Tag Archives: TeachVac

An end to vocational courses in secondary schools?

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I wonder at what point the national employer organisations will wake up to the current trends in the staffing of vocational subjects in our secondary schools. The recent announcement of the bursary levels for those entering teacher preparation courses in 2016 show the removal of the bursary from design and technology students with a 2:2 degree; it was previously £4,000 for such students. This is despite the collapse in trainee numbers in recent years.

Now TeachVac, our job board for teachers, http://www.teachvac.co.uk has recorded far more vacancies in the subject than there are trainees this year, so cutting the bursary is somewhat odd.  Even odder is the absence of Business studies from the bursary list. This is despite TeachVac showing far more vacancies than there were trainees in 2015, with shortages reported almost across the country.

Despite the likely increase in teachers’ salaries in 2016, the funding for School Direct salaried places in design and technology, along with many other subjects, has been held at 2015 levels; a cut in real terms.

However, the effect isn’t ’s severe as it is in primary, where the funding per School Direct salaried trainee has be reduced by between a third and 40% depending on the location of the school. Along with the cuts in the primary bursary, this seems like a high risk strategy that is presumably based on an improvement in recruitment in 2015. Changing the rates from year to year can cause a yo-yo effect that isn’t helpful to either training providers or schools that recruit NQTs. TeachVac staff will be monitoring the UCAS data for evidence of the effects of these changes on the primary sector now we also handle primary vacancies as well as secondary ones.

Returning to the issue of staffing secondary subjects that might feed through employees to the wealth creating part of the economy in the future, I wonder whether the cutbacks are because Ministers only really care about the EBacc subjects and don’t understand the value of early encouragement to think of the value of design and technology for careers in manufacturing, textiles, electronics, the catering and food trades and many other possible jobs not yet imagined.

Perhaps there is a policy to direct such ‘applied’ subjects to 14-18 studio schools and UTCs leaving other secondary schools to concentrate on non-vocational science and art subjects for those wanting to enter higher education at eighteen? This might be a back-door method of creating a selective school system for the 14-18 age group, with most of the new schools being aligned to the further education sector. Of course, it could all be a mistake, and the next ITT census, due out later this month, will show my worries about recruitment in these subjects are a mere chimera.

Along with these subjects that are obviously out of favour, both art and music and the humanities other than pure history and geography don’t seem to feature in the forward thinking of this government. I wonder it is time to ask what the government is trying to achieve with its teacher supply policy for the remainder of this parliament. Perhaps it knows something about the health of the economy we don’t.

Incentives Part 2

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On the 3rd October I posted a blog about the new bursary rates for 2016 headed ‘Incentives and ageism’. In that post I suggested the DfE would run an advert saying in large letters ‘£30,000 to train as a teacher tax free’. Well today in the Metro newspaper the advert ran with the words ‘Receive up to £30K tax-free to train as a teacher’. Apart from the added, but probably redundant, ‘receive’ I got pretty close with my wording. The DfE advert goes on to say ‘you can earn up to £65K as a great teacher’. The predicted ‘*’ appears at that point in the advert. The asterisk refers readers to the phrase ’conditions apply’ at the foot of the advert. To find out what they are requires a visit to education.gov.uk/teachconditions Presumably, this then tells you that unless you are a Physics graduate with a First Class degree or a PhD, you cannot received the £30K tax free sum.

I saw this advert on my way to speak at a Policy Exchange event on the future of the teaching workforce. Details of the event and a speaker list can be found at http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/modevents/item/the-future-of-the-teaching-workforce and I hope an account will be published in due course. As the TES were present, I assume it will also be reported by them.

It was interesting the number of those present that thought the fees of graduates training to be teachers should be paid by government. Fee abatement for graduates is a campaign this blog started way back in January and I am delighted to see it gaining traction. Some present though that we should once again offer to pay off the undergraduate fee debt for teachers that work in state schools for a number of years; perhaps at 20% per year. I suspect that schools could already do that if they so wished to offer it as an incentive to work in their school.

The House of Commons Education Select Committee are now taking evidence on the state of teacher supply following a letter they have received from the Secretary of State after her latest appearance in front of the Committee. It is interesting to try to define the difference between a ‘challenge’ and a crisis’ in both training and recruitment into the profession. It might be possible to have one without the other.

