Are you overpaying to advertise your teaching posts?

New service for schools from TeachVac

Does your school pay an annual subscription to post your teaching vacancies, but then have to pay extra for leadership posts?

Does your supplier tell you how many matches there were for each vacancy you advertised?

Do you know the size of the market in your area, as well as the likely annual demand for teachers?

TeachVac can answer your questions

After seven years of successful matching and designing a system specifically for schools in England, TeachVac is now asking schools to pre-register for free for its new enhanced service and in return receive a report on the labour market for teachers. Pre-registration now costs nothing, but allows for faster delivery of matches to pre-registered schools. When live in the New year, here’s how the new system will work.

Register your school now for just £100 plus VAT and receive 200 free matches. That means the first 200 matches made with your vacancies will be free on all leadership, promoted posts and classroom teacher vacancies advertised in 2022.

Matches are then £1 each up to a maximum of £1,000 per school each year. All further matches are free for the rest of that year.

You fee will make our teacher pool even larger than at present. We aim for the largest pool of teachers that are job hunting to match with your vacancies at the lowest price to schools. TeachVac can do this with its own sophisticated technology written with schools in mind.

TeachVac can save you money

No matches: no cost. No subscription to pay after the registration fee of £100 plus VAT and that is covered by your first 200 matches.

Additionally, we tell you information about the likely pool of teachers and how fast it is being depleted as the recruitment round unfolds between January and September.

TeachVac has been matching teachers to jobs for seven years and its low-cost British designed technology has made more than 1.5 million matches in 2021 for schools across the country.

Sign up today at: https://teachvac.co.uk/school_doc.php

And receive our latest report on the Labour Market for teachers. Schools that don’t register will no longer be matched with our increasing pool of candidates. TeachVac listed 60,000+ vacancies in 2021 and made more than 1.5 million matches. https://teachvac.co.uk/school_doc.php

Good News for All?

The latest Education and Training Statistics issued today by the DfE offers both government and opposition something to shout about Education and training statistics for the UK, Reporting Year 2021 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk)

For the government, the news that Pupil Teacher Ratios (PTRs) have improved in the primary sector and not worsened in the secondary sector can be seen as good news even though the improvement in PTRS in the primary sector probably has as much to do with the decline in the birth rate as it does to direct government actions. With pupil numbers still on the increase in the secondary sector, it is not surprising to see no improvement in PTRS in that sector.

	Primary	Secondary
2016/17	20.5	15.5
2017/18	20.9	15.9
2018/19	20.9	16.3
2019/2020	20.9	16.6
2020/21	20.6	16.6

Source: DfE Statistics of Education 2021

PTRS in the secondary sector remain at historically high levels for the country as a whole, and there will be areas of the country where the ratio in the secondary sector is even higher than the national average. Too often high PTRs have been associated with areas of deprivation and there are challenges here for the levelling up agenda if that remains the case. The Conservative Government invented the idea of Opportunity Areas to seek to address this issue: have they worked?

Opposition parties will no doubt seize upon the fact that education expenditure in real terms declined by 0.4% comparing the most recent year with the previous year. However, expenditure in the primary sector increased by two per cent and by seven per cent in the secondary sector in cash terms, presumably as a result of the weight on pupil numbers in the funding formula.

One outcome of the covid pandemic is that education’s share of GDP increased between 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 from 4.0% to 4.5%. No doubt it will fall back next years as the wider economy will have recovered from lockdowns and the other disruptions economy brought about by the covid pandemic.

The government can also point to improving percentages in the number of young people classified as NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training). In the quarter April to June 2021 the overall figure for the 16-24 age-group was 9.3% as NEETs, down from 11.3% in the same quarter in 2029/2020. Only 3.7% of 16–17-year-olds were classified as NEETS in the April to June 2021 Quarter. However, the largest fall in the percentage of NEETS over the past year was in the 18–24-year-old age-group.

