Tag Archives: teachers

Demise of Forum: the journal for educationalists

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The demise of Forum as a journal read by those in education came as a complete surprise to many. However, that is often the way in business. If you admit to failing then you just go under even faster, with no hope of survival. I am sad to hear of those that have lost money. As the largest shareholder in TeachVac, I know how precarious being in business can be. TeachVac has now launched its new website www.teachvac.co.uk with a special offer for schools.

However, this post is to offer a chance for John Viner, an Education Consultant and ITT professional, to air his views on teacher education in two pieces he had written for Forum, but that will never appear in that journal. As published by me in my blog, these articles that follow come with the usual caveats that they are John Viner’s work not mine, and I don’t endorse the views just by publishing them.

Smoke and Mirrors by John Viner

There is a bombshell of a crisis that is about to burst in our schools and across our education system. From the recent government White Paper, Whitehall clearly thinks either that it’s been fixed, or that, if they blow enough smoke at it, the reality will be hidden. The problem is that we have been here before. Many times.

Any guesses about the focus of this bombshell? Yes, it’s the pending crisis in school leadership and right behind it are the twin horsemen of teacher recruitment and retention. This is the first of two articles in which we will consider the nature of the pending problem, how we might, at least, minimise it and how we can possibly prepare for the longer term.

Hands up if you remember the “Troops to Teachers” initiative. Based on a US model, this was an initiative launched in 2012 with the aim – as the name suggests – of recruiting ex-servicemen and women into the classroom. David Laws, then education minister, said that “pupils would benefit from the experience, background and skills that ex-military personnel had gained in our inspiring armed forces”. Despite the offer of a two-year employment-based degree and a funded PGCE for graduates, the scheme attracted just 363 trainees up to 2018, with a quarter walking away without qualifying.

Jump then to 2018 when Ed Sec Damien Hinds relaunched the scheme with the lure of a £40,000 bursary. The following year, Hinds’ incoming replacement, Gavin Williamson promised the scheme would “motivate and inspire a generation of children in classrooms across the country”. It attracted just 22 trainees that year. Amazingly, the scheme is still running.  To be fair, it is just one of a number of pipelines that the government hope will top up a diminishing pool. More successful initiatives such as Teach First, Now Teach, School Direct and the very successful Teacher Apprenticeship programme are maintaining a steady(ish) supply of trainees.

One of the most reliable sources of information about teacher supply is the annual Commons Briefing Paper.  The most recent version notes:

Since 2011 the overall number of teachers has in general not kept pace with increasing pupil numbers. This means the ratio of qualified teachers to pupils has increased from 17.8 in 2011 to 18.5 in 2020. In addition, the number of teacher vacancies have risen over this period. (Commons Library Research Briefing, 24 November 2021)

The heart of the problem, however, is not so much teacher supply as teacher retention. The incoming pipeline is no match for the size of the drain. In 2018, the DfE published a detailed research report on why teachers left the profession. It recommended: improving in-school support for teachers, increasing progression opportunities, reducing workload, and flexible working. Pay was not a significant driver, although regarded as lower than comparable professionals.   By the end of 2019 the Conservative manifesto made a commitment to raise teachers’ pay while the DfE was running an early-career bursary for teachers of shortage subjects. Conveniently, the workload issue was sidelined. Then came the Pandemic, lockdown, schools as hotbeds of Covid-19 and everything changed.

One of the most interesting outcomes of the pandemic, for all its in-school stress and changes to working practices, was a surge in ITT applications, particularly for employment-based routes. Suddenly schools which had struggled to put teachers in classrooms found themselves hosting enthusiastic trainees. It was a pity that a few saw the Teacher Apprenticeship Programme as a cheap staffing solution but failed to support their trainees adequately, especially in respect of the 20% off-the-job release time to which they were entitled. These trainees quickly came to understand the great under-addressed problem of overwhelming teacher workload. However overall, it was a bonus year for applicants. 

Meanwhile, the pointy heads looking at improving retention, still missing the point about workload and working conditions, came up with the two-year induction framework for Early Career Teachers. It came with all sorts of funded release time and so could have gone some way to making up for the workload during the training year. Meanwhile Nadhim Zahawi has announced pay rises for all teachers, including 8.9% for new joiners. While welcome of course, why was nobody reading the 2018 report on why teachers left the profession?   At the other career end, let’s review why this is crisis waiting to happen.

