Tag Archives: teachers

This idea won’t solve the current problem in teacher supply

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Mr Taylor, the head of the National College for Teaching and Leadership is given to New Year suggestions that can sometimes seem extreme. A few years ago he advocated the abolition of the Teacher Supply Model process and its replacement with local decisions about recruitment into the profession. This year he appears to be suggesting some form of talent spotting of youngsters as a means of overcoming a teacher shortage that he still isn’t apparently prepared to admit has occurred on his watch. This is despite plenty of warning from those that understand the labour market for teachers.

Although a scheme, whether called cadetships, apprenticeships or even a taster scheme, won’t help alleviate the current teacher shortage, and it is naive to suggest anything to the contrary, the idea has been tried before. I recall going to visit such a scheme in North Carolina nearly 20 years ago whereby schools offered cadetship to those possibly interested in a career as a teacher. The problem was that although many potential primary school teachers identified teaching as a possible career when at high school, possible secondary subject teachers were often still more interested in their subject than in how they would use their knowledge after university. Offering tasters at university to this group is probably better than trying something at school where subject enjoyment is often seen as correlated with teacher enthusiasm and likeability. Nevertheless, helping pupils identify the positives of teaching can be useful in counteracting their over-exposure to schooling compared with their understanding of other potential careers.

As teaching is an occupation, schemes to attract youngsters mustn’t either fall foul of employment law or look like cheap alternative to fill gaps where there are insufficient numbers of trained teachers. In the 1960s, scholarship pupils where I went to school often spent two terms as class teachers in local secondary modern schools helping to fill vacancies before going on to university. I am sure that isn’t what Mr Taylor had in mind, but his Daily Telegraph interview does seem to veer towards re-introducing pupil teachers or monitors in classrooms when he refers to such children as classroom assistants. Perhaps he has modelled his idea on the football talent spotting schemes that try to identify future stars while they are still at primary school.

In the past, many young people received their first taste of teaching as Sunday School Teachers or similar roles in other faith communities and many still help younger siblings at home. Uniform organisations were also a route to learning about working with people and helping others to develop new skills. How primary pupils would act as teaching assistants without affecting their own education isn’t covered by Mr Taylor in his interview. Perhaps he just has visions of them as monitors handing out resources, although some might have opportunities to lead baffled teachers through the intricacies of computer coding that is now part of the curriculum.

Putting in place schemes to attract sufficient teachers in ten years time is a long-term project. What Mr Taylor doesn’t seem to accept, perhaps because he would need to admit his own part in bringing it about, is that we have a teacher supply crisis now. I suggested in my post yesterday that fees be abated for trainee teachers and that they all be paid a bursary. That would produce results now, which is when we need more trainee teachers.

No FEES for Trainee Teachers

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I thought I would start off 2015 with a campaign. Readers of this blog know that there is a teacher supply crisis looming partly because of the large increase in pupil numbers over the next few years. As a result, we cannot afford to miss the recruitment targets for new teachers. At present, some trainees pay fees, and they create a debt repayable when they start teaching, but others, notably those on Teach First and the salaried School Direct route, don’t. Not only is this divisive, but it is also off-putting to some would-be teachers.

Imagine a career-switcher in their mid-30s just free from repaying the debt Labour forced upon them by introducing tuition fees after they won the 1997 election. Unless such intending teachers can secure a place on either of the programmes mentioned above they will incur new debt. The Institute of Fiscal Studies was wrong to say trainee teachers won’t need to repay their debt; this group will, and immediately they start teaching.

However, if the IFS is correct, and most new graduates now with £27,000 of debt won’t ever earn enough to repay the extra £9,000 or so of debt incurred as a trainee teacher why is the government taking this debt plus accrued interest onto its books? Abate the fees, as was the case from 1997 until the new fee regime was introduced and cut the government deficit and at the same time makng teaching more attractive as a career. Indeed, I would go further and pay every trainee either the same wage as an apprentice of the same standing or even the equivalent of the salary the Ministry of Defence pays officers in training at Sandhurst.

