Tag Archives: teachers

6,500 extra teachers; myth or realistic aim?

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Hurrah for the Public Accounts Committee at Westminster (PAC). Today the Committee published a report into the government’s plans – or lack of them – to meet their target of 6,500 extra teachers – and lecturers. Increasing teacher numbers: Secondary and further education (HC 825)

The Committee is as sceptical as this bog has been about how the government intends to meet this target that was to be paid for by the addition of VAT on private school fees from January 2025.

One recommendation that the PAC doesn’t make is the creation of a Chief Professional Adviser on Teacher Supply. I held such a post between 1996 and 1997, but was never relaced when I left the then Teacher Training Agency. Such a designated post would draw together the work of civil servants who may change roles almost as frequently as ministers- What odds would one give on the present Secretary of State surviving a cabinet reshuffle before the party conference season? A central role with professional oversight might help the government achieve its aim.

Anyway, the PAC Recommendations included

  1. The Department should set out how it plans to deliver the pledge for 6,500 additional teachers to provide assurance that this will f ill the most critical teacher gaps. This should set out: • how the pledge will be split across schools and colleges; • the baseline and milestones so Parliament can track progress; and • how it will stay focused on teacher retention alongside recruitment.
  2. The Department should develop a whole-system strategy to help frame how it will recruit and retain school and college teachers. This should be based on a fuller evidence base, establish the preferred balance between recruitment and retention initiatives; set appropriate targets for those joining teaching through different routes; and include value for money analysis of different initiatives.
  3. The Department should work with schools and colleges to understand the reasons behind variations [in recruitment and retention], particularly within deprived areas and core subjects, setting this out in published information to help identify and share good practice and ideas on what works best.
  4. The Department should work to better understand why teachers leave and then better support schools and colleges in addressing these factors. This includes looking at changes to contractual and working conditions, such as flexible working, and at how teacher workload can be reduced. It should also collect data on the effectiveness of the newly-announced behaviour hubs, rolling them out further if they prove to be successful.
  5. The Department should assess the effectiveness and relative value-for-money of pay against other recruitment and retention initiatives, to make an explicit decision on whether it needs to do more to ensure teachers are paid the right amount.

The final recommendation will not be welcomed in HM Treasury if it means finding more cash for teachers’ pay, especially coming the day after resident hospital doctors threatened strike action over pay benchmarking. In paragraph 22 the Committee stated that

‘However, teacher pay has lagged behind others – in 2024, those working in the education sector were paid around 10% less in real terms than in 2010, with the wider public sector being paid on average 2.6% less than in 2010.’

Will a return to the 2010 benchmark now be the goal of the teacher professional associations?

In the next blog, I will discuss the committee’s idea for dealing with the thorny issue of providing teachers for deprived areas.

SEND parents need support now

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I have written three posts about SEND since I restarted this blog in May, on the override; EOTAs and more generally. As a result, I was going to sit out the present debate about what might happen in the autumn without making any further comments. However, I thought this paragraph by John Crace in the Guardian was the best summary I had seen about where we are one year into this government. Labour picks on kids as Farage reaches for his human punchbag

‘Now, Send is not perfect. The bill is getting bigger by the year, thanks both to better diagnosis and to some parents gaming the system. But it is essential for many children who benefit from education, health and care plans, and parents are worried sick they might lose out. In the absence of any clear direction from the Department for Education, many disability campaigners are fearing the worst. That children will be treated as cost centres to be downsized. That children diagnosed in the future won’t be entitled to the same benefits as children with the same level of disability are now. This one will now run and run well into the autumn.’

It is going to be a worrying summer for many parents, and that isn’t fair on them. I am all for looking at how the system is being gamed – see my blog about EOTAS – in some ways by a few parents, but most parents are genuinely worried. SEND is the only issue I ever saw a parent cry in a cabinet meeting when trying to prevent a reduction in the spending on transport. These parents have a heavy burden of love to bear, and the State should remember that.

However, the elephant in the room, and one John Crace doesn’t mention is the NHS. Afterall EHCPs replaced Statements of SEN Need. One big difference was the addition of the letter ‘H’ for health. So far, all the attention has been on local authorities, and the NHS rarely receives a mention.

