ITT: less good than hoped for

The September data on postgraduate ITT curses was published by the DfE yesterday. Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2023 to 2024 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK (apply-for-teacher-training.service.gov.uk) Sadly, there was no last-minute surge in offers for teaching. Although offers for primary courses should be sufficient to meet the number of places on offer, the same cannot be said for the secondary sector.

Amongst secondary courses, only English, history, geography and physical education seem likely to meet their DfE targets. Offers in mathematics this September are less than 2,000 for the first time in over a decade. In music and religious education, it is necessary to delve further back in the archives to find offer levels of 480 across the two subjects. There will be real issues with the supply of new teachers in these two subjects next year.

Although physics and design and technology have seen better offer levels than in recent years, in neither subject will the DfE’s suggested recruitment level be met. I suspect that the numbers actually starting courses this year will only be above last year’s dismal total for all secondary subjects if those with conditions pending are able to convert these conditions into recruited students, otherwise the total may be little different to the seriously low number recorded last year.

In mathematics, the number ‘recruited this year is just 1,340 compared with 1,482 last year. However, there are 516 applications listed as ‘conditions pending’ compared with only 300 in this category last year. Should these ‘conditions pending’ relate to visas and right to enter the country it is possible that the number that transfer into the ‘recruited’ column may be smaller than wished for.

The number of new graduates aged 24 or younger is considerably down on last year, a worrying sign for future leadership recruitment. Less than 5,00o men have been ‘recruited’ this year despite the total number of applicants being 16,470 compared with 11,819 last year. This means that those ‘recruited’ has dropped from 46% of applicants to just 30% this year. Such a dramatic decline must merit some form of investigation to allow providers to understand the cause of the change.

The answer may lie with ‘rest of the world applicants, where only 6% have been accepted this year, compared with 13% last year.

The final outcome for recruitment that will include Teach first must await the publication of the ITT Census, early in December. Although this may show a small improvement over last year’s total, there will not be enough trainees to allow the government to be able to say that it has hit its target and STEM has now really become STEAM in terms of recruitment into teacher preparation.

These figures are such as to warn schools to think carefully about recruitment for September 2024 and especially January 2025. Retention may become an important watchword in the corridors of power.

Which one is Physics

Ofqual have helpfully provided some data on the 2023 Level 5 results that came out today. Congratulations to all candidates on their achievements, even if they are tempered by the type of referencing system employed to suit the demands of the system.

In the past, I have looked at the A and A* percentages in Physics and Media/Film/TV Studies as an interesting contrast. This year it is also possible to look at the percentages of such grades in both 2019 (the last pre-pandemic year) and 2023. Outcomes by centre type (ofqual.gov.uk)

Cumulative percentage outcomes by centre type – grade A and above

Level 5 qualifications

Centre type  – Physics	% achieving grade in 2019	% achieving grade in 2023	Difference 2019 and 2023
Other	19.4%	25.2%	5.80%
Further education establishment	18.4%	17.2%	-1.20%
Independent school including city training colleges (CTCs)	42.4%	47.2%	4.80%
Secondary comprehensive or middle school	21.7%	25.6%	3.90%
Secondary selective school	25.8%	29.2%	3.40%
Free schools	27.8%	31.2%	3.40%
Sixth form college	24.3%	27.0%	2.70%
Academies	21.1%	22.6%	1.50%
Secondary modern school/high school	37.4%	37.0%	-0.40%

https://analytics.ofqual.gov.uk/apps/Alevel/CentreType/

Normally, I would ask you to work out which table was the Physics and which Media/Fil/TV Studies, but this year have added the subject titles because not all centres are represented in the Media/Film/TV Studies subject group table by the types of centres.

Centre type – Media/Film/TV Studies	% achieving grade in 2019	% achieving grade in 2023	Difference 2019 and 2023
Independent school including city training colleges (CTCs)	27.7%	26.8%	-0.9%
Further education establishment	10.0%	9.4%	-0.6%
Academies	11.6%	12.6%	1.0%
Sixth form college	11.7%	13.3%	1.6%
Secondary comprehensive or middle school	9.7%	12.2%	2.5%
Secondary selective school	21.7%	30.4%	8.7%

Source ofqual data

Generally, despite the shortage of teachers of physics, the percentage of grades A and above is higher than in Media/Film/TV Studies (MFTVS) and often higher in 2023 than in 2019 except in the FE sector and secondary modern schools. This highlights the risk of using data in an uncontextualized manner.

