Falling Rolls: a matter of urgency, but whose?

Posted on October 6, 2026 by John Howson

In 1977, Haringey council’s Chief Education Officer produced a plan to deal with falling school rolls: it was to cost him his job. His mistake was to be too far ahead of public opinion, for in 1980, school closures, and a reorganisation as a result of fewer pupil numbers became inevitable in Haringey. Among the changes was the closure of the secondary school in Tottenham where I had worked from 1971 to 1977.

This example from history is important for two reasons: firstly, we are living through another period of declining pupil numbers, and secondly, the mechanism for system planning is much weaker today than it was in the 1970s.

In the 1970s, education was often described as a ‘national system locally administered’. Boroughs, such as Haringey, had within the past decade received approval from the government at Westminster to introduce a comprehensive form of secondary schooling. Local planning ratified by government could be seen as normal practice, although not all schools were maintained schools and churches, city livery companies such as the Drapers and the Stationers, as well as other charities had a strong interest in the running of schooling in the borough. However, the ability of the local council to determine how schooling was managed across the borough was not really in question.

How different the world is today, a rump of maintained schools sits alongside the remaining voluntary schools and the block of academies, whether stand-alone of gathered together in Trusts or Committees in local authorities many facing an uncertain future.

Local authorities notionally still have responsibility for pupil place planning, but devolved budgets, powerful Schools Forums and the differing policies of academies and their trust leaders mitigate against local authorities being able to successfully plan the local school system, especially when for the past decade the focus has been on opening new schools.

Overlaying the weak position of local government is another difference from that faced by Haringey’s Chief Education Officer in the 1970s: parental choice: first enshrined in Section 6 of the 1980 Education Act, and now taken for granted.

To view the current position, I have taken a random sample of secondary schools that have so far this school-year advertised for either a new headteacher or a teacher of music. In both cases, I have looked at DfE data on the notional roll and the actual roll, as shown on the DfE’s public website on 6^th October 2026.

The results are interesting.

region	capacity	roll	difference
SE	1440	759	-681
L	1150	795	-355
WM	785	445	-340
NW	700	364	-336
SW	1050	714	-336
L	1330	1092	-238
NW	1200	1023	-177
SE	1560	1409	-151
NE	1350	1201	-149
L	1260	1115	-145
EM	625	486	-139
YH	1750	1616	-134
EE	1210	1084	-126
NW	750	661	-89
SW	1050	990	-60
L	315	272	-43
L	455	436	-19
WM	1100	1084	-16
EM	860	847	-13
YH	710	699	-11
L	1007	1000	-7
NW	900	894	-6
L	1450	1445	-5
L	1213	1214	1
SE	480	482	2
L	1164	1191	27
WM	604	632	28
L	990	1028	38
WM	1253	1306	53
EM	1383	1454	71
L	1200	1302	102
WM	1414	1524	110
L	1140	1271	131
SE	1219	1354	135
NW	989	1157	168
EM	1332	1809	477

There are some very large differences between the ‘capacity’ as shown on the DfE site and the number on roll shown on the same site. There are 13 schools with more than 100 empty places, only three in London.

On the other hand, there are six schools with more than 100 over capacity, two of which are in London.

This was a random sample, so I wondered what might be the implications in selective systems if selective schools were taking more than their ‘capacity’ on other schools and their budgets. I will do a bit of research to find out and report back.

However, it does seem that there is a serious question around effective pupil place planning and the consequences of not doing anything on some children’s learning in the future, if schools are losing income while others are still over-capacity.

Are dashboards useful?

Posted on October 3, 2026 by John Howson

LinkedIn invited me to try their new lead generation tool. I asked it to look at this blog, and it came up with a number of possible future posts I could use to gather new readers, all generated by AI (artificial intelligence) from some key prompts and audience identifies that I provided.

It is an interesting piece, although, I have altered (added in italics) some additional text. I would be fascinated to hear what readers think.

AI starts here

A dashboard showing applications up fifteen percent across the board is one of the easier things in education data to misread, and can be one of the more expensive in terms of outcomes.

If you consider recruitment to Initial Teacher Training (ITT) as an example. The structural reason that a dashboard can be misleading is that an ITT recruitment dashboard aggregates things that behave nothing like each other. Domestic and international applicants, candidates with and without visa routes, subjects with entirely different seasonal curves, and applications that will convert at wildly different rates all sit inside the same headline number. The dashboard is honest. The aggregation is what misleads.