Nobody minded those Ofsted visits about how schools were doing in the pandemic but, as I have noted before, whatever Ofsted might claim, a full return to a robust inspection regime is simply adding to the anxiety of senior leaders.  The NEU conference in Bournemouth heard that over two-thirds believed inspections undermine school leaders’ ability to focus on pupil outcomes while a staggering 86% claimed they added to both stress and workload.

Similarly, we all want the best for our new teachers, but it is the impact on mentors that is increasing their workload. Teach First has optimistically reported that less than 20% of ECTs are unhappy with their experience but also that ‘Mentor capacity and workload is the biggest concern raised right across the sector in relation to ECF changes.’ (Faye Craster April 2022). This has the potential to impact on ECT appointments, with Schools Week (22 April) reporting that “more than one-third of school leaders now say they may take in fewer early career teachers in the future, which rises to 46 per cent among primary heads”.

With the world energy crisis driving up costs, we may well see this also limit new staff appointments, though quite how much is not yet clear.

Add to this what is being called, ‘the great resignation’ as headteachers, crushed by the workload and the accountability are lining up at the exit. Against this background, the White Paper’s promise of ‘strong schools with great teachers for your child’ rings pretty hollow. Indeed, many of its proposed strategies to find these ‘great teachers’ are as solid as a smoke ring.

So, what to do now?  At the very least, you could be analysing your school’s situation to work out how vulnerable you might be to the bombshell’s fallout. That’s the focus of the toolkit with this article. In Part 2 we will explore Zahawi’s bold claims to work out whether they are more than smoke and mirrors.

Things fall apart (W B Yeats) by John Viner

In the last article we looked at the very strange circumstances in which teacher recruitment and retention finds itself. Whatever new initiatives arrive, the fact remains that drain is bigger than the inlet. The plan was to review the problems through the lens of the long-awaited White Paper. That was before the Conservative Party went into freefall and we now have little clarity on what the future will actually hold. At the time of writing, the selection of Liz Truss as Prime Minister throws everything in the air. Some may remember Truss as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Childcare and Education during Michael Gove’s tenure as Secretary of State.  We have yet to see what her government means for education.

Perhaps the simplest way to review all this is to assume that some version of the White Paper will be implemented and to think about any messages we are hearing from Ofsted.

What is certain, in the world of Teacher Training, is that Ofsted have ITT providers under close scrutiny and that is likely to have an impact on recruitment and retention.

White papers are not legislation. They are Government policy documents setting out their proposals for future legislation. They are sometimes published as Command Papers and may include a draft version of a Bill that is being planned.

The Education White Paper has four key themes. It promises that, by 2030:

  • every child will be taught by an excellent teacher trained in the best-evidenced approaches.
  • every child will be taught a broad and ambitious curriculum in a school with high expectations and strong standards of behaviour.
  • every child who falls behind in English or maths will get the right support to get back on track.
  • all children will benefit from being taught in a family of schools, with their school in a strong multi academy trust or with plans to join or form one.

There are some old friends reappearing here and, if you have been in the profession for a few years, you will recognise that we may have been here before. Several times. It would take a deeper exploration of these four key areas to identify the pluses and minuses but, for the purpose of this article, we will focus only on the promise of an excellent teacher for every child. The DfE promises it will deliver half-a-million new professional development opportunities for teachers in training, early in their career, or through new National Professional Qualifications.  Note that, despite what seems an eye-catching headline, it’s 500,000 opportunities, not 500,000 teachers.

So, where will these excellent teachers come from? Last November’s school workforce survey reported that almost an eighth of teachers left the profession last year with, for the first time, greater attrition rates for primary than secondary. Just under 90% of these were early departures, not retirements. This was a jump of 12.4% on 2020-21. Around the same proportion of newly qualified teachers left the profession within a year. Classroom teacher vacancies are at their highest level since records began. The plan to attract former teachers back to the classroom post-covid saw ministers boast that over 500 former teachers had been recruited but the reality was that only around 20% eventually returned to the classroom. Also, it is worth noting that around 8% of teachers are currently deserting the state sector for independent schools.

Prior to her election by the Conservative Party, Liz Truss echoed the White Paper commitment to strengthen and widen Trusts, with an apparent recommitment to Grammar Schools. The promise to provide catch-up support is an old chestnut and usually comes with a pledge to crack down on behaviour, as it does here. Pause to reflect on the Chief Inspector’s 2022 Education Festival speech, where she noted,

And the glue holding school structures and routines together are rules and discipline. The word ‘discipline’ – like exams for some – comes with connotations. For some, it conjures images of over-strict headteachers, punishments and coercion. But for me discipline is rooted in respect. Respect for the school, for staff, for fellow pupils and for learning itself. It’s the discipline of being on time, of treating people well and of making an effort. In successful schools, these things are taught and reinforced, humanely and effectively. Discipline is not a dirty word.