Now I think that as soon as it is obvious that a child will need an EHCP, the NHS, whether maternity unit or GP surgery, should always start the process. It should not be left to a primary school headteacher to so often have to begin the process of applying for the EHCP.

At the same time, the NHS might want to look at early screening for conditions affecting early learning, and put in place a much stronger programme than at present.  

SEND is also an area of life where we need to be clear about what we want from the Early Years Sector. The sector has a part to play in early identification of issues in learning, and surely staff need better training to both observe and report these early learning issues. Much has been taken about the transfer from primary to secondary school, but hardly anything about the knowledge transfer into the school system from early years. Of course, where the school has a nursery class, transfer should be straightforward. But what of other children, and especially those that spend most of their early years in the care of relatives or live in isolated in rural areas?

The government seems to like leaks, so how about some positive leaks around SEND? The government must not go on holiday leaving these parents to suffer over the summer.  

Reform of Home to School Transport needed

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This week the Local Government Association published an important report into home to school transport  The future of Home to School Transport: Report | Local Government Association This is an area of responsibility that always concerned me when I was a county councillor, as the rules of the governing eligibility were set in the 1944 Education Act, in a very different era to that of today.

As the LGA report noted:

“Effective home to school transport plays a vital role in our education system. Fundamentally, it is the safety-net that ensures no child or young person misses out on their entitlement to education because they cannot otherwise get to school. However, current home to transport duties were designed for a different age, societally, educationally and economically. For local government, continuing to fulfil the current statutory responsibilities for home to school transport is becoming increasingly financially unsustainable, posing a real threat of bankruptcy for some, and necessitating cuts to other vital aspects of children’s services provision in many more.”

Much of the report deals with SEND transport, as that costs local authorities the most money, the issue of whether the NHS should bear part of the cost. Sensibly the report concluded that this was a national issue:

“We would recommend that, in the context of budgetary pressures across public services and with health being under no less pressure than local government, this is not an issue that can be left to local negotiation to resolve. The Department for Education and the Department for Health and Social Care should clarify an equitable split of responsibilities, including financial responsibilities, for transport for children with the most common health needs that require substantial and additional support, and set that out in statutory guidance both for local authorities and ICBs.”

With the review of the NHS currently underway, this seems like a timely recommendation.

Surprisingly, the report seems in places to assume that parents must send their child to a state school, rather that state schools being the default position if a parent doesn’t make any other arrangement for their child’s education.  Fortunately, this assumption doesn’t affect their arguments.

I think their conclusions are sensible in both being clearer, with less change of challenge than at present, but the authors appear to have missed the opportunity to discuss how to deal with the issue of selective schools and distance. Making such schools ineligible for home to school transport as they are regarded as a parental choice is as discriminatory as any other criteria. It is a pity this wasn’t addressed more fully.

Nevertheless, I think I can agree with their conclusions for a system that:

“In summary, we are advocating that in future children and young people should be eligible for assistance with home to school travel from the start of reception to the end of year 13, based on a simple binary distance criterion: if they live more than 3 miles away (by the most direct road route) from their nearest suitable school then they would be eligible for transport assistance; if they live less than three miles away then they would not be eligible for transport assistance. This formulation of eligibility would get rid of the current link between eligibility and the ability to walk to school for both children and young people with SEND and those accessing mainstream home to school transport.”

Are teachers losing control of classrooms?

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A recurrent theme running through the recent DfE’s ‘Working lives of teachers and leaders: wave 3 Summary report November 2024’ Working lives of teachers and leaders: wave 3 – GOV.UK is that teachers seem less happy about pupil behaviour than in the previous reports.

In this report, 44% of leavers from teaching cited pupil behaviour as a reason, up from 32% in the previous study and a statically significant change compared to the 2024 study. Not yet at the level of ‘high workload’, cited by 84% this year, up from 80% last year and the top reason in both years.

Nor is it yet at the 47% level of those citing government initiatives/policy changes, although it is worth noting that eight per cent fewer leavers cited this reason this year compared with last year.

Other pressures and stress are still also at the top of leavers reasons for quitting, but dissatisfaction with pay, never near the top of the list of reasons fell by five per centage points to 34%. No doubt both the government and the professional associations will be looking closely at that figure as will be those advising the School Teachers Review Body. Conditions of service seem more of a concern than pay at this point in time.