There was an acknowledgement at the Policy Exchangeevent of the regional nature of the problem of recruiting teachers and that, as this blog has commented on several occasions, the solutions are also likely to be regional or even local. New entrants to the profession don’t often travel far, although according the NCTL Annual Report more than 6,000 have come from overseas: more about this in another post, I suspect, once I have chased up the data.

On the regional note, it looks as if the situation on parts of the East of England is now almost as bad as in London in terms of recruitment. TeachVac now has an average for 2015 of more than seven classroom teacher vacancies per school in both these regions.

Is the lack of a London allowance affecting teacher training numbers in London?

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What is happening in London? The data released by UCAS yesterday on applications and applicants for graduate teacher training courses as at the middle of September – after most courses will have started – shows that the data for applicants with a domicile in London seem way out of line when compared with the data for applicants domiciled in other parts of England.

According to the UCAS data, only 39% of applicants domiciled in London have been placed on a course. This compares with a national average of 51%. By contrast, 16% of applicants with a London domicile were shown in the data as holding a conditional offer, compared with a national percentage of 11%. In the North East, the conditional offers were 8% of those applicants domiciled there; half the percentage in London.

Now it is perfectly possible that providers that recruited applicants domiciled in London were less good at informing UCAS that applicants had been converted from a conditional offer to a confirmed place. Indeed, I hope that is the case. The alternative and more worrying scenario is that the conditionally placed total represents candidates that weren’t going to take up the place offered to them earlier in the year and failed to meet all the conditions such as the pre-entry skills tests without informing the provider that they weren’t going to take up their place.  Were that to be the case, then there might only be around 3,500 trainees in London, outwith Teach First, on courses that started this autumn.

As that’s both primary and secondary trainees, the figure must be of concern. As schools in London have advertised a similar 3,500 vacancies for secondary school classroom teachers so far in the 2015 recruitment round  according to TeachVac (www.teachvac.co.uk), the number of secondary trainees would need to be more than half the trainee total to ensure sufficient entrants to the London labour market in 2016, if vacancies are at a similar level next year. With pupil numbers on the increase, it seems unlikely that vacancies will fall very much unless London schools’ budgets are restricted next year.

As we don’t know the spread of offers between subjects among London providers, it is impossible to tell whether certain subjects might be even more adversely affected by these figures. They certainly need further investigation. Now it may well be that the large-scale operation of Teach First across London is having an effect on the market for training places in the capital. As we know, from TV programmes, such as ‘Tough Young Teachers’, Teach First has its own approach to preparing teachers. However, unless it has the same retention rate as other programmes that presumably aim to train career teachers, any programme seen as a short-service approach to teaching as a career could affect training numbers when pupil numbers are on the increase.

Let’s assume a normal training programme places 75% of its teachers in post: say 75 out of 100. By the end of year 1, 20% leave, taking the number down to 60. If a further 15% leave at the end of year 2, that means 51 are still teaching. However, if the figures were 80% for the entry rate and 10% leaving at the end of each year, there would be 57 still remaining at the start of year 3. How does that compare with Teach First over a similar period from entry to summer school to start of year 3 of teaching?

Fortunately, as a result of a PQ in the House of Lords, we know that the 2014 cohort for Teach First was 1,387 at the start of the Summer Institute. By the end of year 1, some 1,272 gained QTS. However, the government dodged the part of the question from Lord Storey that asked how many entered teaching the following September. As not all of the 1,272 are in London, we cannot really complete the comparison except to say that if all Teach First were in London they would have needed to lose just under 600 trainees between year 1 and entering year 3 of teaching to match the hypothetical figures for other training provision.

The point of this discussion is that any route that retains fewer teachers over the first three to five years of teaching than the norm just adds to the recruitment problems. This is something that should be monitored to allow for the most cost-effective training provision that best meets the recruitment needs of schools in London, especially if there are fewer trainees entering in the first instance than there are places on offer.

TeachVac expands its free service into the Primary Sector

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Teaching and schools have featured strongly in the news today with the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire Show covering the issue of possible teacher shortages and most other news media featuring the opening of new free schools at the start of term. The Victoria Derbyshire piece is at 30 minutes into the show and can be seen on BBC i-player for anyone interested. The head from Educating Essex and the President of ATL were joined in the discussion on the show by a Teach First primary teacher and the chair of the House of Commons Education Select Committee, with a small contribution from myself.

