Tag Archives: teaching

Why aren’t all trainee teachers paid?

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My recent post about tuition fees and student loans Pay tuition fees of trainee teachers | John Howson reminded me that it is some years since I compared how trainee teachers were treated in comparison with another group of public servants undergoing training.

British Army officer training at Sandhurst is a 42-week course, slightly longer than the face-to-face component of a PGCE, but I expect that there are few PGCE students that don’t also work during their ‘holidays’, as, indeed, do most teachers.

The key difference, between a PGCE and Sandhurst, apart for the 24 hour seven days a week residential element to army training, is that all officer cadets receive the equivalent of £35,925 per year. I am not sure if this also contains possible pension contributions as well.

Even those PGCE students with bursaries cannot match that figure. The most generous bursaries according to the government website are £29,000 or £31,000 if a trainee is awarded a scholarship. Teacher training bursaries | Get Into Teaching GOV.UK Of course, unlike a salary, these should be tax free during training.

Bursaries are not available to all trainee teachers, only those that the DfE regards as training to be a teacher in a shortage subject. This blog has regularly commented on the somewhat arbitrary and haphazard nature of such designations, including the removal of a bursary for music in September 2026. By contrast, all officer cadets at Sandhurst are paid, regardless of the corps or arm they will eventually join, and whether there are sufficient trainees to staff all required roles.

By comparison, a graduate joining the civil service ‘Fast Stream’ scheme would earn £31,554 per annum, plus a pension and guarantee of employment, something also offered to successful Sandhurst graduates. Fast Stream | Civil Service Careers

I have to say that I think the civil service salary is not very generous, especially for working in central London, but it can increase substantially by year two, so perhaps, it might be seen as a training salary.

Of course, some trainee teachers can earn a salary. Teach First, with its salary, is similar to the civil service Fast Track in blending training and actual ‘real work’. Fast Track currently pays between £23-31,000 for trainees outside London, and up to 333,500 for trainees in London in their first year. Join our leading two-year, fully-funded teacher Training Programme | Teach First So, similar salary to officer cadets at Sandhurst for London trainees on Fast track, but considerably less for those on the Fast Track route outside of London.

With falling rolls, and better retention rates, the question for the Labour government is whether or not graduate teacher training should be brought into line with other public sector professions, with all trainees receiving a salary plus the guarantee of a teaching post? The latter might be a step too far, but if the government insists on setting training targets trough the Teacher Supply Model, then it should be expected to offer all trainees a teaching post.

Employing trainee teachers, would stop over-recruitment that is costing the government money through paying out student loans, for instance, to the 26% of primary trainees recruited above target last year.

A universal salary scheme for graduate trainee teachers would break the historical bond between trainees and higher education, established when the employer’s training colleges were forced into the higher education sector in the 1970s, following the Robbins Report. Of course, universities could compete to provide the courses for the government alongside other training providers. As they already do for school-based courses.

The present arrangements for graduate teacher training are no longer fit for purpose. The outgoing Prime Minister had little to say about teachers when preparing for government, other than a ‘retention bonus’. Labour’s style over substance | John Howson

I hope that the next Prime Minister, will consider the importance of the teaching workforce in achieving his goals for society. If so, looking at how we train teachers might be a place to start.

Headteacher turnover in England – August 2025 to July 2026

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At the end of this month, I will put together my latest annual report on headteacher turnover across state-funded schools in England. Today, the total number of vacancies recorded since the 1st August 2025 has reached 1,400. Add in re-advertisements, and the total number of different advertisements for a headship in a state school in England has reached nearly 1,650 by this morning.

Apart from seven small local authorities, details of at least one vacancy have been recorded from all other local authorities in England. In some large authorities, more than 30 vacancies have been recorded during the past 12 months.

Themes the report will consider are likely to include: the pay of headteachers, and especially the pay of headteachers of small schools; whether some schools have more difficulty recruiting a new head and what matters? This will include, location, percentage of free school meals pupils; academy or maintained school; religious or secular; large of small, and finally, the time of year of the original advertisement.

The headteacher advertisements from 1,004 schools admitting primary age children (including all-age schools) collected so far, compares relatively closely to the 1,101such vacancies recorded in a previous report compiled in December 2018. A more detailed look at longer-term trends will be included in the January updated report that will also consider re-advertisements, including the re-advertisement posted during the autumn term of 2026.

The current age profile of the teaching profession – see 36th Report of the STRB for details, should be relatively helpful for headship vacancies, with a respectable number of possible candidates within the age-groups from which headteachers are traditionally drawn.

