Who controls your teaching career?

Posted on February 8, 2026 by John Howson

For a few years in the 2000s, I wrote a weekly column in the TES answering questions from teachers about their careers. For all the time I have been associated with teachers, teaching and our education system, it has been clear to me that for the most part teachers are on their own when it comes to plotting a career path. Not only do they few places to turn for individual advice and encouragement, but they mostly have to finance any career development out of their earnings.

There is an obvious tension between the needs of a school, and the needs of those working within the organisation. Good employers recognise the need to develop their staff, even if it means losing them to another school. So how would you answer these multiple-choice questions?

Your school recruited a good new teacher of physics in 2024, straight from a PGCE course. In 2026, do you

A] Keep your fingers cross that by the 31^st May they haven’t submitted a letter of resignation

B] Tell them they can have a TLR to encourage them to stay at the school

C] Discuss their career ambitions with them, and how long they might stay at the school

D] Ask them to teach some mathematics next year, as the school is short of maths teachers?

Might you answer be different if you were the headteacher of

A] a rural school and the teacher’s partner worked locally

B] An urban school with many other schools in commuting distance of your school

C] A school in an academy trust of several local schools

D] A school with falling rolls

Of course, there are no right answers to these questions. But, your instinctive attitude to each possible answer may tell you something about your values with regard to pupils, teachers, schools and education in general.

Should teachers have somewhere to turn for advice about their own careers? There are posts on this blog about how far an entrant into teaching at age 30 might progress in their career. How attuned are schools to the needs of their staff. If a young parent wants a bit of flexibility, does the school either find a way to offer that support or just refuse to even consider the issue: think of everyone else on the staff.

Is career advice a role for the Chartered College of Teachers; for the professional associations; for subject and phase membership organisations; or for all of these, plus leadership teams in schools?

In the late 1970s, I worked in a professional development centre, a place where teachers could come and talk about their aims and aspirations. Do we need such space, either real or virtual today.

Am I right to be concerned about the career paths of teachers, or it everything fine out there these days, with social media available for teachers and many other organisations wrapped around schooling? I would be interested in comments from readers.

I became a teacher because of the freedom it offered me, but I knew I had to manage my own career. Thankfully, I did so, even if some of my decisions might have been different with the benefit of hindsight. But, they were my decisions.

Music bursary: a recurring theme

Posted on February 1, 2026 by John Howson

Earlier today, when I was turning out some old papers about teacher supply issues, I came across a draft for a paper I wrote more than 30 years ago on the subject of failing to meet the demand for music teachers.

Interestingly, in the notes, I compared the data for the shortage subject receiving a bursary in 1990 and 1991, with music that wasn’t a bursary subject.

As you might expect, music stood out, even in the early 1990s as an anomaly.

Take Table 31 from the Interim Advisory Committee report of January 1991. This table lists the percentage of unfilled teacher vacancies recorded in a joint union survey. Music ranked 6^th worst in the list. In the DES Press notice on vacancies, issued on 25^th August 1991, music was third worst as a percentage of teachers in post, with a vacancy rate of 2.4%. This placed music behind only, ‘other languages’ at 7.2% and German, at 2.5%.

In a DFES document ‘Projecting the Supply and Demand of Techers’, published in December 1990, the Department accepted that projections suggested a shortfall of teachers of music. Interestingly, music was the only subject with a shortfall across all four scenarios modelled in the document. Even so, music did not at that time join the list of subjects entitled to a bursary.

Another DES press notice, of 27^th November 1990 (382/90), probably associated with the census of ITT trainees, normally published about that time of year, also showed a deterioration in ITT places filled from 88.9% in 1889, to 71.0% in 1990, although the actual number of trainees had increased from 282 to 340. In 1990, only mathematics, at 63.3% of places filled had a lower percentage of filled places than music.

So, what do I deduce from the data about both recruitment into ITT, and teacher vacancies, from nearly 40 years ago? Perhaps that attitudes in the civil service towards certain subjects in the curriculum don’t change very much.

Maybe the turnover of civil servants with responsibility for ITT bursaries is so frequent that it doesn’t allow for them to start afresh each year in considering the data and trends in each subject.

However, even that approach doesn’t really explain the dropping of the bursary from music for 2026 entry. I think the profession needs an explanation. Otherwise, the axing of the bursary for music can be seen as a cynical ploy to say money in a subject Ministers don’t fully appreciate in terms of its contribution to both society and the growth agenda.

I think that the Arts Council, DCMS, and the music lobby have a right to know why music lost its bursary, and to ask that it be replaced.

