Tag Archives: www.teachvac.co.uk

TeachVac – saving schools money

Posted on by
Reply

The EPI Report published earlier today, about school balances and the use of their income, especially by secondary schools, provides me with an ideal opportunity to beat the drum for TeachVac, the free recruitment site for teachers, where I am chair of the board.

Over the past four years, TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk has built a brand from a standing start and at no cost to the public purse. Last year it matched nearly 55,000 vacancies for teachers in England with potential applicants from across the country. These teachers included, new entrants from training; teachers seeking promotion or just changing schools and returners, whether from a break in service or from working in a school overseas or in the further education sector that includes Sixth Form Colleges.

2019 has started where last year left off for TeachVac, breaking new records within the first week of January. Already, there have been enough new jobs in the first 10 days of January for teachers of Business Studies listed by TeachVac to absorb more than 10% of the new output from training this summer. This is a subject where the DfE really does need to review the bursary funding for trainees if schools are not going either to have to delete the subject or teach it with unqualified teachers or those with QTS, but no subject expertise.

As the DfE vacancy site, the only national competitor to TeachVac that is also free to schools and teachers, approaches full roll out we would invite detailed comparison between the DfE site and TeachVac on both technical features and cost per vacancy. If the DfE is paying too much for its site, then that is still money not reaching schools, but ending up in the pockets of a private company instead.

The TeachVac view is that the sector should be aiming for the lowest price recruitment site compatible with a level of service agreed as the gold standard by all participants in education. In my role as Chair of the TeachVac board, I have been disappointed about the willingness of those representing schools and teachers to even consider properly, let alone offer support, to initiatives by new entrants into this market aimed at saving their member money.

TeachVac has now established a global site for international schools around the world. With the experience of four years of working across schools in England, I believe that TeachVac Global can create the same market transformation as TeachVac has achieved in England.

One other advantage of handling nearly 55,000 vacancies a year through TeachVac is the research evidence it can provide. TeachVac will be shortly publishing its review of the market for senior staff, and specifically for primary headteachers in England during 2018. This will be the second such review, after that of the 2017 market review published last year.

Later, there will be a general review of the market for teachers during 2018, based upon TeachVac’s data. Some of that work will already have appeared in this blog as trends in the 2018 labour market became apparent during the year. This blog has already published some first thoughts about the 2019 labour market for teachers in secondary schools: more will follow as the market for September vacancies develops.

 

 

 

School funding – is it ever enough?

Posted on by
2

The Education Policy Institute, where David Laws, ex-Education Minister is Chair of the Board, published a report on school revenue balances today. The data on school balances discussed in the report in maintained schools comes partly from the same DfE source discussed in a post on this blog on the 12th December 2018.

Simplistic analysis of the report produced comments that the Report showed schools were under-funded. This was because one in ten of the remaining maintained secondary schools had a deficit overall and many others were in deficit in the latest year data was available for from the government. In reality, as the EPI report discussed, the picture is both more nuanced and more complicated than a bald assessment that schools don’t have enough funding, although pressure on 16-19 funding almost certainly does need attention.

What is less clear is the extent to which the former funding formula created winners and losers and whether the new formula will help redress the balance in the future. Personally, I don’t think it will. However, there also needs to be more understanding as to why these one in ten maintained secondary schools cannot live within their means for several years and more schools are now in that position?

As EPI note, academy chains have fewer schools with deficits and are able to move money around between schools. Local Authorities cannot do this to help schools over a temporary crisis. Should the remaining maintained schools now be treated as if they were a Multi-Academy Trust, allowing cash to be moved between schools?  If local financial management means the cash provided for a school is for that school, then MATs should not be allowed to take any cash away from one school to help another and can only charge for services provided.