Perhaps the churches, as the largest employer of teachers, could lead the way by inviting church schools to pay trainee fees from the reserves they hold and negotiate a price with the church universities that is appropriate for the course rather than tie the current fee linked to higher education rates. After all, two thirds of the graduate course is spent in schools, so trainees are currently paying for the privilege of learning how to teach. All other professions abolished this notion of indentured service generations ago.

I wonder if the Carter Review could be even more radical and suggest returning teacher preparation to the employers as a group, thus undoing the 50 years of progress since Robbins started the move to more fully involve higher education in the preparation of all teachers. But, we cannot sit around waiting for Carter; there is an urgent need for action now. The government should act swiftly and announce they will pay the fees for 2015 graduate entrants because the cost of a teacher supply crisis will be far greater and longer lasting than the loss of income from the fees that are repaid.

Meanwhile www.teachvac.co.uk is now up and running offering job matching for secondary trainees, and indeed teachers looking for main scale posts in England for free. Schools can now post vacancies for free as well. I look forward to reporting on the 2015 recruitment round as it develops for both trainees and schools: regular updates will be posted here and schools registering vacancies will be told the current supply situation from later this month every time that they register a vacancy.

IN MEMORIAM

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Death has been a looming presence in education during the past year. From the single death of a teacher in a Leeds classroom to the remembrance of the multitude of deaths in the conflict that started 100 years ago; the Great War; the War to end all wars; the First World War: a conflict with many names and millions of deaths.

All deaths are a tragedy, especially unnecessary deaths from the actions of others. And while we recall these deaths, there have been the others such as those resulting from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and for many other reasons that have passed into memory for all but the family and friends of those who died.

Among those that influenced my career, I celebrate the life and work of Professor Halsey who died in 2014. Although he was a socialist, and I am a Liberal, his work had a powerful influence on many in my generation of educators. I would hope that his view of equality would have espoused the Pupil Premium as a link to the doctrine of ‘to each according to its need’ even if the ‘from each according to their ability to pay’ still seem some way from achievement. However, the universal free school meals for reception and infant pupils introduced in September recognised that sometimes the policy of a universal benefit is better than attempting to define where to draw a line on resource allocation.

The change of Secretary of State from the ideological Michael Gove to his less determined successor slowed the pace of reform, including some rowing back on the timing of parts of the examination reforms, although not yet a recognition of the role of AS levels in the post-16 world of achievements. A rebuke from the head of the government statistical service just before Christmas suggests a Secretary of State that might not yet have the depth of knowledge to challenge the rightward drift of Conservative thinking. It would be a tragedy of the first order if, in a mis-guided moment, grammar schools were allowed to expand; for where one creates a breech others will surely follow.

However, the big news story of 2014 and sadly for 2015 as well, at least as far as I am concerned, and it has been chronicled on this blog, is the worsening state of teacher supply.  A combination of factors has made teaching less attractive to possible entrants to the profession and schools in some parts of the country are already expressing concern about teacher shortages. These will only become worse during the recruiting season for September 2015 that starts in earnest in the new year. I have established www.teachvac.co.uk to monitor what is happening on a daily basis. The site also allows vacancies to be posted for free and for new teachers to receive notification of jobs as they arise.

The main event of the first half of 2015 will almost certainly be the general election. At present, it looks the most unpredictable election since that of 1974; with more Parties than ever, it may become the defining moment as to whether the two-party state is finally replaced by a mutli-party democracy in Britain. That might be one European import it will be difficult to repudiate. Unless it comes with a change in the voting system, it could produce some interesting times in the future. Perhaps a better educated society no longer accepts the notion of political compromises within Parties, but is prepared to look for them between Parties. 2015 will give us some idea.

More or less, but not enough

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Last week in the House of Commons, the Secretary of State for Education confirmed that ‘some 32,543 trainee teachers started undergraduate or postgraduate initial teacher training in 2014-15—236 fewer than last year’. She went on to add that on the fact that ‘one reason more teachers are attracted to the profession is the recovering economy’. I am not sure whether that was a slip of the tongue or a deliberate juxtaposition of two seemingly different facts?