However, having seen how both the DfE and DCMS have recently handled the physical education grants, I am not holing out much hope unless there is a real campaign to reinstate the bursary for music, perhaps with some scholarships provided by private funders. Don’t let us lose music from our state secondary schools.

Happy 14th birthday, and my thanks to WordPress

Posted on January 25, 2026 by John Howson

Dear Reader,

Today, Sunday 25^th January 2026, marks the 14^th birthday of this blog, so thanks for taking the time to read what I have written since January 2013.

Copilot tells me that 96% of blogs started in January 2013 have fallen by the wayside by 2026: but can you believe everything AI tells you?

Sadly, WordPress doesn’t publish such statistics, but it would be interesting to know how many have persevered with what is now a somewhat outdated form of communication. Unlike others, I haven’t switched to creating a podcast, although I did experiment with one way back in 2007; but that’s another story, as is the online chatroom, pioneered with the TES back in 2003.

By the time of its 14^th birthday, this blog has had over 180,00 views by more than 97,000 visitors according to WordPress of the 1,59 posts that I have written since the blog started in 2013.

The most popular has been the one on ‘how much holiday do teachers really have’, with more than 6,100 views since it first appeared on the 20^th May 2022.

Of course, at the opposite end of the scale, there are many posts where I have been the only person to have read what I wrote, according to WordPress. However, on Christmas Day, 2022, someone downloaded all the posts up to that date: hopefully, they also read them.

Between October 2023 and May 2025, while I was the Cabinet Member for Children’s Services on Oxfordshire County Council, I took a holiday from posting on the blog,

Since, I started writing posts again in May of 2025, after ceasing to be an elected politician, readership has been slowly increasing, to now reach double what it was at its low point. This is mostly thanks to readers from around the world once again deciding to view what I write.

So, what do I write about? Mostly education; frequently teacher supply matters – a research interest of mine for more than 40 years, if you start when I began counting vacancies for headteachers. My interest in ITT data goes back to 1987, when as a new senior leader in a School of Education I was faced with dealing with the consequences of an 100% over-recruitment on a primary PGCE.

I am most proud of the wok on Jacob’s Law, to ensure all children have a school place even if they move home mid-year, as often happens when a child is taken into care. No school with spare places should ever refuse such a child a place. What to do if they are bright enough for a grammar school place when moving from a comprehensive system is a question the government still needs to address.

The blog will continue into its next year, but as I approach my 80^th birthday in 2027, perhaps the blog won’t make its 20^th birthday: who knows. And, finally another reason for not producing a podcast; you cannot see the data tables, include din many of the posts.

Thanks for reading, and a happy birthday.

Winners and losers

Posted on December 29, 2025 by John Howson

How have my blog posts fared since I restarted this blog in May of 2025? Some new posts were well received, some old favourites from previous years continued to attract readers, and some of this year’s posts languished unread, according to WordPress’s dashboard.

So, as of today, 29^th December 2025, what have been the most read posts for 2025 and when were they written?

How much holiday do teachers have?					645
150-year-old Committee system to be abolished					75
Too many teachers?					73
Headteacher vacancies: even in August					68
Windfall profits and SEND					58
‘Stuck’ schools – who teaches in these schools?					55
Less than 400 teachers of physics entered service in 2023/24					54
DfE wasting money on ITT					51
Labour’s determination to recruit new teachers doesn’t include music					53
The governance of our schools – does pay matter?					51

Ethnic minority trainee teachers: still huge regional differences in trainee numbers

Posted on December 4, 2025 by John Howson

1n the autumn of 1997, Baroness Estelle Morris, at that time a junior minister in the DfE, in the new Labour government of Tony Blair, opened a conference about recruiting more ethnic minority students to become a teacher. The conference was organised by the then Teacher Training Agency. That conference was held in East London, and was followed by two more in Leeds and Birmingham.

Fast forward to the ITT census produced by the DfE today, and ask the question: how successful has the campaign to recruit certain ethnic groups into teaching been since that first conference nearly 30 years ago? Initial teacher training: trainee number census 2025 to 2026 – GOV.UK

Looking at the group that has found most difficultly in becoming a teacher over the years – Black African/Black Caribbean – there still seem to be big challenges looking at today’s data. Whether these are because students from this ethnic grouping aren’t attracted to parts of the country where there are few of their compatriots or whether there are other reasons cannot be determined just from the numbers.

However, over 500 courses have no candidates recorded from this group in the data published in Table 12 today. Just over 900 courses have between one and four candidates from the ethnic group. A further 83 courses have the number suppressed as being too low, as it might allow an individual to be identified.

