Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
MONDAY 19 MAY 2003
MR JOHN
BEATTIE, MS
SARAH STEPHENS,
MR ALAN
MEYRICK AND
MR KEITH
HILL
Q60 Mr Pollard: I am not very good
at sums but on a quick calculation a 14% response rate is a very
small response to the general survey which you did on teachers'
views on teaching. In line with what the Chairman said about having
a small pot for research and that you wanted it evidence-based,
I wonder what value that actually has and whether you would have
been better concentrating on the retention bit of it and asking
those who were leaving why they were leaving, if it is a problem.
May I give an example, as somebody sitting around this table who
started off as a chemical engineer, then worked for a charity
for the homeless as a director of housing and then an MP, looking
forward to joining the Chairman in the Lords in due course, last
Tuesday I was made an honorary of the Royal College of Midwives
and I am looking forward to delivering my first baby. What I am
saying is that you can go through your career and have real distinct
changes and that is a good thing, not a bad thing. That follows
on from what Valerie was saying earlier. We should encourage this.
This enriches rather than being a worry. It might be a worry if
a lot were coming in and then going straight out again so you
were left with none. That is where you should really be focusing.
There is a question there somewhere.
Ms Stephens: To pick up on one
point along the way there, we have, as you said, put some proposals
forward to the Government to do just the kind of research work
you suggested and they have picked up on that. The study is due
to be completed shortly and will indeed address that. Just to
reflect for a moment on the point about whether the Council is
suggesting that it is a reasonable proposition to attempt to chain
an individual into one career strand, no, we are not. What we
are saying is that when they go—at the risk of repeating
myself—let us hope that they feel they can advocate on behalf
of teaching, because at the moment that is not the picture.
Mr Beattie: I was not looking
puzzled at your question, Chairman, I was making a note about
Northern Ireland. I was talking to my opposite number on the Northern
Ireland TC not too long ago and this was one issue we did not
discuss. We will the next time. We have learned something.
Q61 Paul Holmes: Can we explore some
of the figures on recruitment into teacher training and retention
within the first year or two of new teachers? The Teacher Training
Agency says that about 25% of trainee teachers do not complete
their course at all. The GTC says that another 25% of the remainder
have not completed their course, they do not turn qualified teacher
status into fully qualified teacher status. That would work out
at around 40% of all people who started teacher training courses
not becoming fully qualified teachers one way or another.
Mr Hill: It would do, although
you also have to allow for the fact that the 25% figure we give
in relation to completion of induction years does not mean there
are not teachers who will not go on to complete their induction
years beyond that. Those two figures you have just used in a way
continue to set the context which was set a couple of years ago
through the work of Professor Smithers and through the work of
Martin Johnson at the IPPR, where they both did similar but slightly
different calculations and came up with a figure in Professor
Smithers' case and it is there in The Reality of School Staffing,
a more recent report produced in the autumn for the National Union
of Teachers, that from the point where anyone enters teacher training
to a point three years into their career anything up to 50% of
those who were there at the beginning have gone. You can check
the precise figures in the report.
Q62 Paul Holmes: If around 40% either
do not complete teacher training or turn QTS into fully qualified
teacher status, you then have up to another 20% who, within two
or three years, have left teaching very, very early on. You have
somewhere between 50 and 60% of the people, who started teacher
training courses, who within two, three, four years are out of
teaching or never entered it at all. Is that sort of wastage rate,
50, 60%, good or bad? We have already said it is difficult to
compare with other professions, but surely a 50 or 60% wastage
rate is pretty alarming.
Mr Hill: The point to make about
that is that in comparison, for example, to another profession,
if you are talking about the expenditure of public money on the
training of people who will eventually be teachers, who you hope,
even if they follow a modern career path and teach for a while
and then go off, will come back, you are still talking about a
big loss. Whether it is nonetheless acceptable, because that is
what you have to do in order to get the right number of people
coming out of the system at the other end of it, may be argued
differently by others, but certainly it was the original cause
of concern in the General Teaching Council among others, going
back to 2001 when the initial advice was given.
Q63 Paul Holmes: Are you aware of
any studies in the past, in the 1980s or 1970s, on the same sort
of topic, which would say that things are exactly the same as
they were then, or they are getting worse, or they are getting
better?
Mr Hill: I am not aware of anything
comparable with those figures. The figures in 2001 were based
on teachers who had been in their induction year in 1998 and the
most recent complete set of figures I could come across, which
might enable a similar calculation to be done, would be 1999,
which is why I think the two percentages you have offered, based
on things more recently, are quite helpful and suggest that the
scale of the problem is probably still there.
