Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200
- 219)
WEDNESDAY 18 JUNE 2003
MR GRAHAM
LANE, MR
RONNIE NORMAN
AND MR
JAMES KEMPTON
Q200 Chairman: We have had other
evidence, even last week, that suggested that the data was not
full and good enough, yet we do now stumble on the fact that not
only do you have very good data, but the DfES has good data. I
think this Committee is persuaded that the data is out there but
do we need schools to fill in countless questionnaires?
Mr Lane: There are reasons for
relying considerably on the questions we ask. We have a close
relationship with local authorities in dealing with their schools.
Heads are pleased to fill in the forms we give them because they
gain feedback on that and it provides very important information,
for instances as to the reasons for people leaving the profession.
The Teachers' Pay Review Body keeps its own figures, as does the
DfES, and we do share all that information. We would be reluctant,
as employers, not to be able to talk to our schools about the
problems they are facing.
Q201 Chairman: We are not trying
to stop you doing anything, Graham. Perhaps we will ask the secondary
heads in a minute whether they would like to see fewer of these
questionnaires and requests for information.
Mr Lane: It might be possible
to persuade all the people carrying out the surveys to agree on
one survey. I agree that we want to be sure we can agree on the
questions that are put.
Q202 Mr Chaytor: To move on to a
couple of other issues, one is the survey that you supplied to
the Committee, the December 2002 survey. You have a chart here
on turnover. I return to your opening remark, that there is no
crisis at the moment, that the impression of crisis is largely
media-generated. You are concerned about the implications for
the next 10 or 15 years as the age profile of the profession works
through. In the turnover chart, the lowest level of turnover would
appear to be at the time when budgets are being cut most severely.
There seems to be a relationship between falling turnover and
declining budgets and therefore increasing the pupil:teacher ratio.
My question is: is it not inevitable, when new money is going
into schools and more jobs are being created, that turnover is
going to be greater? Is not turnover a function of the number
of jobs in the labour market as much as anything else? Therefore,
high levels of turnover are symptomatic of quite a healthy labour
market?
Mr Lane: When unemployment is
low, then obviously turnover is higher. There is a link between
unemployment and turnover in the market.
Mr Norman: May I make a general
comment, but not on the specifics? As the City or employment outside
the teaching profession gets tough, as it is at the moment, that
is the time for us to go out and collect a good second-stage of
life set of people who have a tremendous amount to offer the teaching
profession. Right now, there is an opportunity to bring in different
types of people. They do not have to be 100% teachers from leaving
university to the age of 65, or whatever the age the group is.
I think that is healthy. If we cannot do something about that
right now, we will have failed.
Q203 Mr Chaytor: You can only do
something about it right now because there is money in the system
which is creating new jobs and generating opportunities.
Mr Norman: Yes, and there is a
lot more security of employment within, say, the teaching profession
than there is in the banking system or in industry.
Mr Kempton: This goes back to
the point I was making earlier about this particular page 4,[1]
which is about destination. If you look at that, you can see that
there is currently high turnover and at the end, which is within
LEAs, that means teachers leaving one job in a school and going
to another job. That may well be linked to the increase in the
number of teaching posts and the opportunities available. There
are pluses and minuses with that sort of movement. I would draw
your attention to the lines at the bottom of the page which look
to the movements to jobs outside teaching. The change is around
1%. The difference between the two is probably an important statistic
to bear in mind.
Q204 Mr Chaytor: That is wastage
and not turnover, is it not? My point is that high turnover in
itself is not an indication of crisis. In fact, it is exactly
the opposite; it is an indication of a healthy labour market in
teaching.
Mr Kempton: It could be that.
It is also linked to the general health of the economy. I think
you can draw different conclusions from that. What we need to
look at is, for example, how long teachers are staying within
schools and the levels at which they do that. The churning effect
can be difficult for schools in the same way that teachers staying
too long in a school may have adverse effects.