A quick review of courses with the highest percentage (over 50% of each course code) shows that 24 are courses run by providers in London; just three are from outside London, and for three the name does not provide a clue to the location.

Looking at the courses with more than 100 candidates from the Black ethnic group: four are located in London – two each from UCL and Teach First – and the fifth is a national SCITT.

As might be expected, the University of East London, and several other London post 1992 universities, feature in the list of providers with between 25% and 50% of course numbers from the Black group, each with several courses in this percentage range. Most other pre-1992 universities and other post-1992 universities and the SCITTs in London have many of their courses in the 15%-25% group of providers. Few, if any, London providers feature in the list with zero percentage from the black group.

While it is good that courses in London do seem to be attracting applications from the Black ethnic group, there are still many courses in large parts of the country where that seems not to be the case. Does this matter? Would a ‘token’ representative on a single course in an institution be anything more than a token. Should we encourage such students to be trailblazers r should we accept that outside of the conurbations and a few university towns, graduates from the black ethnic group are still relatively rare.

I went to school in the 1960s with one of the few Black pupils in the school. He went on to become a teacher when Black teachers were even thinner on the ground than now, even in London.

So, there has been some progress, but not enough.

More men looking to teach

Posted on November 24, 2025 by John Howson

Today, the DfE published their first round of statistics about applications to train as a teacher on courses starting in the autumn of 2026. Generally, one has to be cautious about data from ‘applications’ and ‘offer’ statistics published in November, as this is very early in the application round.

However, with more than 20 years of data underpinning my remarks, I think it possible to say something.

Firstly, applications – and candidates may submit more than one – are up from 13,159 last November to 15,572 this year. Applications from men are up from 5,072 to 6,580, while those from women are up from 7,978 to 9,031. That equates to 1,052 more women applying, or an increase of 13%, but 1,508 more men; an increase of 30%. I cannot recall a time when the rate of increase in applications from men last outpaced those from women.

Part of this increase is probably down to the large increases in applications for mathematics, up from 1,657 last year to 1,929 this year. In computing, the applications are up from 509 to 841, and in physics from 1,694 to a staggering 3,277. All these are subjects that tend to attract more male than female candidates.

Aword of warning, before one becomes too carried away; applications from the Rest of the World are up from 3,540 last November to 5,120 this November. Might this account for part of the increase in male applicant in these subjects? Sadly, that cannot be determined from the published data.

Final year undergraduates are not yet swarming into teaching. No obvious concerns about loss of graduate jobs to AI from the 21 and under age group, where applications are actually down by 34 from 1,276 to 1,242. Presumably, studies still take precedence over job hunting.

However, there is a big increase in the 22-24 age group applying for teaching: up from 3,349 to 3,658 with nearly 200 of this increase from 22 year olds. Maybe summer 2025 graduates that are still job hunting are turning to teaching? There is little difference in interest in teaching from those over 45 years old. However, there has been a big jump (210) in interest from the 40-44 age group.

SCITTs is the only route to have seen fewer applications than in November 2025. This may reflect the fact that the SCITT route maty be less well-known to overseas applicants. Both teacher degree apprenticeships and PG teaching apprenticeships have seen significant increases in applications. It would be interesting to see this table by phase and subject.

On ‘offers’, it much depends upon how providers handle early applications. However, there is a trend with mathematics, computing, chemistry and physics all recording the highest ‘offer’ levels since 2013/14, whereas music has the lowest offer level since 2020/21. Most other subjects are close to where they would be expected to be, although biology, PE and geography are below where they might expect to be. PE probably over-recruited to current courses, and I would expect more caution there this year.

So, overall, a good start that should presage a good recruitment round unless something unforeseen happens.

Fine words butter no parsnips

Posted on November 5, 2025 by John Howson

What is one to make of a government that announces an expansion of the place of the creative arts in the National Curriculum review literally weeks after cutting the bursary for trainee teachers of music? Labour’s determination to recruit new teachers doesn’t include music | John Howson 8^th October 2026

If I am being kind, it would be that one part of the DfE doesn’t know what the other is doing. Recruiting trainee music teachers has been a challenge over the past few years, and with universities eyeing the future of music degree courses, recruitment probably won’t get any easier.

Did a Minister, when sanctioning the bursary withdrawal, ask what the forthcoming Curriculum Review might have to say about the subject? If so, why was the bursary withdrawn if the creative arts re to play a larger part in the new curriculum?

Hopefully, someone at Westminster will ask this question over the next few days. Perhaps media arts programmes might also like to interrogate a Minister about this curious state of affairs.

