Tag Archives: teachers

Not very ambitious

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I understand that the Secretary of State is going to tell the NAHT Conference of another plan for sabbaticals for teachers as part of a retention drive to keep teachers from leaving. Dangling the odd carrot here and there isn’t the same as having a comprehensive policy for the training and development of the teaching profession.

I looked back through this blog and saw what I wrote in a post on the 17th April 2013 – it is still there and readable https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/mrs-thatcher-as-education-secretary/ The post was written following the death of Mrs Thatcher. Her time as Education Secretary, best known for ending school milk also contained the excellent 1972 White Paper from which the following extract is taken:

Teacher Training and Professional Development

The Government propose to work towards the achievement of a graduate teaching profession. During probation teachers should receive the kind of help and support needed to make the induction process both more effective and less daunting than it has been in the past. Also they should be released for not less than one-fifth of their time for in-service training. For the remainder of their time probationer teachers would be serving in schools, but with a somewhat lightened timetable, so that altogether they might be expected to undertake three-quarters of a full teaching load. The Government propose to give effect to the James Committee’s recommendation that teachers should be released for in-service training for periods equivalent to one term in every 7 years of service. It is their aim that a substantial expansion of such training should begin in the school year 1974–75 and should continue progressively so that by 1981 3 per cent of teachers could be released on secondment at any one time. This involves a four-fold increase in present opportunity.

(my emphasis in bold)

Of course apart from the first point it didn’t happen as planned, because the Oil Crisis at the end of 1972 plunged the country into recession and the hamstrung Labour government of 1974-79 wasn’t able to move the ideas forward. But, there were ambitious targets for the whole profession. For much of this century, successive governments have neglected the professional development of the teaching force and much more is need that is currently on offer from Mr Hinds.

I gather that Bath Spa University has also decided to pay a scholarship of £500 to all its students joining teacher preparation courses next September in recognition of the costs of such courses. I applaud this action, but would rather the government returned to a training grant for all postgraduates in training as a teacher. Stand up to the Treasury Mr Hinds and point out that we need teachers and present policies aren’t working. A thriving modern economy depends upon a successful education service and you cannot achieve that end if you fail to recruit enough teachers.

Scap the work on a new vacancy service for teachers and use the cash saved for more support for trainee teachers. Then use the power of the profession and the many organisations within it to create the free service TeachVac has pioneered at no cost to the DfE. That way ‘all could be winners’.

 

More about school funding

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How much more should London schools be paid under the new National Funding Formula to compensate for the higher salaries teachers working in the Capital are paid? Interestingly, that issue didn’t appear to have surfaced during last week debate in the House of Commons on a Labour motion about school funding and the new National Funding Formula. https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-04-25/debates/0A24031C-1B47-47DA-9682-5ED62B7AB09C/SchoolFunding

The salary differential is greatest for new teachers and smallest, at least in percentage terms, for the highest paid head teachers – CEOs of Academy Trusts don’t have a pay scale – although in cash terms the difference greatest for senior middle leaders at the top of their scale.

Sep-17 Rest of England Inner London % diff
Bottom Main Scale  £          22,917  £          28,660 20%
Top Main Scale  £          38,633  £          47,298 18%
TMS + TLR top  £          51,660  £          60,325 14%
L1  £          39,374  £          46,814 16%
l20  £          62,863  £          70,310 11%
L43  £        109,366  £        116,738 6%

Assuming schools spend around 60% of their funds on staff with QTS, plus another significant amount on non-teaching staff, where I assume the differential across the country isn’t significantly different, then how much more should a school in challenging circumstances in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets receive compared with a similar school in South East Oxford? If the differential is significantly more than 20% then one might ask how the different components within the NFF are derived. The additional of floors and ceilings only serve to make matters worse.

The DfE data published in the autumn of 2017 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-funding-formula-tables-for-schools-and-high-needs indicates a much greater than 20% difference between those local authorities with the smallest allocations and the London Boroughs with the largest amounts.