The point about pupil behaviour is reinforced in the table showing the views about discipline deteriorating among both teachers and school leaders completing the survey. In the 2022 survey 18% of teachers and 5% of leaders said that pupil behaviour was either ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’.  By the 2024 survey the reporting levels were 27% and 8%,

It would be interesting to know more about his change. Is it across all teachers and leaders; worse in the secondary sector than primary schools and what, if any, role has increased absence rates played in deteriorating views of pupil behaviour?

Perhaps more worrying was the findings that although

“around eight-in-ten (79%) leaders with teaching responsibilities reported that they felt always or mostly supported to deal with disruptive behaviour (consistent with the 80% in 2023 but lower than the 85% in 2022).”

But those bearing the brunt of classroom teaching, teachers with teaching responsibilities were less positive,

 “with 49% reporting feeling always or mostly supported with dealing with disruptive behaviour (lower than the 52% in 2023 and 58% in 2022).”

Not surprisingly, there have been declines in those teachers and school leaders viewing classroom behaviour as very good over the same period.

Is this change a consequence of the deteriorating staffing situation in secondary schools in recent year, or is it a reflection of the debate about mobile phone use in the classroom? It would be interesting to know more about the types of school and ages of the teachers reporting the deterioration in pupil behaviour to see how widespread the decline is among teachers.

At these levels this is certainly a flashing amber light, but not yet a full-blown crisis, but all concerned will need to understand the reasons why classroom behaviour is deteriorating.

AI in education: tackling the third revolution

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Earlier this week, I sat in on a webinar hosted by the Education Policy Institute about Workforce Sustainability in the modern school system. The recording of the webinar can be accessed at Workforce sustainability in the modern school system Inevitably, much of the discussion was around how AI might make a difference to schools. AI is the third wave of the IT revolution, after the initial microprocessor revolution of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the arrival of the web and the development of means to access it from desktops to mobile phones, and even watches, from the mid-1990s onward. AI has the possibility to significantly impact on the school system as we know it even more than the previous two ‘revolutions.

The impact might be in four areas

Recruitment – this will be cheaper, faster and more complex as both candidates and recruiters strive to make use of AI to help them secure either the perfect job or the best candidate, whether it be a teacher or any other post in a school.

Administration – compared to the days of pen and paper, typewriters and adding machines, technology in the past 50 years have vastly changed how processes are handled, and especially how data can be analysed. EPI even have a Model, described in the webinar, for assessing how MATs are operating. AI offers much more power to create systems with less need to burden teachers. Tracking individual learning will be far enhanced, well beyond what is possible even today.

Learning – AI could transform how students learn. No longer will teachers need to worry about coping with a range of abilities in the same learning setting: AI will tailor the learning package to the individual and make the learning experience stimulating enough to motivate every child. In doing so it could fundamentally change the role of a teacher, removing some of the drudgery and enhancing the personal interactions with learners. But, will the lightbulb moments teacher value so much disappear?

The contract between The State and families – will the current 190-day requirement to attend a ‘school’ or face sanctions that has existed since 1870 in England be replaced by a different sort of model where learning is at the pace of learner, and qualifications are obtained when ready. Could AI be used to identify those children not making progress, and offer support that families would be required to accept? I don’t expect such a radical change anytime soon, but it would be worth looking at how different groups in society see schooling today and what they want from it as the twenty first century enters the second quarter of the century.

What is certain is that the State needs to participate, and not leave everything to the market. There is a lot of profit to be made from AI, and schools represent a large potential market. The first step will probably be to agree on standards and certification for learning materials so individual schools and teachers can be sure what they are using are high quality learning materials. This is much more important that the debate over banning mobile phones in schools, but receives much less attention from politicians.

Ministers; music matters

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Yesterday, in this blog, I wrote that music courses preparing new teachers for our schools had the highest conversion rate of applicants to offers for any subject. By June this year, some 63% of candidates have been offered places. This compares with just 27% of candidates applying to become a business studies teacher. This data comes from the DfE’s monthly updates on recruitment into these courses.