My suspicion is that in physics it is only those likely to do well that are entered, whereas the entry policy for MFTVS may be wider, and hence there are more lower grades.

It will be necessary to investigate candidate numbers to see whether the increase in A and above grades in MFTVS in the selective schools is down to either a more selective entry policy or some other factor?

I find some of the groupings a bit odd as well. Should ‘city training colleges’ actually be ‘city technology colleges’ and why are ‘high schools’ included with secondary modern as a group when they could be any type of school? The inclusion of ‘middle schools’ in Level 5 qualifications for physics is even more odd.

So, an interesting set of statistics that not a great deal can be read into, except that there are generally more higher grades in physics than in MFTVS. Is the shortage of teachers of physics having an effect, especially in the FE sector? I cannot be sure, but as further education colleges have a lower percentage in 2023 than in 2019, there might be a case to answer, especially as the recent DfE workforce in further education study suggests that there might be fewer than 250 leading physics lecturers across the whole of the FE sector.

But perhaps outcomes might just be down to who is enrolled?

(an earlier version of this post contained a mistake in the table and the post has been corrected and updated)

The other crisis facing schools

In my experience, editors usually have September, and the national annual ‘return to school’ event, as a time to ask journalists to look for a school centred story. This follows on from the useful two-week period in August when there are examination results to cover in the month when there is often little news from the political scene.

This year, editors and their journalists didn’t have to work very hard, if at all, for their ‘return to school’ story. RAAC, and the school buildings saga, was a gift send. Would the story have topped the bill at any other time of year? Who knows, as it is an important issue, but more important say that a reshuffle?

What is clear, is that by focussing just on the school buildings issue, editors are missing the opportunity to take a wider look at the health of our schools. Had there not been RAAC, and the still largely hidden asbestos issue, might the staffing of our schools have been the main story this September?

This is a much more difficult story to sell, as except in rare cases such as a special school reported to the DfE in the summer, schools don’t send children home for a lack of teachers. Instead, they cut subjects from the curriculum – I have been told of a school that is no longer offering languages in the sixth from this September; increase class sizes; reduce non-contact time for teachers and, most commonly, employ what might be considered as under-qualified teachers to teach some groups.

Because anyone with Qualified Teacher Status can teach anything on the curriculum, it isn’t easy to identify the problem, as schools, quite rightly, don’t advertise any shortcomings in the staffing of their timetable. However, extrapolating from the last School Workforce Census that provided a baseline, and adding in the results of new entrants being below the targets set by the DfE through the Teacher Supply Model, it seems clear that some schools are not properly staff this September.

Does this matter? Like the lack of a schools’ database on building issues, we don’t know whether some young people are missing grades in those public examinations we celebrate each August because of staffing issues last year or even earlier in their school lives.

This blog has charted re-advertisements of teaching post against free school meal rates in schools. I wrote a blog on this issue last month, just before the exam results season started Are we levelling up? | John Howson (wordpress.com) I won’t bother to repeat what I said then, but it would be interesting to look at examination results in specific subjects at different centres with different levels of staff turnover for a period of three to five years, to see if there is any measurable effect of staff turnover on outcomes, including entry policies.

My hunch is that it is difficult to create a ‘normal’ distribution curve for results subjects such as ‘A’ level physics if many schools cannot offer the subject, and those that do only enter those likely to be successful candidates.

Editors might like to pencil in a story for January 2024, when secondary schools facing unexpected vacancies will find recruitment even more of a challenge than for this September. What might be the effects on their results in Summer 2024 of an unexpected vacancy, especially if they started the school year this September with both a RAAC and a staffing crisis?

Physics: Better. Arts: worse

Despite today being a bank holiday, the DfE obligingly published the monthly ITT data on applications and offers for postgraduate courses. Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2023 to 2024 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK (apply-for-teacher-training.service.gov.uk)

Perhaps not surprisingly, little has changed since the last set of figures published at the end of July. With courses about to start in a matter of weeks, there are likely to be few more surprises left in this round. On the basis of the data, secondary subjects can be grouped into three sets: those subjects with higher offers this year than at any time since 2019/2020, or in the case of physics, since 2015/16; those subjects where ‘offers’ this year are above the number at this point in 2022, and those subjects where the offers this year are below the number in August 2022.