In the background lies the promise to ensure that tuition contracts go only to approved contractors (but schools remain free to employ individual tutors). However, all the signs were that the DfE, would continue to scapegoat headteachers for the poor take-up of the National Tuition Programme. And that brings us to the looming crisis in school leadership, with the NAHT warning that ‘high-stakes accountability, crushing workload, long hours and inadequate funding’ was driving an accelerating exit rate of headteachers.  And we have not yet been able to consider energy costs. New Ed Sec Kit Malthouse – unsurprisingly a product of the independent sector – has had little to do with education so we wait and see how it falls out.

So, is this a perfect storm brewing, or will the DfE be able to resolve teacher supply?  Let us see what Ofsted may be suggesting.  There have been some minor changes to the school’s inspection handbook. The DfE have clarified that

Section 5 inspections now referred to as ‘graded inspections’ and Section 8 inspections of good and outstanding schools called ‘ungraded inspections’. The purpose of each inspection type and how they are carried out remains unchanged. l

For new teachers, the Early Careers Framework continues to increase workload and stress, despite its opposite claims. We continue to wait for the research that evaluates the impact of the two-year induction period and how far it addresses the issues of retention. Meanwhile, for those in training, there remain several routes: School Direct, Teacher Apprentices, Teach First and Now Teach, to name a few. However, it is evident from recent Ofsted inspections of ITT providers that there is a separate agenda running and many hitherto successful providers find themselves downgraded.

There seems to be a determination to reduce the number of ITT providers. How this sits with recruiting excellent teachers remains to be seen. A very few select bodies have been handed £75,000 contracts to “support the anticipated closure” of initial teacher training providers. How this improves recruitment and retention is unclear.

The important challenge for all school leaders is to try to stay ahead of the game. At the moment it is hard to work out what the game is.

NB the interesting Vulnerability Calculator and recruitment planner are not included in this blog due to the nature of the format.

John Viner may be contacted via LinkedIn or at jeviner@gmail.com

As regular reads of this blog will know, I believe that the downturn in pupil numbers will necessitate some realignment of ITT places, but I subscribe to the need to keep higher education at the centre of the preparation and development of our teaching profession. John Howson

Who wants to be a teacher?

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In this time when history had gained a new relevance in our lives, I thought I would use the time available to me to look back at teacher recruitment in the 1990s. it would be interesting to look at recruitment in 1952, but the world of education has changed so much since then that the numbers really wouldn’t mean a great deal. In those days most teachers that were trained did so through the Certificate route and most only studies for two years. Graduate teachers were mostly untrained and in selective and independent schools. However, I was lucky to attend a state primary school where the headteachers was a physics graduate. How rare was that. W. W. Ashton an interesting character and a rarity in the primary sector of the 1950s.

The following data is taken from the pay review body Report of February 1996 (5th Report of STRB Table 27) I have selected 1994-95 to put alongside 2021-22, as that year marked the high point in recruitment during the five-year period between 1991-92 and 1995-96.

A couple of caveats. The 1994-95 numbers included recruitment in Wales, and the 2021-22 numbers don’t include Teach First and are based on August offers. The table can be updated once the ITT census appears at the end of 2022 as there will be late acceptances and some offered places earlier in the year might not actually start the course. Even with these caveats, there seems to be a story to tell.

SECONDAY SECTOR SUBJECTS19945-95 Number recruited2021-22 August offers excludes Teach FirstChange 2021-2022 on 1994-1995
MOD LANGS1915770-1145.00
DESIGN/TECHNOLOGY1951806-1145.00
SCIENCES29501922-1028.00
MUSIC586286-300.00
GEOGRAPHY744596-148.00
RELIGIOUS ED511388-123.00
MATHEMATICS18881857-31.00
ENGLISH & DRAMA19941969-25.00
PHYSICAL ED13791535156.00
HISTORY9351127192.00
TOTAL1485311256-3597.00
Source STRB 5th Report Table 27 and author’s analysis of DfE data for 2022

Even taking off a number for the recruitment in Wales and adding in possible Teach First recruitment, the comparison shows the decline in interest in teaching in the secondary sector. The numbers are not matched against perceived need as defined in the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model but are nevertheless useful in showing the changing interest in teaching. Physical Education and history teaching are more attractive than in 1994-95, although there may have been a more rigorous cap on applications at that time than currently, so there may have been interested applicants that could not be offered places. For that analysis, the percentage of offer to total applicants will need to be investigated.

