ITT: hiccup not a change in direction?

Secondary schools across England might want to start thinking about their staffing needs for 2022 and 2023. Evidence from the data released earlier today by UCAS about application levels for postgraduate ITT courses reveals some disturbing trends.

This time last year, the pandemic caused something of a flurry of applications to train as a teacher. Applications have continued to increase this year and are currently about 24% higher for primary sector courses- why supply is generally adequate – but only 10% high for the secondary sector overall. Within that sector there are some significant increases, but also some worrying numbers in terms of applications.

Looking at the key curriculum subject,s there must be concerns that in IT, design & technology, geography, languages, business studies and physics there will not be enough applicants of suitable quality to meet the number of places on offer. In business studies and physics there are more applicants than last year, but current trends suggest that unless there is a wave of new graduates seeking to enter teacher preparation courses over the summer the targets won’t be universally met.

In languages, the total number of applications this years is down in most languages on the May 202 number. The same is true for design and technology, where applications are down from 1,190 in May 2020 to 980 this May. So, far only 260 applications have been offered places, with just 30 fully placed.

A significant proportion of the increase in applications are in subjects such as history (+1,100) PE (+1,000) and mathematics (+1,830), whereas geography has 650 fewer applications than last year and biology around 2,000 fewer. History and PE are not subjects where more applicants are needed to meet targets, although more should equate to more choice and better teachers.

These numbers don’t suggest a golden age for secondary school teaching as a career, and should do more than cause a pause for thought at the School Teachers’ Review Body.

In the North East region the number of applicants, at 1,450 this May, is actually around 50 below the figure for May 2020. Fortunately, in London there are some 1,300 more applicants than last year and around 700 more in the South East. Applicants are also still remaining in the process, withdrawals are holding at 23% of applications, and are only up from two to three per cent of applicants.

Another interesting straw in the wind is that there are has been virtually no increase in applicants over the age of 40 when compared with May 2020 total for this age group. Younger career switchers are still looking at teaching as a career, but the increase in new graduates still remains sluggish. This is an area where better data would help flesh out the real picture in the secondary sector. How many of the applications for PE have come from personal trainers that have seen their business disappear? And why are applications for design and technology so low. At current levels, it is difficult to see a future for the subject in our schools, a point made in the past by this blog.

Finally, the Postgraduate Apprentice route seems to be heading towards a situation where it will take over from the School Direct Salaried route. How much longer can that route survive with less than 200 offers in the secondary sector, and fewer than 400 in the primary sector?

If there is not an influx of applicants in some subjects between now and the start of courses, then schools will find recruitment in 2022 challenging. If these numbers are a portent of a decline in interest in teaching, then the levelling up agenda may well be wishful thinking, unless a new strategy for teacher supply is introduced.  

UCAS end of 2020 cycle ITT data

UCAS has today published the end of cycle data for courses that started last autumn. Regular readers that follow this blog will know that much of what is contained in the data has been commented upon in posts on this blog la the August and October.

However, ‘The End of Cycle’ (EoC) report contains much more information than the regular monthly updates published during the cycle. One area is in that of the ethnicity of applicants and the percentages accepted. Why gender is seen as capable of being revealed each month and ethnicity is not is an interesting question. I assume it is down to the fact that numbers in some categories would be too small to make publication viable or appropriate.

Regardless of the reason, the EoC report contains some interesting data.

Accepted percentages 2020 from UCAS PG ITT data
	Male	Female	All
Black	37%	53%	48%
Other	41%	51%	48%
Asian	50%	61%	58%
Not Stated	55%	57%	56%
Mixed [sic]	58%	62%	61%
Total	63%	70%	68%
White	67%	74%	72%

Source: UCAS

Black male applicants had less than a four in ten chance of being accepted on to a course compared with 74% of white females that were accepted. It would be interesting to drill down into these figures to see whether there are regional and subject/phase differences within the categories.  

My assumption would be that London courses perform well in terms of acceptance of ethnic minority candidates and those courses in regions furthest from the capital may attract few applicants from ethnic groups other than the White group. This can pose another issue if a few courses receive the bulk of say Black African Male applicants. The policy should be to take the most suitable applicants.

I don’t know how much effort the DfE puts into monitoring these statistics and how they respond to the outcomes? Are civil servants content with the disparity between the different groups or should more work be undertaken to reduce the differences across gender and ethnicity?