In terms of consequences, there is the issue of funding for small schools that this blog has highlighted before, but also the issue of how much extra schools in pockets of severe deprivation receive within local authorities that are generally regarded as affluent. The issue of the f40 group of authorities and the share of the national cake they receive was aired during the House of Commons debate, but not by any of the six MPs representing Oxfordshire constituencies. As there wasn’t a formal division, we don’t know whether they even attended the debate.

Yesterday, the Oxford Mail has a key article about funding for schools in the county, highlighting the concerns that funds are not sufficient. http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/16192951.SCHOOL_FUNDING__Oxfordshire_parents_battle_for_more_classroom_cash/

Much of Oxfordshire has local elections this Thursday, but I don’t sense that school funding is a big issue on the doorsteps, unlike potholes that seem to be the number one concern in many areas.

However, I am concerned that not enough forward planning is currently being undertaken by either Schools Forum or others to identify the position if current NFF trends continue for the next five How far can schools sustain different changes in pay rates for staff and not fall into deficit? There needs to be a debate about the consequences of the new approach to funding, not just in the short-term, but over the longer time period as well.

 

 

 

Job listings for teachers

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There was an interesting meeting/workshop at the DfE yesterday. The focus was on their embryonic (and expensive to produce) ‘job listing service’, to use its current working title. There were more DfE representatives in the room – were they being paid London salaries – than the whole workforce of TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk that is located on the Isle of Wight. This is surely the sort of project that could have been outsourced to an area of high unemployment to boost a local economy, maybe it is and I am doing the DfE an injustice?

Anyway, private BETA testing is now taking place in part of Cambridgeshire and the North East of England. The aims include providing better data for the DfE. They won’t have any for this recruitment round, so they might like to view this post https://wordpress.com/post/johnohowson.wordpress.com/2542 where I commented on the situation in London.

Those of us attending the event were told not to take photographs of the slides of the entry screens to be used by schools to log jobs. However, anyone that wants to see what the system might look like has only to log on to https://nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/job-profiles/secondary-school-teacher to have some sort of idea of what the site might look like, as the DfE team are using the gov.uk standards and templates from ‘scheme.org’.

In her introduction, the deputy director at the DfE responsible for this work area said the goals included:

  • reducing the time and cost to schools – TeachVac does both of these already and
  • making finding jobs easier – but no evidence was provided as to what was wrong with current job boards and other means of finding vacancies for teaching posts.

However, the Deputy Director did say that job seekers had told them that poor quality listings make finding jobs difficult. I challenged her to publish the evidence on this point, as TeachVac welcomes feedback and the team in Newport want to know if the DfE has evidence from users about TeachVac. Sadly, I didn’t receive an answer to the direct question.

There is a hunger out there for a vacancy listing service from schools and I believe TeachVac offers the best free national vacancy service currently in operation. TeachVac hasn’t required a penny of public money. If you agree there is a need, go to https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/214287 and add your name to the petition. But also go to www.teachvac.co.uk and register as a teacher and make a free search. Then ask yourself what more do I need to know when looking for a teaching post? Let the team know your thoughts.

TeachVac may not look like a wonderful up to the minute site, but it works and you only see the front end screen when you register or change your preferences, so all the investment goes on making the system work for you.

TeachVac is a closed system – you cannot view all the jobs on offer and that is deliberate. No agency can download all the jobs. The risk of the DfE’s ‘open’ system is it provides an incentive for commercial companies to capture applicants – especially new entrants from training – and sell them to schools for a finders’ fee.

An outcome where the DfE destroyed the present market, only to create new commercial opportunities in the recruitment market at even greater cost to schools than the present system would not be a sensible or desirable outcome. But, it is a risk of the present approach using an ‘open’ system.

Is the DfE work value for public money/ That’s for others to judge, but if you haven’t tried TeachVac yet, www.teachvac.co.uk then please do so before making up your mind.

No relief in sight

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Yesterday, I reflected upon the pamphlet by EPI about teacher supply matters. Their suggestion of differential pay for shortage subjects looks even more the wrong solution after looking at today’s data from UCAS. On the basis of applications and offers by mid-April, only physical education, history and possibly geography would probably be excluded from the need for some form of salary increases to aid recruitment and retention if both offers and the identified demand as calculated by the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model are taken into account.