 There is a wealth of other statistics in the release, but many have been so badly affected by the consequences of the pandemic that there is little to say except that 2020/2021 was a highly unusual year and the data will remain as an anomaly in longer-term trend lines of statistics. What will be interesting will be to see how long the recovery period is, and whether if different groups respond in different ways to the outcomes of the pandemic, plus any steps that the government will take to ensure that some groups are not left behind.

Who controls teacher preparation?

Last week the House of Lords had a short debate on Initial Teacher Training. Initial Teacher Training – Hansard – UK Parliament This is an important subject that doesn’t receive enough attention. Each year the government in England trains more teachers than the total workforce of The Royal Navy and schools recruit possibly around 40,000 teachers each year including those moving between schools as well as new entrants and re-entrants.

The government has conducted what it has termed a Market Review into ITT or Initial Teacher Education as many would prefer to call it. ITT Market Review: more thoughts | John Howson (wordpress.com) Personally, I prefer the more neutral Teacher Preparation Programme (TPP) for the experience, but it is a matter of taste and semantics.

The debate in the Upper House included contributions from a former Labour secretary of State along with many other knowledgeable Peers from all sides of the House. There is concern amongst some universities including both Oxford and Cambridge about the degree of government control over the TPP curriculum and the role of the civil service. Last time government took a detailed interest in the functioning of TPP courses there was at least a Quango in the form of Teacher Training Agency that had some credibility with the teachers and academics providing the preparation programmes. Those with especially long memories will recall that I worked for the TTA for nearly a year over the change from the Major to the Blair governments in 1996-1997.

As lord Storey said in the debate “In the last decade,… there has been a steady growth of different routes into teaching, and ITT has become very fragmented. Teaching is now pretty much a graduate profession, with most teachers getting their degree before deciding which route to take. In addition to the traditional degree plus PGCE route, the balance has swung very much towards school-based initial teacher training. The traditional years spent at university, with a placement in a school for an extended teaching practice, has been replaced for many students with a year based in a school, with the school buying in the pedagogical element from a university.”

Then, there is Teach First, Teach Next, Troops to Teachers and on the horizon the iQTS discussed in the previous post on this blog.

The DfE has taken control of the admissions process alongside the certification of providers, so perhaps as the main employer of teachers it us understandable that it would want to be involved with the curriculum.

However, it does seem less than sensible to risk the meltdown of a system that handles such large numbers of would-be teachers relatively economically at a time when central government is looking to make economies. Do we want to go back to a time when the Russsell Group universities train teachers for the private sector schools both at home and overseas in parallel to a government scheme for training teachers for the state school sector?

If you are interested in the subject do read the excellent contributions to the debate using the link at the top of this post.

iQTS: DfE delivers plans for 2022 pilot

This week the DfE produced the document outlining the plans for its new international teacher preparation qualification.

The DfE document states that the iQTS is a new, UK government-backed international teaching qualification which will be recognised by the Department for Education (DfE) (via an amendment to regulations) as equivalent to English qualified teacher status (QTS). It will be delivered by accredited English ITT providers to trainees all over the world.

The DfE cites that the aims of iQTS are to be:

• provide opportunities for accredited English ITT providers to expand into the growing international teacher training market
• make high quality training accessible around the world, allow trainees to benefit from evidence-based ITT and allow schools to develop local talent
• increase the global pool of quality teachers and support global mobility within the teaching profession

According to the DfE the iQTS is built on evidence-based English methods and standards of teacher training with contextualisation for the wide variety of settings trainees may be in.

To be eligible providers of the pilot must be:

• approved by DfE to offer iQTS
• already accredited to deliver ITT leading to QTS in England

Introducing the international qualified teacher status (iQTS) pilot – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Also according to the DfE, iQTS is suitable for candidates living outside the UK, including:

• UK citizens currently working abroad who wish to start teacher training or develop their teaching career
• non-UK citizens who wish to begin teacher training or build on existing teaching experience
• UK and non-UK teachers without QTS who wish to improve their employability in England and internationally with a UK government-backed and approved professional qualification

iQTS will be recognised as equivalent to QTS by DfE, although at present that outcome is still subject to the will of Parliament, via an amendment to regulations. When approved by Parliament this will mean that iQTS holders will be able to apply to gain QTS in order to teach in England. Those who have successfully completed the iQTS qualification will be eligible to apply for the professional status of QTS through DfE’s system for recognising overseas school teachers for QTS.

