as a councillor. As a result of this background, I was interested to read the latest piece by John Blake, Policy Exchange’s current head of education and social reform. The piece is entitled ‘The challenges behind the figures on teacher recruitment’. You can read it by following this link https://policyexchange.org.uk/the-challenges-behind-the-figures-on-teacher-recruitment/

Mr Blake doesn’t dispute the figures highlighted in my previous post that emerged from UCAS last Thursday. However, he claims that teaching is still a well-paid profession commenting that ‘given teaching is relatively well-paid on entry and has generous increment increases in the first few years to nearly £40,000 without having to take on any additional management responsibility, it seems unlikely it is the issue for recruitment either. This view stands in stark contrast to the Pay Review Body comments in their 2017 Report that ‘teacher’ earnings have undergone a further deterioration … continue to trail those of other professional occupations in all regions except the North East.’ (STRB, 2017 Report, page 31).

However, Mr Blake isn’t really interested in defending the pay structure, but in raising the oft asked question as to why so many show and interest in teaching, but don’t follow that interest through. For good measure, Mr Blake also attacks the profession for not producing enough teachers from those that do apply. This latter point needs careful attention. But, as to the former, he hasn’t been able to find any numbers and he doesn’t mention whether this is a general trend for other graduate occupations? By focussing on this narrow point, he misses the issues of more concern raised in my last blog that applications are down across the country; across all age groups and from both men and women and even more seriously, by a far larger amount for applicants to train as a primary teachers than as secondary teacher. By all means let us create an index of interest in teaching and see whether it is waxing or waning at the present time. We could also create an expected conversion rate, but that might mean recreating an agency to handle teacher recruitment, something Mr Blake doesn’t even consider.

But, let’s consider the key points Mr Blake makes about not converting applicants into teachers and then not doing enough to help those going through the process. We would benefit from UCAS providing more data on secondary subjects by applicants than just by applications as at present, since applicants can make up to three applications, but we have to manage with what there is available.

In the previous post, I pointed out that ‘So far, ‘placed and applicants holding offers, account for the same percentage of applicants [as in December 2016] at around 58%. Where accepting more than one in two applicants would be acceptable to most Human Resource departments is a matter for conjecture, but it seems a high percentage.’ What percentage does Mr Blake thinks schools and higher education should be aiming for and does he think it wrong for schools to turn down more applicants than higher education?

As to support during their courses, Mr Blake doesn’t offer any evidence either on the scale of loss of trainees in-course or what might be put in place to reduce such wastage? Personally, I would once again pay all tuition fees for all graduates training to be a teacher and pay them all a training grant. If that doesn’t work, then we really will have a problem.

Finally, I would be happy to join Mr Blake in researching just why applications are down for primary school teachers by such a large amount?

 

 

 

More post BREXIT confusion

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This week the DfE announced a new tender for someone to recruit, train and support overseas teachers in England for the next four years, presumably up to 2022. The information was contained in the teacher Recruitment Bulletin for August https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-recruitment-bulletin/teacher-recruitment-bulletin-august-2017 put out by the National College.

The tender states that the NCTL are seeking a framework of suppliers to assist schools and academies in recruiting, supporting, training and acclimatising international teachers in shortage, priority subjects such as maths, physics and modern foreign languages. The framework will be in place for up to 4 years and will be directly available to schools and academies. The subject list goes wider than that identified as Tier 2 subjects by the Migration Advisory Committee at the start of this year in their report, but does not specifically mention computer science or Mandarin, two subjects added to the list of shortage subjects by the MAC in January along with Science. Whether other language teachers will be able to obtain Tier 2 visas is not clear from the notice about the tender. Whether the use of ‘such as’ is meant to include other priority subjects not regarded as shortage subjects by the MAC also isn’t clear from the announcement.

The Recruitment Bulletin for August also gave further proof of how challenging this year’s recruitment round is into training, offering providers a reminder that:

“You can still request additional ITT allocations for a September 2017 start.

