Tag Archives: teachers

Management Information and Statistics

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The session of the Education Select Committee held this morning was an interesting one. Clearly, the mention of TeachVac www.teachvac.com  as a data source in both a question and answer will help draw attention to the team’s  aim of creating a free vacancy web site for schools that helps free-up cash for teaching and learning. To that end, the TeachVac team are delighted with early take-up of the new free Vacancy Portal announced last Friday (see earlier post). This is especially useful to primary schools that have no place on their school web site to list any vacancies.

However, to return to the issue behind the title of this post, the difference between management information and statistics. The DfE is very good at collecting statistics and there was much discussion among the witnesses at the Select Committee about the data in the School Workforce Census, completed every November by all schools. Much of it is available to everyone and the 2015 data should be published next month. However, the data down to individual teacher level is rightly only available to bone fide researchers. By its very nature this data is of historical interest in terms of the labour market because, by the time it is published, schools are well into a further recruitment round. By comparison, management information seeks to identify what is happening in the here and know. For example, it is useful for shops to know what they sold a year ago, but to reorder they need to know what is happening to sales now. Most have sophisticated point off sale information systems.

Now, if the labour market for teachers is stable from year to year using statistics to help decide how many teachers to train next year is fine. It doesn’t matter if the data is out of date so long as it is accurate. But, if the market is changing, it might help to know what is happening in the current recruitment round. Hence my question in yesterday’s post about the business studies and PE trainee numbers providing a shortage and an over-supply. You cannot easily aswer those questions from the Workforce Census data, but you could from the ITT destinations data. Joining up the information still seems to be something of an issue between different parts of the DfE.

Without the data, you often don’t know the questions to ask. It wasn’t until I started monitoring leadership vacancies that I discovered the difference in re-advertisement rates between Roman Catholic schools and community schools. Similarly, TeachVac has brought into sharp focus the regional differences in adverts placed per school during the recruitment round. Turnover could be deduced from the Workforce Census, but did anyone every bother to do so and then match need to regional allocations even though, as the witnesses accepted this morning, much of the teacher supply market is very local in nature. Incidentally, I don’t think head of department posts are a sub-regional market, but are mostly constrained within a travel to work area. It is only for leadership vacancies at the more senior levels that I think significant numbers of teachers are prepared for the upheaval of a house move.

So, both statistics and management information have their place and their uses. It just seems to me we have lots of the former but not enough of the latter in education.

Recruitment round enters final stage

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The end of May marks the traditional climax of the recruitment round for September appointments in schools. From this point onwards most existing teachers cannot change jobs for September. As a result schools must rely on the remaining trainees, returners and overseas teachers to fill any vacancies still remaining.

At TeachVac, the free recruitment site that is used by an increasing number of schools, teachers and trainees, we have been busy computing the results of the recruitment round so far in 2016 compared with last year.

Secondary schools that post vacancies receive the latest information about the market in that subject every time they post a main scale vacancy. They also receive monthly updates of the overall position in the newsletter posted on the TeachVac website. There is a similar newsletter for teachers.

The more detailed summer review is now being written and will appear by the end of June. It will summarise both our view of the recruitment round to date; prospects for the autumn term and the latest analysis of recruitment into training that will allow early predictions to be made about the recruitment round for September 2018 and January 2018.

TeachVac has always recognised that many primary schools don’t recruit often enough to make it worthwhile having a vacancy page on their website. For that reason TeachVac are launching a vacancy portal that will allow primary schools to use a school specific page within the TeachVac site on which to place their vacancies when they do arise. Simple to use, it will like the other key TeachVac services be free to schools and will provide interested teachers with a link to the school for more information.

At TeachVac we don’t see why anyone should pay for recruitment unless it is absolutely necessary. The basic service should be free. The DfE accepted this view in the recent White Paper, but we still have to see whether they will accept what is already provided in the market or spend public money creating a new system of their own?

Despite the stories of budget cuts and redundancies, TeachVac has recorded more adverts for main scale teachers so far in 2016 than in the first five months of 2015. Some of the vacancies reported early in the year may have been as a result of schools being unable to fill vacancies for January with appropriately qualified teachers. However, it is noticeable that vacancies advertised during May were little changed to the numbers advertised last year, especially the case in subjects where schools might struggle to find a teacher.

Location undoubtedly matters. There are large differences between parts of the north of England and London and the Home Counties in the average number of vacancies advertised per school. These regional differences really do mean that not taking location into account when allocating teacher preparation places can affect some schools’ chances of recruiting appropriately qualified staff with high quality subject knowledge.

