Tag Archives: undergraduates

Bring back King’s Scholarships?

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In 1846, the government solved the problem of providing enough teachers for the growing school population by allowing the creation of pupil-teachers, partly based upon the model in use by the army for their schoolteacher sergeants. After an apprenticeship in a school, starting at age 13, successful pupil teachers were encouraged to compete for Queen’s Scholarships to allow them to progress to a training centre or college for further instruction and learning.

Fast forward 177 years, and there are rumours in the press of the re-establishment of this route for school-leavers that would be willing to receive instruction in schools to become teachers of shortage subjects while learning ‘on the job’. The scheme would avoid the students having to take out loans to pay the fees of higher education institutions for degree courses, and presumably would provide a modest income as well.

This is a further example of the pendulum swinging away from teacher preparation that is external to a school, a swing back that started in the 1990s, and always seems to attract government interest in periods of teacher shortage, and tracking back to school-based preparation. To date, schemes such as the Graduate and Registered Teacher Training programmes of the Labour government, and the School Direct Salaried and Fee schemes of the present government have been aimed at either career changing graduates or at least those with a degree. This has been in line with the decline in undergraduate courses that for the past fifty years have only flourished in a few secondary curriculum subjects, such as physical education and design and technology: even these have dwindled over the past few years since fees were introduced by the Labour government.

So, would a modern apprenticeship scheme for school-leavers to learn to become mathematics, computing or even physics teachers work? I hope the government has done some market research before announcing any such scheme. If not, it could follow the path of the Fast Track Scheme and various attempts to place middle and senior leaders into challenging schools, all of which were projects that either didn’t proceed beyond the stage of a trial or lasted only a few years.

The first question for anyone considering introducing an apprenticeship scheme is what sort of schools are finding recruitment challenging? I wrote a blog about this in July Free School Meals and teacher vacancies | John Howson (wordpress.com) Successful schools in areas where teachers want to work probably see a high percentage of their sixth form depart for university courses at eighteen. Will some studying these subjects want to stay at the school to become a teacher? Are these the schools experiencing teacher shortages?

Will schools with high staff turnover and sometimes with challenging ofsted grades be allowed to train apprentice teachers, even if these are the schools facing the most difficulty recruiting staff in these subjects? That is a key question. If eighteen-year-olds have to move to another school to become an apprentice will the be willing to do so?

Schools will need to be funded properly to take up the scheme. The decline in the use of the School Direct Salaried Scheme, as the central funding was reduced, illustrates the problem. Schools are funded to teach pupils and not to train teachers, even if there is a shortage. Supplying teachers is seen as the job of government.

I have no doubt that some academy chains and even possibly some dioceses might be persuaded to take up an apprenticeship scheme for teachers. Using the apprenticeship levy raised from primary schools to pay for training secondary school teachers won’t, I suspect, go down well in some quarters.  

Then there is the question of subject knowledge development if an apprentice is to be able to teach anything beyond Key Stage 3; who would want to become a teacher with a qualification devoid of subject knowledge up to graduate level. Of course, the schools could enrol the apprentices in distance learning degree courses, but that costs money. They could even expect the apprentice to pay for their own subject knowledge development to degree level. We won’t know until the Secretary of State reveals the plans for any scheme which approach might be favoured.

As this is August, this might be regarded as a ‘silly season’ story were it not for the fact that current schemes for attracting graduates to become teachers have failed, and the government obviously needs to try something different.

Will it work? If the teacher associations refuse to take part, then it won’t, but it would allow the government to say that teachers sabotage a solution to the teacher shortage crisis.

Will school-leavers want to sign up? A level students in the shortage subjects suggested can often earn more than teachers, even with modest degrees from non-Russel Group universities or by leaving school and starting work, so any apprenticeship scheme would need to be sufficiently enticing to attract applicants other than those that couldn’t find either a university place or a job opportunity.

So, please Secretary of State do some market research before announcing any scheme in order to convince everyone that there is a viable and continuing cohort of potential trainees for any apprenticeship scheme.