Male applicants domiciled in London had one of the lowest acceptance rates overall for me of just 50% of applicants. It would be interesting to cross-tab the domicile by region with ethnicity. By contrast, 86% of women applicants domiciled in the north east appear to have been accepted That seems like a high figure to me and it would be interesting to see how many of these were accepted before say, Christmas. Providers that fill courses quickly can save time and money but such a practice begs the question about whether there should be a closing date for applications to allow more equal chances not determined by how quickly you decide upon teaching as a career.

No Tsunami of Applications

Earlier today UCAS released the first data on the 2021 recruitment round for postgraduate teacher preparation courses. The data are for applications up to the 16^th November. Last year the data were for Monday 18^th November 2019. In addition, there are applications through the DfE’s new service for which no data are yet available.

Now, it is always dangerous to read too much into the first month’s figures, but thirty years of looking at the numbers does allow me to make some observations.

Firstly, the increase in applicants domiciled in England, from 6,290 in 2019 to 7,420 in 2020, does not include large increases in applicants from the younger age groups, and  is skewed towards applicants domiciled in the London Areas.

Change in applicant numbers by age of applicant

Age        2020 round         2021 round         change

21 and

Under   1510                       1550                           40

22             970                       1040                           70

23             630                         730                         100

24             420                         570                         150

25-29     1200                       1490                         290

30-39       940                       1160                         220

40+           620                         890                         270

All           6290                       7420                       1130

Source UCAS Reports A 2019 and 2020 November data

For example, in the North East, applicants in November 2019 totalled 380. This November, the number is 390. In London the total was 890 in 2019, and is 1,300 this November. Similarly, in the South East Region, the increase is from 910 to 1,150. So, over half of the increase in applicants is accounted for by just two regions in England.

Although early days, should we be concerned that the number of male applicants aged 21 or under, final year undergraduates, has dropped from 360 last November to 300 this year? One to watch as the number of men over 40 applying has increased from 160 to 250. Overall, there are just fewer than 200 more male applicants this year compared to last year at this point in time.

More applicants means more applications, and the total increased from 17,840 in November 2019 to 21,710 this November. Again, as expected, London has done well, with an increase from 2,740 applications by last November to 4,120 this November. In the North East applications only rose from 1,090 to 1,110.

Both primary and secondary sectors have benefitted from the increase in applicants. Applications for primary sector courses are up from 7,980 to 9,890, and for secondary courses, from 9,860 to 11,790.

All types of provider have seen increases, but one of the smallest increases is in secondary SCITT applications, up from 1,320 to 1,360.

Almost all subjects have seen an increase in applications – data on applicants by subject isn’t published in the main reports.

Arts and humanities subjects has seen some of the largest increases in applications.  Even Physics has 240 applications this year, compared with 180 at this point in 2019. Art has seen applications double from 240 to 540, and even Design and Technology has 190 applications this year compared with 140 in November 2019. But, this might mean an increase an applicants from 50 last year to no more than 70 this year. Still, an increase is to be welcomed.

How long will this increase in interest in teaching last? There has been an article in SchoolsWeek recently suggesting it might be short-lived. After the start of the financial crisis it took just three years before teaching was starting to struggle to attract applicants to the profession. This time, with the pay freeze, who knows? More thought when the next set of data are published.

Some subjects may still be short of teachers in 2021

The covid-19 pandemic has come too late in the recruitment round to ensure that all teacher preparation courses for graduates in all subjects will recruit enough students for September 2020 in order to ensure enough teachers for September 2021 vacancies.

On the basis of the July data from UCAS, the number of ‘Placed’, ‘Conditionally Placed’ and ‘Holding an Offer’ applications were sufficient in biology; Business Studies; English; history; music; physical education; religious education; art and modern languages to reasonably expect the DfE’s Teacher Supply Number to be reached. The percentage in art and design is the highest number recorded for more than a decade. The primary sector should also exceed its target set by the DfE.

On the other hand, computing and geography might meet the target with a few more acceptable applicants during the summer. However, it seems unlikely that chemistry; design & technology; mathematics and physics will meet the desired number this year. There simply haven’t been enough time to attract applicants, unless that is there is a stream of highly qualified applicants between early July and the start of September.

Interestingly, 24% of applications in physics were in the ‘Placed’, ‘Conditionally Placed’ and ‘Holding an Offer’ categories by mid-July 2020. This was the same percentage as in 2019. The figure for mathematics was also 24% in both July 2019 and July 2020. In Chemistry it had dropped from 25% in 2019, to 23% this year, although there were nearly 600 more applications for providers to process, so the final percentage might be higher.