The EPI report covers this point in their policy recommendations

  1. With increasing financial pressures on schools – particularly in secondaries – the government should consider before the Spending Review whether higher per pupil funding is needed, or whether efficiency savings can make up part of the current shortfalls. It should especially focus on the strains faced by many secondary schools, and assess whether changes in pupil numbers are likely to ease financial pressures, or whether these will prove more enduring.
  2. Further consideration should be given to what extra help or advice can be offered to those schools facing large deficits.
  3. The government should determine the reasons for the lower level of in-year deficits in academy trusts, and whether there are any lessons to learn from this.
  4. The government should also look closely at the level of “excessive”, unallocated, surpluses and consider if existing rules allow for these resources to be used effectively.

The last recommendation from EPI is interesting, especially in view of the concerns over deficits. As I noted in December, some schools have balances equivalent to 20% of their annual income and there are schools with more than £1,000,000 in reserves. My view, as expressed in December, is that revenue income is for spending in the year it is provided ad for the current pupils, although setting a sum aside for depreciation is now acceptable.

Finally, TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk was established to help schools cut costs by providing a free vacancy service to schools. I am delighted to record TeachVac handled nearly 55,000 vacancies in 2018 and has a great start to 2019, breaking records. Just why the DfE needs to run a rival scheme isn’t clear.

 

 

A question for the Cardinals

Posted on by
Reply

Why do Roman Catholic schools find more difficulty in recruiting a new headteacher than do other schools? I first posed this question more than thirty years ago, soon after I started looking at trends in vacancies for school leaders in the early 1980s.

After a break of five years, I returned to the subject of vacancies for school leaders in a report published last January. I have just completed the first draft of the 2018 survey into leadership vacancies. The full report will be available from TeachVac at enquiries@oxteachserv.com early in the New Year. You can reserve a copy now.

Once again, in 2018, Roman Catholic schools, and especially those in some diocese, weren’t able to appoint a headteacher after the first advertisement by the school. The data comes from TeachVac, the free job board that costs schools and teachers nothing to use.

(As an aside, I wonder why the DfE didn’t contract with an existing provider such as TeachVac, eteach or even the US owned TES to provide a comprehensive free job site rather than building their own site. Perhaps there are different rules for Brexit and hiring ships from companies still to start their service than for designing government web sites for far more money than it would have cost to buy in the service.)

Anyway, back to the matter in hand, TeachVac recorded that some 57 of the 124 Roman Catholic schools that were recorded as advertising for a primary headteacher during the 2017-18 school year needed to re-advertise the post: a re-advertisement rate of 46%. Other schools had re-advertisement rates for vacancies first advertised during this period in the low 30%s.

Now, some diocese, have reduced re-advertisement rates by appointing deputy heads from secondary schools to run primary schools. I was once sceptical of this as a solution, but can now see that just as a secondary school headteacher isn’t an expert in all subjects taught in the schools, so a primary headteacher needs leadership qualities, backed by experienced middle leaders that understand the different stages of learning and development in the primary sector.

Using a different measure of total re-advertisements to schools advertising a vacancy for a headteacher reveals that a small number of schools have extreme difficulty in recruiting a new headteacher. Some of these schools just start at the wrong time of year.

Overall, almost every primary school of any type that advertised a headship in December 2017 re-advertised the post at some point during 2018. Unless, these schools used a subscription model that allowed for as many advertisements are required to fill the post, the governors were just wasting the school’s money if they used a paid for publication or job board for the December advert. Those that used TeachVac would have not faced that problem, because it wouldn’t have cost them anything.

As Britain becomes a more secular society, all faiths will need to address the question of how to find the next generation of leaders for their schools. With the approach the 150th anniversary of the 1870 Education Act, such schools seem likely to remain a part of the landscape, whatever the feelings and views of those that would prefer an entirely secular state school system.

 

 

Some trends for 2019 in teacher recruitment

Posted on by
2

In two of my recent posts I looked at the prospects facing schools that would seek to recruit either a teacher of design and technology or a teacher of business studies during 2019. These prospects will also apply to schools seeking to make appointments in January 2020, as there will be no new entrants to the labour market to fill such vacancies. If, as happens in both the two subjects already discussed, there are sufficient vacancies for September to absorb the whole output from ITT courses, then schools faced with a January vacancy, for whatever reason, really do face a dilemma. In some cases agencies may help, but in others it is a case of making do until the summer.