The market for secondary school headteachers is usually more buoyant than that for headteachers of primary schools, partly because the ratio of deputy heads to headteachers is greater in secondary schools.

Each year, a number of headteacher switch to another schools. Sadly, just reviewing vacancies cannot identify the number of such moves.

Another issue is that of the undefined term ‘Executive Head’. The term can mean a variety of different things, from just head of a single school to headship f a couple of schools to a post in a multi-academy trust with responsibility for a group of schools. This year, my study of vacancies has largely only considered vacancies for a headteacher of a single school, whatever their title. However, a couple of vacancies for ‘executive heads’ of infant and junior schools with the same school name have been included, as I consider that they are effectively one unit.

I first started collecting data about headteacher vacancies more than 40 years ago in the early 1980s, many of the issue I encountered in those early studies are still visible today.

Finally, are all vacancies now advertised? An annual check of the headteachers’ name on the DfE site containing school information should provide the answer, but it may be complicated by any interim headteachers pushing up the totals. No doubt AI can solve that problem. I will consider it for the report next January.

Are teachers paid a fair wage for being a graduate?

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Last week, the DfE published the latest report from the School Teachers Review body (STRB) School Teachers’ Review Body – THIRTY-SIXTH REPORT – 2026 This is the 36th Report from this body. Its recommendations on pay were accepted by the Secretary of State.

While the headline increases in pay, in percentage terms, seem generous, in reality they are part of a catching up exercise of a similar type to that which caused the hard-fought battle with resident doctors in the NHS.

Here’s what the STRB said about teachers’ pay over the past decade and a half:

• The real-terms value of median teacher earnings has fallen since the early 2010s. The fall in real teacher pay has been greater than that for other professional occupations.

• When comparing teachers’ pay to that of other professional occupations by age and region using data from the SWC and the ONS, teachers fell below the comparators in all groups. The gaps between median teacher pay and that of other professionals was greatest in London.

• Based on proprietary benchmarking data, starting pay for teachers is between the lowest quartile and median for roles of comparable size and scope.

These three comments seem to justify the pay rise, and it is not a generous settlement in a vibrant labour market for graduates. If that market cools between now and 2027, possibly because of the effects of AI on entry level jobs, it will be interesting to see what the next STRB pay report suggests.

The STRB summed up the situation in the most recent period as follows:

In 2024-25, for the Rest of England and London, teachers’ median earnings were below those of the comparator groups for all age bands. The gaps between teachers’ earnings and those of the comparator group were greatest in London.

Across most age categories, the relative earnings of teachers deteriorated from 2014-15 to 2019-20, both in the Rest of England and London. After a slight improvement in 2020-21 during the COVID-19 pandemic, this downward trend for relative earnings continued across all age categories to 2023-24. Over the latest period, between 2023-24 and 2024-25, the relative earnings of teachers have slightly improved, although their median earnings remain below other professional occupation counterparts.

Overall, teachers aged 21 to 30 compared least favourably against the other professional occupations, both in the Rest of England and in London. Those in the oldest age group (over 60) compared most favourably, although are still behind relative earnings of those in other professional occupations. Page 70

In summery the STRB concluded that;

Our analysis of real-terms pay changes over time suggests that the competitiveness of teachers’ earnings compared to the whole economy, wider public sector and to professional occupations, was lower in 2024/25 compared to 2010/11. Figure B.10 shows how the real-terms value of teachers’ median earnings fell throughout the early 2010s. The chart shows there was some improvement for teachers between 2018/19 and 2020/21, prior to the pay pause in 2021/22, and a period of decline to 2023/24. There was some improvement in 2024/25, however we estimate that teachers’ median gross earnings in 2024/25 were 13.9% below their level in 2010/11 in real terms. Median gross earnings for the whole economy were 0.6% below their 2010/11 level, whilst median gross earnings for professional occupations were 9.2% below their 2010/11 level, in real terms. Page 71

One issue potentially facing the STRB could be the problem of a single pay scale for all teachers when the labour markets for primary and secondary school teachers are operating in very different ways. However, it would be a brave government that tackled this issue. Most likely, a move on allowances, and how they are offered, could be the obvious way to tackle over-supply in the primary school labour market, and areas of shortage in the secondary school teacher labour market.

The STRB had something to say about the axing of bursaries from some ITT subjects.