Once awarded iQTS by their provider, if a candidate wishes to gain QTS they will apply to the DfE alongside other teachers who are already eligible for QTS on the basis of having an overseas qualification.

If the iQTS holder then wishes to teach in a maintained school or non-maintained special school in England, they will need to complete an induction period in order to work in a relevant school^. They will be able to complete their induction either in a DfE-accredited British School Overseas (BSO) or in a relevant school in England^. During their induction, they will be assessed against English Teachers’ Standards.

Providers who wish to offer iQTS will:

• run their own application process,
• set course fees
• award the qualification at the end of the course provided all of the iQTS Teachers’ Standards have been met.

The pilot year will be used to test, learn from and iterate the framework. The DfE state it is their intention to make iQTS available to all interested accredited ITT providers by September 2023 after the pilot year is complete.

This announcement comes before this afternoon’s House of Lords debate on Initial Teacher Training. The government’s plans for the shake-up of ITT in England have yet to surface and it will be interesting to hear what the Minister has to say in the Upper Chamber this afternoon on either the place of England in the global teacher preparation market or their plans for the home market.

Teaching in China: bright future or end of the road?

How will the Chinese government’s ruling that International Schools in China must teach the same lessons as Chinese-run schools affect the market for international schools in China and as a result the demand for teachers from Britain? Westminster School abandons plans for sister sites in China amid concerns about communist curriculum (inews.co.uk)

At least one school seems to have scrapped expansion plans in China, and it will be interesting to see how other UK schools with investments in China respond. There is also the question of how those Chinese citizens that can afford private education will respond to the government’s decree. Will they embrace boarding school education and ship their offspring to British schools elsewhere in Asia or even negotiate places in the ‘home country’ original school of the brand or will they think that the brand will remain a draw even if the ‘hard curriculum’ is mandated by the Chinese government. After all, private schools teach the same A levels as are on offer for free in the state system in England but parents still pay large sums for their children to attend private sixth forms. No doubt class sizes will be a consideration for parents in China just as it is in England. Access to wealth buys access to smaller classes whatever is being taught in them.

The outcome of this policy change may have ripples in the labour market for teachers in England. Fewer overseas openings may reduce the ‘brain drain’ of teachers leaving this country.  Any closure of school sites overseas may well also see teachers returning to the UK. If their former employer feels a responsibility to offer them employment on their return, then the number of vacancies in the independent sector available for new entrants to the profession will drop. This ought to be good news for the state school sector as there should be more teachers entering the profession that would need to find a teaching post in the state sector.

Of course, if the Chinese pupils just migrate to schools outside of China, then the demand for teachers will remain at present levels, and the state sector will continue to see teachers leaving for more lucrative and less burdensome teaching posts overseas.

It is probably time for the DfE to research the international transfer of teaching skills. Writing that line reminds me that in September 1968 I attended a student-run conference on ITOMS – The International Transfer of Management Skills- organised by AIESEC. Do we now need to discuss ITOTS?

Of course, there are other teacher flows than just the one from England to the rest of the world. There used to be internal transfer within the African continent and between the Caribbean and the USA.

Teaching is now a global profession as the DfE has recognised with its new approach to QTS and how it can be obtained. Should England take the lead in setting international standards for teacher preparation much as it did in the market for English Language teaching Qualifications?

Recruiting into teacher preparation: the DfE website

Now that the DfE have taken over recruitment to postgraduate teacher preparation courses I have been looking at their web site of providers. On the whole it is a pastiche of the former UCAS offering, with the same faults and good points.

The key good point is that it is comprehensive and has a lot of different filters. Whether or not they are the filters applicants will want to use is another matter. On the downside there is no map of either location of courses availability of places.

Many years ago, universities leant that not having a place name in your title could be a disadvantage, as applicants might not consider you if they didn’t know where you were located. As a result, Trent became Nottingham Trent, and Brookes, Oxford Brookes. Of course, some universities can manage without a place name such as King’s College, London and University College, but they are both technically colleges and not universities.