Maths and English are at similar levels with offer this year to recruitment in 1994-95 and with swap between the removal of Wales recruits and the addition of Teach First to the totals may well be ahead this year of the 1994-95 total.

For the other six subjects in the table, the picture is very different with savage reductions across the languages and for the design, technology and IT areas. Even if Art as a subject was added to the design/technology total that would still leave a significant shortfall this year.

The number for the sciences is an interesting case. In 1994-95 recruitment was to ‘science’ courses. Nowadays, there are separate totals for each science. This shift while welcome in some respects has meant the opportunity to over-recruit in some sciences is more difficult than previously where there are likely to be shortfalls in other science subjects. The move was a good idea but the need for flexibility of recruitment as the year progresses may still be important.

In 1994-95, the employment-based routes were still in their infancy, and university-based courses were the main route into secondary school teaching.

The question for the new government still remains as to how to reverse the trend in recruitment in so many subjects and once again make teaching a career of choice?

Minister’s business experience useful?

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Will schools in financial difficulties receive the Flybe treatment from Kelly Tolhurst MP, the new Minister of State for Education? In her career the Minister has served as a PUS – or first rank of the ministerial ladder – across three departments, plus a couple of months over this summer in the Whip’s Office, where she had previously served in a junior role in 2018. Kelly Tolhurst, MP for Rochester and Strood in Kent is possibly best remembered for being the Minister sent out explain the refusal to bail out the airline Flybe when it ran into turbulent financial conditions at the start of the covid pandemic.

“Unfortunately, in a competitive market, companies do fail, and it is not the role of Government to prop them up.

Given the time of year, the nature of Flybe’s business and fleet, and the routes that it flies, sufficient alternative transport arrangements should be available, either with other airlines or by road and rail.”

Hansard 5th March 2020

Hopefully, the new minister will be more understanding about the financial position of schools as they wrestle with the present financial crisis. As her role at the in the Business Department involved responsibility for small businesses, the MP should be well aware of the challenges that schools will face. As a supporter of the free market, she may well want to see whether the Department is spending its cash wisely on issues such as teacher recruitment and SEND.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the constraints of a national Funding Formula that can be ignored when times are good may also need to be something to be considered, especially the differences between maintained schools and academies when it comes to shifting cash around.

As an MP for Rochester, Kelly Tohurst will know of the stark differences between the town’s schools, where some are comprehensives that are operating alongside selective schools, and will as a businesswomen understand both the costs of re-organising the system nationally to benefit the few rather than the many, and the links between the school system and the need for a modern skilled workforce, something some of her predecessors may have seemed less concerned about.

As in other areas with selective schools, private secondary schools are thin on the ground in the Rochester area of Medway Council and that should be a warning to any government thinking of expanding selective education. The cost to the state of parents switching from private education to state selective schooling should be enough to dissuade any government from taking our school system back to the nineteenth Century as means of creating a twenty first century growth economy.

The Secretary of State should be familiar with issues such as youth offending and the variations between different groups and their schooling. I would hope that this will be a serious consideration for the new residents of Sanctuary Buildings, perhaps more so than under recent inhabitants.

Finally, I would again make my please for Jacob’s Law, whereby children in care are guaranteed a school pace within 14 days of the State taking over parental responsibility. This needs the promised change in the administration of in-year admissions and would befit the education of these children often taken from their families with no say in the matter and dumped in a different part of the country.

Memo to incoming PM

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Despite the record levels of tax receipts, the present economic situation does suggest that genuine economies should be looked for in the public sector. So, here are a few from the school sector that might be worth investigating.

First, sort out the cost of the failed middle tier experiment. Overall, the national leadership costs from academy chains are way too high. This has been recognised in the dreadful Bill working its way through parliament. Maybe there is a need for more than 150 Directors of Children’s Services, but do we need all these additional Chief Officers with their associated costs? Much of the inflated costs stretch back to failure to get grip on Executive Headships by the Labour government under Tony Blair. Sort out the shape of the school system and save money.

Recruiting teachers: axe the DfE jobsite in its present form and put the cost out to tender. As this blog has consistently pointed out, the present DfE site fails on several fronts, and probably isn’t even as cost effective as local authority jobsites.