111. The number of bursaries available for 2026/27 has been reduced across a range of subjects, with others seeing a reduction in the bursary value. The bursary values for Biology and Geography are both down by 21,000, while Modern Foreign Languages and Design Technology are down by 6,000. Art, Music and Religious Education are down by 10,000 to zero, with English down by 5,000 to zero. We also note that for Business Studies, Music, Religious Education, Modern Foreign Languages and Design Technology, the reduction in bursary value coincides with the failure to reach target entrant numbers in 2025/26. P101 My emphasis

There is also an interesting table (B21) that provides evidence to support my posts over the past year querying why music and also Religious Education lost their bursaries. Pages 100 to 102, and especially table B21, where music and Religious Education were placed in the top three subjects for the lowest percentages of ITT placed filled, provide cogent evidence for the need for an explanation as to how bursaries are allocated to different subjects?

I think the STRB are sending a coded message to the DfE in this report about the lack of bursaries in some of the subjects that struggle most to recruit. The DfE’s answer, backed by HM Treasury, would no doubt be that there are few graduates in these subjects to entice into teaching, so the bursary would be paid to those already choosing teaching as a career. Funny how that argument doesn’t work for physics or mathematics.

A couple of other interesting nuggets for the STRB report:

• In 2024/25, male teachers had higher earnings overall than female teachers across all school types. Median earnings were higher in secondary schools than in primary and nursery schools.

• Based on proprietary benchmarking data, starting pay for teachers is between the lowest quartile and median for roles of comparable size and scope. …. The comparative basic salary position of leadership roles in primary schools is generally below the market base salary data, whilst roles in secondary schools are better aligned to the market base salary data.

• The full-time equivalent (FTE) teacher workforce decreased by 0.1% or 432 between 2023 and 2024. Secondary schools once again saw the largest absolute increase in teacher numbers.

• The proportion of teachers from an ethnic minority background remained stable, with 89% of teachers across state-funded schools being white. The proportion of white teachers is higher in nursery and primary schools than in secondary schools and increases with seniority in leadership roles.

Finally, a word about leadership pay. The STRB concluded that:

2.25 The comparative salary position of leadership roles in primary schools falls below the market salary data in all regions, whilst leadership roles in secondary schools are better aligned to the market salary data. P11

After a year of tracking headteacher vacancies, I do wonder why anyone would take on a job both teaching and leading a small primary school for a salary of little more than £60,000 from September when a classroom teacher with no responsibilities, and a similar length of service could be earning nearly £53,000.

Little more than £10,000 extra, for both the loss of the 1,265 working time protection and all the extra responsibilities, seems like a gross imbalance in differentials. This is especially the case when all primary leaders, and not just headteachers, work on average 5.1 hours more than classroom teachers. Table B14 page 91.

I will say more about the issue of headteachers’ pay when I publish my review of headteacher vacancies for 2025-26 at the end of August.

The saviour for the government when considering future pay is ‘falling pupil numbers’. This issue makes the need to recruit teachers, especially with the current age distribution of those teachers in employment less of an overall challenge.

However, as indicated earlier in this post, dealing with the consequences of different primary, secondary and further education labour markets may be a real issue for the next STRB Report.

Dear Secretary of State – updated

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Two years ago, after the general election, I posted this open letter to the new Secretary of State. With the possibility of a cabinet reshuffle following the arrival of a new Prime Minister, I though it was worth taking a second look at my thoughts of two years ago, and what has changed.

Posted on July 6, 2024

At this important time in our history, I thought that I would post my views for the new Secretary of State for Education

An Open Letter to the Secretary of State for Education

Dear Secretary of State,

You have a tough job ahead of you. Firstly, you need to clear up problems resulting from the campaign promise of 6,000 extra teachers. Those of us in the know, are aware that this September, as for the past few years, all the training places for new secondary school teachers are not being filled. Those gaps need to be filled before you can start on adding 6,000 new teachers to the total.

We don’t have 6,000 more teachers, and training targets have been cut in many subjects, so reaching what you and I might have thought of as 6,000 extra teachers seems unlikely, and the pledge will be subject to a sleight of hand to show it has been achieved.

Don’t think of an easy way out, such as upgrading some teaching assistants to teachers, because it is teachers for the secondary schools that we need, not more teachers for primary schools.

And then, there is the state of our school buildings. Even before the concrete crisis, many of our primary schools were time expired, and many are more than 150 years old. There needs to be a programme of replacement and, for those that will remain, a programme to help make them carbon neutral or even sources of renewable energy. After all, school playgrounds are not being used for their key purpose for 95% of the year. How can we make them earn their keep for the rest of the year, by being sources of renewable power?

