Tag Archives: teacher workforce

Worse secondary PTR

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The DfE has today published its annual surveys of the workforce and pupils and schools School workforce in England: November 2021 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) and Schools, pupils and their characteristics: January 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

This post contains some headline thoughts about the data in the first of these two reports

The number of classroom teacher vacancies at the census point was at its highest since before 2010/11, at 1,368 compared with around 1,000 in November 2019, before the pandemic changed all our lives. Part of increase may be down to pandemic and recruitment patterns. But it also provided a warning that the recruitment round in 2022 might be challenging, as it has been. Yesterday TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk recorded its 70,000th vacancy so far in 2022: a record for June, and more than in the whole of 2021.

Secondary PTRs at 16.7 are the highest (worst) since well before 2010/11 when the ratio was just 14.8. This is partly down to demographic bulge going through the secondary sector. 2010/11 was close to the bottom of the demographic cycle for pupil numbers in the secondary sector. I expect ratios to continue to worsen over next couple of years, especially if teachers’ pay increases are not fully funded and schools seek to drawn down reserves to pay inflation matching pay increase.

The retention of early-stage teachers appears to have improved with retention of Year 2 of service teachers up from 80.9% to 82.7%, and Year 3 from 75.8% to 77.0%. Retention also improved in teachers with 4-6 years of service, but worsened among those with 7-9 years of service. Teachers with one year of service also left at a greater rate with just 87.5% remaining, compared to 88.1% the previous year. This is still better than in the period between 2012 and 2018. Might there be a pandemic effect? Will this level of retention continue?

Almost 10% of teachers now come from non-White ethnic backgrounds, with teachers from the Asian community the fasted growing group, but progress is still slow nationally.

There are fewer men in teaching with the percentage down from 25.6% the previous year to 24.5% in November 2021 Men work mostly in secondary schools, with only 35,000 men in primary sector in November 2021.

It looks as if backroom staff numbers have been cut. Whether or not this was to support frontline teachers and TA numbers isn’t clear, but the increase in teachers was not enough to offset worsening of secondary PTR noted above. Whether those PTRs worsened less in schools supported to help ‘levelling up’ isn’t clear from the basic data, but is worth exploring in the context of the looming hard National Funding Formula.  

The number of teacher entrants rebounded from the previous years low, but is still not back to the level of the longer-term trend in the high 40,000s. This may partly explain the issues with the labour market in 2022, where schools are often finding recruitment challenging.

The number of leavers also increased, but again has not reached levels seen before the pandemic. There appears to have been no wholesale departure of senior leaders as a result of the pandemic. There appears to be an issue with the data on the number of deaths among teachers, so we cannot fully consider whether the pandemic had an effect on the teaching profession from this data. The pandemic has also led to the DfE not producing data on teacher absence during 2020/21 as part of these statistics.

In November 2021, when schools completed the School Workforce Census for 2020/21 the nation was still struggling with the pandemic, but the Omicron variant had yet to appear.  Secondary schools were not better staffed based upon the PTR as a measure than the previous year, but retention did seem to have improved for some groups of early career teachers. Whether this is the start of a trend or just a pause on a downward trend we will need to wait another year to discover.

London is a different country

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Among the more detailed numbers published yesterday by the DfE in the plethora of statistics about the school workforce in November 2018 was a breakdowns of the data by individual school; by local authority and by region of the country, with London further subdivided into Inner and Outer London, thus making ten regions in all.

In many respects the teacher workforce in London, and especially Inner London, is very different to the workforce in the rest of England. London is often regarded, along with New York, and a few other places, as a mega-city that is substantially different to its surrounding areas. To allow for comparison purposes, I have included data on the teacher workforce for Oxfordshire and the average for England as a whole in a table shown below.

  Inner London Inner London rank Outer London Outer London

rank

 England

(Average)

 Oxfordshire
% Male teachers 28.2% 1 25.6% 6 25.9% 24.3%
% Ethnic minority teachers 44.4% 1 37.8% 2 14.0% 9.6%
PTR (Overall) 15.7 1 17.7 =2 18.0 18.3
% part-time teachers 15.2% 10 19.8 8 23.7% 33.3%
% teachers 50+ 15.8% 10 18.2% 8 17.6% 20.7%
Average salary £45,285 1 £42,647 2 £39,504 £38,372
% of teachers with an allowance 43.6% 1 40.% 2 35.8% 31.7%
% teachers with one period of sickness 57.8% 1 56.4% 2 54.4% 52.3%
% schools reporting a vacancy 20.7% 2 23.1% 1 11.1% 10.7%

Source: DfE School Workforce Census tables. Note there are ten region including two for London.