Q64 Paul Holmes: So you are not aware
of any studies from the previous 20 or 30 years which you can
compare back to. What about other professions, nurses, doctors,
lawyers, whatever? Are there any side comparisons to make? Would
they accept that a 50 or 60% wastage rate was good or bad?
Mr Hill: I do not know whether
we could provide the evidence here, but I am sure we could find
it. In relation to the medical profession, doctors, quite clearly
you would not get that kind of wastage rate from a point at the
beginning of training to a point in their service.
Q65 Chairman: A very high percentage
of women who study medicine, after seven years of training, never
ever actually practise. It is a very high percentage. Have you
checked the percentages?
Ms Stephens: Although I understand
that there was an STRB commissioned report in 1999 which at that
time showed, to the extent it is possible to show the data and
comparability, that the health sector was in a better state in
this respect. You may want to refer yourselves to that.
Q66 Paul Holmes: Is that sort of
comparison or study or digging back over research from 20 years
ago on teacher training retention not something which should be
done as a matter of priority by either you or government or both?
Are you not flailing in the dark a little bit if you do not even
know whether 50 or 60% wastage rate is good, bad, improving, getting
worse? Is that not a priority you should be looking at?
Ms Stephens: Yes, I believe it
is a national priority.
Mr Beattie: It may be though that
it was bad news even then. If they turned out to be comparable
figures, there is not much comfort in that particularly. Yes,
it is something we can do, certainly.
Q67 Paul Holmes: So it is something
the GTC intend to undertake.
Ms Stephens: Whether we have the
resource to take that kind of survey is in question.
Q68 Mr Pollard: Or whether you should
be doing it in the first place.
Ms Stephens: Or whether indeed
it should be done at all.
Q69 Paul Holmes: In the sense of
flailing in the dark, the Government has then come up with some
solutions to all these problems such as golden hellos, paying
for training bursaries for certain categories of subject and not
others. Is it too early to say or are there any figures, any estimates
of how successful things like that are? Do the students who get
their training bursaries paid for stay in teaching any longer
as a result? Do the ones who get the golden hellos stay any longer
than the ones who do not?
Ms Stephens: It really is too
early to say. Certainly the cohort study we have advised the Government
to fund, but which we are also supporting with modest amounts
of money, will actually get to those very issues, the diversification
of entry routes, what benefits they have in terms of retention,
in terms of career progression, in terms of quality of teaching.
That study will also look at the extent to which incentivisation
of particular routes or particular subjects actually has a payback
in terms of retention.
Q70 Paul Holmes: There is a golden
handcuff effect as well. If you get your training bursary, if
you get the golden hello, you have to stay in teaching for a certain
minimum period of time, but what is the limit, how long do you
have to stay?
Ms Stephens: I am afraid I do
not have that detail.
Mr Hill: No, I do not have that.
Q71 Paul Holmes: I was a teacher
up until two years ago and anecdotally I have had it suggested
to me that there is certainly a noticeable trend now in people
who have come in under this system who are staying for the minimum
period and then they are out. They have borrowed under some of
the student loans and all the rest of it and once they have done
the minimum they are off. Presumably the Government has analysed
that to see whether it is a good investment of money and training
or not.
Mr Hill: The cohort study15[15]
to which I referred earlier will also explore another concern
that we have about some of these incentives and which was flagged
up in the initial advice in 2001 along the lines of being aware
that some recruitment policies could have an adverse effect on
retention at the other end. We have anecdotal and slightly more
than anecdotal evidence from teachers at teacher meetings that
some of the young teachers who worked in the GTC, LEA, CPD projects
are recipients, for example, of golden hellos or recently, for
example, have had opportunities to have their student loans repaid
and so on. There are others who have not benefited from it and
two things seem to be going on there. One is, quite understandably,
that some people feel put out that they have not benefited. More
worryingly, I would suggest, there is also the financial aspect
of it as well. Some of those missing these opportunities are slightly
older teachers and they may have been the very things which would
have enabled them to pay off some of their debts and they are
still fighting with those debts. It would then mean that in terms
of teacher retention, not on a national scale but in terms of
the areas where they work, they simply will not be able to afford
to continue to teach in that particular area because of the cost
of living in that area and they may go somewhere else. There are
other things to explore in relation to the effects of some of
those incentives which no doubt have made a difference to some
teachers.
Q72 Paul Holmes: There was a suggestion
that the Open University study looking at training teachers who
go in through work-based training rather than BEds or PGCEs, that
they might actually be staying in teaching more than was expected.