 

 

 

Teaching attracts career changers

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The data provided today by UCAS about the state of play with applications to the graduate teacher training programmes administered through them provides mixed messages. On the one hand, applications overall continue their upward trend: good news. On the other hand, young graduates, and especially young men, seem to be avoiding teaching as a career. There is a loss of 320 men under the age of 30 compared with the same point last year. However, that is more than compensated for by 420 more men over the age of thirty than applied last year, including 270 in their 40s or 50s., for a net gain of 150, or about 1.5% more than last year. We don’t know how these extra men are split between those applying for primary and secondary courses as that information isn’t provided.

The pattern for women is very similar to that for men, except that it is only the 22 and 23 year olds that are applying in smaller numbers than last year and then only by 180 overall. However, 770, of the just over 800 more applicants than last year, are in their 30s or 40s. The total increase is in the order of four per cent compared with last year.

With a greater number of older applicants than last year, it might be expected that those unconditionally accepted, or ‘placed’ to use the UCAS terminology, would be higher than last year. However, that isn’t the case. ‘Placed’ applicants are 320 down on the 3,340 recorded at this stage last year. There are also fewer holding interview requests and awaiting a provider offer. The good news is that the number of ‘conditional placed’ applicants is up from 19,420 to 22,590, a net gain of 3,150 applicants. I am sure everyone will hope that these applicants can meet the requirements over the next months and move from the ‘conditional placed’ to the ‘placed’ columns of the spreadsheet.

Although the numbers are small, there are fewer ‘placed’ candidates than last year in London, the South East and the South West regions, although all these regions have more ‘conditional placed’ applicants than last year.

In some subjects it is impossible to tell from the published figures how recruitment is faring compared to last year. However, it looks likely that mathematics won’t meet the required target number again this year unless there is a late surge in applicants. The same is true for computing and business studies. After a bad year last year, geography appears to be doing better this year, as is Religious Education. PE and history will rely upon retaining all their applicants with further recruitment closed.

Older applicants are more likely to be limited in where they will seek a job at the end of their training and once courses start it would be helpful to schools to know the age breakdown of applicants in their region or locality. It is also important to know whether more applicants are not lasting the course since the number of withdrawn applications is also up this year.

 

Experience matters

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Experienced teachers are more effective than those who are in the first few years of their careers and teachers in the most advantaged fifth of schools have an average of nearly one and a half years more experience than those in the least advantaged, according to initial findings from a research project by the University of Cambridge, presented to a Sutton Trust conference in London recently. http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/best-in-class-summit/

Now, there’s a surprise: experience matters as much in teaching as in any other walk of life. Actually, it is good to have this fact confirmed from time to time. What matters with this research is if inexperienced teachers end up in more challenging schools as a result of market forces. Such an outcome leaves a Conservative government with a dilemma. If they really want to improve outcomes for pupils in challenging schools they need to address the percentage of inexperienced teachers in such schools. I saw this first hand in the 1970s in Tottenham where the most challenging schools had high staff turnover and large numbers of inexperienced new entrants that included myself among them.  In the Highgate end of the borough this was far less of an issue.

The research highlighted a the start of this post pinpoints the differences in behaviour between challenging schools and those less difficult to teach in as a factor in and this may well be why so many new entrants to the classroom cite behaviour managements as their greatest challenge. Any teacher preparation course must cover a wide range of topics and probably would find it a real challenge to impart the skills necessary to teach in the most challenging schools. However, once teachers have found a teaching post in such a school the extra support ought to be channelled in their direction, as I suspect tis the case in the best of the Academy Trusts, but is not yet the norm.

For a government wedded to the market, it is the market that will need to solve the problem. This usually means money, as supply and demand are governed by price. The alternative is to use a Corbynite Labour solution and direct teachers where they need to work.

The research mentioned above highlighted that teachers recognise success in a school isn’t an individual effort, but a collective response. As a result, team bonuses were favoured by those asked over individual payments. However, this still leaves the issue that if payment only comes after results how do you incentivise the teachers to work in challenging schools in the first place? In the 1970s it was through the Schools of Exceptional Difficulty payments that were added to basic salary for working in schools identified as challenging.

Of course, you could take another tack and try and hide the issue by creating a fuss about something else, such as the role of teacher associations, as the Education lead at one of the conservative think tanks has done ahead of the teacher conferences this Easter. It might keep the right-wing Tory press happy, but my guess is most other members of the 4th estate will still be focussing on issues such as teacher supply that are likely to be to the fore during the conference season.

