Tag Archives: UCL Institute of Education

Gatsby Survey confirms importance of pay and working conditions for would-be teachers

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A Gatsby funded study by a team at London’s UCL has researched assumptions about why people do -or do not- choose to become a teacher in the UK and the US. The findings were that extrinsic rewards drive career choices. The report found that in both countries, extrinsic factors such as salary, working hours and paid leave were the most powerful drivers of career choice. Altruistic motives did play a role – participants were willing to accept lower pay for roles with higher social impact – but these were consistently smaller than the influence of pay and workload.’ New research reveals what really attracts graduates to teaching  | Gatsby Education

These factors were even seen among those undergraduates who already said they were already considering becoming a teacher.

Replies to the UCL study suggested that increasing working hours beyond 40 per week to that of a typical teacher reduced attractiveness of teaching by 15%, and that teachers holiday entitlement increased attractiveness by 11%. Increased salary raised job attractiveness by 9%.

How do these findings compare with previous research? In May 1997, almost 20 years ago, and during another period of challenges in recruiting graduates into teaching, The School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) commissioned the agency BMRB to investigate what factors influenced the attitudes towards teaching shortage subjects/ This was a small-scale study involving only 82 graduates compared with the 2,000 undergraduates, in both the UK and the US, surveyed by the UCL team.

BMRB students said that

  • Teaching should be a vocation
  • Those sampled felt not all were suited to be a teacher
  • There were serious concerns about both working conditions and stress levels
  • Pay was acknowledged to be a significant factor – although not a deterrent to those determined to teach, a better pay structure would make teaching more attractive to those considering other options.

The views BMRB found ‘were not specific to those studying the shortage subjects … but were common across the different subject areas. ‘

So, the common message from both studies, nearly twenty years apart, and of different participant sizes and survey methods, is that teaching must be competitive in regard to pay and working conditions to attract graduates in a competitive labour market.

Another study, in 2000, for the Office of Manpower Economic (OME), by Whitmuir Research, reported similar finding to the BMRB list, but added, disruptive pupils; lack of parental support and the cost of tuition feed to the list.

A large-scale study of 1,880 final year undergradues across 26 HEIs for the TTA in 1999, distributed through careers services, found more interest amongst women than men in teaching as a career, and amongst those in post-1992 higher education institutions.

A review of where applicants to teaching come from, based on DfE data through the common application process would be a sensible annual outcome in order to see if there are changes in the key undergraduate market with regard to teaching as a career.

It seems likely that the STRB knows the issue around recruiting into the teaching profession. The question every year is – will the STRB stand up to government on behalf of the children of this country and ensure that teaching is an attractive career for graduates across all subjects?

Most frightening part of the White Paper?

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We will embed tutoring in every school

101. Government has invested £1 billion to establish the National Tutoring Programme. We will deliver up to 6 million tutoring packages by 2024, which when combined with our programmes to deliver tutoring for young people aged 16-19 equates to around 100 million hours of tutoring. Small group tuition has an average impact of an additional four months in primary schools and two months in secondary school, 63 and it is our vision that tutoring no longer be the preserve of families who can afford to pay for private tuition, but the right of any child in need of additional support.

102. We will continue to financially incentivise schools to provide tutoring – and we expect every school to make tutoring available to children who need it. Schools have the flexibility to use their own staff, bring in dedicated new staff or use external tutors from accredited organisations to provide high-quality tuition that best meets the needs of their pupils. Tutoring will be a core ‘academic’ option in the Pupil Premium menu. 63 Education Endowment Foundation. Teaching and Learning Toolkit. 40

103. From 2024, we will have cultivated a vibrant tutoring market, serving schools right across England. We will expect tutoring to continue to be a staple offer from schools, with schools using their core budgets – including Pupil Premium – to fund targeted support for those children who will benefit.

Opportunity for all – Strong schools with great teachers for your child (publishing.service.gov.uk)

Great idea, what’s wrong with it and why do you call it frightening?

My concern is that the consequences of this scheme might not have been thought through.

‘From 2024, we will have cultivated a vibrant tutoring market’. Not only do markets cost money to operate but there is also the question of where will these tutors come from? Will they come from the existing teacher workforce with teachers switching to tutoring from full-time teaching and, if so, where will their replacements come from?

The government does have an answer, but whether or not it has been agreed by the Home Office is another matter.

Paragraph 40 of the White Paper reads: ‘To make teaching here even more attractive to the best teachers from around the world, we will introduce a new relocation premium to help with visas and other expenses. This will be complemented by bursaries for international trainees with the potential to be brilliant teachers in priority subjects. By bringing forward legislative changes and introducing a new digital service, we will recognise high-quality teaching qualifications from all over the world in this country.’

Will the relocation premium be available to teachers returning to England after teaching in international schools or only to foreign nationals?

Fear not, there are other measures to boost teacher supply

 ‘We will therefore incentivise new teachers to work in places where they are needed most through our Levelling Up Premium. This will be worth up to £3,000 tax-free for eligible maths, physics, chemistry and computing teachers, in years one to five of their careers, who choose to work in disadvantaged schools, including in the new Education Investment Areas.’ (Paragraph 38).

Nothing about how to create more business studies, design and technology and geography teachers despite severe shortages in these subjects. Still there will be initiative to help engineers teach physics, and to improve the supply of languages teachers, although of which languages is not specified. The pledge for many teachers of Mandarin sees like something from a different age.

ITT will have more frequent ofsted visits, but seems to have escaped relatively lightly compared with some predictions.

A White Paper for an economic crisis. Reminds me of Education for All: A Framework for Expansion that was Mrs Thatcher’s attempt when Secretary of State for Education. That was scuppered by an oil price crisis.