A little earlier, just before 0830 the Secretary of State for Education was interviewed on BBC Breakfast News about the new Free Schools. Not I think her finest hour in front of the TV cameras, but sadly you cannot judge for yourself because BBC Breakfast doesn’t appear on the BBC i-player. If anyone recorded the interview, hopefully it might turn up on youtube or somewhere else.

It was disappointing to hear a Secretary of State that didn’t know how many free schools weren’t opening today due to problems and even worse, what was going to happen to the children affected by schools not opening on time. In the days before cabinet government, could you imagine an Education Committee that would let such a thing happen? Most had far more civic pride in the service they provided regardless of their political background.

TeachVac launched its expansion into the primary sector yesterday and also welcomed another of the large academy chains to the site. As more schools and applicants register for free, so the quality of the data collected improves and more and more vacancies can be matched with teachers. I am delighted to see we are beginning to understand in ‘real time’ what is happening in the labour market for teachers. There are still issues about measuring quality, especially in mathematics where trainee numbers at the ITT census last November looked as if they might have been sufficient to meet demand but clearly haven’t been.

I suppose the trips to Canada and South Africa recruiting maths teachers are about as welcome to deputy heads as taking a press gang out during the Napoleonic Wars was to naval officers of the day. The only difference is that ship’s captains didn’t lead press gangs, but some heads might lead the recruitment team on overseas visits. However, in my experience work trips are never the fun others think they were, despite what sometimes sound like exotic locations.

There have been concerns about the pre-entry skills tests affecting recruitment. I thought it was a good idea to move them to before entry, but I may need to re-think my view if it appears that the change is reducing the intake of possible trainees that might have passed the tests at the end of a PGCE or School Direct year when they could have had some coaching in areas they found challenging. After all, we cannot afford to lose would-be teachers. The alternative would be for the government to pay potential teachers to attend courses that improve their knowledge and skills to the standard required. About as likely as paying trainees fees, I fear.

Warning lights flashing amber

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The publication today of the 2014 School Workforce Census data by the government https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2014 allows a review of the key indicators about the staffing of schools across England To this new data can be added the re-publication of the ITT data for courses in 2014-15, first published last November. The latter showed that only 93% of primary and 91% of secondary courses were filled when measured against the demand identified using the Teacher Supply Model. These numbers don’t appear to have changed since last November when they were first released.

According to the School Workforce Census, the number of vacancies reported by schools in November was 1,030. This is 280 more than in the previous year, although as one might expect from a census taken in November, the absolute figure as a percentage of the workforce has only increased from 0.2 to 0.3. Still, it is at its highest since the census moved to November in 2010 when it stood at just 380 vacancies.

The other key indicator of possible recruitment challenges comes from the percentage of lessons taken by those without a relevant post-A Level qualification in the subject. These percentages have increased for pupils in Years 7-13 in maths by 2.8%, so that only 79.8% of pupils this year were being taught the subject by a teacher with a relevant qualification. In English, the increase was 1.8% to 83% and in the sciences it was 1.2%, so that only 86.4% of pupils were being taught by a qualified science teacher of any description in November 2014.

The other indicator is the use of unqualified and temporary teachers. The number of unqualified teachers increased between 2013 and 2014 from 16,600 to 20,300 and is now the highest number recorded since the census moved to November. However, some of the increase may be due to the manner of recording those on Teach First and School Direct in schools. The number of temporary teachers increased from 13,500 to 14,100 and is above the 2010 figure of 12,200. Since sickness absence taken by teachers showed a slight decline, the increase in the number of temporary teachers is another possible indicator of staffing issues.

As this blog has regularly reported, the acceptances for entry into training in 2015 will not be sufficient to meet the requirements of the Teacher Supply Model, so we now know that recruitment for some schools, especially in and around London, but not exclusively in this area, will again be a challenge in 2016.

I published a blog earlier in the week with suggestions for how to tackle the training shortfall and it is clear that regardless of the Bill currently going through parliament, all schools, whether or not they are academies, will find progress challenging if they cannot recruit appropriately trained staff.

Had the census still been taken in January, as it used to be, then the 2016 data might make more worrying reading. But, the time for action is now, not when the growing size of the problem overwhelms the government and its Regional Commissioners.