Sobering data on ITT needs

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Perhaps the most sobering paragraph from the STRB Report issued yesterday:

“Overall, 76% of those employed were in high skilled employment, which compares to 75% in the previous year. ‘Primary education teaching professionals’ was the fifth most likely professional job and ‘Secondary educational teaching professionals’ the sixth. Of those in employment, 8% were working as education professionals.”  My emphasis Source Graduate Outcomes 2019/20: Summary Statistics – Summary | HESA in School Teachers’ Review Body 33rd report: 2023 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The other two main sources of teacher supply are career changers and returners

New graduates are a key source of entrants into the profession, and there needs to much more research into trends in graduate behaviour. How are changes in the mix of subjects studied by new undergraduates likely to affect the number of entrants into teaching in three years time? A surge in business studies undergraduates and a decline in those studying English might well have repercussions for teaching.

Similarly, where home graduates’ study can affect entry into teaching. Two decades ago, it was clear that the most common recruitment ground for primary trainees was in the post-1992 university sector and especially in the smaller former colleges of higher education that used to be the main providers of undergraduate ITT. Does this trend still hold true? What percentage of Teach First entrants come from universities without ITT provision? indeed, is there an index of recruitment by university and course over a period of time?

I raise these issues about the somewhat amateurish approach to marketing, an area of recruitment that received some criticism from the second panel that appeared in front of the Education Select Committee earlier this week. Marketing is not just about the obvious front end of adverts, but also about making sure that activities are focused where they can have the most benefit. In that respect, the DfE needs to ensure that all evidence it collects is shared with course providers to help them in their marketing efforts.  

Of course, all this may be happening, as I am outside of the loop these days, but if so, then it should be clear to government what is needed to increase recruitment into the profession.

Clearly, what is not needed is late and confused messages about pay. Waiting until mid-July to announce a pay settlement means that while other employers can entice new graduates with starting salaries for September, teaching has been recruiting with that hand tied behind its back. It is also worth remembering that teachers not on salaried training courses start earning a year later than their colleagues that graduate straight into employment: those friends also don’t add to their student debt levels as a result of their job in either the private or public sectors.

Perhaps the glimmer of hope in another study by ISE quoted in the STRB Report was that “Employers expected that the economic recession into 2023 would lead to a decrease in the number of vacancies in the coming year.” (para 20, 33rd STRB Report). However, so far, there seems little sign of this recession.

Disturbing profile data on new teachers

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Yesterday, the DfE published its annual survey of ITT providers, through an analysis of their outcomes

Initial teacher training performance profiles: 2020 to 2021 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

One of the most revealing tables in the report is reproduced below.

Summary of final year postgraduate trainee outcomes for the 2020/21 academic year

Percentage awarded QTSPercentage of those awarded QTS teaching in a state school
AgeUnder 259072
25 and Over8673
DisabilityDeclared8168
None declared8873
Ethnic groupAsian8164
Black7865
Mixed ethnicity8672
Other8266
White8974
GenderMale8471
Female8973
Source DfE

For every one of the groupings in the table, the minority group or groups seem to have fared less well than the majority group in terms of their percentage awarded QTS. Whether it is older trainees, trainees with a declared disability, males or those from a declared non-white background, the percentages gaining QTS are lower than for the comparator group. Interestingly, in most case the percentage of each group teaching in a state school is also lower, although older qualifiers marginally outperformed younger new teachers in terms of the percentage teaching in a state school at 73% compared with 72%

The disturbingly low percentage of ‘Black’ teachers gaining QTS continues. Only 78% of ‘Black’ trainees were awarded QTS, the lowest percentage in the table, and 11% points below the White trainee outcome for that much larger group of trainees. The government really should investigate why this discrepancy in outcome continues each year, especially as only 65% of ‘Black’ trainees awarded QTS were teaching in a state school at the time of the data collection.

Elsewhere, the demise of the undergraduate route is such that only 4,737 final year trainees were recorded, compared with 35,371 postgraduate trainees of whom nearly 19,00 were on school-led courses, with just over 16,500 on higher education led courses. What this balance will look like after the end of the current re-accreditation process is completed is an interesting question. With falling pupil numbers in the primary sector, it seems likely that the 40,000 trainees with QTS in these profiles will mark something of a high point.

The covid pandemic affected these data in two ways. Firstly, the pandemic created a one-year increase in registrations to train as a teacher, boosting the 2020-21 cohort of postgraduate trainees, and secondly, more trainees than usual may have extended their course and will have qualified later than normal due to the effects of the pandemic. Those late qualifications will have redcued some of the outcome percentages.