An Auger effect already?

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The publication of the data on ITT applications for June 2019 coincided today with the DfE’s date for publishing its annual raft of statistics on teachers and schools. The DfE data is, of course, backward facing, whereas the UCAS data tells us what to expect in the teacher labour market in 2020.

With only three months left in the current recruitment round, it is usually easy to predict the actual outcome of the recruitment round. However, with the current levels of uncertainty over issues such as the funding of schools after the new Prime Minister is elected by Conservative Party members, and assuming there isn’t a general election in the autumn, as well as what happens to tuition fees in the short-term, the past may not be a guide to the future. Nevertheless, this blog will try and made some inferences from the data as it currently stands.

Overall applications are down on last year. The current total of 32,720 applicants is some 490 below the figure for June 2018. Perhaps of most concern is the decline in ‘placed’ applicants in London and the South East, where the figure is down from 900 last year to 710 this year. There has also been a decline in ‘conditionally placed’ numbers in these two regions, although numbers ‘holding offers’ are similar to last year at this point.

There has been a reversal in the recent trend in age profile of applicants, with fewer applicants than last year in all age groups, except for new graduates 21 or under, where the number is up from 4,630 last year to 4,670 this year. ‘Placed’ applicants over the age of 25 are down this year by 130 to some 1,440. In the past, this age group has help keep applicant numbers up as younger applicants have fallen away.

The number of applications are down from both men and women, mostly as a result of fewer applicants being ‘placed’. As degree results are confirmed over the next month or so, the number of ‘placed’ applicants should increase rapidly over the next two months. This is a number that will need watching very carefully.

The data on application status by provider region (Table B6 of the UCAS monthly data) confirms that there needs to be a focus on what is happening in London. Placed numbers are down by 100, and ‘conditionally placed’ by 160, with only those ‘holding offers’ up by 50, for a net change across the three categories of around 200. Application numbers to providers in London are down by around 600. With London schools seeing growth in pupil numbers, and so far in 2019 having advertised 10 vacancies per secondary school (www.teachvac.co.uk data) these numbers must be of concern.

So far it is primary courses that have borne the brunt of reduced applications, down from 41,180 in 2018, to 38,880 in 2019, whereas applications for secondary courses are up from 52,530 to 53,250. But, before anyone hangs out the bunting and declares a ‘dance and skylark’, it is worth delving deeper into the statistics for individual subjects. History, English and biology al doing extremely well, and could recruit their largest numbers of trainees in recent years.

On the other hand, art, chemistry, IT, mathematics, music and physics are recording new lows for June in terms of those ‘placed’ and either ‘conditionally placed’ or ‘holding an offer’. Based on the evidence of previous years, none of these subjects will hit the required Teacher Supply Model number in 2019.  That’s bad news for the 2020 recruitment market for teachers.

Has the Auger Report with its suggestion for lower fees already had an effect on recruitment onto UCAS courses for this September? If so, the government must react sooner rather than later to stem any further losses ad protect teacher supply.

 

 

 

 

At least everyone is now talking about teacher workload

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DfE press officers were unusually busy yesterday, with several announcements made to coincide with the Secretary of State’s speech at the NAHT conference in Liverpool – not a professional association solely for primary leaders, as some seem to imagine, but for leaders in all schools.

One of the most important announcements was that of the formation of a Workload Advisory Group to be chaired by Professor Becky Allen, the director for new Centre for Education Improvement Science at UCL’s Institute of Education. The appearance of senior representatives from the teacher associations among the membership makes this look like a reformation of the former body that existed under the Labour government. Assuming it produces proposals that are accepted by the DfE, then this Group should help Ministers restore some morale to the teaching profession by signalling that they are taking workload concerns seriously.

Announcements about the treatment of so called ‘coasting’ schools and forced academisation may well sound, if not the death knell, then certainly a slowing of primary schools opting to become academies. Why give up relative independence under local authority administration for the uncertain future as part of an Academy Trust, where the unelected trustees can decide to pillage your reserves and move on your best teachers and there is nothing you can do about the situation. That’s not jumping from the frying pan into the fire, but taking the risk of walking out of your house and leaving the front door wide open.

Hopefully, the Secretary of State is starting to move towards resolving the twin track governance system that has emerged since Labour and the Conservatives jointly decided to have a fit of collective amnesia about the key importance of place in schooling and also demonstrated a complete lack of the need for any democratic oversight of local education systems. My Liberal Democrat colleagues that demonstrated no opposition to academisation during the coalition government are, in my view, almost as equally to blame as the members of the other two main political parties for not recognising the need for significant local democratic involvement in our school system.

The Secretary of State might now be asked to go further and adopt the 2016 White Paper view that in-year admissions for all schools should be coordinated by local authorities; a local politician with responsibility for schools should also once again have a voting position on schools forum rather than just an observer role, especially as the NAHT have pointed out the growing importance of the High Needs Block and SEND education where links between mainstream schools and the special school sector is a key local authority responsibility. http://www.naht.org.uk/news-and-opinion/news/funding-news/naht-analysis-of-high-needs-funding/

The idea of a sabbatical mentioned by the Secretary of State was discussed in an earlier post on this blog, but there was little else on teacher recruitment in his speech.

If you want to listen to my thoughts on the present state of teacher recruitment, then Bath Spa University have just published a podcast in their Staffroom series where I answer a series of questions. You can access the podcast at https://soundcloud.com/user-513936641/the-staff-room-episode-10-crisis-in-recruitment and my interview is followed by a discussion between leading staff at the university on the same topic.