Time for radical solutions

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Secondary schools across England might well have been facing much greater issues over staffing their timetables for September than they are but for the syphoning off of cash into increased National Insurance and pension contributions.  While that decision to boost government finances may be a relief to both the Treasury and the DfE, since it both diminishes the size of any crisis and provides so much needed cash for the government, it doesn’t mean that there is any reason to relax.

As this blog has shown, 2016 is likely to be as challenging a recruitment round as was 2015, if not more so. At TeachVac,  www.teachvac.co.uk the free recruitment service, the average secondary school in London had placed more than six advertisements for classroom teachers since the start of 2015 and the end of June: some schools have placed many more.

This blog has long recognised that something has to be done to alleviate the growing pressure on staffing and the associated recruitment issues. At the start of 2015 I advocated a return to a ‘no fees’ policy for graduates, with the State once again paying the fees of those graduates opting to train as a teacher. So far, the government has been resistant to this proposal.

What else might be done? We know that there are a few subjects, physical education and history being the main ones, where there is some over-capacity emerging from training programmes. There is a need for a programme of post-training subject knowledge enhancement that might help some of these teachers secure employment in another subject. After all, they have shown a desire to become a teacher and undergone a training programme, often at considerable expense to themselves. Do we just abandon them to their fate or try to harness their potential?

We know that IT and business studies teachers are both in short supply. How about a one term conversion course to equip some of these teachers with subject knowledge. They have the knowledge to teach for their existing training so most of the time could be classroom based with some days spent turning the new knowledge into practical experience teaching classes. The whole program could be university or school-based.

I wonder if there is an IT company that might sponsor a group of 25 through a pilot programme as it is difficult to see what new steps the National College are taking to help reduce teacher shortages. Indeed, it is surely time for a management change at the top of that organisation if it once again fails to deliver as many trainees as a required having been warned of what was to come two years ago.

If the troops to teacher model has proved its worth, it is surely time to roll it out to a wider group of potential career changers or create a whole new programme to encourage teaching as a second career. For those with really long memories, we might even call it the TASC programme.

Tell your Head

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The big story today is how the NHS can save money by better procurement. This provides me with an ideal hook on which to remind everyone about the success of TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk the free to use recruitment service for schools and teachers.

It has always seemed to me something of an irony that as the ability to recruit teachers becomes more of a challenge so the cost of doing so goes up, transferring resources from teaching and learning into the coffers of the private sector.

As a result, I worked with others to establish TeachVac, a recruitment service with the aim that using it would be free to both schools and teachers. We went live in January serving just main scale vacancies in secondary schools but have now expanded into all secondary vacancies up to and including leadership. In the autumn we expect TeachVac to expand into the primary and special school sectors.

TeachVac has a simple registration service and for schools that have difficulty with their URN, the most common registration problem, there is both a helpful demonstration video and a helpline to talk admin staff through the registration process.

For teachers it’s even easier to register a series of job preferences. Matching takes place daily and a job posted before lunch can be attracting interest the same evening. For main scale vacancies TeachVac has access to the overwhelming majority of vacancies as they arise using the best of modern technology.

As a bonus, with main scale vacancies schools are told each time they register what the likely size of the pool of trainees left is like. This can help schools judge how challenging recruitment might be.

Next year, as we have the data, the TeachVac team will refine this data down to a more regional level. Not that such a refinement will matter in subjects such as business studies, design and technology and in the next few weeks English, as in these subjects the pool has either already run dry or is about to do so. Those school unlucky enough to need to make an appointment for January will really struggle to do so in some parts of the country, but at least by using TeachVac they will know that is the case and can consider alternative arrangements and how useful throwing money at advertising really is?

The message about TeachVac is spreading quickly, but to keep down costs we need to remind you that if you are a school seeking to post a vacancy or a teacher or trainee looking for a teaching post at any level bookmark www.teachvac.co.uk and register today. Every million pounds TeachVac helps schools save on recruitment can help improve teaching and learning.

Tell your head and chair of governors and anyone in the staffroom looking for a job now or in the future to register today. Both schools and teachers receive regular newsletters about the recruitment scene.

Job market starts to hot up

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By the end of February the recruitment site TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk had recorded just over 4,000 vacancies for secondary classroom teachers since the 1st January 2015, including more than 1,500 during February despite the half-term holiday period.