Three patterns come up repeatedly:

– Treating a total as a common trend, when a surge in one subject or one applicant group is carrying the whole figure

– Reading application volume as recruitment, when the gap between offer, acceptance and enrolment is where subjects like physics may be very different to that in Classics.

– Comparing the current month to the same month last year without checking whether the policy environment, bursary levels or visa rules changed in between

However, the second-order effect is the one that causes real damage. When a headline figure looks healthy in December, the case for intervention weakens, and by the time the subject-level picture is unambiguous in March the levers that would have mattered, bursary announcements, provider allocations, targeted campaigns, may have already closed for the cycle.

Intervention decisions are can risk being made against an aggregated number at exactly the point in the year when disaggregation would tell you, the reader, something much more useful.

The key takeaway: the dashboard rarely gets the arithmetic wrong. However, all too often it might be read as a single story when, in reality, it is holding four or five different stories, and the one that matters is usually the quietest.

AI ends here.

My message that isn’t in the AI piece, is, if designing a dashboard, first know what is its purpose. If you don’t know what it might reveal, check regularly for trends. As an example: when I first started counting headteacher vacancies in the 1980s, I didn’t know that church schools will be more likely to re-advertise their vacancy than non-faith schools. When looking at teacher vacancies; I didn’t know the rhythm for temporary and maternity leave vacancies being advertised, but I had a hunch, and added the field to the database. As a result, I would also say, collect as much data as you can, when constructing a database, as you might not know what it will tell you.

So, thanks to AI for simulating this post, and quickly offering me some thoughts about many posts I had already written. Does this make this a genuine post or an artificial one?

Poetry please

Posted on October 1, 2026 by John Howson

Today is National Poetry Day. As some readers might recall, 2026 is the Year for Reading, so a day celebrating poetry, a form of language that can be both read and spoken ought to be celebrated. Sadly, I fear that isn’t the case today in England.

In the past, when I have celebrated National Poetry Day on this blog, I have offered a poem I have written. One was about war, and sacrifice of young lives; another was about departure, in that case leaving a loved one at an airport.

Sadly, I note the latter of these was in a post more than a decade ago, in 2015. It has been remiss of me not to have highlighted poetry on this blog since then.

For today, I thought that I would offer one from a collection about Oxford, where I have lived for almost 50 years now: since 1979.

The Oxford Canal. (revised July 2024)

Work water now departed:

Leisure flows instead.

Gone barges pulling butties;

As tourist labour locks.

Only residents line banks,

Washing, sitting, growing,

Where dogs stand guard,

Cats enjoy stern sun.

Few walk that path

Horses once trampled.

Clear line unseen ‘neath

Dense overgrown takeover.

See solitude of wooden bridge.

Sentinel in skyline waiting.

Pulling rope restoring purpose:

Vertical to horizontal shift.

While silent lock’s door

Spills excess, seeking release

Granting access now, as narrowboat,

Cruiser, paddle board, gather height.

To silent reach, kingfisher domain,

Voles burrow bank, and vivid

Dragonflies skim blue and green,

Grey heron muting nature’s palate.

Man’s art intrudes, littering

Casually, disfiguring permanently.

Heming sides with barrack blocks.

Building canyons; cutting vistas.

As rural pubs welcomed

Bargee’s evening halt.

Mooring space now tethers

Holiday rentals.

Still canals survive.

Flagging future rails and

Concrete motorway routes.

Slowly amongst the haste

I have chosen this poem partly because I pass the end of the canal almost every time I walk into the city centre, but also because when I was Chair of the county council, during covid, not being able to have the usual fundraising dinner, I walked along the canal from Oxford to Banbury, alone, as a fund raiser for the charities I supported that year. The walk was a distance of around 26 miles, so not far oof the only marathon distance I have ever walked.

I am delighted to say that we have a Poetry Library in Oxford that runs workshops and activities with schools. I know from local book fairs that there are also a number of poetry circles in the city, at least in the west. I celebrate all their activities to help make this word form relevant to modern life.

So, three cheers for National Poetry Day, and please post your favourite poem in the comments.

Finally, for those that know Oxford and the saga of the buses and the Botley Road bridge, this reworking of Alfred Godley and his 1914 poem might strike a chord. For years growing up in London, I wondered what buses were doing ‘in the corn’ on arrival in Oxford it became obvious

Behold the bus

Processing like some affair of State

Not one, but, two, four, six or eight

Lumbering convoys rutting roads with weight

Clean engine, passengers, and double deck create.

Fares please: no cash, but mobile, card or pass

These days. Machines talk, as humans mute remain.