In the first category are: physics -the subject has recorded 729 offers, the highest August number since the 840 of August 2016. However, this is still not a high enough number, even if all those offered actually turn up, to meet the DfE’s target. Also, in this group of subjects are; geography, design and technology and biology. The offers in design and technology will still not be sufficient to come anywhere near meeting the DfE’s target.

In the middle group, of subjects better than last year, but worse than 2021, are: mathematics, English, computing and chemistry.

In the group where this year’s offers are below last year are: art and design, religious education, physical education, music, history and business studies – in this case almost the same as last August.

In the case of music, the 232 recorded offers are the lowest recorded in recent years. This is despite a high conversion rate of 21% of applications into offers.  In religious education, the 259 recorded offers are also the lowest level of offers in recent years in this subject. In both these subjects, this level of offers will not be enough to satisfy the demand for teachers in a normal recruitment round. By comparison, only eight per cent of physics applications have been converted into offers, and in biology the percentage is 13%.

Compared with last year, most of the increase in candidate numbers has come from those age 24 or above. The youngest age groupings of 21-23, have seen an increase of 400 from 10,116 to 10517. By contrast, the 40-44 age grouping alone has increased from 2,477 to 3,621, an increase of more than 1,100 applicants.

As reported previously, when compared with two years ago, the largest increase in candidates is the group applying from ‘the rest of the world’, up from 3,216 to 8,406, an increase of more than 5,000. By contrast, the East of England number two years ago was 3,495 and this year it is 3,440.  The South East numbers are: 4,651 two years ago, and 4,825 this year: a meagre increase.

This data suggests that schools will find recruitment in some subjects that they have not been concerned about in the past, may well become difficult during the 2024/2025 recruitment round unless the consequences arising from the pay settlement depress demand below that seen in the past two years.

Fewer salaried entrants to teaching?

Ever since Kenneth Baker introduced the Licensed and Articled Teacher Schemes, wat back in the last century, when he was Secretary of State for Education, there have been possibilities to earn and learn to become a teacher.

Since 2000, the main schemes have been the Graduate and Registered Teacher Schemes; Teach First/High Achievers route/School Direct Salaried route/Postgraduate apprenticeship route and a few specialist routes such as troops to Techers and Teach next. The government has recently proposed a new undergraduate apprenticeship route (see Bring back King’s Scholarships? | John Howson (wordpress.com) on this blog).

Over the years numbers on these employment-based routes have fluctuated. The table is my best estimate of numbers each September starting such courses. The total should be treated as indicative rather than absolute for two reasons: some routes, numbers from some routes such as Fast Track and troops for Teachers aren’t included, and the numbers published often changed between the original ITT census and later published data containing both late registrations and early departures.

Year	EBR ITT
2000	4120
2001	4810
2002	6810
2003	7676
2004	7417
2005	7403
2006	7635
2007	7282
2008	6963
2009	5699
2010	5842
2011	6890
2012	6057
2013	3701
2014	4146
2015	4750
2016	4485
2017	4115
2018	3969
2019	4246
2020	4078
2021	3197
2022	2850

Source: Various government publications

From the turn of the century up to 2012, the GTTP was the main source of employment-based entry, after the Fast Track Scheme ended. Whether that latter scheme really qualified as an employment-based route is anyway debatable, although the management of their careers did ensure some sort of control not present in other routes.

After the Gove revolution, the School Direct Salaried route took over as the main employment-based route into teaching, alongside Teach First (High Achievers route) that had been steadily growing in numbers since its inception as a short-service route for those prepared to teach for a couple of years.

Even allowing for the caution about the data, it seems that since the Market Review of ITT by the DfE numbers on employment-based routes have dropped to their lowest levels this century. At their peak, the various routes were recruiting more than twice as many new teachers through employment-based routes as in 2022. Indeed, Teach First is, seemingly, now the main route for those wanting an employment-based route into the teaching profession. Is this what the DfE intended when it set up the Market Review?