Ebacc and ‘well-being’

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Country Life isn’t a magazine that receives many mentions in this blog, indeed, this may be the first time it has appeared here. However, I did note that it has increased its sales over the past four years and that their Christmas 2015 issue recorded bumper sales. The BBC are also running a three part series about the editor and life in the countryside. Last week’s episode had a moving story of the farmer facing bovine TB in his herd of milking cows.

Anyway, this blog isn’t here to sell magazines, but to note that Country Life recently ran an interview with the newly appointed head teacher of one of the country’s private schools; Wellington College. In the course of that interview the new head teacher talked about what are coming to be known as ‘well-being’ lessons. He clearly saw them as an important part of a rounded curriculum. I also recently heard a presentation by a head of department at Dulwich College – another private school – with responsibility for well-being in the curriculum. At that school they also regard well-being as important for the staff members as well as their students.

This set me to wondering whether the DfE sees well-being as an important part of the curriculum in schools funded by the government. My guess is, with the current emphasis on the EBacc subjects, Ministers haven’t really grasped the wider responsibilities of schools in helping young people take key steps along life’s increasingly complicated journey. You cannot train to be a teacher of ‘well-being’, and government has steadfastly refused to make PSHE a compulsory part of the curriculum.

Now, it may be that government thinks this is entirely the role of parents and, while those either with enough cash to pay for private education or able to win scholarships can ask for this as part of the package they are paying for, it isn’t the duty of the State to provide it as part of their education offering. Such a position flies in the face of an education system where pastoral care has always been seen as an important part of education, at least for as long as I have been involved with education.

If government isn’t interested in the well-being of those it educates, it should be interested and involved in the well-being of those that deliver education. Among the many statistics the government doesn’t collect is, I suspect, is one about the trends in occupational health of the school workforce and especially of trends in mental health referrals, as opposed to just days lost through absence. Surely, any good employer ought to know what is happening, at least in the academies and free schools it directly funds.

The obvious starting place for action is the teachers’ workload and especially the twin areas of marking and preparation. An understanding of what is necessary and what is just fear of Ofsted might be a useful place for Ministers to start, rather than concentrating civil servant time and energy on deciding when and where it is appropriate to use an exclamation mark.

Talk up teaching

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According to the Mail on Sunday, not a newspaper I usually read, but whose reporting of the Secretary of State’s remarks to the ASCL Conference have been brought to my attention, we need to be positive about what a great career teaching is. Apparently, according to the Mail on Sunday, Mrs Morgan told ASCL delegates:

That a number of schools are struggling to recruit good teachers but that talk of a “crisis” in recruitment may deter people from the sector. She said that, “While the headline data shows a sustained low, national vacancy rate, the reality on the ground for many heads is that they are struggling to attract the brightest and the best.” She acknowledged the cost of recruiting can be a burden when schools have “other, better things to be spending money on,” On fears that highlighting recruitment issues may put people off of becoming a teacher, the Education Secretary said: “Let’s focus on commenting to the outside world on what a great profession teaching is, how rewarding it can be and what good teachers have the power to do.”

In questions there was apparently talk of the need for a national database of vacancies: TeachVac your time has surely come.

In case the Secretary of State has been shielded from TeachVac by her officials I am sending her a letter outlining the advantages of the free service we have been providing for more than a year now. I agree with the heads asking why spend millions of pounds on advertising when it can be done for free?

Heads, teachers, local politicians, governors and others responsible for recruitment might ask why they haven’t tried TeachVac if it is free. Wasting money through inertia is not acceptable when everyone is complaining about the effects of austerity.

Let me re-iterate, TeachVac is free for everyone, to schools to post vacancies and to teachers, trainees and returners to post requests to be told when a vacancy meeting requirements is posted.

If you know someone involved in recruiting teachers and leadership staff in schools, do please tell them to visit www.teachvac.co.uk and watch the demonstration videos. Signing up takes no time at all, but a school does need to know its URN – available via Edubase – as a security check.

As to the Secretary of State’s thesis about talking up teaching, I agree it is a great job, but surely she could have offered something on the workload front that would have allowed an even more positive message to have emerged from her speech. I hope by Easter, she will have something more eye catching to say to the other teacher conferences. She could even announce that the DfE is investigating free initiatives on recruitment advertising and job matching such as TeachVac. Such a move wouldn’t cost a penny, but would show the government is keen that the cash she has for schools isn’t being spend on private sector profits.

If anyone wants to know more about TeachVac, please do contact me and I will be happy to answer your queries.

