Tag Archives: teachers

School budget under pressure: use TeachVac

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The BBC are running a story today about school budgets being under pressure http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37860682 although I cannot find under link to new evidence to suggest why the story should suddenly have emerged again today. After all, it isn’t news, but maybe the joint NUT/ATL launch of the website on school funding cuts at http://www.schoolcuts.org.uk/#/ is what has prompted the renewed interest in the issue.

As readers will know, I have long worried about the fate of small schools in the tightening funding climate. These schools saw off the Gove decision to remove any block grant that is needed to help with overheads. A straight per pupil formula would wipe out many remaining village schools and also small infant schools in urban areas. Church schools would be especially badly affected.

However, if the teacher associations are serious about the need for more funding they should also be serious about ensuring schools use the cash they already have as cost effectively as possible. What follows is as near as a rant as you will read on this blog so, if that worries you, don’t read on.

More than two years ago I did the round of teacher associations with my concept of the free vacancy matching service for schools based upon the advances in technology. I was listened to politely by all of them, but that was as far as any interest went, despite the fact that I explicitly made it clear that the aim was to save schools money.

Fast forward to November 2016 and TeachVac has been operating on a daily basis for more than two years, matching teachers and vacancies, all for no cost to either the schools or the teachers. Have the developers of TeachVac seen the teacher associations beating a path to their door to see how their members can save on the millions of pounds they spend on recruitment advertising? Well no, not really, although I did have the first meeting instigated by a teacher association on this issue less than two weeks ago. I understand the caution, after all nobody wants to be associated with a shooting star or a one-day wonder, and they have followed Teachvac’s progress through its regular reports to groups such as SATTAG and its evidence to the Select Committee. But, this is such a major drain on some schools budgets that it might have been something where options could have been explored.

The same can be said for the DfE, although they had more justification to say it wasn’t their concern about how schools spent their money, at least until the White Paper in March expressed an opinion that more should be achieved in the recruitment field by government. The NCTL, Education Funding Agency and Regional School Commissioners, as a group, have also seemingly shown no interest in how schools can save money on recruitment. MATs, on the other hand, have recognised the value of a service such as TeachVac and many of the largest ones have signed up.

If budgets really are coming under pressure, then by all means campaign for more money, but also look to use the existing funds as wisely as possible.

Teacher Supply in the news again

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Last week Nick Gibb as Minister for Schools appeared in front of the Education Select Committee. At the weekend the media picked up on a parliamentary question from a Lib Dem MP about teacher retention. The facts in the answer to the PQ probably didn’t reveal anything new, but the figures did create quite a stir, with your truly being quoted yesterday on the BBC new site education page. The key point is the rise in departures of teachers with 3-5 years’ experience of teaching. This seems like a new trend.

However, the data is a ‘lagging’ indicator, as it arrives several years after the event. Nick Gibb talked about another and new ‘lagging’ indicator the DfE has inserted into the School Workforce Census. This is the question about whether a school has advertised a vacancy in the past year. Since the census is taken in November, I assume a school will reply this year with data from the 2015/16 academic year. The data from the census appears in the spring of the following year. By then the main bulk of the next recruitment round is nearly over and the data can only influence what happens the following year. Indeed, as an aid to teacher supply, it might miss decisions on trainee numbers for that autumn and so this year will influence 2017 entry into training and the 2018 recruitment round. As we are in a period of rising rolls, the data will also be lagging behind the growth in pupil numbers and so probably underestimate demand.

As I said, when establishing TeachVac, we need a real-time tracking system for the recruitment scene in schools across both state and private sectors to detect trends as they happen and in time to affect policy decisions that will allow a response to the identified change.

This issue was well demonstrated in the interchanges between the Committee and the Minister at the Select Committee over the issue of regional provision of places. I was interested to hear the Minister say that those that train in the North East might not work there, but offer no evidence to back up his assertion. Some time ago the DfE used to track and publish the data on where trainees studied to become a teacher and where they obtained their first job. It was not encouraging on the issue of mobility between regions and distance they traveled to obtain a teaching post. With significant numbers of career changers among trainees in some regions this isn’t perhaps surprising, but I am not sure the Committee pushed the Minister on that point.