School-based preparation exists in other forms, through the SCITTS and School Direct Fee routes, but neither are as attractive to those that want to earn while teaching.

Does the DfE think that there should be an employment-based route for career changers, as opposed to new or recent graduates, and if so, how is it prepared to fund such a scheme?

The proposed school leaver apprenticeship model seems to want to tap into a market that may not exist, while the government doesn’t seem to have a plan for career changes that need to earn and learn. This seems like an odd approach driven more by the spare cash from the Apprenticeship Levy sloshing around the system than any sensible approach to market planning.

Hopefully, someone will correct my thinking and tell me of the DfE’s grand plan for career changers wanting to become a teacher. After all, this was the fastest growing segment of those showing interest in teaching as a career this year.

Are we levelling up?

England has a teacher supply crisis in its secondary schools. Not, please note in most areas in its primary schools. Years of missed targets for trainee numbers must have an effect on the labour market unless other sources of teacher supply can be found.

From today the effect of missed targets on examination results will also start to become clear. Will those young people most likely to stay in the local economy have fared less well than those that will disappear off to a university, and then who knows where (likely London in many cases) after graduation, rather returning to their local area where they were brought up. If so, what are the consequences for those local economies?

As the latest in my series on the what happened in the labour market for teachers, as measured by advertisements tracked by TeachVac between January and the end of July 2023, I have managed a quick calculation of number of advertisements for teachers by the Free School Meal percentage of schools. This measurement might suggest whether schools with higher percentages of FSM pupils have more staff turnover?

This is a crude measure because it doesn’t standardise for school size. A better measure is for turnover measured after taking pupil numbers into account and matching the resultant outcome against the percentage of FSM pupils. I haven’t yet had time to do that calculation.

Adverts by school	>10	10-20	21-30	31-40	41+	Total schools
FSM
0-10	201	162	56	28	13	460
11-20	415	323	160	36	55	989
21-30	310	255	120	63	60	808
31-40	162	150	80	34	37	463
41-50	97	89	50	27	15	278
51-60	34	32	14	4	5	89
60+	5	4	1	0	1	11
total	1224	1015	481	192	186	3098
40+	136	125	65	31	21	378
Adverts by school	>10	10-20	21-30	31-40	41+
FSM
0-10	44%	35%	12%	6%	3%	100%
11-20	42%	33%	16%	4%	6%	100%
21-30	38%	32%	15%	8%	7%	100%
31-40	35%	32%	17%	7%	8%	100%
41-50	35%	32%	18%	10%	5%	100%
51-60	38%	36%	16%	4%	6%	100%
60+	45%	36%	9%	0%	9%	100%
total	40%	33%	16%	6%	6%	100%
40+	36%	33%	17%	8%	6%	100%

Source: TeachVac

There is some evidence from the tables that schools with lower percentages of pupils on Free School Meals do have a lower turnover of staff, and that schools with a higher percentage of such pupil do experience did experience high numbers of advertisements for teaching staff during the January to July 2023 period.

This type of analysis is important because too often the focus is on the student: attendance rates; previous history of examination taking and other factor such as free school meals, but these are not linked to school factors.

Thus, today, BBC Radio 4 has been worrying about the performance of students in the North East compared to students in London. Nick Gibb, The Minister, on the world at One on Radio 4, (I don’t often agree with him), but I do in this instance, suggested it was more a London and the rest of the country difference. However, The Minister didn’t say that there are more independent schools in the south than the north, and that the ability to recruit staff might be a factor in the widening gap in outcomes between those regarded as ‘disadvantaged’ and other pupils.

To ignore staff turnover, is to miss an important component in a system that has failed to train sufficient teachers in many subjects for nearly a decade now. Such shortfall in a market-based recruitment system must surely have consequences?

Secondary School Leadership Vacancies – January to July 2023

Secondary Leadership Scale Vacancies

The Leadership Scale contains three main groups of vacancies: assistant heads; deputy heads and headteachers. There are also executive head teachers in academy trusts, but those posts are not included in this analysis.

Assistant Head vacancies

Vacancies in the three leadership grades in the secondary sector are sufficiently numerous to warrant consideration for each individual grade of assistant; deputy and headteacher. Although TeachVac collects data from the private school sector, these tables only contain details of vacancies for leadership posts in state schools across England.