Although Teach First still uses that name for its band of training, the DfE has re-named its trainees as the ‘High Potential ITT trainees’. It would be interesting to understand the thinking behind this insult to other trainees and their providers. whether universities or schools?

Finally, there is some evidence to support the thesis that the distribution of training places may not be ideal. Only 62% of those awarded QTS in both the North East and North West were employed in state schools, compared with 76% that trained in London; 78% in the South East and 82% of those trained in the East of England. Since these three regions also contain a high percentage of the national total of private schools, this is an interesting outcome, and raises a key question about the use of resources across England.

Undergraduate applications for Education courses

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UCAS has published a Statistical Release about the number of applications received for undergraduate courses by the January 2021 deadline. The deadline was extended by two weeks this year because of the unusual circumstances created by the covid pandemic. https://www.ucas.com/data-and-analysis/undergraduate-statistics-and-reports/ucas-undergraduate-releases/applicant-releases-2021/2021-cycle-applicant-figures-january-deadline

Normally, I don’t take account of undergraduate numbers, but I thought it worth looking at the JACS3 code for Group X that covers both teacher education and the teaching of the academic discipline of education. The numbers are for applications from applicants domiciled in England.

Overall applications for the X code area have fallen over the past decade, presumably as teacher training places have reduced in number at the undergraduate level.

2012       65,610

2019       41,250

2020       38,130

20121    42,310

The majority of applications come from women. Applications from males were:

2012       11,260

2019         4,960

2020         3,930

20121      4,820

So, although overall applications in 2021 are higher than in 2019, those from men have not recovered to the level of 2019 by deadline day.

The majority of applications come from school-leavers. For men aged 18-19 the number of applications was 3,270 of the 4,820, with only around 1,230 from all he age groups over 21.

Should there still be vocational training at undergraduate level for teachers? It is interesting that UCAS have pointed out the large increase in applications for Nursing courses. “Total applications for nursing courses have risen by almost a third (32%) to reach 60,130, with increases seen in each age group – from UK 18 year old school leavers (a record 16,560 applicants, up 27% on 2020) to mature students aged 35 and over, where for the first time over 10,000 (10,770, a 39% rise) have applied.”

UCAS also note that” the largest proportional increase in UK applicants by their declared ethnic group has come from black and mixed race students, both up 15% to 40,690 and 25,830 respectively. Applicants from the Asian ethnic group have increased by 10% to 70,140, while 11% more white students (to a total of 352,170) have applied.” There is also good news on the social mix of students, “more than a quarter of 18 year old students from the most disadvantaged areas (26.4% from quintile 1 of the UK using the POLAR4 measure, 33,960 students) have applied, up from 24.5% at the same point in 2020.”, but there is still from for more participation from students from these areas.

UCAS report that “overall, a total of 616,360 people had applied, an increase of 8.5% and a new record for this point in the application cycle.” However, perhaps not surprisingly, applications for the EU (excluding the Irish Republic) have declined this year.

Higher education still appears an attractive proposition for school leavers, this despite the tales about on-line learning and a lack of social life students have faced this year.

However, the future of undergraduate teacher training must be the focus of debate. Perhaps a generic degree working with young people might be a better option leading to an appropriate postgraduate teacher preparation course?

Grade inflation or more hard work

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Last summer 29.6% of students taking A level Physics gained an A* or A grade in the examination. However, just 10.6% of students taking Media, Film and TV Studies that achieved the same grades. It’s worth recalling these figures when reading the reports of grade inflation in universities with more students than ever achieving First class honours degrees. (source for A level data: http://www.bstubbs.co.uk/a-lev.htm Source for University data: HESA) Agreed, the extra 4,000 student studying Physics at A level in 2016 compared with 2010 may be partly responsible for the decline of 3.5% in the number of A* and A grades during the same period, but that is to be expected with a widening of the pool of entrants into the examination. However, the top grade is open to all. Maybe there is some degree of selection here with only those needing the subject for university traditionally taking it at A level.