Still, it was good to know that £16 million will go on advertising for trainees this year, some £10 more than last year and money that might otherwise be spent on teaching and learning. Reducing the unnecessary spend on recruitment of those training and already trained might at least release some extra money back into the system at the school level where it is currently spent with agencies and on advertising. TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk cost nothing to use for schools, teachers and trainees and offers a solution for the sector to adopt.

Are Bursaries a waste of money?

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About twenty years ago there used to be something called the Shortage Subject Priority Scheme that was the forerunner of today’s ITT Bursary Scheme.  I recall that the then Treasury civil servants were sceptical of the scheme, claiming that it paid money to many who would have entered teaching anyway and that the marginal gains in recruitment came at a significant price that wasn’t worth paying. Fortunately that argument was dispatched with the counter-view that the cost of not recruiting sufficient teachers was greater in the long run than the expenditure on recruitment initiatives.

Today’s bursaries of up to £25,000, and even higher scholarships of £30,000, are far higher in cash terms than was ever contemplated back in the 1990s teacher supply crisis. Judging by the rates announced recently for next year they are still something of a blunt instrument. Clearly they are useful, but there are two obvious issues. Firstly, how do such high rates translate into discussions about starting salaries art the completion of a preparation course, especially outside London where the potential difference for a Physics PhD or 1st class degree holder is not insignificant? The NCTL should be able to answer that question from the School Workforce Census by looking at the salaries of new entrants to the profession. Linking that data to ITT output data would be even more illustrative of how the market is performing.

The second issue is around the speed of response. To be really responsive the bursary needs to be adjusted in-year when recruitment is slow.  Geography illustrates this point well. Two years ago recruitment into training was sluggish, but it picked up last year and using the UCAS data for 2016 appears to be performing even better this year. We won’t really know whether that is the case until the ITT census in November. Nevertheless, it was a bit of a surprise to see the increase in some bursary levels for the subject. However, it might be associated with the introduction of a scholarship in the subject.

The increase in IT bursary levels in IT and the cut in those for trainees in Biology are less of a surprise in view of their recruitment levels: it will be interesting to see what happens to recruitment in Biology as a result.  It is difficult to assess the upward revision of the bursary for some trainees in English in view of the recruitment controls used this year. This move would suggest that the subject hasn’t fared as well as the imposition of recruitment controls suggested was the case. Again, we shall know more when the ITT census is published. It seems difficult to justify paying some trainees in Classics £25,000 in bursary, but not those in RE. Perhaps the NCTL can offer an explanation?

Of course, the whole bursary package, and the lack of it for some trainees, has to be set against a training landscape where some trainees receive a salary and other benefits, presumably taxable whereas for those on bursaries it can be more tax-efficient from the trainees point of view but doesn’t offer pension contributions. Whether this Smorgasbord of routes and financial incentives for those entering teaching is the means to maximise recruitment or whether a simple salary offer for all trainees, especially with the high conversion rate into the profession, would be a better approach is a subject for debate. Personally, I think it merits some degree of simplification.

 

Small fall in applicant numbers for graduate teacher preparation courses

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Preliminary figures for applicants to postgraduate teacher preparation courses handled through UCAS show a fall in applicants domiciled in England of around 1,000 when compared with September 2015 figures. As a result, the number placed decreased from 21,710 in September 2015 to 21,150 this September. However, the number conditionally placed increased to 4,980 compared with 4,740 in 2015. Overall, this meant the decline was just over 300 in total compared with last year.

As this blog has reported already this year, the main reduction in applicants is among the 22-25 year olds, with part of the decline in applicants from these age groups being masked by an increase in career changers over the age of 30 having applied.

Overall, it looks as if the percentage accepted rose slightly from 62% of applicants to 63% this year. There was a further, albeit small, decline in the number of men applying, from 15,900 in 2015 to 15,570 this year.

London remains the most popular place to become a teacher, despite the additional costs associated with living in the city, with 27,530 applications for courses in London. However, this was down from 29,530 in 2015, whereas applications increased in the North East, East Midlands and in Wales.

Although there were more applicants placed on secondary courses in 2016 compared with 2015, up from 14,600 to 15,750 (including those conditionally placed and holding offers) the number placed on primary courses has fallen by over 1,000 from 12,970 to 11,510. This must be a matter for concern as it may well lead to shortages of new entrants in some areas for primary main scale vacancies in September 2017.