There are at least seven secondary subjects where the April combined total of ‘placed’ students plus those ‘conditionally placed’ and ‘holding an offer’ are the lowest seen for this point in the cycle since well before the 2013/14 cycle, when we still had the former GTTR recruitment system. As that system measured only applicants and not applications, it is something of a challenge to compare back into the period of 2006-08 when applications were last falling, ahead of the recession of 2008 that arrived just too late to help recruitment that year.

There is some good news today, English ‘offers’ are up compared to last year, when numbers were frankly dreadful. However, it looks unlikely that the Teacher Supply Model number will be met this year, thus making recruitment again a challenge for schools in 2019. Biology is doing well for placed applicants, but this may be down to a shift from those just shown under the science heading. Neither Chemistry nor Physics have seen similar increases, with both subjects recording new lows since the 2013/14 recruitment round.

Among the arts subjects, both music and art are faring especially badly this year. The stories about cuts to the arts curriculum may well be deterring possible applicants. The independent sector and schools with an arts focus might want to check with their local providers what is happening in their areas. Seemingly there was no change at all in the aggregate number of ‘placed’, ‘conditionally placed’ and ‘holding offer’ applicants in music between the March and April recording points: an almost unheard of state of affairs for any subject at this point in the recruitment round.

The EPI pamphlet reminded readers that offering places to a greater percentage of applicants was one way to meet the Teacher Supply numbers A quick look at the overall regional totals of offers – it would be helpful if UCAS would publish these separately for primary and secondary programmes by region and by secondary subject – suggests an overall ‘offer’ and ‘placed’ rate of 69%. Allowing for those in the early stages of their applications and those that have withdrawn, this means probably about 70% of applicants overall had had an offer or one sort or another. Interestingly, that percentage falls to just 62% for the London region, but is at 73% of applicants with one sort of offer or another in both the North West and Yorkshire and The Humber Regions.

Younger applicants have a much higher ratio of offers to overall applicant numbers than is the situation for older students – 77% of the 21 and 22 age groups had an offer. This may partly be due to this group applying earlier, so a higher percentage of older applicants may be at an early stage in the application process, while the youngest applicants are now busy with examinations and final degree outcomes. Nevertheless, only 58% of those over 40 have had offers, a difference of 19% with the youngest age groups. For men from the oldest age group of those over 40, only 48% have had an offer. This compares with 80% of women in the 22 or under age group. However, it should be noted that men and women have different offer rates overall.

Clearly, the TV advertising campaign isn’t working this year. Perhaps the pay rise, when announced, will make a difference, but unless something does, the additional secondary pupils in our schools over the next few years are going to find that who will teach some of them will be an interesting question.

 

EPI’s view of teacher labour market

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The Education Policy Institute (EPI) have helpfully pulled a lot of information about teacher supply – some of the data has already appeared on this blog over the past few years – in a new pamphlet. The teacher labour market: a perilous path ahead? https://epi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/EPI-analysis_Teacher-labour-market_2018.pdf

I am not sure that I agree with their conclusions about paying some teachers more than others. However, it is an inevitable solution offered by free market economists, where changing the price offered for labour is the mechanism for dealing with shortages and surpluses. Interestingly, EPI don’t suggest cutting the pay of PE teachers. I assume they believe the millstone of student debt and no guarantee of a teaching post should be enough of a disincentive. However, it would be one way to provide schools with the cash to pay others more.

I assume that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party would eschew the free market approach and go for the alternative strategy of state controlled rationing. Such a strategy was popular after Second World War, when the Ministry of Education used to issue an annual circular telling local authorities how many newly trained teachers they could employ. In those days, the issue of subject expertise was less of a concern as, apart form in the selective and independent sectors, most schools employed class teachers rather than subject specialists.