Some progress on buildings, but not much, and no real policy advocacy around renewables.

Don’t get me started on funding for 16-19 year olds. That’s a battle with the Treasury you must win. At the same time, you could increase the upper age for free transport for young people in rural areas from 16 up to the de facto if not de jure leaving age of 18 from where it now stops at 16. Start by offering it this September to those staying in the same school. This is a levelling up programme for rural areas.

Rural transport, and indeed, 16-18 transport has been ignored. This is despite the fact it may contribute to NEET numbers in rural areas. I have suggested reviewing motor insurance tax for 16-18s where there is no public transport to school or college, and extending free transport to 18 for those that receive it up to age 16. No sign government understands this issue.

AI and technology are important to our country’s future, and we need to work out how they impact on our education system. Are we training new and existing teachers in a curriculum and teaching style for the future, not the past? Do we need a research body for teaching and learning in schools?

Much more to be done here; especially in training new teachers. New teachers entering preparation courses this September at age 22, might not retire until 2063. In the past 40 years we have seen, the microprocessor revolution; the internet and social media sensation, and now AI. How have we responded to this revolution, every bit as significant as the arrival of printing more than 500 years ago: we have banned mobile phones from schools.

I am sure you will have much to say about early years, and perhaps you could reverse the name change Mr Gove announced when he had your job in 2010.  Bring back the Department for Children Education and Families.

Hopefully, early years will be a success story, but outcomes need monitoring especially for those children that fall behind when they reach school. Do you favour schools having an on-site nursery? What about a qualified workforce?

There are other issues, such as higher education, private schools and the consequences of VAT on fees, and the relationship between local authorities and the academies sector, not least for children in care that you will have to deal with, but solving the teacher supply crisis is the number one priority.

Well, we have VAT on school fees and it has shaken the tree for some of the weaker schools that were also suffering from falling rolls. However, there are still not enough teachers for state schools, and private schools can attract teachers where there are shortages leaving more challenging schools with less well qualified staff. What’s the policy to deal with this problem?

The dual regime of democratically controlled local authorities nominally responsible for maintained schools and the academy sector responsible to Whitehall and with no local democratic accountability is a blot on your copybook. Following the Blair/Brow government’s line on ducking the issue of selective schools for some and comprehensive schools for others is a waste of a big majority, especially as most Labour MPs represent areas with comprehensive schools.

You could take a leaf out of David Blunkett’s approach in 1997, and pay the fees of all trainee teachers studying as postgraduates to enter the profession. Paying them all a training salary, as his successor introduced, and the coalition removed, would be another step forward. This year, it should be possible to pay the bills from the unfilled training places where the money has already been allocated by H M Treasury plus the VAT receipts from private school fees.

Training to be a teacher is still expensive in debt terms for many. Working abroad after qualification can bring higher income, and no fee repayments while abroad.

If the government is serious about education, then now is the time for action. Good luck in your first 100 days in the job.

However, will you still be in post after the arrival of the new Prime Minister? Of will we have to start all over again?

Don’t let this government kill off music in state schools.

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Regular readers will know that I have been championing the need for more teachers of music in our schools, and the government’s actions in first, cutting the bursary for these trainee teachers, and then halving the target number of trainees that they will fund. Now comes news of yet another year of funds not uprated for inflation that will mean cuts to services. Even more ominously there is talk by civil servants of the need to prepare and ‘exit strategy’.

Last evening, I attended a wonderful performance of pupils from both local state secondary and primary schools across Oxfordshire joining with the world-class Gabrieli Consort & Players to perform Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in the Silk Hall at Radley College. This is a great example of making elite-level musical experiences genuinely accessible to all children, including those from more disadvantaged backgrounds.


As we know, singing together fosters a profound sense of belonging.
However, as one of the key players behind arranging the event has noted ‘we cannot ignore the stark reality behind the scenes, core revenue funding for music services across local authorities has faced severe real-terms cuts. Children in under-served areas will be the first to lose out and music will once again become an exclusive luxury for the privileged few.’ I absolutely agree.

Programs like Gabrieli Roar from the Gabrieli Trust that facilitated the Radley performance, show us what is possible. About Gabrieli Roar – Gabrieli Consort & Players

Let’s celebrate the exceptional performance witnessed at Radley last night, plus the event tonight in Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre with a different group of young musicians, but let’s also keep fighting for sustained, robust core funding for music education in our schools and with our young people.