There seems to have been little change in numbers on the the School Direct Salaried route, at around 3,300, possibly because of small fall in applications for this route despite the general increase in applications from older graduates.

As far as individual secondary subjects are concerned, this has been a better year for applications in many subjects than 2015, although the increase has not be universal. The actual outcome won’t be known until the ITT census in November, but on the basis of this UCAS data it appears that the following might be the outcome in relation to the government’s Teacher Supply Model number (minus the Teach First allocation, where applications are not handled by UCAS).

Art & Design – acceptances above 2015, but not likely to be enough to meet the TSM number.

Biology – acceptances above 2015 and should meet TSM number

Business Studies – acceptances above 2015, close to TSM, but the TSM isn’t large enough to meet demand from schools for these teachers.

Chemistry – acceptances above 2015 and should meet TSM number.

IT/computing – acceptances below last year and not enough to meet TSM.

Design & Technology – the position is unclear from the UCAS data but TSM may not be met.

English – acceptances similar to last year and should meet TSM number.

Geography – acceptances above 2015 and should meet TSM number.

History – acceptances above 2015 and should meet TSM number.

Mathematics – acceptances above last year, but probably still not enough to meet the TSM number.

Music – acceptances above 2015 and should meet TSM number.

Physics – acceptances above 2015, but probably still not enough to meet the TSM number.

Physical Education – acceptances below last year due to the effects of the recruitment controls, but should be enough to meet TSM.

Religious Education – acceptances below last year and not enough to meet TSM.

Languages – difficult to determine exact position from the UCAS data, but should easily meet TSM number on the basis of acceptances.

On the basis of the above, we can already express concern about the supply of business studies, design and technology and physics teachers for 2017. Schools needing to look for a teacher of English that aren’t either linked to Teach First or with a School Direct salaried trainee may be potentially facing problems, especially in those areas where there is keen competition for teachers between the private and state sectors.

The government may be able to anticipate the ITT census with a degree of relief this year, assuming that a sufficiently large number of those still shown as conditionally placed actually turned up when courses started. If they didn’t, for whatever reasons, then this relatively optimistic assessment will have proved meaningless.

Teacher Recruitment – The text of a talk to senior leaders in Birmingham

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Earlier today I talked to a workshop for senior school leaders in Birmingham. I have posted the substance of my talk below for anyone interested, whether from Birmingham or elsewhere.

Is there a crisis in teacher recruitment? When I was growing up in the 1950s there was a radio programme called the Brains Trust where one panellist often started his remarks with ‘it all depends upon what you mean by ..’. I guess that is a good starting point here. It all depends upon what you mean by a recruitment crisis.

Since every child must have a teacher for every lesson on the timetable and we don’t send large numbers away untaught, the government is right to say, ‘crisis, what crisis’ in absolute terms. But, dig a little deeper and the certainty of that statement looks a little less secure.

How can we measure the possibility of a crisis?

There are two key indicators;

  • The intake into teacher preparation courses compared with determined need
  • The percentage of pupils or lessons taught by appropriately qualified teachers.

Another indicator, developed by TeachVac, is to consider whether different types of school have different recruitment experiences? Interestingly, the DfE has recently started to look at the evidence on this point in relation to retention and they recently published their first paper looking at the results from the School Workforce Census over the past 5 years.

But, let’s start at the beginning.

The DfE decides on training numbers using the Teacher Supply Model. After years of secrecy, this is now published each year, although not many people seem to make use of it. From the Model’s output the NCTL/DfE allocate places to providers on Teach First, the 2 School Direct routes, on SCITTs and to higher education and other providers.

Each November, the DfE publishes the ITT census that reveals the numbers on preparation courses and hence the likely number of new teachers that will enter the labour market the following year because the vast majority of those training to become teachers in secondary schools are on one-year programmes – Teach First is the main exception and until last year was outwith the TSM calculations.

Thus, intending teachers fall into 2 key groups; firstly, those on programmes where they enter the classroom almost straight away – Teach First and SD salaried – and where many will presumably stay at the school where they are working after completing training, assuming that they stay in teaching.

The remainder of trainees are what might be called the ‘free pool’ of possible new entrants since their preparation course doesn’t tie them in any way to a particular school, although some will be offered a teaching post in the schools where they are placed during their course.