If you’ve already achieved 90% or above of your original allocation, you can request additional places up to 125%. Further requests beyond this increase will also be considered on a case-by-case basis.

This offer applies to higher education institutes (HEIs), school-centred initial teacher training providers (SCITTs) and School Direct partnerships in all category one subjects (drama, history and primary, excluding PE and undergraduate courses); it applies to HEIs and SCITTs in all category 2 subjects (art and design, biology, chemistry, English and music), with School Direct partnerships continuing under the same methodology as before.

Please note the 10% tolerance in each subject remains for all allocated subjects, including PE and undergraduate courses, and is in addition to the subjects listed.”

No doubt the relaxation of recruitment rules has already lead to the reported surge in offers in history and geography: the latter reaching new record highs for offers.

In an attempt to keep up the pressure on the government the Sun newspaper has reported that the Labour Party has looked at the time series data in the School Workforce Census and discovered that teacher numbers in secondary schools fell by around 11,000 between 2011 and 2016. Had they probed a bit deeper they would also have noticed that the pupil teacher ratio worsened from 15.6 to 16.4 in the same period, with most of the deterioration being since 2014. How much of the worsening is due to increased pupil numbers not being fully funded and how much by the worsening funding situation is still partly a matter of conjecture but the evidence is mounting of school budgets under pressure.

This will be the sixth year in succession that some training targets are likely to have been missed unless there is a late surge in applications to train as a teacher.

 

 

 

 

New Evidence on recruitment crisis

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An analysis of TeachVac’s www.teachvac.co.uk data on recorded vacancies announced by secondary schools in the first seven months of 2017 sreveals how much schools in London and the Home Counties dominate the list of the top 100 schools regularly advertising vacancies.

Government Region PERCENTAGE OF TOP 100 SCHOOLS BY RECORDED VACANCIES
LONDON 37%
SOUTH EAST 29%
EAST of ENGLAND 12%
WEST MIDLANDS 6%
EAST MIDLANDS 5%
NORTH WEST 3%
SOUTH WEST 3%
YORKSHIRE & THE HUMBER 3%
NORTH EAST 2%

TeachVac records the vacancies from the vast majority of secondary schools, both state funded and independent and links those vacancies with teachers and trainees seeking employment. This free service to schools and trainees, teachers and returners to the profession also provides an interesting amount of data for analysis. TeachVac’s Summer Review for 2017, looking at some data around the labour market for teachers, is published today and copies can be obtained by contacting enquiries@teachvac.com The price is £15 plus postage and packing.

Returning to the percentages in the table above, even allowing for schools that regularly advertise to create a talent pool; for schools where TeachVac may have picked up advertisements for School Direct teacher preparation courses; for re-advertisements and other advertisements that have could have been double counted, the data is so stark as to make clear the likely regional extent of recruitment issues in the labour market for main scale classroom teachers in secondary schools.

Some 80% of the 100 recorded schools with the most advertised vacancies are in or around the London area, compared with just eight per cent for schools across the north of England and 11% across the Midlands. Of course, this also doesn’t take into account the different sizes of schools; their differential funding patterns and turnover rates. However, the difference between the top three regions and the rest of England is so stark as to suggest that even when these factors are taken into account there will still be a significant difference between London and most of the rest of England.

In my previous post, helpfully given extra publicity by the TES, I recorded the fact that for many subjects 2018 is already shaping up to be a challenging labour market. But, for many schools that is also going to be the case for unexpected vacancies that arise for January 2018. The Review identifies the TeachVac analysis of vacancies compared to the size of the ITT supply side as recorded by the November 2017 ITT census.

The Review also looks at head teacher turnover in the primary sector. Recording data on the labour market for teachers is important in helping shape the future needs of the profession. The fall in acceptances for 2017 training provision the London area, reported in this blog yesterday, is also of concern for 2018. Should there be some help for trainees living in London above the normal bursary arrangements, as there is with teachers’ salaries for those working in the Capital?