Inner London is at the extreme in all aspect considered in the table, only ceding first or last place to Outer London in respect of the percentage of schools reporting a vacancy. With separate distinct pay rates, it is not surprising to find London toping the average salary figures, but it is perhaps more surprising to find it the top region for male teachers, with more than a quarter of teachers being men, compared to only just over 24% in Oxfordshire.

The other outstanding percentage is for the percentage of non-White teachers employed. Approaching one in two teachers in Inner London, and more than a third in Outer London, are from ethnic minority non-white backgrounds. This compares to less than 10% of teachers with such backgrounds in Oxfordshire.

Despite paying higher salaries, London schools also manage to have the most favourable Pupil Teacher Ratios in England, some three pupils per teacher better in Inner London than in Oxfordshire. This is despite the many small schools in Oxfordshire, and does indicate the funding difference between London schools and those in much of the rest of England.

Additionally, it may well be that as a result of better funding teachers in London are more likely to receive an allowance than those elsewhere in England. However, this may also be part of a drive to ensure schools are fully staffed. If so, it is only working to some degree, as London schools, and especially those in Outer London, are more likely to report a vacancy than schools anywhere else in England.

Based upon these figures, it is imperative that Ministers and civil servants look beyond London when assessing information about the teacher workforce, and especially when reviewing claims about the funding of schools.

Vacancies still a concern

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The recent data on the workforce in state schools at the time of the 2018 School Workforce Census conducted by the DfE shows vacancies rates overall at similar levels to the previous year in percentage terms, but on the increase in terms of absolute numbers. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2018

Given that the data is collected in November, when schools ought to be fully staffed, any vacancy is of concern. Data from before 2010 was collected each January, when vacancy levels might be expected to be affected by those teachers that departed at the end of December and how easy it was to replace them.

Nevertheless, the 1,725 recorded vacancies in the secondary sector in November 2018 was the highest number since 2014, and more than three times the level recorded in 2011, after the financial crisis. Vacancy levels fell in mathematics between 2017 and 2018. This can partly be attributed to the subject having a relatively good year in terms of ITT recruitment in 2015-15 that fed through to recruitment for teaching posts in September 2018. I expect the ground gained between 2017 and 2018 in mathematics to be lost in the 2019 census, with little indication of any improvement in 2020.

Business studies has the largest percentage vacancy level. The subject includes both commercial studies and economics.  It remain a mystery to me why this important subject group for the British Economy does not attract more help for trainee teachers through the scholarship/bursary scheme. Mr Hunt’s idea of paying off student loans for young entrepreneurs seems only likely to make the situation worse if it was implemented. Indeed, I have yet to hear about a solution to the teacher recruitment problem from either of the candidates for the Troy Party leadership.

The other measure of concern is that of the percentage of hours taught in a typical week to pupils in Years 7 to 13 by teachers with no relevant post-A Level qualification. The trend in many secondary subjects continues to worsen, even among EBacc subjects, where recruitment into ITT is buoyant. However, that may be due to changes in teaching methods as much as to a shortage of teachers in history and geography. Where schools employ a classroom teacher approach to some or all of their pupils, generally either Year 7 pupils or those having trouble learning in large classes, these teachers may not be specialists, and this can cause the number of hours taught be a non-specialist in a subject to increase for perfectly sensible reasons.

Of more concern, and not provided in the Tables, would be any evidence of increasing levels of teachers lacking subject knowledge teaching groups in Years 11 to13. Although even here a case can sometimes be made on the basis of teaching experience and non-formally acquired subject knowledge, such as through high quality Professional Development activities.

Within the detailed tables, there is far more data on these matters, but it will take a little more time to work through the data. However, there is no room for complacency over retention and every reason, as the school population increase over the next few years to continue to express serious concern at the trends emerging in relation to mid-career retention of teachers.