Card accepted; green light flashes, pass along the car.

Seat forward, backward, even sideways, or stand downstairs.

Along the Botley Road they rattle,

Down the High they trundle,

Creep slowly through the Cowley cycles

Rush headlong twenty miles along St Giles.

Deep in phones, passengers miss the engine roar

As fingers fly, while bus patiently pauses, absorbing

New influx of riders, whose hands held out,

Supplicated, is there space for us aboard your omnibus?

Of course, no longer implet in the Corn they are,

But still we see, Copia Motorum Borum.

But no longer is the cry! Domine, defende nos
Contra hos Motores Bos!

With apologies to Alfred Godley and his 1914 poem

Teacher shortages are commonplace across the globe

Posted on September 30, 2026 by John Howson

OECD has today published the 2026 edition of ‘Education Indicators At a glance’. Education at a Glance 2026 | OECD The section on teacher shortages has already received several comments on LinkedIn and elsewhere. I though I might look in some detail about the United Kingdom section in the ’country report’ about teacher shortages.

On the face of it, the UK fares well compared with other countries. Apparently, only 2.9% of teachers in state schools are not fully qualified. I wonder what the percentage would be for Further Education?

Teacher shortages

Shortages of skilled workers have affected many sectors across the OECD in recent years, and the teaching profession is no exception. Teacher shortages manifest in different ways across education systems: in some countries, a lack of fully qualified teachers is reflected in a higher share of non-fully qualified staff, while in others a significant number of teaching positions remain unfilled.
Non-fully qualified teachers refer to teachers who do not yet meet all the requirements to be recognised as fully qualified teachers under national regulations. In most countries, they either possess the required academic qualifications but lack mandatory certification or teacher training, have completed the required teacher training but do not hold the required academic qualifications, or lack both. In England, 2.9% of all primary and secondary teachers in public institutions were not fully qualified in 2024/25, below the OECD average of 9.1% (Figure 1).
Countries use two main approaches to measuring teacher shortages. The first approach estimates shortages before or at the start of the school year based on projected recruitment needs. The second approach measures shortages by counting the number of positions that remain vacant at the start of the school year or shortly after it begins. England uses the second approach, and 0.6% of all teaching positions in public secondary education were unfilled at or shortly before the start of the 2024/25 school year (Table 2). Education at a Glance 2026: United Kingdom

However, it is important to delve into what’ ‘Qualified’ actually means.

In England, possession of QTS allows teachers, not, interestingly, a reserved occupation term, to teach anything to anyone at any level. For the past 25 years, I have been asking for QTS to be linked to phase and subject studied in ITT. However, apart from in the Liberal Democrat Manifesto in 20025, there has been no political appetite to limit QTS in any way. I still think that is a mistake. The over-supply of PE and history teachers has helped keep school fully staffed during the recruitment crisis that started way back in 2013, but may now be coming to an end.

It is also worth pointing out that schools can be fully staffed in England by adjusting the curriculum, and dropping subjects they cannot staff. The other alternative, as OECD noted, is using less well-qualified staff. The figures on combined versus separate science at Key Stage 4 between different types of school are stark. The former can be staffed with teachers with less subject knowledge than the latter. If you don’t pass the 11+, you probably won’t study Physics as a subject by KS4 | John Howson

I was surprised that OECD appears to have accepted the DfE data at face value and not to have a definition that would deal with the fact that QTS is so broad as to be meaningless at both primary and secondary school levels.

No song for Labour?

Posted on September 29, 2026 by John Howson

Traditionally, the Labour Party conference used to end in song. Historically, it was the Red Fag that was belted out by delegates, many of whom had learn to sing both in school and in church, chapel or other place of worship. Go to a funeral or a wedding these days, and singing is often either desultory or non-existent, except for a few brave souls. Partly, this is down to the decline in attendance at organised worship, but partly, especially for weddings, it may be down to the decline in music teaching in schools.

Yesterday, I was told of an initiative to revive school choirs https://www.cloreduffield.org.uk/clore-school-choirs-and-singing-programme

However, it will take more than a few philanthropic gestures to revive music in our schools. The subject has now reached a crisis point in state schools across England. I don’t expect the number of new trainees to meet the DfE’s target this autumn. Sadly, It is not as if missing the ITT target in music is something new.

ITT census	% of target recruited
2019/20	80
2020/21	122
2021/22	71
2022/23	62
2023/24	27
2024/25	40
2025/25	65

My expectation for the 2025/26 outcome is somewhere between 80-85% based upon September acceptance numbers through the DfE recruitment to ITT portal data published yesterday – see my previous two posts for more details.