2022 State Secondary Sector -Assistant headteacher vacancies
GOR	Vacancies
East Midlands	102
East of England	173
London	248
North East	39
North West	164
South East	201
South West	174
West Midlands	138
Yorkshire & the Humber	129
Grand Total	1368

2023 State Secondary Sector – Assistant headteacher vacancies
GOR	Vacancies	Difference 2023 on 2022
East Midlands	120	18
East of England	180	7
London	241	-7
North East	24	-15
North West	154	-10
South East	221	20
South West	128	-46
West Midlands	139	1
Yorkshire & the Humber	139	10
Grand Total	1346	-22

In 2023 there were more vacancies at this level in the South East than in 2022, whereas in the South West there were fewer recorded advertisements than in the same period in 2022. London and the South East regions account for 33% of the vacancies at this level in 2022 and 34% in 2023. Vacancies at this level were rare in both years. However, some schools might have advertised internally or in a form not caught by TeachVac’s recording of the data.

Deputy Head Vacancies

As with the assistant head grade, there were very similar numbers of advertisements for deputy heads during the first seven months of 2023 advertised by state secondary schools in England when compared with the same schools during the same period in 2022.

Deputy Head 2022
GOR	Vacancies
East Midlands	67
East of England	74
London	132
North East	28
North West	93
South East	119
South West	74
West Midlands	77
Yorkshire & the Humber	98
Grand Total	762

Deputy Head 2023
GOR	Vacancies	Difference 2023 on 2022
East Midlands	72	5
East of England	86	12
London	134	2
North East	24	-4
North West	88	-5
South East	147	28
South West	59	-15
West Midlands	63	-14
Yorkshire & the Humber	94	-4
Grand Total	767	5

Source: TeachVac

Although the overall total of advertisements was similar in 2023 to the number in 2022, there were some regional differences, with more vacancies being advertised by schools in the south East and the East of England and fewer advertisements in the south West and West Midlands.

 Headteacher vacancies

As with both the assistant and deputy head teacher grades, in the first seven months of 2023 the number of advertisements logged for headteacher vacancies was very similar to the number recorded during the same period of 2022.

Headteacher 2022
GOR	Vacancies
East Midlands	26
East of England	31
London	55
North East	18
North West	43
South East	48
South West	54
West Midlands	46
Yorkshire & the Humber	44
Grand Total	365

Headteacher 2023
GOR	Vacancies	Difference 2023 on 2022
East Midlands	19	-7
East of England	47	16
London	38	-17
North East	12	-6
North West	44	1
South East	59	11
South West	48	-6
West Midlands	47	1
Yorkshire & the Humber	44	0
Grand Total	358	-7

Source: TeachVac

As with deputy head advertisements, there were more advertisements for headteachers in the South East and East of England in 2023, and fewer in London, where at least one secondary school closed in the summer of 2023. It seems likely that some of the increases may be the result of new schools opening following the building of new housing estates in the Home Counties.

Most secondary schools are able to appoint a new headteacher after their first advertisement. However, around 10% of schools require more than one advertisement before they can fill their headteacher vacancy.

As an exercise, all schools with a re-advertisement for their headteacher posts were matched with their percentage of pupils listed as eligible for Free School Meals. The 33 schools identified as having re-advertised their headteacher vacancy were divided into three groups: schools with less than 20% FSM; 20-25% FSM and schools with more than 25% FSM

The analysis showed that in 2023 there were:

12 schools in the less than 20% FSM group

4 schools with between 20-25% FSM group

17 schools with 25%+ FSM, including two schools with more than 40% that had both readvertised twice so far in 2023.

The below 20% FSM group contained two Roman Catholic schools and a Church of England Middle school. These are schools of a type that often finds recruiting a new headteacher challenging.

Repeating the exercise at the end of September might well add some more schools to the list of those re-advertising for a headteacher as schools often wait until the autumn before re-advertising.

Bring back King’s Scholarships?

In 1846, the government solved the problem of providing enough teachers for the growing school population by allowing the creation of pupil-teachers, partly based upon the model in use by the army for their schoolteacher sergeants. After an apprenticeship in a school, starting at age 13, successful pupil teachers were encouraged to compete for Queen’s Scholarships to allow them to progress to a training centre or college for further instruction and learning.