So, does the increase in student numbers at universities mean there is grade inflation and more should mean greater numbers of lower grades? In the end it depends upon what you want the marking system to achieve. Traditionalists, may want a normal distribution curve of outcomes with a bunching around the middle grades and only limited numbers expected to achieve the highest grades or to fail. This system is great for identifying the really high flyers, but does it disincentive everyone else? Should degree class reward hard work and are students working harder now that have to bear the cost of their university education through the fee system? Has a competitive job market through the years of the recession also signalled to students that outcomes rather than just the university experience matters? This takes us back to the A level results. Are there too many A* and A grades in Physics? Of course not.

Perhaps students are becoming pickier at both choosing courses and even modules within courses with a view to outcomes? To what effect does ‘drop out’ among student affect the outcomes of those that remain. Do students realising they selected the wrong course, perhaps during clearing, quit in larger numbers. We know students from poorer backgrounds are more likely to quit. Is this because they received poorer advice about which course to pick at what university and ended up doing the wrong subject?

There is lots more to explore behind the simple headline data. But, maybe there has been some grade inflation and university quality control mechanisms need to ensure that outcomes keep pace with learning. After all, that is what the external examiner system was supposed to achieve. What do these figures also say about the claim that A levels were being dumbed down and students were arriving at university knowing less and less well equipped for university life? Interestingly I had a conversation on LinkedIn about this point with a teacher in Essex recently.

Personally, I think the outcomes are a tribute to our students, but universities do need to ensure that they monitor their learning outcomes to keep pace with changes elsewhere.

Tuition Fees rethink

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One of the most spectacular policy announcements of the recent general election campaign was Labour’s offer to scrap tuition fees for new students and abolish outstanding repayments for graduates. There was no attempt to link this to the NHS and social care funding crisis as the other great funding need. There was also no real vision for how this would sit alongside the need to remove the cap on public sector pay. However, it seems to have worked, like most much announcements, in this case attracting many young voters that would benefit from any removal of fees.

I notice that the Tory press has taken to blaming the Lib Dems for the present university student fee levels, this despite the fact that it was a decision of the coalition government, albeit taken by a Tory minister and presumably approved by both a Lib Dem Secretary of State and the Cabinet as a whole.

One of things that riled me at the time of the fee hike was the lack of any discussion on why classroom subjects should be assumed to cost the same as laboratory and practical subjects? I wonder if ministers thought the market would drive down prices but, as I have pointed out before, with demand far exceeding supply, there was no incentive for any university to anything other than tinker at the edges with the £9,000 fee levels.

So, are such fees justified for arts and humanities subjects? Well, much depends upon the size of the group and the number of hours taught. Fees at this level should allow for minority subjects cross-subsidised by more popular courses and lots of options within courses, even if only 25% of the fee income goes directly to teaching and the rest to legitimate university and departmental overheads. Of course the level of salary and the mix of experience of teaching staff also play a part, as they do in school finances. One cannot help feeling that universities are possibly also possibly funding future capital programmes and increasing their surplus funds from the fees being paid by current students. Both seem to me good reasons for re-assessing the balance between the price paid by students and the eventual cost to government.

I think university accounts should be much more transparent on how fee income is spent, especially between different types of course. Many years ago, I conducted research into the funding of teacher education courses and it was clear that at the £3,000 fee level universities that paid a fee to schools could not cover their costs and had them written off each year by the central administration. It would be interesting to repeat that exercise on the £9,000 fee level.

Personally, I think that there is a case for fees to be in the £6,000 range, to allow for funding of free nursery education that might be a casualty if fees were to be abolished, with a direct government top-up for specified STEM and other more expensive subjects that universities might need encouragement to develop. I certainly don’t want undergraduates subsidising either the summer conference trade or in most cases either research programmes or postgraduate taught courses.

 

What happens to graduates?

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Last week the DfE published and interesting bulletin about graduate outcomes for all subjects by university using three time periods. The full details can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/graduate-outcomes-for-all-subjects-by-university However, there needs to be a word of warning for anyone looking at the ‘Education’ information. Firstly, this should relate only to undergraduate outcomes, so PGCE and similar courses ought to be excluded, unless they are specifically a first degree outcome. Secondly, the JACS code used for ‘Education’ annoyingly covers both courses leading to QTS and those that just relate to the academic study of education in some or all of its guises. This lack of demarcation between professional and non-professional degrees is somewhat irritating, as at some universities there are students on both programmes and it seems impossible to differentiate their outcomes. This also makes comparing the education data with other subjects less than totally helpful.