Either way, the numbers are nowhere near as high as the DfE has predicted will be needed to meet the demands of schools in 2015 for teachers unless there are more returners than expected or, as now seems likely, schools start recruiting overseas. BBC Radio Kent is covering the issue on Tuesday morning in their Breakfast Show, as it seems likely that some schools in the county are already considering looking overseas for teachers.

Any qualified teachers in the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia thinking about working in England as a teacher are reminded that they have automatic qualified teacher status and this means they can be paid the same rate as teachers qualified in the UK or EU. In the event that they need a visa to work in England, some agencies are adept at making a case to the Home Office to grant a visa. Teachers and schools should always check the track record of agencies in this respect as well as whether they are members of the Recruitment Employer’s Confederation, a trade body for the industry.

Vacancies in November may well have been higher than in the past few years. We have recorded more than 3,000 main scale posts notified by secondary schools across England.

Schools can register these vacancies for free at www.teachvac.co.uk – the site has a demo video of the simple registration and recording process: trainees and teachers can also use the site to tell us where they want to teach. Overseas teachers can register and use the site to monitor vacancies in areas where they are interested in teaching and there is a demo video for teachers about the site as well. At present, the site is restricted to main scale posts in the secondary sector.

Trainees using the site also have access to a monthly newsletter with information about making the best of applications, interviews, and, in coming months, the current state of the job market.

Based upon current sign up numbers we are starting to create a picture of possible job hotspots in certain subjects and as we expect to be able to offer advice on how the recruitment season will unfold between January and some point in the summer term. With schools already having a good idea of their budgets for 2015/16, recruitment is likely to start early to provide schools with the best opportunity to access the largest number of potential teachers, especially in those subjects where recruitment is likely to be the most challenging: physics, design & technology, English and business studies.

Should trainees bring benefits as well as costs?

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The IFS Report on The Costs and Benefits of Different Initial Teacher Training Routes published on Monday makes for interesting reading. On the face of it, paying all trainees a salary might be less expensive for government than paying bursaries to some but not others and trying to reclaim the fees that the government used to pay anyway, from some, but not all, trainees.

The IFS study has shown that the costs of training differs according to the route chosen and the nature of the trainee, but that many costs are not fixed but rather variable in outcome, dependent upon factors such as the quality of the trainee and how much input they require during their preparation period as well as how much government must pay to attract them into the teaching profession.

Generally, the costs of preparing a teacher can be divided into student support (fees and bursaries on some routes and salaries on others); training costs, and finally marketing and recruitment costs.

On the other side of the ledger is the benefit a trainee can bring, especially towards the end of their course when they may require less supervision. However, since they could acquire more skills if the training cost was regarded as a fixed cost this might push up standards rather than trying to quantify a benefit from a trainee. Herein lays the issue at the heart of the IFS research; should schools be expecting to reap benefits from trainees?

I am sure that those that think teaching is a profession where you don’t need training will regard the cost of some routes as too high and will try and focus on the benefits of early immersion in the classroom. However, as anyone that has watched the recent spy on the wall documentaries about schools will know some teachers need more help than others at the start of their careers and that such help comes at a price.

The other part of the IFS study that concerns me is the manner in which views of teachers about trainees are turned into numbers. Although the responses aren’t large for the different routes I would have liked to know, if this approach is going to be used, whether trainees in subjects where recruitment is easy returned more positive feedback from the schools than subjects where trainees were more of a challenge to find. In relation to School Direct I am not sure at this stage whether there has been any attempt to quantify the cost to the school of an unfilled place and to set this off against an overall sum for the route.

Traditional higher education providers may set the threshold for entry into training at a lower level than schools offering the newer routes. This will undoubtedly increase the cost of their training, but if taking risks provides sufficient teachers and only recruiting certainties doesn’t then, although the cost of training may be lower, the cost to education may be higher unless, for instance, teachers were prepared to teach larger classes.