Cuts to the ITT bursary for trainee teachers, cuts to teacher training numbers, this despite a shortage of teachers of music teachers in state schools, and the recent grant announcement that once again music funding from government hasn’t increased to cover inflation, all show a government across both DCMS and the DfE that isn’t successfully challenging the Treasury to support music in schools.

The government has an aim to channel cash into after school activities, doing so through music service is a quick win, as the infrastructure for delivery already exists, and there is no battle over a teacher’s 1,265 hours contract.

If you have any influence with policy-makers, please ask them to review and increase funding for music services, with a focus on helping engage disadvantaged groups in society to benefit from music of all genres, through both engaging as players and listeners.

I grew up in Tottenham, where school music thrived in the 1950s, and still does through Haringey’s Music Service. Let’s ensure music can still be for all in the future, and not just for those able to pay to unlock the enjoyment of both singing and playing an instrument.

Oxfordshire and the defence dilemma

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Defence* and education are both important public services in Oxfordshire. The county plays home to Brize Norton – the largest RAF base in Britain; RAF Benson; Dalton and Vauxhall Barracks, plus MOD Bicester, and for good measure a University OTC plus cadet forces that also include naval elements.

There is also Shrivenham, the national Defence Academy, plus elements of the reserve forces. So, a real presence from our armed forces, even if not as significant as in West Surrey, Hampshire and Wiltshire.

Apart from its schools and colleges, both state -funded and private, the county hosts two universities and lots of enterprises selling into the education market, including a thriving publishing sector.

As a result, of the county’s engagement with both sectors, today’s announcement of shortfall in defence funding may well have implications for the education sector across the county if the gap in funding defence spending is to be closed by raiding the budgets of other government departments.

The government already has a win with falling pupil numbers. This decline will release funding from education if the remaining pupils and students remain funded only at their present levels, even if inflation is taken into account.

However, there will be other implications for the education sector if the defence funding gap is to be closed, and possibly even more funding to be found for that sector, the announcement of new rules for CEOs pay in academy trusts Government plans NHS-style rules for academy CEO pay will be a shot across the bows of many MATs. I have written about this issue several times on this blog. See The pay of senior staff in academies | John Howson as an example.

I would go further and ask why there are so many MATs, each with a CEO. In Oxfordshire, the 2025 accounts for MATs operating schools in the county revealed a salary bill for the highest paid -excluding large national MATs with outrageous salary bills – of some £3.9mn for the highest paid employee of each Trust. Cut the number of trusts to say, 5, the equivalent of the former 5 divisional directors under local authority management of schools, and perhaps more than £1mn might be saved. Multiply that across England and the saving mounts up.

Then there is small sixth forms. I wrote about this issue earlier this year in a post Are small sixth forms a good idea? | John Howson This is a hard area to tackle, but with falling rolls is the current arrangements in a county such as Oxfordshire best for both the country’s finances and the outcomes for students, especially if we need more cash for our defence?

If sixth forms eat up cash, what about small schools? I favour keeping schools, and especially primary schools, in their communities. Oxfordshire has been excellent at supporting village schools, but could rationalisation save money or would the additional transport costs outweigh the savings?

However, the big transfer of cash from education to defence would be due to decisions on the pay of those working in the education sector and the funding of the sector as a whole that are taken at the national level.

Will funding return measures, such as Pupil Teacher Ratios, return to levels last seen 50 years ago when spending on defence was a higher proportion of GDP than today. What that might mean across England was laid out in my review of PTRS. (PDF) PTRS OVER TIME: A REVIEW OF PUPIL TEACHER RATIOS BETWEEN 1974 AND 2024 AND TWO PERIODS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT RE-ORGANISATION PTRS OVER TIME: A REVIEW OF PUPIL TEACHER RATIOS

It is difficult to see anything other than challenging times ahead for education in Oxfordshire if the government is serious about more funding for defence.

 Of course, the government could just put up taxes.

*Defense for those with a Ministry of War

Hope over expectation: my view of today’s report on white working class children

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How good are the recommendations into today’s report on the education of White working-class children? Based on my analysis of this one recommendation from the report; not universally very good The Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes Here is one specific recommendation:

“Government should encourage and support more deliberate action to ensure that the highest performing primary and secondary schools admit and support a fair share of disadvantaged pupils, particularly in areas with significant white working class populations. Too often, the highest performing schools within local areas serve intakes that are significantly less disadvantaged than the communities around them. This should include clearer guidance and encouragement for schools and trusts to prioritise disadvantaged pupils within existing admissions rules, alongside stronger expectations that high-performing schools demonstrate how they are contributing to inclusion and fair access locally. Local authorities should also play a stronger role in supporting fair access, admissions coordination and inclusive place planning, building on their existing statutory responsibilities in this area.”