However, Education, along with nursing, has a relatively flat profile in relation to median earnings five years after graduation. In subjects, such as law, the profile is exaggerated at both ends, with Band one universities providing the bulk of those at the higher end of the scale, with band two and three universities more frequently towards the lower end of the scale. Indeed, in law, the difference is around threefold in earnings with the median at the top end being around £60,000 after five years of graduation from one university. For Education, the highest median is around the £35,000 mark.

In most subjects, male graduates earn more than their female companions who studied alongside them as undergraduates. Indeed, for all subjects except English Studies, male median earnings exceed female median earnings at more than 50% of institutions offering that subject. In 12 subjects, male earnings are greater than female earnings at more than 75% of institutions.

It is in the remaining in employment information that the lack of separation between those on professional education degrees and others may be more starkly seen. Nursing degrees score the highest in terms of those with sustained employment or further study. Education graduates while towards the top of the list are probably not as high up the table as they would have been if those on QTS courses had been considered separately.  Hopefully, the work that the NfER are doing at present on retention in teaching compared with other professions may throw some light onto this question.

For the graduates of 2008-09 that entered the job market in the depth of the recession, those with education degrees seem to have managed relatively well in terms of sustained employment, with only a relatively small proportion being self-employed. By contrast, those with degrees in the creative arts and design had the lowest proportion with sustained employment of study and a relatively high proportion of self-employed graduates.

This is interesting research from the DfE but, apart from the issue of professional and non-professional degrees in the same subject area there are also issues such as the subjects where a percentage of graduates may be working overseas after five years and not likely to feature in the data collected. Still, this looks like an exercise that will reveal the graduates most likely to repay their student loans.

 

Your future their future

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Seventeen years ago this October the government of the day launched one of the most famous teacher recruitment campaigns ever with the ‘talking heads’ cinema commercial and an endorsement from Tony Blair. This year the campaign slogan is ‘Your future their future’ and in place of cinema adverts there is a film available to view on YouTube, 4OD and Sky Go as well as milk round events and I am sure posters and other advertising media. In case you missed the announcement from the NCTL it can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/your-future-their-future-new-teacher-recruitment-campaign I confess to being at a round table in the DfE that day, but nobody mentioned the campaign launch, so it wasn’t as high profile as in 1997 when the then TTA hired part of the new British Library building for the launch event. But money was nowhere near as tight then.

The launch of a more high profile – well hopefully more high profile – campaign than in recent years to attract applicants to train as a teacher no doubt reflects the growing anxiety within government about recruitment this year. Starting early for 2015 recruitment at the time when finalists are thinking about their futures makes good sense. The immediate impact of the campaign won’t be known until the new recruitment round opens through UCAS later this autumn. After the last set of UCAS data on the 2014 round are published at the end of this month this blog will discuss its reflections on the process compared with what went before.

There have been many different recruitment campaigns around the world to attract potential teachers into the profession. You can see some of them at https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=teacher+recruitment+campaigns&biw=1280&bih=890&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=7zgcVLCLEfPy7AaHuYHAAQ&ved=0CDIQ7Ak including ones with strap lines such as: ‘work with the most exciting people in the country; ‘there are many perks to being a teacher’ – I wonder what the Advertising regulatory authorities would say of one like that now? My favourite was the poster with the line ‘the dog ate my homework’ that doesn’t seem to feature in the collection displayed.

The challenge for campaigns recruiting people to the teaching profession is that they have to appeal to potential undergraduates, new graduates, finalists and career changers. While younger age groups might respond well to a social marketing campaign using twitter, facebook, and other social media sites I probably haven’t heard of, career changers may relate better to campaigns in more conventional media sources. 4OD and Sky Go are interesting new locations to place a film about teaching. Using a high profile teacher from a TV series about Educating Yorkshire will help with those that remember the series, but how many undergraduates watched it last year?

I hope that the new campaign not only goes on to win awards but also helps remind everyone that teaching is a great career. If it doesn’t, then this time next year we will still be discussing the recruitment problems facing schools and the profession. Good luck.