At first glance the IFS study provides a good basis for further thinking by policy makers, but there is still a great deal of work left to do. For instance, what are the longer-term costs of programmes with lower retention rates in the profession; and are different routes better at attracting future leaders?

Was Professor Halsey right after all?

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Educational Priority Areas grew out of the desire in the 1960s to improve the quality of education for those children living in the most deprived parts of the country. Now over half a century later we find the government’s Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission that is chaired by a Labour politician and includes a former Tory Secretary of State for Education among its members recommending paying teachers 25% more to work in the most deprived schools as an experiment in improving outcomes for disadvantaged children. Well that sounds very like the Schools of Exceptional difficulty payments introduced under Margaret Thatcher’s regime when she was Edward Heath’s Education Secretary. This idea along with the instruction to Teach First to extend to certain coastal fringe areas this seems like another step in the move away from a free-market economics of education solution to a more planned and directed outcome to a problem that has be-devilled this country; the gaps in attainment between different social classes.

The Commission’s idea that the Pay Review Body might designate a new pay category that was non-geographical and thus unlike the present arrangements is really a challenge to the free market and comes remarkably swiftly after the abolition of national pay scales by the previous Secretary of State. The Commission noted that few academies had made use of the powers over pay that had been available to them in the past and this seems to have been one of the reasons for them advocating a more interventionist approach. Elsewhere, the Commission seem to have a somewhat fanciful notion of what local authorities can now achieve. It is all very well using the example of the London Challenge, but that was developed in a timeframe before the wholesale introduction of academies and free schools decimated local authority education departments. Realistically, the Commission needs to pay more attention to how far the complexity of running today’s school system may be adding to the very issue that they are trying to solve. As regular reads know, I would prefer local democratic involvement, especially in the primary school sector, but even more I would prefer a coherent management and leadership regime for the whole system that is dedicated to raising standards for all.

The Commission also discuss parental involvement and the poor quality of career advice that is often linked to low expectations. More must be done to encourage parents that the education system failed not to let the same thing happen with the next generation. Breaking the cycle of hopelessness is a vital component to raising standards as the Commission acknowledges. How to disseminate best practice rather than ritual nods to devolving training to schools and Teach First might have allowed for discussion about the content of both initial training and professional development of teachers.

Where I do agree with the Commission is in the vital role played by primary schools and the need to focus more attention on success in the early years. Regular attendance and strategies to help pupils that miss school are important moves in helping all pupils achieve success as last week’s publication of the EYFS profiles showed.

For anyone interested in the issue of social mobility this is an important but at times challenging and even depressing Report to read. It can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/364979/State_of_the_Nation_Final.pdf

 

 

 

 

Good news for English

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On Tuesday the National College published the allocation for teacher preparation courses starting in 2015 ahead of the opening of the recruitment round through UCAS next month. The good news is that after several years of concern that the allocation for English was below what might be expected the allocation for 2015 entry has increased by around 600 to 2,348 while the underlying estimate of need has increased by almost 1,000 to 2,253. This increase is as a result of changes to the Teacher Supply model highlighted in the previous post on this blog.

Overall, the allocations show a continued drift towards school-led provision although the direction of travel in the secondary sector wasn’t as great as it might have been because of an increase of more than 4,000 in the total of places allocated.  The Salaried Route on School Direct hasn’t seen a large expansion, with 4,589 of the 4,712 bids being accepted. The growth has mainly been in the tuition fee route where 8,437 secondary and 4,623 primary places have been allocated. SCITTs account for 3,663 places, and HEIs of all descriptions 22,244 or almost half of the 43,516 places allocated.

Schools have more places than HE in Art, Chemistry, computing, design & technology, drama, English, geography, history, mathematics, music when SCITT numbers are included, PE and Physics. HE has more places than schools in Biology, business studies, classics, other subjects and Religious Education. The last is despite the large number of faith-based secondary schools.