 

 

Ebacc takes hold

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TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk the free recruitment site for schools, teachers and trainees has recorded more than 5,000 main scale vacancies in secondary schools since the start of this calendar year. In some parts of the country, a very high percentage of these vacancies have been in English, mathematics and the sciences – three key EBacc subjects.

Now, it may be that some of the vacancies are a hangover from last year when schools may have appointed a less that appropriately qualified teacher to fill a January vacancy and are already seeking a better qualified replacement for September. Alternatively, some schools may be advertising early, gambling that they will have a vacancy in these three large departments so they might as well get on with the recruitment process. Either way, there has been a significant level of recruitment activity in these subjects.

At the other end of the scale, PE and art continue to produce few vacancies in proportion to the number of trainees: the decision to increase trainee numbers in art now looks a bit odd unless vacancies pick up as the recruitment round gathers pace.

Schools placing vacancies with TeachVac are told our estimate of the remaining size of the trainee pool at the day before they place their vacancy. This allows them to judge how challenging recruitment might be. At TeachVac we are still waiting for the NCTL to provide us with regional recruitment data into ITT that would make this service even more useful to schools than having to use the national data that is all that is currently available to us.

We assume the DfE and NCTL receive vacancy data from another source as they haven’t asked TeachVac for information. With daily data updates from more than 3,600 schools and other sources we think TeachVac is the most comprehensive vacancy platform, certainly for main scale secondary vacancies and increasingly for other teaching and leadership posts as well. And, it’s free for everyone to use. As budgets get tighter we think that a very valuable services.

So, if your school, MAT, diocese or local authority isn’t using TeachVac to advertise their teaching and school leadership vacancies, you might ask them why not? The advantage of TeachVac’s daily matching service is that if there are no downloads of the job after say, forty-eight hours, a school can then decide whether to try another tack, but it hasn’t cost anything.

Registered users also receive access to the monthly school and teacher newsletter, also free, with more information on the state of the job market. TeachVac staff also address conferences and seminars about the state of the job market using the most up to date data available. I shall be speaking to academy heads tomorrow at an event organised by the Guardian Newspaper.

As the demand for teachers grows, TeachVac is also providing data to a growing list of organisations interested in understanding what is happening in the labour market for teachers. As TeachVac covers both state funded and private schools we can compare trends across the two sectors.

At present, we don’t cover international schools at TeachVac, but it is something we are looking into for the future, along with the FE sector.

 

 

ITT Recruitment controls examined

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I have now had a little longer to look through the UCAS data issued yesterday. It is supplemented by the daily data issued to help keep providers aware of the changes at the margin. However, the purpose of this post is to look at offers this year compared with the same point last year.

An offer for this purpose is anyone with an unconditional offer, a conditional offer or holding an offer pending a decision. Added together these three groups provide a view of the best outcome to date against the total of applications. Of course, the total applications contains multiple applications from many candidates and eventually only one offer is held. However, since the same system was in use last year it is interesting to see what difference the additional numbers attracted to teaching and the introduction of recruitment controls have made.

The following table reviews the percentage of offers to the total of applications received made both last year and this year in February for a range of secondary subjects.

2016 2015 diff 2016 on 2015
Geography 29 27 2
D&T 29 23 6
RE 29 24 5
Biology 27 21 6
Music 27 18 9
Physics 26 24 2
Chemistry 26 21 5
Computer Studies + IT 26 26 0
History 26 14 12
Mathematics 25 25 0
English 25 17 8
Art 25 19 6
Business Studies 24 20 4
PE 18 12 6

Generally, offers as a percentage of applications are higher this year than at the same point last year, significantly so in history, music and English. However, in IT and mathematics there has been no change compared with the same point last year. On balance, it seems that where recruitment controls were expected, and indeed introduced, offers account for a higher percentage of applications than at this stage last year.

The question is has this affected quality in any way? And, has it affected the balance of applicants accepted by gender, ethnicity and disability? We won’t fully know until the end of the year. The other issue is whether the same percentage of those offered conditional places, presumably mostly on completing a degree and passing the skills tests do actually manage both. The former hurdle may be easier than the latter.

What we don’t really know is the extent of the geographical consequences of the increased offers. Hopefully, they are in the places where they are needed and not offered to location specific candidates in the more favoured areas of the country when it comes to teacher supply. More clarify on this point would help shape the debate. And, in some subjects, ‘favoured’ is a relative term when the gap to the Teacher Supply Model total is still likely to be a wide one.