This distinction is important because in some subjects, English is a good example, the difference between the ‘free pool’ and the trainee total number can now be quite significant. The total trainee number in the 2015 census for English was 2,283 trainees, but the free pool – after allowing for non-completers – was just under 1,400 trainees; a difference of around 900. This is a substantial number potentially not available to all schools. After all, schools with trainees outside the ‘free pool’ can also fish in that pool if they need to, but it may be harder for schools that rely on the ’free pool’ to tempt other trainees away to their school from the other routes.

In this way the re-orientation of the teacher preparation market may be having consequences the government has yet to fully understand. We will be discussing the possible apprenticeship model later: but where those numbers come from will affect the size of the ‘free pool’; quite dramatically so if they reduce new entrants in Year 1 of the other routes in some subjects.

So, let’s go back to the beginning again. Is there a recruitment into training crisis?

We can classify secondary subjects into three groups

Those where the national answer is No; PE, history, Art and languages, plus probably the biological sciences are in this group

Those where the answer is YES: design & technology, business studies, physics

Finally, those where there are problems in some years: effectively all other subjects. Based on the 2015 numbers, RE, IT, geography and English fall into that group. Next year, we expect geography and possibly English to be much better placed based on our analysis of applications to train in 2016/17, but it won’t be until the census is published in November that we can be certain of our predictions.

Nevertheless, there will be recruitment issues in 2017 in design & technology, business studies, physics: of that fact we can be pretty sure even now. For some subjects, this will be the 5th year the TSM figure hasn’t been reached.

There isn’t time here to go into how the TSM figure is calculated and why, for instance, in English it under-estimated need for a couple of years and has consistently over-estimated training need in PE in recent years.

So, a quick word about demand. TeachVac receives data about job vacancies from over 3,500 secondary schools every day. It’s a free service to schools, teachers and trainees and schools that directly enter vacancies receive our latest update about the current size of the trainee market.

Because we monitor real vacancies linked to real schools we can drill down to regional data on a daily basis. I can tell you that the West Midlands was 5th in the regional list for vacancies per school.

In Birmingham, between January and the end of August this year, TeachVac has recorded a 30% increase in vacancies compared with the same period in 2015, up from 351 to 456 with all subjects except IT, business studies and art recording either an increase or no change. Although there isn’t time to go into the details, maths and the sciences were the top two recruiting subjects. When I looked last evening, it was still 29% ahead of last year by28th September.

As you would expect, March to May is the peak recruitment season. But it is worth recalling that January 2017 vacancies will need to recruit from the same pool as September vacancies since there are few new trainees entering the market outside of the September starting point. By now most trainees that want a teaching post have found one and schools need to rely more heavily for January on movers, returners and re-entrants to fill basic grade vacancies where there aren’t enough new entrants. The DfE currently suggest between 50-55% of main scale vacancies across a recruitment cycle go to new entrants to teaching in state schools.

Looking at Birmingham schools, using TeachVac data, we could detect a sight tendency for schools with more pupils on Free School Meals as a percentage of the school roll to advertise more vacancies, but we need to do some more work on this issue over a longer-time period and at present we don’t have the funds to do so.

I mentioned at the start a second indicator of the percentage of qualified teachers in each subject. Nationally, these figures are going in the wrong direction, but as QTS allows anyone to teach anything to anyone at any level we don’t know what this actually tells us about the recruitment problem.

To conclude, there is a recruitment issue, it is not universal, but will become worse as pupil numbers increase over the next decade unless the government recruits sufficient teachers into the profession. This is a challenge it has never been able to meet when the wider economy is doing well, especially with the demand for graduates increasing. More graduate level jobs means more pressure on teaching as a career and the recruitment messages have to be better and more sophisticated.

In 1997, I recall launching the TTA’s internet café exhibition stand at a career’s fair in Birmingham putting teaching at the forefront of new technology. If you look at TV advertising today which can you recall of the 2016 campaigns, the Royal Navy, I was born in … but made in the Royal Navy, or the latest train as a teacher campaign?

The fact that there are fewer Royal Navy personnel in total than the number of trainees we need to see enter teacher preparation courses every year for at least the next decade makes you think.

Thank you for listening.