The problem with the free market approach, as suggested by EPI, is the assumption that teaching can outbid the private sector when it comes to pay. This was presumably also behind the thinking of the Gatsby Foundation paper http://www.gatsby.org.uk/education/latest/examine-pay-of-early-career-shortage-subject-teachers-to-effectively-tackle-retention-in-english-secondary-schools of March this year that said ‘a data simulation to measure what the impact of a 5% pay increase for early years maths and science teachers in England would have been, had it been introduced as policy in 2010. The report reveals such a policy would have eliminated the shortage of science teachers experienced since 2010.’ I wonder whether that would have been the case or whether private sector employers would have matched the pay increases and offered better non-pay conditions of service.

Where EPI is correct is to cite a perilous path ahead for the teacher labour market. Tomorrow should see the latest UCAS data on applications and acceptances for 2018 teacher preparation programmes. I doubt we can expect much good news. As the EPI pamphlet points out, and in doing so reinforces a point made on this blog, ‘there is still a chance training providers will be able to get close to meeting DfE’s recruitment targets, but they might need to accept nearly all applicants.’ As I have said before, what does that mean for the quality of applicants being offered places if almost anyone that applies can be taken onto a teacher preparation course?

Increasing the time spent on sports and PE in our secondary schools and reducing the time on separate sciences taught by specialists before Key Stage 4 might upset some departments in Russell Group universities, but it might also make for a healthier school population. Looking at the curriculum that can be staffed might be a better use of limited resources than trying to decide each year how much to pay teachers with different skills and expertise. But, if the government does go down that path, they might need to pay the highest salaries to teachers of business studies.

 

100 days and counting

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Mr Hinds has now been in post as Secretary of State of Education just beyond the 100 day point, regarded as the first milestone for a politician by many commentators. During the same period in 2010 Michael Gove had already achieved the passing of the infamous 2010 Academies Act, despite having had to wait for the creation of the Coalition. However much many of us dislike its contents, and the subsequent effect on schooling in England, one must admire the political foresight of Mr Gove and his team of advisers.

As with all Mr Gove’s successors, there has been little sign of the same degree of ambition from the present incumbent of the office at Sanctuary Buildings. Now it is true that a minority government is in an even weaker position with regard to legislation than even a coalition. However, one of Michael Gove’s first acts at Defra this January was to attend both the Oxford Farming Conference and it alternative unofficial counterpart down the road. In doing so, he was making a clear political statement.

So, what has been achieved in the first 100 days by the Secretary of State for Education? Judging by Mr Hind’s speech to the ASCL Conference in March, it is more a matter of emphasis and a nudge here and there, than dealing with the big picture issues. A pause on changes in assessment and testing; more emphasis on reducing workload to calm down the teaching profession and a nod to the importance of technology. A sort of steady as you go regime.

So, what’s still in the Secretary of State’s in-tray? School funding hasn’t gone away as an issue, although it doesn’t seem to be playing very big in local elections across England. Parents haven’t yet seen the real effects of tightening budget. The fact that two of the three remaining maintained secondary schools in Oxfordshire had deficits of more than £1 million each at the end of 2017-18 financial years tells of pain yet to come. School Funding could be a big issue for Whitehall if teachers’ pay increases this year are more than was estimated by the Treasury in its school funding models.

Such an increase seems likely, since the Secretary of State hasn’t managed to tackle the issue of providing an adequate supply of teachers and stemming the outflow of those already in the profession. National teacher shortages are always seen as the responsibility of the government at Westminster, and 2018 is still not looking very healthy on the recruitment into training front. Failure to recruit trainees will impact in 2019 on the ability of schools to recruit new teachers and allows plenty of time for profession to mount any number of campaigns. The joint letter from a number of organisations sent to Mr Hinds earlier this week may be just the first in a veritable salvo of concern about this issue.

For me, the Secretary of State could make his name by regularising the parallel systems of governance between locally overseen maintained schools and nationally managed academies. Although not exactly the same situation, Mr Hinds may recognise, coming from a hospitality industry background that the 2003 Licensing Act did away with the dual system of liquor licences being issued by Magistrates’ Court and entertainment licences by local authorities. Our dual governance system for schools is a mess and, as I have said before, doesn’t help some of our most vulnerable young people such as children taken into care that need a place in a different school.

But then, a concern with social mobility also didn’t seem to feature large in Mr Hind’s first 100 days.