 

Qualified relief for the government

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So far this week I have spoken at two events on the subject of teacher supply and recruitment into training. The first was in Manchester, to the North West group of suppliers of teacher preparation programmes, the second, today, was at a conference in London. As a result, I am a little late in analysing the UCAS data that came out earlier today. Tomorrow, I am off to talk to a group of NASUWT members for my third engagement of the week on the topic.

The data that emerged from UCAS today has to be compared with the really dreadful figures for February last year, at least in terms of offers made. Thus, it is not surprising that offers are generally above the level of February 2015, except it appears in computing where there has been a slight dip. Nevertheless, despite the improvements, mathematics and physics look set to miss their Teacher Supply Model target for 2016 unless there is a very sharp pickup in recruitment in the remainder of the cycle. This is despite the relatively generous bursaries on offer. If these bursaries are not working, it is a real challenge to see how the government can increase them further without distorting starting salaries in a manner that might lead to questions about equal pay for jobs of equal worth.

More interesting is the difference in offers made so far this year between SCITTs, where 30% of applications are shown as placed or had an offer made, and 21% with offers on the School Direct Salaried route, where 79% are shown as ‘other’ including presumably those turned down. Of course, we don’t know whether some of those refused a place on a salaried course may have been offered a place on another type of course.

In England, there are about 1,500 more applicants than at the same point in February last year. Just over 100 of these are men, with the remainder of the increase being women. In subjects where recruitment controls have been imposed this may further affect the imbalance in the profession between men and women. Interestingly, there were 160 fewer men between the ages of 23 and 24 that have applied this year compared with the same point last year. This was compensated for by 240 more men over the age of 39 that had applied this year. The number of new young graduate males was almost the same as at this point last year. Among the women, there was the same drop in the 23 and 24 age group, albeit a smaller decline that from men. There were increases in all other age groups. UCAS doesn’t provide data either on ethnicity or on the split between primary and secondary.

By the time the March data appears the picture should be starting to become clearer for the likely outcome of the whole recruitment round, although the large number of conditional offers still means that even in subjects where recruitment controls have been imposed there could be a falling away of those holding offers.

Generally, at both events I have attended this week, the issue of recruitment controls has not received a good press or even a sympathetic understanding. I hope that the authorities will review the situation in time for a more resilient system to be introduced next year that will encourage providers to plan for the longer-term once again. With rising pupil rolls we cannot risk an unstable teacher preparation system.

 

Every little helps

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The news that 28 entrants through the troops to Teachers scheme have qualified as teachers – subjects not specified – can be looked on as a failure in one respect, since it was one of Michael Gove’s big announcements when he was Secretary of State for Education.  But, in another respect, it has generated useful discussions about encouraging career switchers into education.

I doubt that this is the total number of armed forces personnel that have moved into careers in the education world during the period of the scheme. There has always been a steady flow of non-commissioned officers in all services entering the further education sector when they have finished their stint in the military. Many joined the forces as raw recruits and progressed through the ranks acquiring skills and knowledge on the way, paid for by the Ministry of Defence. Indeed, there will be many tutors on university training courses that will testify to the success of these recruits into lecturing in the FE sector. Had Mr Gove taken this supply into account, he might well have questioned how many leavers there were with degrees or near degree status in academic subjects quitting the forces each year to enrol on his scheme?

The next question to ask is where have those teachers that have completed the Troops to Teachers course ended up teaching? Are they in challenging urban schools or independent schools serving the offspring of military families? Hopefully, some researcher will be tracking their experience of teaching as a career over the next few years.

Whether setting up courses for specific groups of entrants into teaching is a good idea is debatable. After all, if they join staffrooms of teachers from a range of backgrounds wouldn’t it have bene useful to have trained together with those from other backgrounds rather than seen as a separate group?

What is interesting, in the new employer-managed world of academies, is at what point the employers are going to take a greater interest in preparing the next generation of teachers? This is an issue that should be high on the agenda of the faith communities and especially the Church of England with its large number of rural primary schools. There is a network of church universities that can trace their heritage back to the days when they were Church of England training colleges producing the bulk of the certificated teachers for the church elementary schools across England. For many years after the move of teacher preparation into higher education there was a concordat between the Department and the Church over the percentage of training places the Church would provide. Does that still exist or should the Church of England be ensuring that it has control over enough places to ensure the staffing of its schools in future years.

At the same time, it can continue to ensure that there are enough teachers willing to take on the leadership roles in schools and the strategic oversight of the sector going forward. The removal of local authority oversight places a greater burden on the remaining providers of education.