How many applicants know that Orange Moon Education is offering Classics courses in Nottingham and Bristol and possibly Bradford as well unless they delve into the Orange Moon site or where The South East Learning alliance is offering training?

The last time the DfE was involved in the application process, when the School Direct Scheme was first established, the DfE included more data on the number of places still on offer from each course and the number filled on its web site. I always thought that was a useful tool for applicants as places filled to know the possible risk of applying to a nearly full course against applying to one with more places available.  However, long-time readers of this blog from 2013 will recall the difficulties that resulted from my use of the data on applications and places filled.

Some years ago, Chris Waterman worked with me to produce a book of maps showing the location of providers and their different type of provision. As a former geography teacher, I still think that some visual representation of provision would be useful. Such mapping might show potential trainees where the competition for jobs might be fiercest, especially if it was overlayed with vacancy rates for the different subjects and sectors.

It is interesting to see that as I write this blog in early November there is already a difference between the total number of courses available and the number of courses with vacancies on the DfE site. In design and technology, there are 443 courses listed, but only 426 have vacancies: 17 apparently don’t have vacancies. For physics, the numbers are 736 and 716, a difference of 20. This begs the question of, if there are only around 1,100 places to train as a physics teacher how many of the 736 courses are real opportunities and how many sub-sets of an offering with some slight difference, and does this matter? Around 8% of primary courses are currently not on the list for courses with vacancies.

By Christmas, the DfE will have a good idea of how the recruitment round is shaping up. With the international school job market opening up again, training teachers will become as important as filling the vacancies for lorry drivers for the future of our economy.

Teaching is a wonderful career

The DfE has today announced the 2022 summer programme for interns in certain subjects that want to consider teaching as a possible career. It is interesting that to the obvious STEM subjects has been added Modern Languages. However, other subjects with significant shortages such as design and technology and business studies still don’t feature in the list. The bias towards an academic curriculum still seems firmly planted in the minds of Ministers. However, at least IT is included, so there is a nod to the future.

In reality not all STEM subjects are included. As the DfE notice makes clear, the aim of the internship programme is to enable undergraduates studying for a degree in STEM-related subjects the opportunity to experience teaching maths, physics, computing or modern foreign languages before they commit to it as a career.

The programme is school-led. Only school-led partnerships can apply for funding. School partnerships can choose to collaborate with an accredited Initial Teacher Training (ITT) provider to develop and deliver their programme.

The partnership lead should submit the application as they will have overall responsibility for the budget. However, they should work in collaboration with partners to develop the proposal.

DfE welcome applications from school-led partnerships across England, however especially welcomes applications from schools in geographic areas where there have previously been gaps in provision, including:

• Bristol
• Cornwall
• Cumbria and north Lancashire
• Devon
• East Anglia
• London
• Merseyside
• Oxfordshire

Applications must be for a minimum of 5 participants. Teaching internship programme: summer 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The DfE has also announced that the ITT Census of current trainees will be published on the 2^nd December. This will allow schools to understand what the supply of new entrants into the labour market for next September will look like in each subject.

Interestingly, the number of vacancies being advertised by secondary schools this November is much higher than in recent years, with more than 700 new vacancies listed last week alone. Early data from today suggests there is no let up in the trend to advertise vacancies in what is normally a relatively quiet month. Normally, the most distinguishing factor about vacancies in November is the high number of those that result from a teacher taking maternity leave.

Maybe we are seeing the early signs of the increase in departures of school leaders that have borne the brunt of the handling of the pandemic in schools over the past 18 months. TeachVac will track that trend and report in its annual round up of trends in leadership vacancies.

The DfE is now handing applications for the 2022 entry into teacher preparation courses and the first data from that source that has replaced the monthly UCAS data of past years will provide an interesting insight on how teaching is viewed as a career at this stage of the pandemic.