Mr Hill: The cohort study will
examine all the different routes to teaching. I am also aware
from the NASBTT conference, the National Association for School
Based Teacher Training, that a claim was made there that the retention
rates for teachers entering through training school routes is
in excess of 90%. That was probably mentioned in the memo. It
would be very interesting to see the extent to which that was
true and sustained over time. In terms of the joint conference
we held at the Institute of Education in the autumn, the conference
looking at issues around initial teacher training, the interpretation
of why that might be had a lot to do with the notion that teachers
trained through those routes are better prepared for hitting the
ground running and understanding the realities of the job they
are going to take on when they move over to their induction year.
I am also aware of counter evidence in relation to the quality
of some of the teaching and Ofsted reservations about some of
those routes. It is not the whole solution to the problem but
it is an area which needs further investigation, which the cohort
study would certainly do.
Q73 Jonathan Shaw: Would the cohort
of students through the initial teacher training programme tend
to be older students? You advised us that a greater number of
teachers tend to stay on after their training, who are perhaps
coming into it as their second career.
Mr Hill: The average age of people
entering teaching is higher than it was and marginally even higher
for black and ethnic minority groups. The mature entrants study,
which is a different thing, undertaken by the Open University,
specifically looked at those entering through some of those various
routes on the basis of them being older entrants and having come
from other backgrounds, though interestingly about 10% of them,
on the initial evidence—and it is very initial evidence—had
recently had some experience of working in schools, which is what
motivated them then to think they would become teachers.
Q74 Jonathan Shaw: You briefly referred
to ethnic minority and black teachers. The survey which you and
MORI undertook looked at gender, age, sector, employment status
but not ethnic origin.
Mr Hill: It did actually collect
ethnicity data, but it does not feature in any of the evidence
provided to you.
Q75 Jonathan Shaw: It does not feature.
Can you illuminate the Committee? What are your findings?
Mr Hill: The best thing we can
offer to do is send you some information about the survey.[16]
We commissioned London Metropolitan University to look further
at the survey from the point of view of ethnicity. One of the
problems is the numbers of teachers involved and whether there
are enough of them to make it useful.
Ms Stephens: Just to make that
group data robust; whether there are indeed sufficient numbers
who responded. We are clear on the survey that it is broadly representative
in terms of gender, in terms of sex, in terms of region. I just
want to be clear about this. We are not as confident on the issues
of ethnicity, service and position, in terms of the research methodology
and the response from it.
Q76 Jonathan Shaw: Certainly it was
a concern of the Committee. When we visited Birmingham this was
spelled out very clearly, particularly in terms of role models
for young black men and under-achievement in that particular cohort.
So obviously we should be interested in understanding any information
you might have, particularly if it could pinpoint areas which
seemed to be doing well in terms of retention of ethnic minority
teachers. We should be particularly interested in that.
Mr Hill: For your information,
the Teacher Training Agency have a report, referred to as the
Carrington Report, which did some useful work on issues to do
with recruitment. It is a recruitment issue as much as retention
issue of the black minority ethnic teachers. The national college's
study focused more on those who have made it to leadership in
order to examine possibly the major retention issue in relation
to those teachers: the fact that they are ambitious but appear
to hit a glass ceiling when it comes to promotion. Also for your
information, but I cannot comment on this as it is not yet a public
report, the other major report which has almost reached the point
at which it will be a final report, commissioned by the department,
is one from the University of Glasgow and looks at aspects of
teachers' careers in relation to gender, disability, ethnicity
and sexual orientation and that has further information about
issues to do with recruitment and retention of black and minority
ethnic teachers.
Q77 Jonathan Shaw: We see in the
papers today that a particular school says that they are not going
to have traditional sports days; they do not want competition
amongst their kids, they want inclusive problem solving. They
will all come first. Mr Beattie, you said you were concerned about
teaching. Sports teaching is an important part of the curriculum.
We hear it time and again. You can say that is a peripheral media
story, but presumably the media would make an enquiry of the General
Teaching Council as to what your view is. Would the GTC have views
on that?
Mr Beattie: I have not heard about
that and I certainly have not heard from the press.
Q78 Jonathan Shaw: It is in The
Times today.
Mr Beattie: Is it? I have a copy
of The Times; I must get round to reading it. Without knowing
the details I could not possibly comment on the case, except to
say that I share your view that healthy activities, sporting or
otherwise, should be part of the curriculum for all children.
Q79 Jonathan Shaw: In a competitive
way?
Mr Beattie: I have no objection
to competition and most of the children I know who have undertaken
sport and other activities like that appear not to have either.
I would not necessarily make it compulsory. On the other hand
I would also encourage problem solving activities, enquiry based
learning and all those other things. I do not think it is a choice:
there is a place for both of them.
15 Note by witness: this study, in partnership
with the TTA and DfES, is entitled `Research into ITT, Induction
and EPD: a comparative study of teachers' experiences as trainees
and their early career progression'. Back
16
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