Fast forward 177 years, and there are rumours in the press of the re-establishment of this route for school-leavers that would be willing to receive instruction in schools to become teachers of shortage subjects while learning ‘on the job’. The scheme would avoid the students having to take out loans to pay the fees of higher education institutions for degree courses, and presumably would provide a modest income as well.

This is a further example of the pendulum swinging away from teacher preparation that is external to a school, a swing back that started in the 1990s, and always seems to attract government interest in periods of teacher shortage, and tracking back to school-based preparation. To date, schemes such as the Graduate and Registered Teacher Training programmes of the Labour government, and the School Direct Salaried and Fee schemes of the present government have been aimed at either career changing graduates or at least those with a degree. This has been in line with the decline in undergraduate courses that for the past fifty years have only flourished in a few secondary curriculum subjects, such as physical education and design and technology: even these have dwindled over the past few years since fees were introduced by the Labour government.

So, would a modern apprenticeship scheme for school-leavers to learn to become mathematics, computing or even physics teachers work? I hope the government has done some market research before announcing any such scheme. If not, it could follow the path of the Fast Track Scheme and various attempts to place middle and senior leaders into challenging schools, all of which were projects that either didn’t proceed beyond the stage of a trial or lasted only a few years.

The first question for anyone considering introducing an apprenticeship scheme is what sort of schools are finding recruitment challenging? I wrote a blog about this in July Free School Meals and teacher vacancies | John Howson (wordpress.com) Successful schools in areas where teachers want to work probably see a high percentage of their sixth form depart for university courses at eighteen. Will some studying these subjects want to stay at the school to become a teacher? Are these the schools experiencing teacher shortages?

Will schools with high staff turnover and sometimes with challenging ofsted grades be allowed to train apprentice teachers, even if these are the schools facing the most difficulty recruiting staff in these subjects? That is a key question. If eighteen-year-olds have to move to another school to become an apprentice will the be willing to do so?

Schools will need to be funded properly to take up the scheme. The decline in the use of the School Direct Salaried Scheme, as the central funding was reduced, illustrates the problem. Schools are funded to teach pupils and not to train teachers, even if there is a shortage. Supplying teachers is seen as the job of government.

I have no doubt that some academy chains and even possibly some dioceses might be persuaded to take up an apprenticeship scheme for teachers. Using the apprenticeship levy raised from primary schools to pay for training secondary school teachers won’t, I suspect, go down well in some quarters.  

Then there is the question of subject knowledge development if an apprentice is to be able to teach anything beyond Key Stage 3; who would want to become a teacher with a qualification devoid of subject knowledge up to graduate level. Of course, the schools could enrol the apprentices in distance learning degree courses, but that costs money. They could even expect the apprentice to pay for their own subject knowledge development to degree level. We won’t know until the Secretary of State reveals the plans for any scheme which approach might be favoured.

As this is August, this might be regarded as a ‘silly season’ story were it not for the fact that current schemes for attracting graduates to become teachers have failed, and the government obviously needs to try something different.

Will it work? If the teacher associations refuse to take part, then it won’t, but it would allow the government to say that teachers sabotage a solution to the teacher shortage crisis.

Will school-leavers want to sign up? A level students in the shortage subjects suggested can often earn more than teachers, even with modest degrees from non-Russel Group universities or by leaving school and starting work, so any apprenticeship scheme would need to be sufficiently enticing to attract applicants other than those that couldn’t find either a university place or a job opportunity.

So, please Secretary of State do some market research before announcing any scheme in order to convince everyone that there is a viable and continuing cohort of potential trainees for any apprenticeship scheme.

Demand for middle leaders in schools during 2023

Continuing the look at the labour market for teachers during the first seven months of 2023, this post looks at the trend in advertised vacancies for promoted post – largely vacancies with a TLR attached to the advertised vacancy.

Promoted posts

Promoted posts in the secondary sector include the whole range of middle leadership posts from supporting roles with a TLR in mathematics and English departments to heads of subject roles in sciences and languages departments and faculties and also all the heads of department roles across all curriculum subjects; SEND and student support roles taken by teachers.