Encourage central procurement. Delegated budget to schools is a great idea, but so is central purchasing. Do more to facilitate such outcomes across Trusts and local authorities.

Axe the Apprenticeship Levy for small primary schools, or at least reform it so that there can be a benefit. At present it is just a tax on schools.

Dump the tax on Insurance. This would help more than schools, and, at present, taxes the virtuous while encouraging others to avoid protecting themselves and their possessions.

Introduce a fund for investment in renewable energy that schools can use to spread the cost of introducing new energy sources over several years. Target the fund first at small schools in rural areas where the school can act as a community energy hub if the grid fails in a storm or for other reasons.

Regular readers will know my feelings about making use of playgrounds in supporting energy procurement. Where is the research programme

Longer-term, evaluate how teacher preparation programmes can meet the needs of the school sector in the most cost-effective manner, especially as school rolls start to reduce and fewer new teachers may be needed.

Review the National Funding Formula, and whether it meets its aims? In its present form, will it lead to wholesale closure of small schools as unviable financially, and what will be the costs of such closures and who will bear them?

The National Funding formula doesn’t take any account of whether schools can top-up income by lettings; from wealthy parents or by selling resources. As such, it is a crude instrument for school funding and needs a rethink.  Schools in pockets of disadvantage in otherwise wealthy areas are especially vulnerable unless in a MAT that is prepared to switch funds between schools. Much depends upon what the school system is trying to achieve and how the financing can be used to help. Equality based on superficial equal shares of the funds available has its consequences.

So, Prime minister, we need a world-beating school system for all. Over to you.  

Cost savings

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Does your school have a recruitment strategy related to saving money, while still recruiting teachers in the most cost-effective manner?

Perhaps you just employ a firm to do it all for you?

Staff turnover is inevitable, promotions, retirements and a teacher’s partner’s career move all lead to resignations, not to mention time out for maternity leave and other caring roles taken by teachers. So, the first question is – how many resignations were for other reasons, and could they have been prevented?  Of course, you might have made a wrong appointment and be pleased to see the teacher depart, but how hard will they be to replace?

The next question is then: will the recruitment cost of the new teachers exceed the retention cost of keeping the current teacher? The answer might be different as between a teacher or physics and a teacher of history. One is likely to be easy to replace, even for a January appointment, while the other post will aways be both expensive and risky in terms of finding a replacement.

Having identified likely turnover, do you just take out a blanket subscription or look to a plan how to spend the cost of recruitment. There are three main groups of vacancies:

Those vacancies that an advert on the school website and a bit of social media will fill easily.

Those where you might as well employ a specialist recruitment agency on a ‘no appointment no fee’ basis if there is no interest in the job on the school’s website after a couple of days. Schools can be certain that the vacancy will have been noticed and passed onto others. If there isn’t someone in the wings just waiting to teach food technology at your school, then you need help finding a teacher of the subject.

The third group of vacancies are those that fall between these two extremes, where knowing your local and regional market is important in deciding how much to spend on recruitment advertising.

A secondary school with ten vacancies in a year; one straightforward; one really challenging and eight of average challenge might consider that whatever it does it will still have to pay for the search for a teacher for the challenging post, but need not pay for the straightforward to fill post.

The question to ask is ‘how much should our school pay to advertise these average vacancies in the present climate?’ Can there be added benefits such as the management of the process of recruitment as a part of the package? Do you know how many possible candidates any recruiter has for your level of job in your area?

Finally, do you know what the labour market looks like for the period when you will be recruiting? If your recruiter tells you, what is the evidence base that they are using?

If you have read this far, you may know that I am Chair at TeachVac, a job board that from October will charge schools for vacancies based upon how successful the site is in making matches with interested possible applicants. At present there is a £250 offer for unlimited annual matches for secondary schools, and £50 for primary schools regardless of size. There is an alternative pay by match scheme. Check out more at https://www.teachvac.co.uk/misc_public/TeachVac%20Brochure.pdf

London teacher labour market most active

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August was a more active month than normal in the labour market for teachers. Although vacancies in the primary sector were subdued, the secondary sector remained active, with nearly 800 new vacancies published during the month according to TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk

Nearly two thirds of the vacancies, 64%, were posted by located schools in London, the South East and East of England regions, with the remainder of the country accounting for only around a third of vacancies. In some subjects, the percentage was even higher, with 29 out of the 40 posts for teachers of geography listed by schools in these three regions. No such posts were tracked across either the North East or North West regions.