‘more deliberate action’ – What does this mean, since it doesn’t spell out any actions? Obviously, it means support for selective schools, as they are the highest performing secondary schools, and nowhere are they mentioned, so is the report endorsing the status quo. A selective school currently seeking a new headteacher has less than 7% of its pupils on free school meals according to the DfE website.

‘admit and support a fair share of disadvantaged pupils’ – What is being recommended for school with entry tests? And what is a fair share? Similar to the balance of the catchment area? But the location of schools is often based on history rather than current place concerns?

And for non-selective schools, how do you override parental preference and faith-based requirements?  Probably, through the school funding mechanism to encourage change in admissions criteria.

I would have liked to see some specific recommendations. A case study of how a successful school has already used the admissions rules would have been insightful.

‘stronger expectations that high-performing schools demonstrate how they are contributing to inclusion and fair access locally.’  Everyone knows what schools do to ‘expectations from government’.

‘Local authorities should also play a stronger role in supporting fair access, admissions coordination’ Ha, Ha, ha. It has taken two years of a Labour government to get local authorities the ability to control in-year admissions for academies and free schools (Clause 52 of 2026 Act). Will government back closure of faith schools if it is the best outcome for place planning: we shall see.

And what of transport in rural areas? At present transport to selective schools is not free in most areas outside London and the other conurbations, as it is seen as a parental choice, something I campaigned about in the 2024 general election in Weald of Kent and raised in Castle Point about schools on Canvey Island during the previous General Election.

I would have liked a much more radical approach to policy recommendations, as in the section on teachers, where a revision of the apprenticeship system is advocated. Trainees should also understand what teaching in schools in working lass areas is like. Of course, if the recommendation above is actioned, some schools will look very different, as some might lose successful pupils to selective schools and be even less educationally comprehensive. Will teachers want to teach in such schools without more incentives?

Sadly, with an Education Act passed in the last session of parliament, even a new Prime Minister may find it difficult to fsecure time for more reforms, so what will happen will probably only be within the current rules and framework.

I wonder what changes we will see by the end of this parliament: I am not holding my breath, at least for the secondary school sector. In the Early Years field, I am much more hopeful because there is an acceptance that closing chidrens’ centres a decade ago was not a wise policy move.  

Still, any report that puts these issues back on the table for a little while and creates discussion cannot be all bad.

Tell me the old, old story: the working class and schools

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With the publication later today of the Star Academy Trust commissioned report into outcomes for ‘white working-class boys’, I thought I would look at what I posted when the inquiry was announced last year. Class matters more than ethnicity | John Howson

“However, I cannot help thinking that the focus of the inquiry is wrong. All the evidence suggests that of the three factors of race, gender and class, it is the third one that really matters. Yes, they are often inter-related, but looking at socio-economic data, it is often schools in deprived areas, regardless of the ethnicity of their pupils that fare less well in school performance table.”

Way back in 1982, nearly 50 years ago, I used some evidence from a book published in 1926 by Kenneth Lindsay, and entitled ‘Social Progress and Educational Waste’ about the wide variations in the percentages of children obtaining secondary education – not mandatory for all until 19944 – to discuss differences in provision for schooling across England. (Variations in Local Authority Provision of Education Oxford Review of education, Volume 8, Number 2, 1982). Lindsay, in his book, found one school in Lewisham that won as many scholarships to secondary school as the whole inner city area of Bermondsey out together.’ Differences in education by social class were commonplace.

In the 1960s, The Plowden Report into primary education found that ‘the boroughs in which expenditure [on schooling] was generally low were very much the same in 1960-61 as they were in 1950-51.’ Later that decade another report Half our Future looked at the children leaving school at 15. I celebrated its 50th anniversary with this blog post Half Our Future: A tribute | John Howson both Reports revealed the differences in outcomes for different social classes and how those gaps might be reduced.

Finally, in terms of evidence of the different education outcomes for different groups in society, it is worth reading the Oxfordshire County Council report to Education Scrutiny Committee of 16th October 2014 ESC_OCT1614R05 Educational Attainment of White Working Class Boys.pdf

So, don’t expect anything new, today, but I would like this report to be linked to the speech by Andy Burnham, also to be given today that should speak about the importance of ‘place’ and devolution in our society.  