Of course, everyone has to recruit to these places and the concern must be with so many more places to fill some parts of the country will fill places all their places whereas others won’t. In those circumstances the mobility of future trainees will be of vital importance. Through the TeachVac system I am pioneering a means of collecting that information starting with the current secondary trainees. More information can be found at http://www.oxteachserv.com/teachvac/  and current trainees can already register job preferences for where they will be looking for jobs when recruitment starts in the New Year. More details in a future post, including our first view of the current job market using our new recording system.

Along with allocations to schools and higher education, the NCTL have also published figures for Teach First allocations for the 2015 to 2016 academic year. They have been allocated 2,000 places; three-quarter in the secondary sector with numbers ranging from 430 in English and 308 places in mathematics down to 15 in design and technology.

Primary allocations nationally total 20,072 for 2015, slightly less than the 21,870 that were the total allocations last year. With half the primary allocations in HE going to undergraduate places there will be around 14,000 trainees on one-year courses in schools and HE plus the 2012 entrants to undergraduate courses that will have amount to around another 6,000 trainees making around 20,000 new primary teachers in 2016.

The next key data will be the ITT census in November when we will know the full extent of recruitment for this year. By then we will have started to analyse the state of the job market and can begin to make forecasts for recruitment into schools in 2015.

All or nothing

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According to the press this morning David Cameron is set to announce the creation of a squad of high-quality teachers, to be employed centrally that will be sent out to assist poorly performing schools. The National Teaching Service (NTS) will be made up of up to 1,500 ‘super teachers funded by central government, and will be deployed to so-called failing schools.

If true, this development poses a number of issues for trainee teachers, schools, and indeed parents. Historically, apart for the ill-fated and short-lived Fast Track Scheme introduced by Labour over a decade ago to recruit and place the best new teachers, recruitment has been a discussion between an individual teacher and a school or in a few cases a group of schools. Even in the latter case, except in the primary sector, posts advertised have usually been associated with working in a particular school. In the primary sector, pooling arrangements for the first stage of recruitment were popular when local authorities managed schools even though they sometimes might have discriminated against ‘returners’ in favour of newly qualified teachers.

Any announcement of an NTS has implications for current trainees if it is to start in 2015. More likely it will not commence before September 2016. However, savvy trainees on PGCE or School Direct courses, especially in shortage subjects, may decide to avoid working in schools likely to be targeted by NTS flying squads on the basis that they might need to be replaced by the in-coming teachers. Teachers already working in these schools now have an extra incentive to find another job just in case the alternative is redundancy or dismissal on other grounds when the NTS arrive.

Announcing the NTS in October is probably the most stupid move in the teacher labour market made by a government since the 1996 announcement of changes to the pension scheme drove an unprecedented number of head teachers to quit by the following summer. Even though 1,500 NTS staff, and it is not clear whether they will encompass all grades of teacher or just say, middle leaders, need to be recruited it is not clear how many schools will be targetted. That issue alone will be interesting as presumably there will need to be incentives to secure the NTS staff away from their present posts.

Now, as someone who working for seven years in a school likely these days to be a top target for an NTS squad to replace existing staff, I fully accept that there are under-performing schools. I also accept that some staff drafted in may make a difference. The famous arrival of Mike Tomlinson at The Ridings School in Yorkshire in the late 1990s had an immediate impact but longer-term change proved more elusive.

At the heart of this announcement is the issue raised before in this blog of whether schooling has now been nationalised in England. The very term NTS suggests the answer, but in a typically British manner it may be being handled in a cack-handed manner. However, it probably explains Labour’s announcement of the idea of a teacher’s oath yesterday. As usual, I am left wondering what is the position of my own Party, the Lib Dems on the idea of who is responsible for teachers and their employment

An oath for teachers?