AI and education – The view of the House of Lords Committee

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The section on education in the recent House of Lords Report on Artificial Intelligence (AI) was one of the more confusing sections in terms of understanding exactly what was being suggested as the way forward. You can read the Report, published earlier this week, at: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldai/100/10010.htm#_idTextAnchor094

Not surprisingly, industry representatives told the Committee how badly prepared young people were in this country and more needed to be achieved lest we fall further behind. Then, there was the counter argument about not cutting other subjects to make time for developing these new skills and knowledge. If you want creative industries then you need to include creative subjects in the curriculum not to relegate them to some cultural backwater and just treated by schools as an afterthought.

The Committee heard that there is the downside of our modern digital world, once it was the bad effects of posters and newspaper adverts and video nasties on children, now it is reduced attention spans, shallower cognitive capabilities and experience a loss of identity as a result of time online and using social media. One witness warned the Committee, “that the idealised world represented on social media “leads to many illnesses including eating disorders … and serious mental illnesses”.   The implication being that schools must put in place strategies to prevent such outcomes among future generations exposed to the perils of the modern world.

The Committee recognised that the 2014 change to the curriculum on IT in schools across England needed time to take effect. However, the removal of any consideration of moral and ethical issues to do with social media and digital technology from the curriculum was regretted by some witnesses; no doubt more so over recent weeks as the various concerns over social media and the handling of personal data have emerged. Personally, I think the downgrading of Religious Education at examination level, where there was a real opportunity to discuss issues of ethic, morality and philosophy, by excluding the subject from the EBacc was a mistake.

The Committee went on to welcome the projects outlined in last autumn’s budget for more computer science teachers and the establishment of a National Centre for Computing with industry to produce training material and support schools with the teaching of computer science. But, they didn’t really seem to probe very deeply on what is actually happening on the ground in our schools. IT and computer science teacher vacancies remain at the lower end of range seen over the past four recruitment cycles according to TeachVac’s data http://www.teachvac.co.uk; so perhaps those already in post are staying put and there aren’t large numbers of new posts being created. Whether there would be jobs for 8,000 extra teachers by the end of this parliament as envisaged in the budget seems highly unlikely.

As I wrote in my blog post when the number was leaked the weekend before the budget:

If the 8,000 number does make it into the budget, then so as not to look as if the Treasury doesn’t talk to the DfE there will have to be some form of explanation. Personally, I would add 10% to the Teacher Supply Model and split the rest between for professional development for existing teachers: spending 40% on those on professional development for secondary school teachers already teaching computer science and not fully qualified; 40% for lead teachers in the primary schools, starting with a programme for MATs and dioceses and the allocated the remaining 20% for programmes for teachers of other subjects to embed areas such as geographical information and other subject-related techniques into curriculum development. I might keep a small pot of cash back for new methods of preparing teachers that don’t rely upon face to face contact.

Finally, the Committee said: “the Government should explore ways in which the education sector, at every level, can play a role in translating the benefits of AI into a more productive and equitable economy.”

You try and work out what that really means.

Few teachers from ethnic minorities outside London

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According to the School Workforce Survey, in November 2016, just over half of the secondary classroom teachers in London schools were from ethnic minorities. This compared with just five per cent of classroom teachers in the North East of England.

The percentage of teachers from ethnic minorities in London secondary schools only changed marginally between 2010 and 2016, increasing from 52% to 53%, whereas in Inner London primary schools the percentage, although lower, had increased from 40% to 44%. In the North East, the percentages had stayed the same at 5% in secondary sector and just two per cent in the primary sector.  The data comes from the tables in the DfE’s new leadership study discussed in the previous post on this blog. The data reveals the gulf in employment of teachers from ethnic minorities in the different regions of England.

Senior leaders and head teachers from ethnic minority backgrounds are still relatively rare in schools outside of London and parts of the West Midlands. What this study doesn’t highlight is the difficulties some ethnic minority candidates have in even entering the teaching profession in the first place. The now departed NCTL undertook a number of different studies identifying this problem and it is to be hoped that the data from those studies won’t just disappear from sight along with the NCTL.