These are vacancies suitable for trainees, returners and those moving schools, but not seeking promotion. As the DfE have a rule of thumb that 50% of these vacancies go to trainees, this means that around 2,000 trainees may have found a job by now. As there were around 13,000 trainees at the time of the ITT census in November that probably leaves just over 10,000 left in the pool after allowing for those that won’t complete the training year.

As I have suggested from last autumn, not all subjects are faring the same. The trainee pool was probably down to below two thirds by the end of February in English, business studies, design and technology, social studies and computer science. Next week, mathematics, history, geography and the sciences as a whole will probably join the list. Business studies may fall below 50% left in the pool and next week, and there have already been more vacancies recorded in the South West than there are trainees in that subject.

With the bumper recruitment months or March, and especially April still to come, I expect some schools to face recruitment challenges in these subjects.

On the other hand, PE, music and art have seen relatively few vacancies so far this year and in PE some trainees may struggle to find a post, especially if they are not especially interested in vacancies across a wide geographical area.

London and the counties around the capital have so far seen the largest percentage of vacancies relative to the number of schools in the regions even though Teach First is active in London. By contrast, the North West has seen comparatively few vacancies posted by schools so far this year.

TeachVac is free for both schools and trainees to use and offers a range of data analysis to anyone interested in the labour market for teachers in England on a real-time basis.

TeachVac will soon be expanded to allow registration by returners and teachers moving between schools as well as adding promoted posts to the vacancies on offer. However, it will remain free to both schools and teachers allowing substantial savings over other recruitment routes. The video demos on the TeachVac site show both schools and teachers how to operate the TeachVac system. All that is necessary for schools is to know the difference between their URN and their DfE number when they register.

In return, schools that register vacancies receive a real-time update on the state of the market in that subject where it is one of the main curriculum subjects tracked by TeachVac.

If you know of a trainee or teacher looking for a teaching post in England, whether in the state or private sectors, or a school wanting to post a vacancy for free, do point them to www.teachvac.co.uk

Prediction comes true

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In December I wrote on this blog in a post headed crocodile tears that: ‘One must assume that since the majority of academies are secondary schools the overall figure for school balances might be in excess of £4 billion and possibly even higher across the system.

’ According to figures obtained from the DfE and printed in the Guardian today schools are carrying balances of more than £4 billion and, as I predicted, academies had more than £2.4 billion in reserves at the end of March 2014, although one must be slightly careful as that isn’t the end of their financial year as it is for other state funded schools.
Although schooling is big business, with millions of pupils and more than half a million teachers, this is still a sum across all schools equal to half the level of investment it is suggested that the NHS needs in England between now and 2020. The question must therefore be, is this level of reserves necessary at the school level and, if not, what can be done about the situation?
Guidelines suggest reserves of 5% for secondary schools; 8% for primary schools and I would suggest perhaps 10% for the smallest rural primary schools. However, the Minister in his answer to Frank Dobson’s question referred to schools holding one month’s expenditure as the test of solvency. That equates to just over 8% of annual revenue, so probably a bit high for a large secondary school since academy financial years mirror the school year so salaries are secure for the whole of an academic year.
Today Children’s Services Weekly has reported that Cambridgeshire faced a large increase in home to school transport costs due to more staying on after sixteen and increased SEN transport costs. This highlights the dilemma facing our education system: putting the funding where it is most useful. Certainly sitting idle in schools bank accounts because there might be a rainy day at some point in the future, is a waste of public money. As regular readers of this blog know, I dislike revenue spending being saved and turned into building projects for future pupils. The money is, in my opinion, for the education of the present generation not for their younger brothers and sisters.
Personally, I think the government should now publish the revenue balances of all academies in the same manner as they do for other publicly funded schools. They should also measure overheads paid to academy trusts compared with local authority charges for similar services and those bought directly from the private sector. Protecting the education budget is one thing, but obtaining value for money is another and equally important duty.
As regular readers know TeachVac launches today. It was originally an idea to collect data about the labour market but now, like the disruptive retailers, it has been shown to offer significant saving while providing the level of management information any large organisation should possess about the turnover of its workforce. If you haven’t been to http://www.teachvac.co.uk do pay a visit and view the demo videos on both the schools and teachers sections of the web site.