The improvement to around 80% is because the target for this September has been reduced by the DfE from a high of 820 trainees needed in 2024/25, to a new low of 260 two years later for the 2026/27 intake.

ITT target	2021/22	2022/23	2023/24	2024/25	2025/26	2026/27
Music	540	470	790	820	565	260

In part, the reduction in the target is the result of not adding unfilled places in one year to the target for the next year. That was a policy I have always said, since it was tried in the 1990s, was a mistake. Schools cannot absorb more than a certain number of teachers each year, and they always start the autumn term fully staffed for the timetable that they have produced.

Change the timetable, and cut an examination subject, and a school is unlikely to offer it the following year in its options package, especially if it might not recruit a teacher needed to teach the subject, and someone else might need to make way for the restoration of the subject to the timetable. Once gone, it is hard to recover without a change in policy.

Of course, falling rolls will mean a reduction in demand for teachers, assuming school funding doesn’t improve – quite likely, and that retention remains at current levels – also likely with a faltering graduate job market. But is the cut to 260 places for music, a cut that would certainly justify the removal of the bursary sensible? The DfE seem to think so, after having run the Teacher Supply Model, based upon current input data. I am less sure.

So far in 2026, there have been over 500 vacancies for teachers of music and heads of department, so by year-end in December that total might have increased to somewhere between 550-600 vacancies across the year in state schools.

How does that compare to possible supply? In 2025/26 the ITT census recorded 367 music trainees. Allowing for wastage, both in-course and post-course that might reduce the available number to less than 300 or about 50% of vacancies, leaving the other 300 to be filled from returners or other sources.

	Music	ITT census
	2013/14	380
	2014/15	375
	2015/16	355
	2016/17	355
	2017/18	295
	2018/19	300
	2019/20	320
	2020/21	483
	2021/22	390
	2022/23	301
	2023/24	214
	2024/25	345
	2025/26	367
estimate	2026/27	240

With the reduced target of 260, the likely outcome, based on the September offer number is for around 230 trainees at the end of the year, with less than 200 available to work in the state sector in 2027, based on past trends.

Vacancies would need to fall by around 200 in 2027 for that number of new teachers to take up half the vacancies. If vacancies were to remain at 600, admittedly an upper estimate, then new entrants to the labour market might only be able to fill a third of vacancies. This would be grim news, and leaves me with two conclusions

The Teacher Supply Model has cut targets too far too soon

The removal of the bursary has affected recruitment, but the effect has been masked by the cut to the ITT target.

In the real world, unless I am wrong, fewer children will study music from September 2027/28 onwards – that’s the next school-year.

Is that what the government wants? I don’t know, but I do know that there is a risk of music disappearing as an examination subject unless more music teachers are recruited.

I was told, an unverified number, of just 190 entries in the North East Region for music at A level this summer. How many of those were from private schools? I will see what I can find out from the published statistics.

Music is changing, but that change won’t happen nor will music continue to support growth in the economy through orchestras, popular music and other trends if we let music die in the majority of state schools.

A world where music is created by Artificial Intelligence and not by humans, will be a less enjoyable place in which to live.

The ITT Census versus September acceptances

Posted on September 28, 2026 by John Howson

In my previous post, I said at the end of the post that I would look at what any differences between the August ITT acceptance data issued by the DfE earlier today, and the ITT census to be issued in December 2026 might be, by looking at the difference between those accepted in September 2025 and the ITT Census of December 2025.

In reality, this task has proved something more of a challenge that I had expected. This is mostly because of the late announcement of the targets for September 2026. These were not announced until April 2026, by which time many subjects had already made offers in excess of the new, and lower, targets. The fact that the targets for 2026 were in many subjects drastically reduced has made the analysis almost impossible.

Because of the reduction in the targets, it is possible that the outcome of the 2026 ITT Census could be the best year in terms of hitting targets since 2012, especially once Teach First and any other non-DfE portal recruitment is factored into the census.

However, there are a few subjects that rely almost entirely upon the DfE portal for recruitment that we now know are very unlikely to meet even the revised target for September 2026.

These are: Business Studies; Classics, Drama; Religious Education and the catch-all ‘Other’ that includes media and communication studies, social studies, citizenship and psychology.

Although how the ‘other’ subjects grouping reaches a target of 2,035 places remains a bit of a mystery. As I have advocated elsewhere, it is now time to breakdown the ’other category’ into its component subject targets to allow for meaningful discussions about teacher supply. With around one in eight places in the ‘other’ category and the category recruiting very poorly it is time for a more meaningful discussion about the classifications used by the DfE for its IIT targets.