There is some encouraging data from this DfE study, showing that in 2016 more ethnic minorities were appointed as a percentage than in 2010, except for primary classroom teachers, where the percentage ‘new to post’ remained the same at 12% in both years even though the total stock increased by two per cent over the period to 14%. The percentage of primary places on teacher preparation courses being offered to ethnic minority candidates bears further examination, since many courses are in areas where few such candidates may be applying putting greater pressure on a relatively small number of courses. Such an arrangement can produce a ceiling for the number of ethnic minority candidates that can be accepted if applicants are not spread around the country more widely.

Women continued to make headway in the secondary sector between 2010 and 2016, taking a great percentage of all post up to headships, where there was no change, with a disappointing low figure of 38% in both years. However, in the primary sector the picture was almost exactly the opposite, with women taking a lower percentage of posts in 2016 than in 2010 up to deputy head level. There was a slight increase in the percentage of both deputy and heads that were women in the primary sector between 2010 and 2016, to 80% and 73% respectively.

Not surprisingly, as the retirement boom ran its course, the result was a younger teaching force at all levels by 2016, although, as pointed out in the previous blog post, the length of time required to become a head teacher didn’t decline in the same way as it did between 2010 and 2016 for other promoted and leadership posts.

 

 

 

Leadership trends for schools across England: A DfE Report

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The DfE has today published an important new piece of research about the school workforce, concentrating mainly on observations about Leadership roles. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-leadership-2010-to-2016-characteristics-and-trends

As a purist, I cannot get my head around the use of headteacher rather than head teacher but, apart from that grumble, there is much to welcome in this study. In my ways it fills in the gaps since the end of my annual reports for the NAHT (nd from time to time ASCL as well) that appeared between the late 1990s and 2012.

As these are no longer available to open view on the NAHT web site, I have reproduced the key issues from the 18th Report, and last in the series, at the end of this blog. This is because the DfE report, authoritative as it is, doesn’t then move to discuss in detail some of the potential policy implications arising from their findings. To provide one such example. If it takes a teacher potentially 16 years to become a secondary head teacher, then what are the implications for promotion possibilities for mature entrants with career experience outside of teaching? A use of the Sankey diagrams by age group of entrants to the profession might help answer this question.

The DfE Report also compliments TeachVac’s analysis of leadership vacancies during 2017 in the primary sector across England issued this January, and still available on request from enquiries@oxteachserv.com

The DfE Report comments that teachers with a senior leadership role (headteacher, deputy or assistant headteacher) form a small proportion of the overall teaching population, smaller in secondary (10.8%) than primary (18.5%) schools, which has grown since 2010 (up from 9.7% and 18.1% respectively). This growth was mainly in assistant heads, which have increased from 3.5% to 5.2% of teachers in primary schools and 5.6% to 6.5% in secondary schools between 2010 and 2016.

However, there are a greater percentage of classroom teachers in primary schools than secondary schools. This means fewer teacher in the primary sector have posts with salary additions due to additional responsibilities than in the secondary sector. This is the result of the subject related nature of teaching in secondary schools since the development of the comprehensive school model in the 1960s and 1970s replaced the class teacher model previously used in the secondary modern schools, and the elementary school sector before the 1944 Education Act. Such a divergence of staffing models is still reflected today in the formation of principles behind the DfE’s Common Funding Formula.

Those with an interest in school leadership will find both the report and the accompanying tables repay detailed study. I look forward to reading updates over the next few years. However, they will need to bear in mind the important change in the secondary sector during the period of the DfE’s analysis in relation to the creation of academies and the implications for issues such as the retention of school leaders.

Extract from: The Staete of the Leadership Market for Senior Staff in Schools 2011/12

18th Report issues – September 2012

By Prof John Howson & Dr Almut Sprigade

Each year this survey provides a dynamic picture of the state of the labour market for senior staff appointments on the Leadership Scale in publically funded schools. It complements the picture provided by the School Workforce Survey that allows an understanding of the state of the labour market for a particular date in November.