In music, the percentage in the ‘Placed’, ‘Conditionally Placed’ and ‘Holding an Offer’ categories by mid-July 2020 was 32%, one of the highest for any subject, and up from 26% in July 2019. Physical education, not a shortage subject, has seen their percentage increase from 20% in July 2019 to 24% in July 2020.

So, 2020 looks like being the best year for recruitment into training for teaching for five or six years, but it seems unlikely that all subjects will meet their targets. However, there may well be a glut of both physical education and history teachers entering the market in 2021, unless all the vacancies lost this year by schools either retrenching or not needing to recruit appear again for September 2021.

Would I take on the extra debt to train as either a PE or a history teacher? Well, I would certainly look at the employment record of the course offering me a place this year and check with TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk what the job situation is like in these subjects, especially in view of any debt to the government that will be incurred by joining the course. After all, we don’t know what might happen to interest rates and repayment terms as the government seeks to manage the economy over the next few years.

Clarity ahead of Select Committee – but still not good news

What has become clear this afternoon is that the DfE may have faced a dilemma last autumn. With the national roll-out of School Direct being enthusiastically taken up by schools, it could either have effectively wiped-out the university-based PGCE courses by meeting the demands of schools or it could have denied schools the places they were asking for in School Direct. The DfE targets for secondary subjects did not allow the third option of satisfying both schools applying for School Direct places and keeping the PGCE going and still keeping within the targets. The extent of the problem can be seen by comparing Table 2b in the underlying data of Statistical Bulletin 32/2013 issued by the DfE on the 13^th August and Figure 1 of the School Direct management information published this afternoon by the National College for Teaching and Leadership. In practice, the DfE seems to have chosen a third way by creating inflated ‘allocations’ to try to keep higher education going, but still to satisfy the demands from schools for places. This exercise risked substantial over-recruitment against the real targets.

So what happened? Looking just at the STEM subjects, Chemistry had an allocation of 1,327 in the Statistical Bulletin, but a target of 820 places in Figure 1 of today’s document – a difference of 507. To date, recruitment has been 900 according to Figure 1, so the subject is over-recruited against target, but significantly under-recruited against allocations. School Direct, where bids totalled 422 places last November, and reached around 500 by the time all bids had been collected, apparently recruited just 260 trainees, leaving higher education to recruit the other 640.

Sadly, in Mathematics, Physics, and Biology, despite the target being well below the allocation figure, the target has not been met. In Physics the shortfall is 43% against the target; and in Mathematics, 22%. In Biology it is just 6%. However, these percentages do not reflect the actual numbers who have started courses; that number may be greater or smaller than those released today.

Indeed, in no subject was the allocation met, although in business studies it was missed by just one recruit. However, the target in this subject is apparently higher than the allocation in August, although that may have something to do with classification. Less clear is the Religious Education position where the target is shown as 450, but the allocation in August was 434 for postgraduate courses. Somewhere another 16 places have been added since August when they have been subtracted in most other subjects.

I have suspected for some time that the allocations were above the level required by the DfE’s model, and have hinted as much in earlier posts. More than 40,000 trainees did seem an excessive number to train.

More interesting is how successful School Direct has been.

SUBJECT	Target	School Direct	School Direct % of Target
ENGLISH	1500	850	57%
HIST	540	290	54%
PE	780	350	45%
CHEMISTRY	820	260	32%
MUSIC	390	90	23%
GEOG	620	140	23%
MATHS	2460	510	21%
MFL	1550	320	21%
BIOLOGY	740	150	20%
ART	340	60	18%
OTHER SUBJECTS	1200	200	17%
PHYSICS	990	130	13%
IT/CS	570	70	12%
RE	450	50	11%
BUS STUD	230	20	9%
SOC STUD	180	10	6%

School Direct works in subjects where there are lots of high quality applicants looking to train as a teacher. At the other end of the scale are subjects where either the schools didn’t bid for many places, as in Art & Design or recruitment is a real challenge, as in Physics.

These are the subjects where School Direct faces it greatest challenges for 2014, and where the DfE/NCSL seemingly still cannot do without higher education.

What is also clear is that the DfE cannot repeat this same exercise this autumn for 2014 recruitment. It will have to make it clear how many trainees are needed according to the model. Otherwise students will be paying £9,000 in fees without knowing whether they are a target or an allocation, and totally uncertain about their chance of securing a teaching post. That won’t attract many takers in an improving graduate job market as the risks are too high.