As mentioned in the post that initially analysed the ITT census for 2018, the position in physics is once again dire, with less than half of the ITT places filled. Fortunately, there won’t be a shortage of science teachers, since far more biologists were recruited into training that the government estimate of the number required. However, recruitment of chemistry teachers will prove a problem for some schools as 2019 progresses, since one in five ITT places were left unfilled; the highest percentage of unfiled places in recent years. Perhaps some early professional development on increased subject knowledge for biology teachers required to teach the whole science curriculum at Key Stage 3 might be a worthwhile investment.

In 2018, there were not enough trainee teachers of English to meet the demand from schools for such teachers; it 2019 that subject will be less of a problem, but finding a teacher of mathematics might be more of an issue for schools once again, although various CPD initiatives may have helped improve the mathematical knowledge of those teaching the subject and may have helped to reduce demand. Only time will tell whether a shortage of teachers of mathematics will once again be a headline story for 2019.

Although state schools may have reduced their demand for teachers of art, the independent sector still generates a significant demand each year for such teachers. The fact that more than one in five ITT places weren’t filled in 2018 may have some important regional implications for state schools seeking such a teacher, especially where the demand is also strong from the private sector schools. The same issue is also true for teachers of religious education, where demand from the state sector was weak in 2018. Any increase in demand during 2019 would see schools experiencing more problems with recruitment than during 2018.

All these assumptions are predicated on the belief that rising pupil numbers, and the associated funding per pupil, will more than cancel out the pressure on school budgets across the country. Once again, TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk expects that London and the surrounding areas to be the focus of most demand for new teachers and the North East, the area where schools will experience the least difficulty in recruiting teachers.

TeachVac will be there throughout 2019 to chart the changing trends, and I would like to extend to all readers of both this blog and users of TeachVac and its international arm, TeachVac Global www.teachvacglobal.com my best wishes for 2019.

 

100: well almost

Posted on by
Reply

Congratulations to the DfE for reaching the 100 vacancies point on their web site for the first time. Sadly, once vacancies past their closing date and non-teaching posts are removed, the total slips just below the three figure mark, but it will make that level soon, I am sure. This on a day when TeachVac, the only other free site to both schools and teachers, has more than 50,000 vacancies for 2018. To be fair to the DfE, their site still doesn’t cover the whole of the country and has only really been in operation of three months, including the quiet month of August, so it has a way to go to catch up TeachVac, but it is running at about 5% of TeachVac’s total at present.

TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk will also hit another key milestone and new record today. However, those details will keep for another post. Still, the team of six in Newport on the Isle of Wight have much to be proud of in developing TeachVac without a single penny of government money. This is compared with the hundreds of thousands of pounds the DfE has spent on their site.

Rather tongue in cheek, I suggested to officials that the DfE buy the vacancies from TeachVac for a fraction of the cost it would cost the same number of schools to input the vacancies to the DfE site, especially using the DfE’s outdated methodology. The DfE could then work with TeachVac to ensure applicants were attracted to the one site. This is because, without spending on making sure teachers, trainees and returners use any vacancy site, it is valueless. TeachVac also has the added benefit of attracting teachers working overseas to teaching posts in England through its TeachVac Global site for international schools. www.teachvacglobal.com

Unlike the DfE, TeachVac also uses it data to provide schools with information on the local vacancy market and has established a new vacancy index for both primary and secondary classroom teachers that will track how recruitment is changing in a world where funding is a concern to schools, but so is the wastage of teachers with several years of experience in the profession.  The next crisis may well be trying to find sufficient middle leaders with experience and appropriate professional development to take on this demanding role.

The free sites, such as TeachVac and the DfE work alongside paid for advertising sites for teaching posts. As more and more teachers use the free sites, it will be interesting to chart the fate of the ‘paid for’ recruitment advertising market. TeachVac offers a service to the independent sector, although the DfE site doesn’t. At present it seems that Sixth Form Colleges are excluded for the DfE site, presumably as they aren’t technically schools. TeachVac is happy to accommodate such institutions as it also provides special arrangements for MATs, diocese and local authorities to handle both individual schools recruitment needs as well as those for all schools in the group.