I also pointed out that the 325 candidates offered places by June this year, of the 565 that have applied, meant that the DfE’s target for new entrants of 565 was unlikely to be met ,making 10 missed targets in the last 11 years.

Music ITT recruitment

Recruiting yearJuneSeptemberdifferenceITT censusTarget% filled
2014/153103605035348173%
2015/163403703035739989%
2016/172903102029539375%
2017/182503106030040973%
2018/192403208031239280%
2019/20360480120469385122%
2020/213904203038654071%
2021/222282875929247062%
2022/232012302921679027%
2023/242883789033182040%
2024/25326565

The table shows that the only time the DfE target for music was met was during the initial covid year, when there was a surge of applications for teacher preparation courses. Even in that year, the 469 trainees recorded at the time if the ITT census in the autumn would not have been enough to meet the target for this year of 565.

Between June and September new offers made have ranged from 120 in the covid year to as low as 20 in 216/17. Based upon last year’s figure of 90 new offers, and assuming this year is a little better and that 100 new offers are made, would mean a figure of around 426 offers by September, still more than 100 adrift of the target for this year that has been set at a more sensible level of 565 compared with the targets for the previous two years.

In passing, it is worth recording that adding shortfalls into future targets is not a helpful exercise, especially as all schools start the year fully staffed. Doing so also makes the percentage of target filled number misleadingly low, as with the 27% of the 2022/23 recruitment round.

Collecting this data together isn’t just of interest to data watchers. There is a serious issue here that is also linked to the cutbacks in university courses currently underway.

Imagine a scenario where the civil servant in charge of teacher supply and training meets his opposite number in charge of universities over coffee one lunchtime this summer. ‘I have just seen the data on ITT music offers and we risk not hitting our target again this year’.  ‘Bad luck’, the other replies, ‘but if universities cut music courses, won’t that make it even more difficult for you in future years?’ ‘You cannot let that happen, as we need graduates for teaching’. ‘Sorry, universities are free agents, and music courses are not in fashion right now.’ ‘What shall we do?’ ‘Perhaps we can write a joint paper for the PS mentioning apprenticeships’ ‘Good idea, job done.’  ‘After all music is an important export industry, and we mustn’t let it go the way of design and technology in our schools.’

Last week I attended a concert in Dorchester Abbey where in the course of a week pupils from 41 primary schools came together to sing their hearts out. We must ensure that music is available to all of them when they transfer to secondary schools.

Big range in candidate’s chance of becoming a teacher

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The latest ITT data for applications and offers for course starting this autumn was published by the DfE this morning. Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2025 to 2026 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK Normally, the data appears on the last Monday of the month, so this moth’s data is a week early. However, at this stage of the year the early publication probably doesn’t make much of a difference to any analysis of the data.

The good news is that the DfE allocations or targets, call them what you will, have already been exceeded in some subjects; even before any Teach First data has been added to these numbers. However, what matters is how many of the ‘offers’ turn into trainees on the ground when courses start. Based on previous years, it seems likely that this will turn out to a good year for the government and schools, but challenges still exist in some subjects.

At least four subjects, business studies; design and technology, music, and religious education won’t meet their targets this year. This is despite music having the highest conversion rate of applicants to offers of some 63%. By comparison, business studies has the lowest conversion rate of just 27%. It is possible that both classics and drama might also fall short of their targets this year, but the jury is still out.

SubjectTarget 2025/26June offersJune applicationsoffer to candidates’ ratio
Business Studies90025593427%
Chemistry730730243230%
Physics1,4101431476330%
Others2,520399117934%
Mathematics2,3002321621637%
Religious Education780397102939%
Biology9851275330339%
Total Secondary19,270161003848142%
English1,9501648393742%
Classics60419543%
Computing895895201544%
Art & Design680817165050%
Geography935854171250%
Design & Technology965587117450%
Modern Languages1,4601418272352%
Drama62026950154%
History790924166356%
Physical Education7251514263957%
Primary7,65087901527358%
Music56532551663%

For some subjects the ‘offers’ are well in excess of the targets/allocations, with physical education have offers double the requirement, and a high ratio for offers to candidates. The cash this will bring to universities through fees will no doubt be welcome, but is it a good use of taxpayers’ money? If the Teacher Supply modelling is correct, many of these trainees might struggle to find a teaching post in 2026: not a phrase I have written recently.