The economic cost of grammar schools

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Much of the Tory argument in favour or a return to a selective school system, with both grammar schools and secondary modern schools – whatever name you give them –  has centred on the  possible social mobility benefits of allowing children good at academic subjects to be socially segregated from their peers at age eleven. Those parents with the money have always been able to achieve this result by opting for private schools.

Now, I cannot oppose private schools, because how you spend your cash is up to you. How the government taxes it is up to the government. But, I do wonder what will be the fate of private day schools under a revamped selective system? Unless the Tories can come up with a regime that allows children from dis-advantaged backgrounds to be selected for grammar schools places the selective schools will become havens for parents that can afford to pay for testing to pass the entrance exams, as happens at present. Using the test of Free School Meals, existing grammar school almost universally do not admit children on free school meals, even allowing for the fact that many selective schools are in areas of relatively low unemployment.

So what happens if parents decide to switch from paying for secondary education to taking advantage of free schooling in grammar schools provided by the state? Well, someone has to pay for the cost of these extra pupils. Might the cost be as much as a billion pounds extra on the education budget once the legislation permitting grammar schools is enacted? After all, I am sure parents will see the economic benefits of not having to pay out school fees and will be pushing for such schools everywhere. It would surely be difficult for the government to win a court case that schooling was still a local service when so many decisions are taken nationally, including who has the right to open a new school and thus to try to deny a demand from a group of parents for a selective school whatever the local community as a whole wants.

Transferring the cost of educating a group of secondary pupils from the private sector to the state might be balanced by an increase in private primary schools just concerned with coaching pupils for entry to grammar schools. I have already alluded to the possible effects on recruitment to teaching in the secondary sector of re-creating a selective system, but it might also affect recruitment to primary school teaching.

There are poor schools in the present system, but the answer is to strive to improve them, as has happened in parts of London and not to turn back the clock to a system that clearly doesn’t work for the benefit of all children.

Perhaps Mrs May sees grammar schools in the same light that Mrs Thatcher saw the sale of council houses, a vote winner for the Tories and hang the consequences for society as a whole. If so, she should test the support through a general election sooner rather than later.

Grammar Schools -percentage of pupils on Free School Meals in rank order from highest % to lowest (from Edubase January 2016)

FSM %
12.4
9.6
8.5
7
6.8
6.3
6
5.8
5.4
5.4
5.4
5.2
5.2
5
5
4.9
4.8
4.5
4.5
4.4
4.3
4.3
4.3
4.3
4.3
4.2
4.2
4.2
4.1
4.1
4
4
4
3.8
3.7
3.7
3.7
3.7
3.6
3.5
3.5
3.5
3.4
3.4
3.2
3.2
3.1
3.1
3
3
2.9
2.9
2.9
2.9
2.9
2.9
2.9
2.9
2.9
2.9
2.8
2.8
2.8
2.8
2.6
2.6
2.6
2.6
2.6
2.5
2.5
2.4
2.4
2.4
2.3
2.3
2.3
2.3
2.3
2.3
2.2
2.2
2.2
2.2
2.1
2.1
2.1
2.1
2.1
2.1
2.1
2.1
2.1
2.1
2.1
2
2
2
2
2
2
1.9
1.9
1.9
1.9
1.9
1.9
1.8
1.8
1.8
1.8
1.8
1.8
1.8
1.7
1.7
1.7
1.7
1.7
1.7
1.6
1.6
1.5
1.5
1.5
1.5
1.4
1.4
1.4
1.4
1.4
1.4
1.4
1.4
1.3
1.3
1.3
1.2
1.2
1.2
1.1
1.1
1.1
1
1
1
0.8
0.8
0.8
0.8
0.8
0.8
0.8
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.6
0.5
0.5
0.3
0.3
0.2
0

 

The responsibility of government

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In a previous post on this blog, I argued that what matters in education is the contract between parents and the State for those families that take up the offer of free schooling. This makes the present debate about selective education very important. I have yet to hear either a Minister or indeed any Tory MP talk about anything other than grammar schools. What is the likely effect of creating more grammar schools for the system as a whole?

Here are some questions to ask supporters of more grammar schools

Which other school systems across the world select at age 11 and are any in the top 10 PISA rankings?