Ideally, a jointly managed and badged recruitment site supported by the government, teacher associations, employers and teacher educators would be the best solution, provided that is, it offered the lowest cost solution using the best of modern technology.

 

Should you train to be a teacher?

Posted on by
1

This is the time of year when final year undergraduates; recent graduates unhappy with their current lot in life and career changers often start to consider teaching as a possible career.

Teaching in England requires more than half a million graduates to provide an education to all children. Even a low departure rate of around five per cent would require more than 25,000 replacement teachers each year, either through new entrants or by those return9gn to teaching. So, even if the economy goes downhill thanks to trade wars and Brexit, there will still be lots of children to educate.

If you are a potential teacher reading this blog, you can visit the DfE’s advice service for potential teachers at https://getintoteaching.education.gov.uk/

One of the questions you might want to ask the advice line is, will I find a teaching post where I want to teach and doing what I want to do when I qualify? May, I suggest that if the person answers ‘yes’ to that question, you press them for some hard evidence. After all, the DfE is now running a vacancy web site for teaching posts, so should be able to answer a simple question such as ‘what are my chances of finding a teaching post?’

Unlike many graduate training programmes, only some teacher preparation courses will guarantee those that complete the course successfully a teaching job. Most, however, will require you to take on extra student debt to pay for the course: in some cases this is ameliorated by a bursary payment made tax-free. In other subjects, where the government considers the supply of entrants is sufficient then there is no bursary available. This fact might be a warning sign about job prospects.

Even where there are bursaries, do you want to commit a year of your life to training to become a teacher only to find there are not enough jobs to meet the supply of teachers where you want to teach? Hence the need to quiz the government’s recruitment advisers about vacancies.

If the government cannot answer your question, then local authority might be able to do so, as many still have teacher recruitment services or at least operate job boards and should know something about the local demand for teachers. However, they may not know what is happening in academies in their area, with regard to job prospects for teachers.

You can also ask course providers during any interviews how successful their trainees are at finding jobs and where they find them?

Finally, I recommend you sign up with a job board that can tell you about real vacancies. Beware vacancies not tied to a specific school: the job might not exist. Some schools these days operate talent pools and collect applications even when they don’t have a vacancy. The best make this clear; some don’t.  You can often spot these apparent vacancies by a lack of any starting date and a long period to the closing date with a comment that appointments may be made before the closing date if a suitable candidate appears.

If you want a job board that is free to both schools and teachers and tries to only match real vacancies with teachers looking for those jobs in specific parts of England, then may I recommend TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk This free national vacancy service was established more than four years ago and currently handles more vacancies than any other free service, including that operated by the DfE.  I am happy to be the Chair of its Board.

If you are considering becoming a history teacher, a teacher of PE or of Modern Languages or indeed a teacher of any subject or a teacher working in the primary sector, then signing up when you are considering teaching as a career can provide evidence of the job market that may help you assess the risk of training to be a teacher.

As the Chair of TeachVac, I would be delighted to welcome you to join with many other teachers, trainees and returners already making use of our free service.

Should you have a wish to teacher overseas, then our global site www.teachvacglobal.com  may be able to help you find a teaching post almost anywhere in the world.

 

 

 

Bulk buying back in vogue

Posted on by
3

When I was a young teacher in London there was a large central buying organisation for schools, called something like Greater London Supplies. I recall that they had a big depot at Tottenham Hale in north London. Purchasing basic supplies on behalf of large numbers of schools made good business sense, even to the most socialist of Labour councils. However, it didn’t make sense to the Thatcher government that believed market competition at a school level was the way forward.

Reading the DfE’s recent announcement on procurement and helping schools with costs, suggests that this is yet another move back in the direction of levering the purchasing power of schools as a combined unit, rather than expecting them to operate as individual business sites. How long will it be before Ofsted is asked to include in their inspection report whether a school is making full use effective purchasing decisions to target as much cash as possible on teaching and learning?