A reminder of how the targets have changed this year when compared to the previous year

		2025/26	2026/27
Total		26,920	20,800
Primary	Total	7,650	5,520
Secondary	Total	19,270	15,280
	Art and Design	680	605
	Biology	985	675
	Business Studies	900	1,200
	Chemistry	730	690
	Classics	60	75
	Computing	895	565
	Design and Technology	965	620
	Drama	620	370
	English	1,950	1,980
	Geography	935	685
	History	790	520
	Mathematics	2,300	2,000
	Modern Foreign Languages	1,460	1,085
	Music	565	260
	Others	2,520	2,035
	Physical Education	725	655
	Physics	1,410	810
	Religious Education	780	450

Some years ago, the total was nearer 40,000 trainees, so this has been a dramatic reduction.

When were secondary trainee targets last as low as 15,280? Not for some time. I will do a search and see if I can find out the last time the targets were this low for both primary and secondary trainees. As these targets now include almost all routes, it will be interesting to see whether when they were last this low were there no ‘off target’ numbers such as the former employment-based routes?

Vocational education: Closing doors or widening opportunities?

Posted on September 25, 2026 by John Howson

The education of young people has had quite an airing over the past week. At the Liberal Democrats conference, Munira Wilson MP, the Party’s Education spokesperson at Westminster, gave a platform speech that foreshadowed the announcement by Lucy Powell, the Secretary of State, about post-14 vocational education.

You can see Munira’s speech on YouTube. I suggest starting at 1 hour 38 minutes into the video lib dem conference 2026 autumn saturday afternoon session – Search

In her speech, Munira raised one of the key dilemmas of education. How to promote ambition without encouraging many young people to leave their communities to seek to achieve their ambitions? Many that leave our rural and coastal communities (the source of another debate at the conference) to fulfil an educational ambition, often at university, never return.

I believe that governments should be encouraging these young people to return and set up businesses in rural and coastal communities as part of regeneration schemes.

Labour’s, Lucy Powell’s, focus was one the perennial issue within the British education system: how to resolve classroom and practical subjects at examination level in terms of parity of esteem? Labour answer is to recreate courses for 14-16 year olds in practical subjects, such as construction, care and business. New Vocational GCSEs unveiled in major shake-up to hands-on learning for teens – GOV.UK

In 2003, I wrote a paper for the Liberal Democrats entitled ‘No child left behind’ – a phrase borrowed from US President Bush – in which I advocated a 14-18 sector. I recognised that many young people at 14 were disillusioned with school, but might be brought back into education if they were offered courses more aligned with their career ambitions. Now, I understand Munira’s point that at 14 she wanted to be a teacher, but as a graduate went into a different career. Munira no doubt already wanted to go to university at 14.

But, what of those, the Newsom 50%, Half Our Future: A tribute to Sir John Newsom’s Report | John Howson that don’t aspire to stay in education. At what age should we help them on the path to a working life? In 2003, I suggested links with further education, and its more grown- up approach and better facilities than many schools can provide for practical courses.

Labour’s announcement this week, ahead of their conference, seemed a bit rushed. Nothing about where to find the staff to teach these new vocational subjects in schools? Nothing about the issue of ‘norm’ referencing in examinations. How do you ‘norm reference’ the building of a wall in a construction class or the creation of a meal in a hospitality course? Trying to create national standards will be a real challenge.

Both Munira, and then Lucy Powell, did speak about the need for more work experience in schools. Again, this is something that I support wholeheartedly, but again how do we deal with the limited opportunities in our rural and coastal communities? As so often in education, it will come down to who will pay for the transport?

However, NEETs are not just an education issue. Any government that is responsible for an economy that is not producing jobs for either young people of those made redundant in their 40s and 50s, has two choices, either benefits or some form of education and training provision, if it wants to keep down the numbers unemployed. With AI likely to recreate the job scene in a new format, the issue of the relationship between education and employment isn’t going to go away anytime soon.

Music Teachers: demand and supply

Posted on September 11, 2026 by John Howson

As part of its monthly review of applications by graduates to train as a teacher, this blog has often commented upon the issue of whether there will be sufficient new teachers of music. This blog has also condemned the withdrawal of the bursary for music by the Labour government.

Wearable glasses: a need for a new school rule?