At the same time rumours abound that the DfE is reviewing how it will handle the vacancy web site it created a couple of years ago and also that the tes is once again might possibly be seeking another new owner.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I wonder why schools continue to pay millions of pounds to a private American owned company instead of investing a few thousand in creating a low-cost site that is jointly owned by the profession and the government.

But then the talk of scare resources is often an easier approach than the actions necessary to overcome the conviction that the status quo must always be funded.

With 7 million hits this year and 50,000+ vacancies at no cost to either the public purse of teachers, TeachVac has shown what can be achieved.

Education and climate change

Today is education day at COP-26. This blog first mentioned climate change in a post on 17^th September 2019 and most recently did so in a post about school buildings Zero Carbon Schools | John Howson (wordpress.com) a couple of months ago.

I am delighted to say that the issue of school playgrounds as a possible resource for renewable energy is being taken forward by a multi-national company. Their idea is to inset PV tiles into the surface rather than have extending panels that was my suggestion. Any change to the surface must be safe for children in any weather conditions and must not become contaminated with anything that would reduce the effectiveness of the tiles as a source of energy. The process must also be cost effective.

However, with the roll out of 5G leading to the end of copper phone cables and no guarantee of phone services in a power cut as a result, some local generation and storage capacity in rural areas might well be another reason at looking into the wider role of schools and their buildings in serving local communities.

Today at COP-26 will no doubt be mostly centred around the curriculum as that is where governments can make promises that cost little to implement compared with changes to buildings already in use and setting standards for new construction.

There will also be a new award announced by the Secretary of State to encourage young people to take action against climate change, as if encouragement was needed. As I wrote in an earlier post on this blog, young people can start by conducting an audit of their school’s current actions relating to climate change and suggest some simple steps to start with. In the light of COP-26, will every governing body have an item about climate change on their agenda for this term’s final meeting?

School transport and especially the use of parent’s cars to take children to and from school can be a major source of both pollution and energy consumption. The move towards electric vehicles will help with the former and can encourage better use of the latter if the power to drive the vehicles is created from renewable energy.

So, today is a day for some celebration, much reflection and a desire to move forward. However, actions will speak louder than words in the next few years.

Levelling down?

There are suggestions of a policy towards limiting access to higher education for those without traditional qualifications. For a government that proclaims its belief in levelling up, this would seem a strange policy to even consider. Minimum entry requirements would do the opposite of levelling up | Wonkhe

Such a policy must not be allowed to drive a coach and horses through the policy of ‘life long learning’. Many that come to higher education later in life than through the traditional route had a fractured schooling, with poor outcomes. Any change in policy must not damage their ability to return to learning, especially at the level of higher education.

However, more seriously, while the government has continued to operate a policy of not providing enough qualified teachers in some subjects, notably mathematics and physics, but also design and technology and languages, the young people on the receiving end of teaching from less than ideally qualified teachers much not have their ability to attend a university jeopardised by a failure in government policy.   

By now, the government should have some indications as to whether its idea for ‘Opportunity Areas’ has borne any fruit in terms of levelling up in some of the northern areas where the scheme was trailed.

A market-based approach to teacher supply may encourage teachers to work in schools where pupils have less struggles with learning and more support from home. These schools usually have less trouble attracting teachers as the study of vacancies and free school meals reported earlier this year by this blog demonstrated.  

With the world starting to open up again for both travel and work opportunities, there must not be a large outflow of teachers from England to schools overseas. The ending of the pay freeze is welcome news, as is the recognition of the importance of professional development. However, the government does need to pay more attention to the distribution of teachers and the locations where there are shortages of fully qualified teachers.

Using professional development approaches to improve the qualifications of teachers is one route to overcoming shortages; stemming losses must be another action. The National Audit Office make it clear some years ago that improving teacher retention was a cost-effective route to solving the recruitment issue. However, it doesn’t always solve the issue of the distribution of teachers.

It will be interesting to see whether there is any correlation in Ofsted ITT reports between programmes that are deemed either ‘inadequate’ or’ requiring improvement’ and the schools used to prepare teachers?

If levelling up is to make a difference in education outcomes, then among the many strands needing to be woven together for a successful outcome is the approach to teacher supply and distribution.