Promoted post 2022
Subject Group	Independent	State	Grand Total
ART	55	244	299
SCIENCE	173	1699	1872
ENGLISH	108	1312	1420
MATHEMATICS	110	1513	1623
LANGUAGES	141	853	994
HUMANITIES	6	165	171
COMPUTING	133	582	715
DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY	67	750	817
BUSINESS STUDIES	97	502	599
VOCATIONAL	2	109	111
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION	53	484	537
PHYSICAL EDUCATION	147	389	536
TEACHING & LEARNING	66	744	810
PSHE	32	72	104
DANCE	70	242	312
SEND	115	688	803
MUSIC	118	345	463
SOCIAL SCIENCES	68	281	349
PEFORMING ARTS	7	121	128
GEOGRAPHY	41	535	576
HISTORY	46	291	337
Grand Total	1655	11921	13576

Promoted post 2023
Subject Group	Independent	State	Grand Total
ART	39	290	329
SCIENCE	151	2131	2282
ENGLISH	96	1541	1637
MATHEMATICS	102	1706	1808
LANGUAGES	105	973	1078
HUMANITIES	7	227	234
COMPUTING	63	691	754
DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY	52	846	898
BUSINESS STUDIES	71	457	528
VOCATIONAL		86	86
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION	21	447	468
PHYSICAL EDUCATION	113	472	585
TEACHING & LEARNING	57	873	930
PSHE	7	136	143
DANCE	53	278	331
SEND	103	638	741
MUSIC	110	433	543
SOCIAL SCIENCES	47	308	355
PEFORMING ARTS	4	131	135
GEOGRAPHY	30	636	666
HISTORY	35	334	369
Grand Total	1266	13634	14900

Source: TeachVac

The advertisements for posts at this grade largely mirror the position for advertisements for classroom teaching vacancies for posts with no responsibility payments. Thus, fewer recorded advertisements in business studies and vocational courses, and also this year in religious education, and for leadership roles in special needs departments. One the other hand, there were above average increases in advertisements for physical education, the sciences and English, as well as some of the smaller subject areas such as computing and the humanities.

State schools still looking for secondary subject teachers

Classroom Teachers and promoted posts

(This is part 3 of the review of the labour market for teachers during the first seven months of 2023 – previous parts have already appeared on this blog. The next part will discuss promoted posts)

Secondary Sector

For many years secondary schools have controlled the location of their vacancy advertising. With the rise of the multi-academy trusts there have been some recent changes in the marketplace. Some trusts have consolidated all their vacancies into a single job board similar to that in use local authorities in the primary sector. Some Trusts have gone further and arranged with one of the emerging players in the recruitment market for them to handle the vacancies across the Trust’s schools.

To date the changes in the marketplace have not significantly dented the position of the ‘tes’ as a key website for vacancies, but there is no doubt that the market is undergoing its largest shake-up since the move from print advertising to on-line advertising.

Then there is the DfE site. Despite several years of operation and cajoling by Ministers and civil servants, schools do not always routinely post their vacancies on this free site. TeachVac and others have demonstrated how an efficient free service and covering all schools can operate at a lower cost to the taxpayer than the DfE site, and provide the government with a better real-time understanding of the working of the labour market.

As the Education Select Committee is currently conducting an enquiry into the supply of teachers, it will be interesting to see whether or not they address this issue when they come to write their report, presumably sometime in the autumn.

Classroom teacher vacancies

The outcome for the first seven months of 2023 was an overall increase of seven per cent in recorded vacancies for classroom teachers.

2022 Classroom teachers only
SUBJECT GROUPING	Independent	State	Grand Total
ART	150	992	1142
SCIENCE	936	5848	6784
ENGLISH	585	4185	4770
MATHEMATICS	674	4724	5398
LANGUAGES	499	2668	3167
HUMANITIES	50	464	514
COMPUTING	239	1805	2044
DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY	225	2987	3212
BUSINESS STUDIES	362	1474	1836
VOCATIONAL	23	494	517
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION	122	1245	1367
PHYSICAL EDUCATION	287	1774	2061
TEACHING & LEARNING	30	121	151
PSHE	22	104	126
DANCE	109	576	685
SEND	96	279	375
MUSIC	120	1005	1125
SOCIAL SCIENCES	180	976	1156
PEFORMING ARTS	4	127	131
GEOGRAPHY	184	1874	2058
HISTORY	159	1179	1338
Grand Total	5056	34901	39957