Of course, it is possible that the talk of expanding provision is just that, and the government has no real intention of putting funds behind any expansion in order to make it happen. Blame can then be laid at the door of schools for not switching resources into the creative subjects.

After all the government just said that

‘A new core enrichment entitlement for every pupil – covering civic engagement; arts and culture; nature, outdoor and adventure; sport and physical activities; and developing wider life skills.’ New curriculum to give young people the skills for life and work – GOV.UK

Not much meat on the bone there. Delving into the detailed response from the government we find that

“We recognise the Review’s concerns around access to music and that some schools require support to deliver music well, including from specialist teachers, particularly to help pupils to develop their knowledge and skills in learning to read music and play instruments. We continue to invest in instrument stocks through the music hubs. Our £25 million investment will provide over 130,000 additional instruments, equipment and other music technology by the end of 2026, with around 40,000 already in the hands of teachers and pupils. We will consider how we maximise the impact of this investment to ensure the opportunity of and access to a reformed music curriculum is fully realised.” Government response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review page 34.

Not much joined up thinking there. Encouraging singing has a much lower capital cost than instruments, and can capture more pupils – see the great scheme at Debry Cathedral that has over 900 possible singers.

The first sentence of the paragraph bears no relation to the rest of the paragraph, so don’t hold out hopes that music will achieve more than lots of instruments sitting on shelves or being played by children whose parents can afford the lessons.

I am very disappointed in the music section of the government’s response, especially that now I chair the Oxfordshire Music Board and so music is a particular interest of mine.

Is Labour making mistakes on ITT bursaries?

Posted on October 7, 2025 by John Howson

Yesterday, the government announced the bursaries for trainee graduate teachers and support for school training through the Post Graduate Apprenticeship route (PGTA). As might be expected, the subjects covered by these inducements to train as a teacher are mostly STEM subjects, plus some other subjects, but not the arts and humanities subjects, except for geography for some reason.

Subject	Bursary	Scholarship
Biology	£5,000
Chemistry	£29,000	£31,000
Computing	£29,000	£31,000
Design and technology	£20,000
Geography	£5,000
Languages	£20,000	£22,000
(French, German and Spanish only)
Languages	£20,000
(all other languages, including ancient languages)
Maths	£29,000
Physics	£29,000	£31,000

Teacher training bursaries | Get Into Teaching GOV.UK

The bursaries are paid for by the government, and the scholarships mostly by the subject associations. While I can understand the government’s desire to increase training numbers up to target in these subjects, the list does raise two important questions about what seems like a continuation of the policy of the previous Conservative government.

Firstly, are these now the subjects where targets will not be met in 2025 when the ITT census is published in December. If there are other subjects not likely to meet their ITT target, why are they not included in the list?

I produced this table for an earlier blog, but it is worth repeating here.

Subject	Target2025/26	% increase Sept on June	accepted Sept 25	over/under target
Total Secondary	19,270	26%	16843	-2,427
Primary	7,650	34%	9880	2,230
Chemistry	730	49%	909	179
Biology	985	36%	1397	412
Mathematics	2,300	35%	2617	317
Design & Technology	965	33%	678	-287
Art & Design	680	33%	902	222
Geography	935	33%	981	46
Classics	60	32%	42	-18
English	1,950	31%	1760	-190
Drama	620	30%	273	-347
Business Studies	900	29%	235	-665
Music	565	28%	343	-222
Religious Education	780	28%	418	-362
Others	2,520	25%	360	-2,160
History	790	23%	936	146
Modern Languages	1,460	21%	1428	-32
Physics	1,410	19%	1313	-97
Physical Education	725	17%	1491	766
Computing	895	5%	761	-134

Why are subjects such business studies – a perennial ITT target failure – and music and religious education not included in the bursary list? Does a Labour government not believe these subjects are worth supporting?

The second issue is around whether there will be the jobs available for trainees recruited into training in September 2026, and entering the labour market in September 2027, if on a traditional course. The more the PGTA route is funded, the fewer advertised vacancies there may be if the schools convert PGTA trainees into qualified teachers doing the same job.

The government announcement contains no discussion about the labour market for teachers, and whether ITT trainees, faced with a secondary sector where pupil numbers will be at best flat, and at worst in decline, if the decline in the birthrate together with government policies on immigration or even the threat of them help to reduce the secondary school population.

From my perspective, this announcement like a sloppy piece of work by the DfE, in what could be a rapidly changing labour market, if the intention is to ensure all subjects receive sufficient new entrants into the labour market in 2026.

However, if there is a rapid decline in graduate level entry posts as a result of AI, then the government’s stance may be vindicated, even if says nothing about equality of opportunity.