TeachVac, the free vacancy site for schools and teachers, www.teachvac.co.uk  where I am chair of the board, doesn’t yet feature in the DfE list. I am sure that they will find a good reason not to list it, as they don’t yet list any vacancy advertising services, whether they are either paid for services like all the others or free like TeachVac and their own nascent service. Maybe they don’t want competition?

The government’s actions in driving down costs aren’t completely risk free. After all, if prices are driven down too far then suppliers will exit the market and leave just one monopoly provider. At that point, it becomes an issue as to whether the State should regulate the provision of the service or actually take over the running.

As I have suggested in previous posts on this topic, once prices have been reduced by increasing efficiency then it can become very difficult to make a profit. Then there is also the reason why local decision-making was favoured by many: the speed of service delivery. A central maintenance contract may be cheaper, but what is the true cost of waiting several days for a window to be replaced or a leaking toilet mended?

I am sure that there is a unit within the DfE thinking of other areas where schools can either save money or increase their incomes without putting more pressure on parents. They might want to ensure deals there are good deals on school uniforms and sports kit and make schools explain why they are requiring a uniform that is more expensive than the average. Tradition, would not be a good enough answer.

My own suggestion for research is, as mentioned before, school playgrounds. They must be the least used piece of real estate in the country. I don’t suggest they are done away with, as when needed they perform a vital function, but what can we do with them for the other 99% of the year? More all-weather community pitches; a source of generating renewable energy; even vegetable growing spaces areas with a playground on top.

We are spending millions on research into driverless cars; how about a couple of million for more effective playground spaces?

 

 

Marketing matters

Posted on by
Reply

TeachVac, the free recruitment site for schools and teachers, www.teachvac.co.uk is having a bumper August in terms of visitors. That’s not really a surprise, as Teachvac has upped the marketing budget to widen our reach even further than the record numbers of teachers reached during the recent peak recruitment season. The months between March and June witnessed records being broken every month.

August is a good time to market to teachers as they are often interacting with social media and may have more time than at other points in the year, apart from that week between Christmas and New Year.

TeachVac staff are also busy working away at updating all our information about schools. What was Edubase – now GIAS, ‘Government Information About Schools’ – seems to contain a proportion of errors. Most are trivial, names not yet updated or re-brokered academies were the data hasn’t caught up with the change. But, there are a small number of more serious issues, such as the primary school listed as a post-16 establishment and the multi-academy trusts where all schools are listed under the central office site, making it difficult for parents to know where each school is located and possibly skewing the data associated with the school that can affect the results for several different geographical areas.

Once TeachVac’s staff have completed their update, we will see if the DfE is interested in knowing of these issues? As it is a free service to schools and teachers, should TeachVac make a charge for such a service to the DfE?

On a different but not unrelated front, BERA, the British Education Research Association will publish a blog from 2016 posted on this site that I wrote about school recruitment differences across the country. This will form part of a new series BERA is promoting. I will provide the link to their site on the 5th September when it becomes active. It may also be possible to provide an update on the situation in 2018 to compare with the outcomes in 2016 what I wrote two years’ ago.

Next week will also see the August data from UCAS about recruitment to postgraduate teacher preparation courses starting this September. Although not the final figures, the August numbers do provide a clear direction of travel for the 2019 recruitment round. I hope to publish a three-year comparison of the August figures along with the regular monthly commentary.

 

Are all trainees equal in the job market?

Posted on by
Reply

There is quite a lot of other data in the ITT profiles that wasn’t discussed in the previous post on this blog. However, it also has to be said that there is a lot of data that isn’t in the profiles, notably for different secondary subjects and routes and regions. I assume the DFE uses that data when considering the bids from providers, but with largely open recruitment, in all except a small number of subjects, it is only meaningful data if it shows some regions are missing out on trainees. A breakdown of employment by region where QTS was obtained and region NQT is reported as teaching in would also be interesting. However, as some providers are close to regional boundaries maps showing the percentage of those with QTS teaching in each region by region of QTS award would be the best method of displaying such information.