2023 Classroom teachers only
SUBJECT GROUPING	Independent	State	Grand Total
ART	123	1125	1248
SCIENCE	837	6476	7313
ENGLISH	541	5076	5617
MATHEMATICS	568	5234	5802
LANGUAGES	414	3014	3428
HUMANITIES	43	645	688
COMPUTING	223	1964	2187
DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY	218	3026	3244
BUSINESS STUDIES	324	1316	1640
VOCATIONAL	13	419	432
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION	92	1338	1430
PHYSICAL EDUCATION	253	1875	2128
TEACHING & LEARNING	21	129	150
PSHE	10	128	138
DANCE	106	649	755
SEND	82	283	365
MUSIC	85	1171	1256
SOCIAL SCIENCES	152	963	1115
PEFORMING ARTS	3	144	147
GEOGRAPHY	160	2191	2351
HISTORY	142	1266	1408
Grand Total	4410	38432	42842

Difference 2023 on 2022
SUBJECT GROUPING	Independent	State	Grand Total	% change
ART	-27	133	106	9%
SCIENCE	-99	628	529	8%
ENGLISH	-44	891	847	18%
MATHEMATICS	-106	510	404	7%
LANGUAGES	-85	346	261	8%
HUMANITIES	-7	181	174	34%
COMPUTING	-16	159	143	7%
DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY	-7	39	32	1%
BUSINESS STUDIES	-38	-158	-196	-11%
VOCATIONAL	-10	-75	-85	-16%
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION	-30	93	63	5%
PHYSICAL EDUCATION	-34	101	67	3%
TEACHING & LEARNING	-9	8	-1	-1%
PSHE	-12	24	12	10%
DANCE	-3	73	70	10%
SEND	-14	4	-10	-3%
MUSIC	-35	166	131	12%
SOCIAL SCIENCES	-28	-13	-41	-4%
PEFORMING ARTS	-1	17	16	12%
GEOGRAPHY	-24	317	293	14%
HISTORY	-17	87	70	5%
Grand Total	-646	3531	2885	7%

However, the increase was neither consistent across all subjects nor uniform in those subject groupings where there was an increase. Five subject groupings recorded decreases in vacancies during the first seven months of 2023, when compared with the same period in 2022: Business studies; vocational subject not classified elsewhere; teaching and learning; Special Needs without a TLR and the social science subjects not classified elsewhere.

Business Studies and design and technology (a 1% increase) are both subjects that schools have struggled to recruit teachers for many years. Perhaps the reduction in recorded vacancies means that schools have now accepted the difficulty in recruitment and stopped advertising. No doubt that will have affected the curriculum being offered as well.

The 34% increase in vacancies classified as for humanities that may have partly been the result of concerns from pervious years about the shortage of teachers of geography; not actually an issue in 2023. However, there was also an above average increase in recorded vacancies for teachers of geography and the vacancy rate is very different for the rate for history teachers, where demand is much lower. However, for 2024, the reduction in ‘offers’ may make finding even teachers of history more of a challenge next year.

The other key subject with a significant increase in demand, as measured by vacancies advertised was English. The recorded increase in vacancies was some 18%, and was entirely as a result of more recorded vacancies from schools in the state sector.

For most of the other EBacc subject groupings, the increase was in the range of 5-10% in 2023 when compared with the same time period in 2022.

However, independent sector schools as a group recorded a lower demand, as measure by vacancies advertised, during 2023. Down from 5,056 to 4,410, a reduction of 646 vacancies advertised. As will the state sector, there was not a uniform decline and some subject that were in the list of subjects in the state sector that experienced year-on-year declines in vacancy advertising did not do so in the private sector: business studies is one such subject.

The is undoubtedly an unmet demand for secondary school teachers in a range of subjects that will not be met until either recruitment into training increases or more teachers are persuaded to return to teaching in state schools. School and trust leaders would be well advised to focus their attention on retaining staff wherever possible and by whatever means as this is often a cheap option that trying to recruit a replacement member of staff.