Mr Lane: If you look at page 6,
the turnover rates by regions, you discover that London, the South-East
and the eastern region had a much higher turnover in 2001 than
the North, Wales and the North-West. There is some evidence now
that the London turnover is beginning to decline. There are reasons
for that because action has been taken. I understand that the
authority, for instance, with the biggest number of vacancies
turns out to be Essex, followed quite seriously by Hertfordshire,
which is now amongst the highest in turnover terms.
Q205 Paul Holmes: This follows on
from David Lane's argument that the graph in Figure 1 shows peak
turnover at times when there is more money going into the system
and more job creation. Another interpretation of the graph might
be, and I declare an interest in this as I was teacher throughout
the period shown on this graph, that first you go from an average
turnover of about 9.5% in 1987 to a peak of about 14% in round
about 1990-91, and then you do the same thing from 1997 to 2001
going from about an 8.5% turnover, soaring back up to 14% again.
You have two high peaks; they both coincide with the periods of
most massive change in the imposition of ideas on schools from
central government. In 1987, we had the National Curriculum, which
meant that year by year teachers had big, thick folders about
how to mark to levels of achievement that were then scrapped and
replaced the next year and then scrapped and replaced the next
year. There was a constant imposition of things from above. Teachers
felt powerless and out of control. Since 1997, of course we have
had the similar imposition of all sorts of different ideas, sometimes
contradictory, by a new Government keen to make its mark. How
far could you argue that those two high peaks of turnover in the
teaching profession come down to low morale, a feeling of being
powerless in the face of Government's imposition of its ideas
and then changing its mind a year later, then again after another
year?
Mr Lane: I am very reluctant to
assume a theory and look at the figures and try to put the two
together. One thing which happened in 1996-97 was when the Conservative
Government, for very good reasons, had to stop the flood of early
retirements. In 1996-97 there were over 10,000 early retirements,
with 12,000 the year after. The figure dropped in 1998 to 2000.
The 1997 turnover figure is almost entirely due to the fact that
there was a last minute rush of early retirements before the barrier
came down. Of course, teachers will leave the profession if they
can. Salaries may have something to do with it. Certainly there
was more turnover; sometimes the turnover is not because people
are leaving the profession but because of promotion. In a rising
roll situation, you are obviously creating more jobs, and that
increases the turnover in LEAs because there are more job opportunities
and more promotion opportunities. It is interesting that with
the increase in teachers' salaries, which have now been fairly
significant since 1997 with the new structure, it is possible
for instance for people working in London now to be on over £30,000
relatively quickly, certainly within five years, and not impossible
to be on £40,000 at the age of 35 to 40 as a threshold for
most teachers after six or seven years. That becomes a fairly
competitive area for teachers working, say, in the London set-up.
The situation is similar nationally. Therefore, I think that stops
people leaving the profession and encourages people to come into
it. Actually, you may see a reduction in turnover in the profession
in the next few years. You are right that there are rising rolls
which create more jobs and more turnover.
Mr Norman: There was almost an
implied criticism, and fair enough, of LEAs and what they are
doing. I think they can have quite a say on turnover by encouraging
young teachers to come out of teaching and move into becoming
advisors, then moving back into teaching in promoted situations.
We tried with the Peer Review Body to put sabbaticals much further
up the list. This gives people a top-up and a freshening so that
they can start again, if you like, and it is a very healthy side
of turnover. That is a role that LEAs should play and do play.
Q206 Paul Holmes: We had the point
earlier that there are three different sets of surveys: those
from you, the DfES and the GTC. When we were talking to the GTC,
for example, and they now have this survey, we asked if the level
of recruitment and retention was good or bad compared with other
professions and good or bad compared to teaching five or ten years
ago? They just said, "We do not know". Apart from the
fact that we have three different surveys rather than just one,
do we need to sharpen up the sorts of analyses and comparisons
both to other professions and to the historical trends which you
show?