As might be expected, demand for teachers of history during August was limited, with just 14 posts identified. Interestingly, only two of these posts were advertised by schools in London and the three regions of London, the South East and East of England only accounted for 5 of the 14 vacancies.

TeachVac provides a regular monthly newsletter for both schools and teachers. The service is free to teachers, as is the use of the jo board to match teachers to vacancies on a daily basis.

Schools pay a nominal fee of £10 for their newsletter.

From the end of this month, TeachVac will end its free matching service for schools. To cover its operating costs, and ensure that data collection remains of the highest quality, from October schools are being asked to pay £1 for every match made between a teacher and one of their vacancies. There is an annual limit of £500 per secondary school, beyond which point remaining matches in the 12 months are free. For primary schools, the cap is set at £75. This means just 75 matches are required to hit the limit, and all further matches that year are free.

During September, TeachVac has put in place a special offer of £250 for secondary schools and just £50 for primary schools: effectively, half-price for an annual subscription regardless of the annual number of matches made during the year.

To date, in 2022, TeachVac has made 1.95 million matches between jobseekers and schools with vacancies, covering both state-funded and private schools across England. By the end of September, the 2 million matches mark will have been passed.

Schools, MATs, diocese and other groups signing up now at enquiries@teachvac.co.uk will always be placed at or near the top of the daily matching algorithm, ensuring teachers see their vacancies first. This is an added bonus on top of the half-price offer.

If you would like more information, either email enquiries@teachvac.co.uk or send me a message via the comment section.

Please circulate this post to those responsible for recruitment in schools. Sign up in September for a half-price fixed fee. If you need convincing, ask TeachVac how many matches have been made in 2022 for your school or group of schools using the email address above and the code MATCH22.

Marketing schools: value for money?

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Can we afford to spend millions on marketing schools to parents in the present cost of living crisis? Mrs Thatcher has been credited with creating a need for school marketing by introducing the concept of ‘parental choice’ into schooling after winning the 1979 general election. However, even before her victory in 1979, some schools were already seeing the need to compete for pupils during a period when the numbers transferring to secondary schools in some areas were already in decline.

I seem to recall that before I left Haringey in 1979, at least one school in Tottenham had already produced a colour brochure extolling its virtues to parents. By the mid-1980s, the idea of choice and marketing to encourage parents to select schools was already sufficiently acceptable for a publisher to ask me to put together ‘The Parents’ Guide to Secondary Schools in London’s Commuterland’ (ISBN 978-0333404447 but long out of print). By the 1990s, one of my students at Brookes University was writing a research article entitled: The School Brochure: A Marketing Tool? (Educational Management & Administration, v23 n2 p89-95 Apr 1995) and presenting a paper at a BERA conference, before going on to a distinguished career in higher education.

Now at that time I seem to recall that the definition of marketing was something along the lines of: “to seek, sense and satisfy, needs, wants and aspirations, within a legal, ethical and financial framework.”

After more than forty years of marketing schools, this summer’s examination results have highlighted the gap that still remains between examination outcomes, both across the country and between schools. So, has the money spent on marketing parental choice made schooling better or worse than before, and, more importantly, can we afford the cost to society?

It is interesting, within the definition quoted above, what schools don’t tell parents. Most, for instance, don’t mention the qualifications of their staff to teach the age group or the subject and how they have kept up to date with changing teaching and assessment, preferring to rely upon Ofsted while at the same time complaining loudly about the methods of assessing schools.

The head of the secondary school in Rutland that refused to join in the annual exam results ritual.  Uppingham Community College chose not to publish GCSE headline figures due to there not being ‘a level playing field in education’. Rutland achieves best GCSE results in England (stamfordmercury.co.uk) may be an outlier, but might this mark the start of a trend?

With the in-coming government likely to need to make savings, is marketing state schools an area where some limits should be placed on the amount that state-schools can spend on marketing each year?

After all, the Conservative government has been happy to introduce regulations on school uniforms – see earlier post on the topic – and on recruitment costs, by its free job board. However, the latter doesn’t seem to have reduced the spending in that area very much. Perhaps, because there are not enough teachers to go around.

Might the teacher associations be persuaded to back any curb on marketing if is could be shown that the savings could be applied to fund the inevitable pay rise that must surely come at some point if inflation continues out of control.

In recent years, I have wondered whether parental choice and the associated spending on marketing allowed government to avoid the issue of providing a first-class education for every child? As a result, spending money on marketing seems worth a debate in the present economic climate.