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Labour’s suggestion of teachers taking an oath on entering profession is an interesting idea. One reason to embrace it is that it would mean the word teacher would became a reserved term that could only be used by those prepared to take the oath unlike at present when anyone can call themselves a teacher regardless of their qualification, or even their lack of them. However, taking an oath guarantees nothing as the history of medical and legal malpractice cases testifies. While it may be useful to help those that haven’t thought of the professionalism and associated values of being a teacher it can be ignored by anyone with predetermined intentions to misbehave. But, I cannot be too negative. I took an oath on becoming a magistrate and it was a solemn occasion.  Similarly, I have witnessed the oath taking of police officers at attestation ceremonies and explained to them why it was so important.

If there is to be an oath who is to administer it? Police, army, even medics all work for organisations with a national structure and with other professional bodies there are organisations, whether Inns of court, the Law Society or other professional bodies, but the General Teaching Council for England was abolished by this government in a short-sighted move allegedly linked to a supposed bonfire of Quangos. Without a professional body it seems unlikely that teachers would be prepared to swear an oath of professional virtue to the State, especially if they were working in the private sector.

The situation may well be different in Singapore where the oath-taking procedure was apparently spotted by Labour. Realistically, if it is about enhancing the status of teachers and making them more professional then returning power to the profession in return for enhanced status may not be enough. Professions don’t generally go on strike, so is Labour also signalling that teachers should sign away any rights to industrial action with no corresponding control over their earnings that would still be set either by the government of the management of individual schools?

I think most teachers already have a strong sense of public duty and a wish to serve the young people that they teach. After all, there may well be easier ways of earning a living for many graduates than the long hours and relentless term-time working life where the pace of teaching doesn’t differ from day to day as patterns of working do in most other professions.

On balance, I think the oath idea probably won’t fly unless Labour’s friends in the trade unions are prepared to endorse it. I am sure that they won’t do so without testing the strength of feeling among their members. Now a Queen’s Medal and long-service awards might be another matter. And while we are at it, perhaps the creation of some Regis Professors of Education might enhance the status of the profession in higher education.

What’s a trainee teacher worth?

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Earlier today the DfE and NCTL announced the bursary arrangements for 2015/16 graduate entrants to teacher training. These arrangements apply to almost all graduate entry routes except Teach First. Interestingly, gone is the uplift in amounts for trainees working in schools with high percentages of free school meals that existed in previous years. On the other hand new subjects are now eligible for bursaries, including religious education. There is still, however, a pecking order with some subjects attracting higher amount than others regardless of where the trainee obtained their degrees. Physics, chemistry, maths and IT/computing graduates with doctorates or first class honours degrees will be paid £25,000, whereas geographers and design and technology trainees with the same level of degree will be paid only £12,000 despite probably being in scarcer supply than either chemists or mathematicians at the present time.

Even worse off will be RE graduates with a 2:2 degree as, despite the shortage of trainees, they won’t receive anything. The same goes for the many primary, history and English trainees with similar degrees. There are some shortage subjects, such as business studies, that once again seem to have been overlooked, whereas it is at least arguable whether there is a shortage of classics teachers in state-funded schools but they qualify under the languages heading. As a result such trainees will receive £15-£25,000 depending upon their degree class.

Once again there is no recognition for trainees on bursaries of the differential cost of living in and around London although those training in adjacent classrooms on the School Direct salaried route do receive such differentials to mark the fact that there are different salary bands for teachers.

One of the risks of this market-based approach, an approach not favoured by the army when deciding whether to pay gunners at Sandhurst more than future armoured regiment officers or those destined for the infantry, is that some candidates may hold off applying in the hope that the amounts paid in future years will be even better. However, hopefully, this is balanced by those for whom the cash makes a difference when deciding whether or not to train as a teacher.

Personally, I would favour paying the fees for all trainees with degrees as to expect those who take a subject degree and train as a primary teacher to pay up to £9,000 more in fees than those that opt to train as part of their first degree seems a bit unfair.

As the period between now and February is vital in setting the basis for the success of recruitment to training in 2015 it is to be hoped that the announcement about funding taken together with the recently announced recruitment campaign are successful in attracting more applicants of a suitable quality into teaching than in recent years since the prospect of a third year of under-recruitment at a time when pupil numbers are rising is not a prospect that anyone wants to contemplate.