I am curious as to where the more than 4,700 physics candidates have come from? If those with offers turn up, then that will be really good news, but I think we need clarity about the numbers and their reliability in predicting trainee starters this autumn.

Although all regions have seen an increase in candidate numbers, the Midlands have seen a fall in candidate numbers as measured by the region of the training provider. There is an imbalance between provider regions with just three regions; London, the North West and the South East accounting for the bulk of ‘offers’. As some providers are located in one region but provide wider, and even national coverage, this should not be an issue, but is worth monitoring, especially in the subject that won’t reach their targets, for any regional shortages.

Still, for many admissions tutors in ITT this will be their easiest summer for more than a decade. 2026 might be even better.

Mixed messages on teacher retention in latest data

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How long do teachers stay in service? The DfE comment in their analysis of the latest data that Retention rates for teachers increased for both the newest teacher cohort who qualified in 2023 and for second year retention for those who qualified in 2022, while decreasing for most earlier cohorts compared to the equivalent measure last year.

Now after a period where retention rates have been declining that’s good news, and with the worsening general labour market and an older teacher workforce than in recent years, I expect retention rates to continue to improve over the next few years.

However, the improvement is something of a mixed blessing. Teachers with longer service tend to cost more, and if schools are funded for average salary costs, more schools will find the pay bill higher than the funding, especially as pupil numbers drop.

At the same time, higher retention rates mean fewer vacancies as rolls fall unless schools receive real increases in their funding that allows additional teachers to be recruited (the Spending Review will answer that question).

If past history is anything to go by, then different regions of the country will be affected differently. My guess is that retention rates will be lower in London and the Home Counties, and higher the further north and west you travel across England. This improvement in retention rates is bad news for job hunters, and also bad news for recruitment agencies that make their profits from schools advertising vacancies unless schools’ resort to only offering one-year contracts that are not then renewed.

Any reduction in job opportunities may also be bad news for teachers trying to return to work in the United Kingdom from abroad. Add in the decline in the number of pupils in private schools, some 11,000 in the latest data, when compared with the previous year’s data, and that might be somewhere around 750 less jobs in that sector in one year.

Although retention is better for the first two years of service in the latest data from the DfE, rates still have some way to go to return to levels of twenty years ago.

% in service after each year of service2003 entrantsLatestDifference
19189.7-1.3
28580.5-4.5
38173.2-7.8
47870.2-7.8
57667.6-8.4
67564.6-10.4
77362.5-10.5
87060.6-9.4
96859.2-8.8
106657-9

The table compares the latest data with the 2003 entry cohort survival rates for their first ten years of service. So, 66% of the 2003 cohort were still in teaching after ten years, but only 57% of the 2014 cohort were still in teaching after ten years.

The table shows an alarming difference for teachers with six to seven years of service, the group that might be expected to be taking on middle leadership positions. Hopefully, the new pay rise will be a further incentive to persuade teachers to to quit. Knowing why they do quit, and where they go, is some other data the DfE might wish to share with everyone.

Ethnic minority groups still excluded from teaching

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Yesterday, the NfER published a report about ethnic minorities and the teaching profession; from entry to leadership. Ethnic disparities in entry to teacher training, teacher retention and progression to leadership – NFER sponsored by Mission 44.

This is an issue that has concerned me for the past 30 years since I first wrote an article for the then NUT (now NEU) in their magazine abut the future of the teaching profession. The article asked whether or not the teaching profession was destined to be ‘young, white and female’. A decade later, I produced two reports for those in government responsible for teacher recruitment about, firstly, all minority groups in 2008, and then specifically ethnic minority groups in 2011. The latter report concluded the following:

‘Of three hundred graduate would-be teachers; 100 each from the Asian, Black and White groupings used in this study:

 24 of the white group, 14 of the Asian group and just nine of the Black group are likely to fulfil their aspiration of teaching in a state funded school classroom.