Headteacher vacancies: even in August

Posted on August 9, 2025 by John Howson

More than 40 years ago, I first started counting heads. That’s actually headteacher vacancies, not actual heads. With some spare time on my hands, I thought that I would go back to my roots and look at what is the current state of play this August?

Of course, August is a quiet month, and there are currently fewer than 60 headteacher vacancies listed on the DfE website that is the main go-to place these days, just as the TES was in the 1980s.

The DfE vacancy website still contains some of the flaws created when it was established. Anyone trying to use modern methods of’ scraping’ jobs will come across the random duplication outcome that has been a feature of the site ever since its inception. I am not sure whether it was deliberate or a fault in the coding, but it always used to annoy me when I was running TeachVac to see the same job repeated in the listing more than once.

The alternative, pioneered by TeachVac was to ‘scrape’ school websites where schools placed their jobs. However, for obvious reasons, not all schools placed headship vacancies on their website. Presumably not to let staff and parents know of the impending departure of their headteacher.

At least with headteacher posts, there is no problem deciding whether the vacancy is a repeat listing or a re-advertisement. Headteacher posts are unique, and thus easy to track.

Anyway, what did I learn from collecting the first 50 vacancies? Special schools were over-represented, with eight such schools looking for a headteacher this August. As a part of the White Paper on SEND, I hope that the government will consider the staffing and training of staff for the special school sector that has long been a Cinderella, and if not bullied by the bigger primary and secondary sectors, it is certainly still in search of a fairy godmother.

There are only two secondary schools in the list, and one is a 10-14 school, and the other a private school. That doesn’t surprise me, as secondary schools usually sort out headship vacancies well before the start of the school year. If there is an unexpected vacancy, then there is often a deputy head that can ‘act up’ until an appropriate time to advertise the vacancy.

Of the 50 or so primary schools, including one First School, 17 were faith schools: ten Roman Catholic; six Church of England and one other Christian faith. These numbers don’t surprise me in the least; indeed, I would have been surprised if there were fewer Roman Catholic schools in the list. All the years I monitored headteacher vacancies, Roman Catholic schools often featured prominently in any listings.

The relative absence of schools from London and much of the South East is interesting, but I need more data to say anything else than that.

Almost all schools provide a starting salary, either as a point on the scale or as a cash sum. One academy adds 5% to the quoted salary. The indication of a starting salary is an improvement over the time when schools rarely quoted a starting salary for those interested in becoming their headteacher.

Whether I keep us this task will no doubt depend upon how much else I have to do, but it was interesting retracing my footsteps.

1,500 posts and counting

Posted on July 15, 2025 by John Howson

When I wrote my first post on this blog, on the 25^th of January 2013, I little though that I would reach 1,500 posts. However, despite stopping posting for 18 months, between the autumn of 2023 and May this year, while I was otherwise occupied as a cabinet member on Oxfordshire County Council the blog has now reached the milestone of 1,500 posts, including 40 so far this year since I started the blog up again this May.

Since one of the features of the blog has been commenting on numbers, here is a bit of self-indulgence. The blog has had 175,983 views since its inception, from 93,875 visitors, and has attracted 1,459 comments. The average length of a post has been between 550-670 words, although there have been a few longer posts in response to consultations and Select Committee inquiries.

How much holiday do teacher have? is the post with the most views – more than 6,500 and rising. Some posts have had no views, but are still an important record of my thoughts. The United Kingdom has been responsible for the most visitors: not a surprise, as most posts are about education in England. However, the USA comes second, with more than 15,000 views. Apart from some former French speaking countries in West Africa, Greenland and Paraguay, almost all other countries have had someone that has viewed the blog at least once.

Later this year, I will be publishing a book of the 2013 posts from the blog, and at that point they will disappear from public view. If you want to register for the book, check on Amazon after August 2025 or email dataforeducation@gmail.com for publication information. Alternatively, ask your favourite bookshop or library to order a copy.

I am sometimes asked about my favourite post. With 1,500 to choose from, that’s difficult, as many haven’t seen the light of day for a decade or so. However, Am I a blob? From 2013, was fun to write, and the posts about Jacob’s Law finally brought about a change in the legislation over admissions in the current bill going through parliament.

Most posts have been written, as this one is, in one session from start to finish, with editing just to tidy up my thoughts. Some are more passionate than others, and many are about teacher supply issues, where I am also researching a book on the subject covering the past 60 years of ‘feast and famine’. Much of the recent history has been well chronicled in this blog.

Thanks for reading, and for the comments. Who would have thought that someone that failed ‘O’ level English six times would end up writing a blog! Funny old world.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: writing