Still, we must make do with what is on offer. I prefer the simple calculation for postgraduate trainees of the percentage of those that were recorded as final year trainees and the percentage in teaching six months after gaining QTS. This includes teaching in the private sector, so isn’t yet providing a picture of those that started an ITT course and ended up teaching in a state funded school. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before that data is available.

Anyway, what do we know? Women outweigh men at the start of the final year by more than 2:1. Women are also more likely to end up in teaching than men. 85% of women recorded as final year trainees were in teaching six months from being awarded QTS, compared with 79% of men.  Of the 8,525 men recorded as final year trainees in 2016, only 6,700 were in teaching by then end of 2017. There were 285 recorded as looking and a further 365 recorded as still to complete QTS, so the percentage could increase, but it could also increase for women as well for the same reasons.

Members of ethnic minorities, of whatever gender, fare less well than those from a non-minority ethnic group in the working as a teacher outcomes. Only 78% of the 3,875 that were recorded as final year trainees from an ethnic minority group were recorded as being in a teaching post six months after receiving QTS. Again, there may be late entrants yet to come from the pool of 120 trainee still looking and the 290 yet to complete QTS.

Recording a disability seems create an even greater hurdle. Of the 2,560 trainees recorded as declaring a disability at the start of their final year, only 1,960 or 77% were recorded as in teaching six months after receiving QTS. This is especially disappointing in light of the fact that 12% of final year trainees, a record percentage, declared a disability. More work needs to be done to discover the issues with this group finding work as a teacher.

Finally, I am interested in how trainees find their teaching jobs? Are more now offered jobs by the schools where they spend time and do fewer trainees need recourse to national jobs sites such as either TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk – where I am chair – or other recruitment sites? Do please let me know your thoughts.

 

Notice to ITT providers, both existing and potential new providers

Posted on by
Reply

I would be grateful if readers of this blog could alert those that either provide ITT places or are seeking to do so in 2019 to the following.

In the DfE’s Requesting initial teacher training places for 2019 to 2020 document issued yesterday https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-itt-requesting-places-2019-to-2020 There is mention of:

.. a realistic assessment of employment need in the local area in submissions (Section 3, page 6)

TeachVac is able to offer providers an independent set of figures showing the number of vacancies advertised in Jan – Dec 2017 and from Jan – Jun 2018 in a range of secondary subjects and for primary teacher posts. There is a small fee providing this information. TeachVac will also add some summary information about the national vacancy situation at the end of 2017. The information provided can be used to justify data include din submissions to the DfE

TeachVac’s normal turnaround for this service would be three working days from receipt of both an official order and details of the secondary subjects needed, whether primary teacher vacancies are required, and local authority areas to be covered. A one working day turnaround is available for an extra fee.

TeachVac can offer the following list of secondary subjects for which data is readily available:

PE, Art, History, Languages, Mathematics, All sciences, Music, Geography, English, Computing /IT, D&T, Business Studies as well as primary teaching vacancies.

Other secondary subjects on the DfE may well be available – if you would like data on these, please ask about the specific the subject required.

Costs:

For many providers the costs are likely to be £55 + VAT, but larger providers requiring more data, a provider could pay around £110 + VAT. This is made up as:

Up to 5 subjects across up to 5 LEA’s – £55 + VAT (this is the minimum cost)

If you need more subjects / local authorities then TeachVac will charge £28 + VAT for each group of up to 10 subject-LEA’s (1 subject in 10 LEA’s or 2 subjects in 5 LEA’s etc).

Expedite fee (1 day turn around) – £85 + VAT

Sub division of science into Combined / Physics / Chemistry / Biology specialisms as requested in the job adverts – £11 + VAT per LEA. This service is also available on request for design and technology and modern languages for an extra fee.

Those providers who recommend TeachVac to their trainees and or registered schools are entitled to a 10% discount on these costs.

How to proceed:

Email data@teachvac.com with details of who you are, a list of subjects, a list of LEA’s, any special requirements and whether you recommend TeachVac to your trainees and or registered schools.

TeachVac will email back a total cost and action the request upon receipt of an official order / order number.

TeachVac is a totally free national vacancy service to schools and teachers.

If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact TeachVac.