Even in the sciences, where shortages have been the greatest out of three hundred would-be science teachers there would be only some 34 White teachers, 17 Asian teachers and 11 Black teachers.’ (Howson, 2011 author’s copy)

The NfER report has concluded over a decade later that:

‘There are significant ethnic disparities in postgraduate ITT rejection rates among UK-domiciled applicants that are not explained by differences in applicant and application characteristics. The persistence of ethnic disparities that are not explained by the applicant characteristics that we can observe in the available data suggests that discrimination by ethnic background is likely to play a role, although we cannot definitively rule out other factors (such as differences in qualification levels or work experience).’

In the 2008 report I helped produce, we also concluded that it was sometimes challenging to identify rationales for outcomes about ITT recruitment.  Take an example of a course with 20 places and 100 applicants; 60 women and 40 men. Assuming all are graduates with the same class of UK degree – unlikely, but there can be too many variables to make easy judgements possible – how do you allocate places. One possibility is on a first come, first served basis. So, if men apply later than women, as is often the case for new graduates, they may find all the places allocated by the time that they apply.

A fair distribution might be 12 women and 8 men offered places, based upon all applications. Now add another category, ethnicity. Where do you place that, ahead of gender? Again, what of the timing of applications. Should there be a cut-off date for ITT applications whereby all applications received by that date are assessed together, rather than on a first come, first served basis, as at present?

A further complication is around differential rates of application. Historically applications from those identifying as black African males were mostly received by a small number of courses. Even if those courses only took those applicants, there would still be an issue at the macro level, and no other groups would have access to those courses.

In 2008, we also discovered larger courses were generally better at recruiting diverse cohorts from a larger pool of applicants. Does a move to a more school-based ITT system make recruitment of minorities more or less likely?

This is an important issue for society, and one that I hope this latest report helps stimulate discussion around whether changes are needed in ITT.

6,500 more teachers: is Labour’s pledge dead in the water?

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Last week, I wrote the following in this blog:

“The Spending Review also needs to come clean on what the pledge around the 6,500 extra teachers means, and how they will be paid for? The IFS makes the point that the college sector needs more than 6,500 extra lecturers to cope with the fact that rolls there won’t be falling over the next few years, and any added working in adult learning will put up the demand for lecturers even more. Switching funds to the college sector solves the issue of how to pay for these extra staff, but will leave the secondary sector with a pupil-teacher ratio in many areas little different to what it was 50 years ago. Hard times for schools ahead?” More thoughts on funding schools, ahead of the spending Review | John Howson

Will, we will know if it is hard times, status quo going forward or genuinely more cash for the school’s sector on Wednesday, when the waiting and teasing will finally be over.  

However, there appears to be news about the pledge to create an additional 6,500 teachers that formed part of Labour’s 2024 general election campaign. Labour said that they would:

Enable school staff to help our children to succeed

  • With over 6,500 more teachers in schools
  • All new teachers to be qualified
  • A new national voice for school support staff
  • A Teacher Training Entitlement for all our teachers
  • Everyone in our schools treated with the respect they deserve. Labour’s plan for schools – The Labour Party

According to the tes, and other sources, the pledge of 6,500 more teachers is dead in the water. Labour ‘abandons’ manifesto pledge to hire more teachers This follows the publication of the annual workforce data by the DfE showing that unsurprisingly showed that with falling rolls, the number of teachers in the primary school sector actual fell between November 2023 and November 2024. The primary school total of teachers dropped by about 2,900, while the number of secondary and special school teachers, as well as those working in pupil referral units, went up by about 2,350.

Now, Labour can argue that the November 2024 data was based upon the funding of schools under the previous Conservative government, and they would be correct. However, it would make the pledge even harder to achieve if it was assumed that the 6,500 additional teachers were to be added to the November 2023 total that was the latest figure at the time of the general election.

Creating more than 7,000 additional teaching posts was just never going to happen, especially as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that there is a staffing crisis in the further education sector, and that’s where funding for any addiitonal staffing probably ought to be directed first.

Will Labour pull a rabbit out of the hat between now and Wednesday, after all it was VAT on private schools that was supposed to be used as hypothecated cash to fund the extra staff. We shall see what is announced.

And what of the other pledges? Will there be a new national voice for support staff already being told that they are less valuable that teachers by being awarded a lower pay increase: bad news for the beleaguered special school sector.