What percentage of pupils should go to grammar schools in any area and is this fixed by pupil numbers or pupil places? This matters in a period of rapidly rising pupil numbers such as we will see over the next decade.

There are a higher proportion of single sex schools amongst grammar schools than secondary schools as a whole. This may be because otherwise girls might take a large proportion of the places available. How would you address this issue?

Until recently, grammar schools received more funding than secondary moderns in many authorities. Age weighted pupil funding and Pupil Premium altered that. Will new grammar schools be funded in the same way as existing schools?

What appends to schools that currently select by aptitude?

Who pays the transport costs in rural areas for pupils going to grammar schools?

With the county council elections along with some other urban areas in 2017 should parental appetite for grammar schools be tested at the ballot box?

Where do UTCs and Studio Schools fit into the new scheme of schools? Isn’t it better to provide specialisms from 14 onwards rather than at age 11?

What responsibility does the government have to all pupils it educates?

How does the government intend to ensure disadvantaged pupils, late developers and pupils with SEN will be able to gain a place at the new selective schools?

Who will bear the cost of setting up any new system?

What will be the effect on teacher supply if some teachers are excluded from teaching a section of the school population?

Why wait until 11 to select, why not do so at the primary school level based on potential?

It goes without saying that this muddled approach to our school system serves nobody very well. What is must not do is put off potential teachers wondering whether to sign-up for a teacher preparation courses starting next year. Indications are that my post of 25th August worrying about 2016 recruitment may have been close to the mark in some subjects and I don’t want 2017 to be even worse.

The government must declare how far we have a national system and how far local areas can still decide their own style of education. Our economy in the 21st century needs an education system fit for purpose note one just for vote winning.

 

 

 

A National Teaching Service?

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How much of the White Paper issued in March is now history? Does a change in government mean a change in policy across the board? Two of the proposals contained in the White Paper were for a National Teaching Service and for the creation of free national vacancy website. Where are we  now with both of these suggestions?

I will confess an interest in that I helped establish TeachVac (www.teachvac.co.uk) as a free national job matching service partly because such a service was missing and because schools were spending ever larger sums on recruitment, in some cases to the detriment of spending on teaching and learning. We are already doing what the White Paper suggested alongside the plethora of different regional and local websites maintained by both local authorities and their commercial brethren. In some cases these sites handle teaching and non-teaching posts together, in others they separate them out and they may or may not include local academies and the various range of free schools.

Teachvac has the added advantage over local authority sites of bringing together both state-funded and private school teaching vacancies in one place. This fact allows a view of the overall demand for teachers. Our analysis suggests that the DfE are better at modelling, through the use of the Teacher Supply Model, the demand in subjects such as mathematics and English than they are in some of the less common subjects such as business studies and in subjects with complex demands for different specialisms, such as in design and technology. However although sometimes the modelling may be accurate, but the lack of recruitment into training then affects the supply that doesn’t meet the modelled need.

A national site like TeachVac allows this kind of discussion in a manner not possible before, when the DfE largely had to rely upon the results from the annual School Workforce Census. While useful in some respects, the census lacks the dynamic up to the minute real-time information of a site such as TeachVac. However, it also allows governments to quite truthfully state an opinion at variance with current outcomes in the labour market. I don’t think that is a good enough reason not to consider the advantages of a national site, especially when one already exists and costs nothing to use.

The other initiative mentioned in the White Paper was the National Teaching Service. This is an attempt to help recruit teachers and middle leaders into underperforming schools that may otherwise struggle to recruit able teachers. The recruits from the first round of the pilot programme should have started work in schools this September. However, the expected tender for the further roll-out of a national programme has not, to my knowledge, yet appeared. The development of this type of service is a complex matter and not one to be rushed, especially as schools are now in many cases free to determine individual terms and conditions of service.

With the postponement of the consultation on the National Funding Formula, it is difficult to see the service making great headway until policy is clearer. The same is true for any similar service to place head teachers in challenging schools. Matching supply and demand by intervening in an open market is possible, but not easy. Some readers will remember the Labour government’s attempt with the Fast Track Scheme that briefly flourished around the time of the millennium.

It will be interesting to see how the DfE, having had the summer to think about these issues, takes them forward this autumn. At TeachVac, www.teachvac.co.uk the staff are happy to talk to officials about our experience.