Both Lindsay and Plowden wrote when schooling was a devolved activity, sometime described, at the time, as ‘a local service nationally administered’. Since then, the administration of schooling has become more site -based with schools operating their own budgets, but more nationally controlled from Westminster. This shift in ‘place’ doesn’t seem to have done much for the educational achievements of white working-class boys.

So, will a shift back to more local or regional decision-making move on the dial for outcomes? Much, I think depends on the interplay of the 4 ‘P’s of Education power

Parents

Premises

People

Purpose

And how they operate together.

The Conservatives, after the 2010 general election had ideas, but they didn’t work for those not wanting to go on to high education. Interestingly, although academies were free from following the National Curriculum, few looked at whether it was appropriate as a curriculum for their communities.

However, what is common to all places is the vital need to engage with effective early learning. If all young people achieve successful early in life, then, with the building blocks firmly in place, more can be achieved later. Fail early, fail often in schooling, and with failure comes disillusion and a lack of engagement.  

So, let’s continue the battle to achieve success in education for all, but it won’t be easy, and will need a view of ‘place’ that incorporates local, regional and national policy-making that supports communities and their schools.

So where does parental choice fit into this model of support? More importantly, where does a selective secondary school system fit into the thinking about the issued raised in today’s report?

“

DfE Vacancy website: two irritations

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For years one of the features of the DfE’s vacancy website that has irritated me is the seemingly random repeating of vacancies. The example below, seen this morning, is an extreme example of this tendency, with the two adverts for the same vacancy appearing next to each other on the same page. I never know whether this is either a coding glitch that has existed since the site became active or a deliberate attempt to ensure some vacancies are repeated in case viewers missed them on their first appearance in the listing or search. Either way, putting the two versions next to each other doesn’t seem to me to be sensible.

Headteacher

Bordesley Green Girls’ School & Sixth Form, Birmingham, B9 4TR

Full-time equivalent salary

L33 to L39

School type

Local authority maintained school, ages 11 to 18

Working pattern

Full time

Closing date

30 June 2026 at 9am

Visa sponsorship

Visas cannot be sponsored

Headteacher

Bordesley Green Girls’ School & Sixth Form, Birmingham, B9 4TR

Pay scale

L33 to L39

School type

Local authority maintained school, ages 11 to 18

Working pattern

Full time

Closing date

30 June 2026 at 9am

Visa sponsorship

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Another irritation of the DfE vacancy site, as far as I am concerned, is that a search on the term ‘headteacher’ can result in random vacancies for other posts appearing in the search, such as this on today for an ‘assistant principal’. This is not an issue at this time of year when there are few vacancies on the site, but is more of an issue when there are a couple of hundred vacancies to consider.

Assistant Principal – Behaviour and Alternative Provision

More than one location, Archway Learning Trust

Full-time equivalent salary

From £67,898 to £75,049 per annum

School type

1 academy, None, ages 11 to 19

Working pattern

Full time

Closing date

6 July 2026 at 9am

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Both the issues mentioned here may cause problems for AI generated searches aimed at counting the number of vacancies for particular post.  The search mechanism would need to be very sophisticated to cope with such anomalies.

This is the reason why, at present, I still spend a couple of hours a week studying the list of vacancies. I would be delighted if anyone would provide me with a foolproof automated regime to collect vacancies, because forty years of collecting headteacher vacancies has taught me that it is not a straightforward exercise.

Later next month, when I come to write my annual report of the 2025/26 school-year and headteacher vacancies, I will discuss some of those issues in more detail, including ‘what is an Executive headteacher’ and do we need a definition?

Meanwhile, I have collected data on just under 1,400 nursery, primary, secondary and special schools that are state-funded and located in England and have advertised for a head teacher since 1st August 2025.

Since January, I have also been collecting data about vacancies for teachers of music in state-funded secondary schools. Next year, I might expand that to include private schools so that I can understand the completion for teachers across both sectors.

Watch our for the report that will be published either in Late July or August this year.

Is the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model outdated?

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For most of my adult life, the government department responsible for the supply of teachers, whether it was called the DfE, DES, DfEE or by another name, has used a version of the Teacher Supply Model to calculate future teacher needs, and presumably to ensure the government doesn’t waste money training too many teachers.