Bring Back Circular 1 each year?

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Recently, I wrote a post about a Schoolsweek’s story about the DfE and the need to manage ‘sufficiency’ ITT review: DfE forms ‘sufficiency’ group amid places fears (schoolsweek.co.uk) by creating a new group than most people either didn’t seem to be aware of or didn’t know who comprised the membership. ITT places need a review: but not behind closed doors | John Howson (wordpress.com)

Anyway, I was thinking about what the Group might consider if its aim is to ensure that as many schools as possible are able to recruit the most appropriately qualified teachers to fill their vacancies.

Of course, apart from cutting the numbers of trainees to keep them in line with the predictions from the Teacher Supply Model, the Group could decide to do nothing, and just let the current market-based system continue with vacancies advertised, and teachers applying and the private sector making £40,000,000 or more per year from recruitment. (n.b. I am Chair at TeachVac, the job board).

At the other end of the intervention spectrum, the DfE could follow the actions of their predecessors in the Ministry of Education and return to publishing circular 1. This told local authorities each year how many new entrants from training they could employ. If they wanted more teachers, then there were either returners or teachers moving schools or unqualified staff that could be employed. This draconian approach no doubt worked well in the total planning economy of the immediate post-World War Two years, but probably wouldn’t work now, especially with the disparate system of school governance and the lack of a coherent middle tier in schooling that currently exists across England.

However, a variation on that theme would be to create all teachers as government employees and assign them to schools, as happens in some other countries. My guess is that model won’t work with a government pledged to reduce the civil service by some 90,000 employees.  Creating teachers as civil servants might seem to send out the wrong message about the power of the state.

So how else might the government manage the distribution of the ‘sufficient’ new teachers they are aiming to train to help reduce the inequalities currently in the system? Two possible solutions are, either tighten up on QTS by first making it a requirement for academies to ‘normally’ only hire teachers with QTS, and then segment QTS so it is aligned with the preparation course a person undertakes. This would mean those on primary sector courses would not have QTS to teach in the secondary sector, and visa versa. At present, any teacher with QTS can teach anything to any child at any level. In the secondary sector, QTS might become subject specific.

To deal with ‘shortages’ emergency certification could be provided for a limited period, with CPD to allow for full certification if the teachers was going to be employed teaching in that area permanently. This would also show where shortages were affecting schools and make effective use of the CPD budget.

The other alternative is to expand the Opportunity Area scheme by providing certain schools with additional cash to compete in the market to hire teachers in shortage subjects. However, without caping the spending of other schools, this approach just risks developing a race to see who can pay the most for their teachers. Good news for teachers, especially in shortage subjects, but possibly not the best use of resources.

With a significant number of career changers thinking of teaching as a career, a training salary might be a useful tool ensure these would-be teachers can make the switch into teaching. At the same time, ensuring a job for every successful trainee in the September after their course ends is worth considering. At present, those teachers needed to fill January appointment can find themselves without a job during the autumn term; a waste of talent and a loss of skills. Taking such teachers on as supernumeraries, paid from central funds, on the understanding that they are applying for posts would be worth considering.

Of course, none of these initiatives may be necessary if the recession throws up lots more returners to teaching that are the right mix of skills and in the right locations.  

To make decisions about any such scheme to consider needs high quality up to the minute knowledge of the labour market for teachers and school leaders, as well as the ability to understand the data and its implications. Fortunately, in NfER and our higher education sector, the government has the skills available to it to help answer these questions.

But it could abandon levelling up and just leave it to the market for teachers that is now not local, nor national, but global, in its reach for the high-quality teachers produced through the current teacher preparation system in England.

Batten down the hatches

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The DfE has finally provided the August data on ITT applications. Flagged for the 22nd August publication, the data are now in the public domain. As expected, they make grim reading for anyone at all interested in teacher supply.

At this stage of the year there are two numbers that matter; the absolute number offered a place on a postgraduate ITT course, and how that number relates to the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model (TSM) and its calculation of how many teachers are needed to be trained each year.

First the good news, there are more offers in design and technology than in August last year; nearly 100 more. However, nowhere near enough to meet the probable TSM number, based upon past levels.

Now the bad news. Several subjects are at their lowest level for offers for any year since before the 2013/14 recruitment round. These include:

Languages

Religious Education

Physics

Music

Mathematics

English

Computing

Biology

None of these subjects will recruit enough trainees to meet the likely TSM number.