Posted on September 10, 2026 by John Howson

This post on LinkedIn caught my eye recently. It adds yet another challenge to schools trying to keep pupils and staff safe in an ever-changing world, where technology is continually throwing up new challenges.

A small request as the new academic year begins. As Meta glasses and other wearable technologies become more common, ‘covert’ recording in classrooms is going to become increasingly easy. I get that it happens, maybe it shouldn’t but it does.

Personally, I really don’t mind being recorded; if a student genuinely thinks having a recording of part of a session will help them revisit an explanation or support their learning, I’m pretty relaxed about it. ,Indeed, if the reason was genuine, I’d probably be quite happy that there’s another way for you to digest the information I’m trying to deliver.

But please ask first.

Ater reading this post, and considering the debate around mobile phones in schools, I wonder if I can see a new school rule being developed, perhaps along the following lines:

Any pupils, staff and visitors wanting to wear glasses on school premises must register a photograph of those glasses with the school office, and notify the school office of any change.

Pupils and visitors should be aware that cameras at entry points and classroom doors check anyone entering the school wearing glasses to ensure that they are of the registered design.

The rule is to protect everyone (pupils and staff) from the use of unregistered recordings within the school premises. It is just an extension of the current photo pass rules, but adapted to cope with new technology.

If we are going to be wiped out as a species by AI, sometime before my 90^th birthday, then is this issue worth worrying about. I don’t know, but I do know keeping vulnerable young people safe is an essential role for the State, and its agents, as well as private sector organisations that offer services to young people and vulnerable adults.

I would be interested to hear what others think? Over-reaction, as I think knife arches are in schools, or a sensible approach to a possible problem? What degree of risk are we willing to accept? I don’t want knife arches in schools | John Howson

It was the mass killing of pupils 30 years ago in Dunblane that started the drive to ensure the safety of those in schools. So far, compared with what is happening around the world, especially in countries where guns are commonplace, England has avoided large scale attacks, but, as I know from personal experience, one attack is one too many.

Teacher retention versus recruitment: not just a matter of economics

Posted on September 10, 2026 by John Howson

This week, the Education Policy Institute (EPI), a think tank with left leanings, published another report about the value of ensuring teachers don’t leave the profession compared with trying to boost recruitment. Their latest report is called Retain or Recruit? Microsoft Word – EPI_RetrainRecruit_September2026 and follows on from their earlier report on a similar topic, reviewed in my blog post from 2022, ‘Keeping Science Teachers in Schools Keeping science teachers in schools | John Howson Both EPI reports were supported by The Gatsby Foundation, a body that has a long and honourable history of supporting research in this field.

The latest EPI report makes three recommendations:

Fund a specialist-equivalent retraining programme

Close the data gaps on completion, post-programme teaching, and demand

Add retraining alongside bursary policy, not in place of it

Microsoft Word – EPI_RetrainRecruit_September2026 page 53.

I am all in favour of re-training, if there are the teachers with sufficient knowledge, skills and desire to retrain to do so located in the schools that need them. After all, with an open labour market for teachers, using price as a mechanism for attracting teachers to work in schools without teachers capable of delivering physics at an advanced level hasn’t worked.

However, the EPI report does need to be set into the current context of falling pupil numbers that will eventually affect the size of sixth forms. As I demonstrated in an earlier post, Are small sixth forms a good idea? | John Howson small sixth forms often don’t perform well. Is it worth making sure any first tranche of retrained teachers would be in schools with a viable future, and the possibility of a credible ‘A’ Level programme? However, this is a much wider issue than just teaching physics to ‘A’ level that a future government may need to deal with at some stage.

I am all in favour of ensuring we know who teachers what to whom, and indeed what isn’t being taught in some schools because of the lack of a qualified teacher. I wonder whether this information already exists within the School Workforce database? If not, some sampling of schools might be useful. The 1999 study that I participated in showed that ‘Teaching ‘A’ Level physics was an important driver in retention of early career teachers. I guess it might also be for those retrained. We know for ‘A’ Level entries the schools not currently entering any candidates for the subject.

It is also worth recalling the EPI previously visited this issue in 2018, as I noted in my blog post Pay physics teachers more than history teachers? | John Howson when the issue of differential pay was discussed. Mechanisms around recruitment and retention incentives and equal pay for jobs of equal worth can bedevil that debate.

Finally, it is worth considering whether programme such as Teach First have a better rate of retention than other ITT routes, including apprenticeships and salaried schemes.

We all want more teachers of physics, so I hope that decision-makers consider the EPI approach seriously, as they did with pre-ITT course subject enhancement courses.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

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