The most important questions that this survey addresses are; what are the trends in the demand for senior staff, and is the market able to meet them, both now and in the foreseeable future? Of course, even within the three different grades of head, deputy and assistant head associated with the Leadership Scale there are many different sub-markets associated with geography, type of school, phase of education and source of public funding.

The school sector is undergoing a period of significant change, especially in its governance, and such moves may affect the labour market, especially during any period when existing schools seek to change their status. This may, for example, have affected the number of deputy and assistant head posts advertised by secondary schools during the period when they converted to academy status. It is difficult to see why otherwise during a period of declining pupil numbers there should have been an increase in deputy head vacancies.

The key issue during recent years has been the effect of retirements on the labour market. Once again, this year, retirements have been the dominant reason for headship vacancies and a significant reason in the vacancies for both deputy and assistant headships. However, it seems likely that the peak year for retirements has now been passed, and that whilst remaining at a high level they may decline over the next few years. This assumption is based on the continuation of an orderly market with no sudden upturn, perhaps due to an unpredicted change in pay, pension or conditions of service.

According to the School Workforce Survey conducted in 2011 (DfE, 2012) there were just fewer than 4,000 primary heads in the 55-59 age group, along with 878 secondary heads, and 299 special school heads, making a total of around 5,200 head teacher likely to retire within the next five years. Assuming there is an equal distribution across the age range that equates to around 1,040 departures each year for each of the next five years. To this figure must be added a number of early retirements, say around a third of turnover if the figures in this report can be grossed up for the market as a whole. That would add somewhere around 900 departures to the total, providing for around 2,000 of the total of 2,678 recorded advertisements this year. This would represent some 75% of current turnover compared with just less than 70% recorded in this survey in the current year. However, if any of those in the ‘other category’ were actually retirements, then the difference might be smaller. On a worst case scenario of high early retirement plus expected levels of age-related retirement the turnover of head teachers might be expected to be around the level seen in 2010-11. Now that the abolition of the mandatory NPQH has widened the pool of eligible candidates, the question is whether the supply side can provide enough candidates considered as suitably qualified by governing bodies and whether there is sufficient appetite for the role from those candidates?

The evidence of application levels from this survey suggests that in schools that are neither at the extremes of the pupil number ranges nor associated with certain other characteristics, such as being a Roman Catholic school, the demand for the post of head teacher is sufficient to ensure most schools that advertise at the appropriate time will be able to make an appointment. However, the supply for certain more specialist segments of the market may be less secure. The fate of Roman Catholic schools, where recruitment has been an issue for most of the past two decades, shows that schools do eventually make an appointment. Evidence of how they perform during any interregnum and whether the appointment of a temporary head teacher can affect short-term performance might be worth investigating further.

It may, of course, be that the current wage freeze on teachers’ pay is spurring interest in leadership posts since promotion offers one way for a teacher to increase their salary when there are no cost of living increases. However, if that is the case with relation to applicants, it does not seem to have been the case with appointments, where a minimum period of service appears to be seen as relevant to an appointment as it ever was; more than five years’ service being required for an assistant headship; 10-15 years for a deputy headship; and more than 15 years for a headship. The age at which mature entrants to the profession reach this length of service may affect their chances of promotion, especially if they do not reach 15 years of service before the age of 45.

Although the number of returns from schools in the London area was below average there was some evidence that these schools were finding some difficulty in filling leadership posts, and especially for the more junior or more specialised vacancies.

The increase in advertised deputy posts in the secondary sector should mean that the supply of deputies will remain adequate even if vacancies for headships remain above the longer-term average. However, there were little more than 1,200 primary deputy posts advertised during 2011-12 compared with just over 2,000 headship advertisements. As 40% of headship appointments went to deputy head teachers, this suggests a demand for around 800 deputy head moving into headship each year or three quarters of new deputy head appointments. The position is further complicated by the fact that most appointments are probably from candidates who do not relocate when taking up a headship. This means that there needs to be a sufficient spread of candidates across the country.

The percentage of women being appointed to headships in the secondary sector does not yet reflect the percentage of female teachers working in secondary schools, and it would be helpful to establish whether or not women have the same success rate at interview as their male counterparts. A similar exercise for ethnic minority candidates might also be useful, especially now that the benchmark of the NPQH has been removed.