Physical Education

History

Drama

Will probably recruit enough trainees to meet targets, as should the primary sector, where there are around 12,000 offers. Much depends upon the numbers made offers that fail to turn up when courses commence.

In total, around 24,000 candidates have been recruited, and have either fulfilled all requirements or have ‘conditions pending’. The 13,850 of the 24,000 in the latter category are a worry. There should not be that many at this stage in the cycle. Perhaps course administrators haven’t updated the records during July and August. But it cannot be because candidates are awaiting degree results, so presumably it is either DBS checks or some other administrative issue.

24,000 is still an impressive number, and it should hammer home to Ministers in the new government how important teaching is as a career. With approaching a decade of under-recruitment to training, parts of the school system are now facing serious issues with staffing.

So, how serious is the present situation? In August 2021 there were 46,830 applicants to courses. This August, the number is 38,062. New graduate numbers have dropped from around 14% of the total to 13%, but the decline is greater in percentage terms than the nine per cent overall decline. Teaching is becoming more reliant upon career changers once again.

There have been 5,000 fewer female applicants this year compared with August 2021, and 2,500 fewer men, although the level of applications from men is still higher than it was 30 years ago when applicant numbers struggled to reach the 10,000 level.

While there has been a slight increase in applications for the PG Teaching apprenticeship route into teaching, some other routes are below last year. HE is down from 55,000 to less than 53,000 but SCITT are only marginally down from 15,000 to just over 14,600. The School Direct Salaried route has attracted less than 6,000 applications, compared with some 9,000 last year. With just 760 offers, this route is no longer of any more than passing interest in supplying new teachers to the profession.

If there is another spark of good news it is that applications to courses in London at 27,460 this August are only marginally below the 27,600 recorded last August. Might this be where a significant number of career changers are seeking to enter teaching. Should more ITT places be allocated to the providers with courses in the capital?

This is the last set of data because courses commence in September, and whoever is Secretary of State in September would be well advised to seek an early briefing from the newly appointed SRO for the ITT Reform Project as to how he will ensure sufficient high-quality teachers for all our state-funded schools. The current recruitment campaign isn’t working, and relying upon a recession to make teaching more attractive as a career is akin to crossing your fingers and hoping.

Then end of this cycle of recruitment marks my 35th year of studying trends in teacher recruitment, ever since I was appointed to the leadership team at Oxford Brookes then newly formed School of Education.

The next number that really matters will be the ITT Census, to be published late in the autumn, when the whole reality of the 2023 recruitment round will become apparent to schools.

My advice to schools, don’t wait until then, start planning now for a challenging recruitment round in 2023, whether for January or September appointments.

Leadership turnover and Free School Meals

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Earlier this summer I published a post about vacancies and the Free School Meal percentages of schools. I promised that I would look at headteacher turnover by the percentage of Fee School Meals at those schools advertising for a new headteacher this year.

The data by regions for the period of adverts from 1st January 2022 until last Friday is in the table below

1st JAN TO 19th AUGUST 20220-9.9% on FSM10-19.9% on FSM20%+ on FSM
East Midlands29%32%39%100%
East of England28%40%32%100%
London21%30%50%100%
North East21%25%54%100%
North West30%27%43%100%
South East40%32%28%100%
South West24%43%34%100%
West Midlands24%30%46%100%
Yorkshire & Humber24%27%49%100%
AVERAGE27%32%42%100%
Source: TeachVac

Now this is a crude piece of analysis, as it just takes the school and places it in one of three bands for Free School Meals percentage at the school, as recorded by the DfE. The table also incudes both primary and secondary schools, and also does not distinguish between schools that have only advertised one and those that have advertised more than once. There has been a discussion about trends in re-advertising amongst primary schools using data from one authority in another recent post on this blog.

Anyway, urban areas, not surprisingly, have the highest percentages of schools in the 20% plus grouping, with London having 50% of advertised headships from such schools, compared with 28% of headships in the South East and 32% in the East of England falling in this grouping; both areas with high employment and significant areas of affluence. The South East had the largest percentage of schools in the lowest groups of less than 10% of pupils in the school eligible for Free School Meals. This compared with just 21% in London and the North East regions schools that have advertised for a new headteacher.

If I have time, I will look at both re-advertisements and create a standard number based upon the size of the school roll to consider whether this has any effect. Separating out primary and secondary schools, and perhaps schools of a religious character and other schools might also be interesting.

We can expect the current average of 22.5% of pupils eligible for Free School Meals to increase as any recession bites. How much may depend upon how government help with energy bills is counted in a family income total.