TeachSted launched by TeachVac

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A new service for school facing an Ofsted inspection has been launched by TeachVac. Entitled TeachSted. www.teachsted.com  offers schools, although at present only secondary schools, the opportunity to receive a report about vacancies in the school’s locality or across the local authority they are located within for key curriculum subjects when they are faced with an Ofsted inspection. The report will help schools show they are aware of any recruitment issues locally and provide the evidence about recruitment in the local area when faced with questions about recruitment during an inspection.

Schools can pre-register for the service for a small fee. This means when a report is requested it can be sent to the school within an hour of the request being received.  There is a fee for the generation of the report. Any further reports are issued at a lower cost to the school. Schools not pre-registering may have to wait a little longer for their report to be created.

A sample report is shown below and the report issued to a school is up to date for the current year to the end of the previous working day.

Sample School

Local Authority: Somewhere – could also be for a specified distance around a school rather than a local authority

Below are the number of adverts found by TeachSted in the local authority stated above.

Subject Jan to Aug 2016 Jan to Aug 2015 Calendar Year 2015
Art 3 3 3
Business Studies 2 3 3
Design & Technology 1 6 8
English 5 10 12
Geography 6 5 7
History 4 1 3
IT 1 1 1
Languages 9 12 14
Mathematics 10 15 18
PE 3 1 1
Science 6 14 15

For more details visit www.teachsted.com to find out more details and to register for the service.

Those schools registering will receive registration until 31st December 2017 and access to the one hour report service.

Schools using TeachSted will also receive free use of TeachVac including the monthly newsletter.

Multi-Academy Trusts wanting to register all schools should contact:  enquiries@oxteachserv.com

Come clean on teacher recruitment

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The latest data from UCAS on the numbers recruited to most teacher preparation courses starting over the next few weeks show mixed signals. On the first look at the data https://www.ucas.com/corporate/data-and-analysis/ucas-teacher-training-releases there is support for the conclusions this blog has been publishing over the past couple of months: IT, mathematics, music, physics and Religious Education won’t meet their target as set by the Teacher Supply Model, after the removal of Teach First numbers, but other subjects ought to do so. So, there is nothing new or very surprising in these figures.

However, delve a little deeper and the anxiety of the increase in ‘conditional placed’ numbers over ‘placed’ candidates that this blog has been worrying for the about for the past few months may still be a cause for concern. Take English as an example. Last August, there were 990 placed candidates and also 990 conditional placed candidates. In mid-August 2016, there are 860 ‘placed’ and 1,180 ‘conditional placed’ candidates. That represents a loss of 130 or so (due to rounding we cannot know the exact difference from year to year) in placed candidates, but an increase of 190 in conditional placed applicants. This is all well and good if those conditional placed candidates convert to placed candidates and turn up on the first day of the course. But, why are they still listed as conditional placed as late as mid-August? Is the system of reporting a change of status not working properly? There must be similar concerns about the difference between placed and conditional placed applicants in other subjects, including geography and mathematics.

The difference is even more interesting when the numbers on the different routes into teaching are considered. Higher Education, as expected, has seen a decline of 280 in placed applicants for secondary subjects as places have moved to other routes. However, SCITTS have taken up just 100 of these and the School Direct Fee route only 50. There appear to be 90 fewer School Direct Salaried route ‘placed’ candidates than in mid-August last year. As a result, the fate of the ‘conditional placed’ and the conditions they need to meet before starting their courses will be critical in determining the outcome of this recruitment round and the numbers of new teachers available to schools looking for teaching staff for September 2017. The number ‘holding offers’ and awaiting decisions on places across all routes is basically the same as at this point last year and will make no meaningful difference to the eventual outcome.

The number of men ‘placed’ is also down on last August by some 220, with fewer numbers in the youngest age groups not entirely offset by an increase in men over the age of 30 offered a place. There are more ‘conditional placed’ men in most age groups, with 250 more over the age of thirty. However, total applications from men are down by a couple of hundred.

In November, when the DfE publish their ITT census, these figures will be able to be put into perspective and that will help with interpretation of the same data next year, assuming the rules of the game don’t change in the meantime. we will also be monitoring the effect by tacking vacancies thorugh TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk the free recruitment service for schools,teachers and trainees