As has already been mentioned, Roman Catholic schools continue to find appointments more challenging than do other schools, with fewer applicants and smaller shortlists. Neither is per se a bad thing, but if they result in more unfilled vacancies then the process for schools is both more expensive and time consuming, and potentially unsettling.

There have always been fewer problems recruiting deputy and assistant head teachers than in recruiting head teachers and, generally, that has been the picture again this year although some primary schools appeared to have found difficulty in appointing an assistant head, and this may need further investigation as to the type and location of schools facing problems.

Overall, 2011-12 was another year in which the demands of the labour market were generally able to be satisfied by the supply of candidates putting themselves forward to fill the vacancies on offer. However, it is worth noting that a small number of schools that failed to appoint after a first advertisement continued to face problems when re-advertising their vacancies. If they are located in areas where support for the middle tier is now weak it is not clear what help would be available to them. As more schools become academies this may become more of an issue until a governance structure is worked out for schools.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is London leading the teacher job market in 2018?

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Will the STRB have to take a long hard look at where teachers are needed when deciding how to make the pay award this year? I ask this question because TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk, the free to use recruitment site that matches vacancies for teachers with applicants, where I am the Chair, can reveal the importance of London in the teacher job market during the first quarter of 2018.

According to DfE statistics, in January 2017, London schools taught some 16% of the nation’s children educated in state-funded schools. The assumption might be that these schools might require a similar proportion of the nation’s teachers.

There are several challenges to this assumption. Firstly, more teachers may be required because pupil rolls are rising faster in London that elsewhere in the country, especially in the secondary sector. Secondly, London, as a region, educates more children in independent schools than other regions. While London accounts for some 16% of children in state-funded schools, it accounts for 26% of those educated privately in recognised independent schools. As such schools generally have smaller classes and larger numbers of post-16 pupils than many comprehensive schools, their presence will probably increase the demand for teachers needed to work in London. TeachVac handles vacancies from both state and private schools. Thirdly, teachers in London may be more prone to either move around or move out of teaching: including going to teach overseas.

So what did TeachVac find during the first quarter of 2018?

Recorded main scale vacancies placed by secondary schools January – end of March 2018

London England % Vacancies in London
Business 110 355 31%
Music 68 244 28%
RE 75 301 25%
Social Sciences 55 227 24%
Geography 142 595 24%
PE 87 382 23%
Science 500 2229 22%
History 92 412 22%
IT 75 358 21%
Languages 195 936 21%
Art 54 278 19%
Total 2379 12423 19%
Mathematics 318 1813 18%
English 274 1566 17%
Design & Technology 62 454 14%
Humanities 16 129 12%

Source TeachVac.co.uk

As far as the levels of vacancies for main scale teaching posts in the secondary sector are concerned, London schools seem to be advertising more vacancies than might be expected, even allowing for the higher than average number of pupils in private sector schools.

The most interesting feature of the table is how it is the smaller subjects where the relative demand is highest in London. In English and mathematics, London’s share of the national vacancy total is possibly even below what might be expected, given the percentage of pupils in the private sector. I think this may be explained by the significant presence of Teach First in London schools and the importance of both these subjects to the Teach First programme. On the other hand, the subjects at the top of the table mostly do not feature so prominently in the Teach First programme: perhaps they should.

April is the key month for recruitment at this grade, and TeachVac has already experienced a bumper start to the post-Easter period, even though many schools are officially on holiday. TeachVac can link every vacancy on its site to a job posted by a school. The TeachVac site contains no vacancies from agencies or other sources, a factor, as the Migration Advisory Committee found some years ago, resulting in an inflation of the figures to a point where they can become almost meaningless. As a ‘closed site’ that only sends jobs to registered applicants TeachVac also cannot be browsed by those wanting to extract a finder fee from schools.

Finally, it seems as if the DfE may launch a trial of their own service later this month. do test TeachVac at the same time and with the same parameters and let me know how TeachVac measures up to the DfE’s millions of pounds of expenditure on the project?