Training too few teachers, not as a result of the Model, but because of under-recruitment into training, has been a problem for the Teacher Supply Model (TSM) during periods of teacher shortage. Do you either add the under-recruitment to the TSM target in any one year to the next year’s TSM total, thus making it even harder to reach, or do you accept every school starts each new school year in September fully staffed, so there are no vacancies to be filled, even if additional trainees just happened to be recruited. Over the past forty years, both approaches have been tried: neither really works.

I first came across the TSM in the late 1980s when, in response to a Select Committee Report, a technical document explaining the working of the TSM at that time was published. Between the late 1980s, and a seminal announcement, also to a Select committee, by David Laws when he was the Minister of State that the TSM would be part of open government, the TSM remained largely secret, apart from one other document published in the late 1990s in repose to yet another two Select Committee reports.

Why were successive government keen to keep the TSM under wraps? Possibly because the workings allowed for an understanding of future government policy. There are three obvious areas where changes in policy can have consequences for schools and society that might create political debate: reactions to future pupil numbers, whether up or down; changes in education funding that might allow more or less funds for schools; policy changes such as extending the learning leaving age or the introduction of a new subject, such as citizenship or computing. All impact on the TSM

Governments often don’t want to signal policy changes ahead of time, especially if they might be controversial. In the first decade of this century, the secrecy around the TSM almost caught out the ITT sector when falling rolls together with improved ITT recruitment made a reduction in ITT numbers inevitable for secondary subjects, especially as there was no policy around improving staffing levels in the secondary sector, partly because of the decision over the introduction of non-contact time in the primary sector.

Planning is an essential too of any organisation, including governments, whatever extreme free-market thinkers may say. After years of following the consequences of the TSM decisions on the outcomes for the teacher labour market, I have some concerns about what happens when the TSM has been run for any particular year. The elements of the TSM have changed over the years, as explained above in relation to under-recruitment as an example. That’s not an issue for me, although the discussions with the sector may have helped prevent some changes to the TSM in mor recent times.

What is at the core of my concerns about the TSM is the length of time between the collection of the data for input into the TSM and the consequences for the real-time labour market for any September recruitment round, let alone the needs for teachers to fill any January vacancies.

I acknowledge that improved and faster data collection over time thanks to better computing capabilities has helped reduce the time taken between data collection and the effect on the labour market of the TSM output for any recruitment round. Currently, data from the 2025 School Workforce Survey, collected in November 2025, will probably influence the TSM run for the 2027 entry into training, and hence, the 2028 labour market.

At least with most trainees now on a one-year postgraduate training route, there is no longer the issue of a four-year undergraduate course to add into the mix. The November 2025 data collected, if such courses were still a significant part of the ITT scene, would not affect the labour market until 2031. A lot can happen in the intervening years.

Even with the shorter training period, there is still a time lag between data collection and the consequences of that data on the labour market.

My question is, should a further check be added once the TSM has been used to calculate ITT targets, in order to allow the comparison between the TSM target and the current reality of the labour market?

The DfE now has excellent data from several years of operating its own vacancy platform, and there are also private operators monitoring the labour market with useful vacancy data in real time. This data can be compared with the TSM output target to allow a discussion about the validity of the TSM target to current labour market needs.

Now, it may well be that the TSM number is the best fit for training needs, but as my previous post that considered the labour market data for teachers of music alongside the ITT target cut that presumably emerged from the TSM output has suggested, the addition of vacancy data does allow for a debate about whether the TSM target under or over estimates demand. Music ITT: has the government made a mistake? | John Howson

Such use of vacancy data also allows for a consideration of policy changes, such as how schools react to a change in a market where QTS still allows any teacher to teach any subject to any child, and ‘permits the use of unqualified staff. where nobody with QTS is either available or considered sufficiently expert at delivering the curriculum.  

The TSM isn’t outdated, just, in my opinion, no longer enough by itself to ensure an orderly labour market for teachers.

Why is this important, it is because the market does play a part in determining how shortages are dealt with. Where are the qualified teachers of physics teaching? How much more do schools with high levels of free school meals have to spend on recruitment than a school with fewer such pupils? Important questions around the staffing of the nation’s schools.

I read the Fed report on education issued yesterday National Education Report 2026 – FED and believe that the supply of teachers and school leaders is still at the heart of any effective system of education.

How any government determines teacher supply is a vital decision affecting the lives of many young people. Ensuring every child has the best possible teachers throughout their whole school-life is equally as important as whether or not they are banned from social media, but much less often discussed.

I think that teacher supply issues should be much higher up the education agenda, but I would, wouldn’t I, having spent a career worrying about teacher supply matters.