Mr Norman: I am almost speaking
as GTC here. I am trying to urge the GTC to get hold of all the
research that was done on these sorts of issues and make that
available on a website so that there is only one set of information.
As the Local Government Association, we have already asked the
DfES if we can share their piles of information. The answer always
comes back "yes". Whether we actually get in there and
find it and then do share it, I am not quite certain. It is a
huge subject area of trying to rationalise all the research and
information that is there and make sure it is best used.
Mr Lane: The DfES tends to collect
data rather than to undertake detailed surveys. Our information
is coming from individual schools. That is one of the differences
in the methodology. Therefore, you can draw less particular lessons
from it.
Q207 Chairman: I hate to do a John
Humphreys on you, Graham, but Paul Holmes is trying to push you.
What is coming over from the evidence you have given so far is
that you are pretty happy about the situation at present?
Mr Lane: We are fairly sanguine
about the present situation. However, if we do not keep on taking
the measures that we are taking, and if we do not keep on at local
level also working with the schools on this, there is always the
danger that we will slip into a crisis. There are 24,000 schools
out there and it is very easy for shortages to appear. Of course,
in the next few years in some areas of the country, but not all,
we are going to reach a falling roll situation. That is going
to add a different dimension to our issues. We have not had a
falling roll under local management for schools. Some of the funding
issue this year was because schools were not getting ready to
plan for the falling roll situation. That forced some of them
into a serious deficit situation. That is not the only explanation
on the funding issue but it was an element there in some schools
in some parts of the country. Of course, when there is a falling
roll situation, one always asks the question, and certainly the
teaching unions do so: is this an opportunity to reduce the size
of classes and keep the same number of teachers with fewer students?
Q208 Chairman: If that was only one
of the problems we have heard reported, that of the falling roll,
particularly on Radio 4, what are the other reasons?
Mr Lane: One of the two reasons
why there has been a major funding crisis in our schools this
year, and it has been a crisis, is that DfES officials have totally
underestimated how much it costs to employ teachers. With the
shortening of the pay scale, for instance, there was an enormous
increase in the bills for schools. That was not fully funded or
fully calculated. The post-threshold payments were not fully calculated.
Of course the increase in wages and the increase in the number
of staff being taken on as teaching assistants and learning support
staff were not calculated and so there was an under-funding for
the pay bill. The other reason was the way that the Standards
Fund was removed and put into the main stream and redistributed
much more thinly. It was not modelled properly. We all tried to
suggest a better modelling. The result is that some secondary
schools in particular lost a large amount of cash. The money had
to go more thinly across primary schools but not enough to compensate
for the loss in funding that many individual schools had. I think
we may be coming out of that now that we are getting better data,
but it does need some extra money going into the system, certainly
by next April, if there is not going to be a repetition next year.
Q209 Jonathan Shaw: Do you share
good practice with your competitors in terms of different authorities
for recruitment and retention of teachers? Do they ring up each
other and say what is working in one local authority and what
is not working?
Mr Lane: Yes, on the whole they
do because none of us is in the business of trying to solve one's
own problems at the expense of those of other people. Of course,
you always make sure your own schools are fully staffed at the
beginning of each year. Good practice is shared constantly. One
of the reasons we are working together on housing issues is because
we have now discovered that is one way of keeping younger teachers
in the profession.
Q210 Jonathan Shaw: You mentioned
Essex and Hertfordshire were having particular problems. Why is
that?
Mr Lane: The reason Essex is having
particular problems, and it is a large authority, is because a
lot of teachers live in Essex but can earn considerably more money
in a London school after a daily short train journey. Housing
is cheaper in parts of Essex than it is in London.
Q211 Jonathan Shaw: They will live
in Essex but teach in London?
Mr Lane: Yes. I can give you similar
situations?
Q212 Jonathan Shaw: What about part-time
work and job sharing? What are you doing about that? What are
the disadvantages and difficulties in that?
Mr Lane: I remember doing quite
a bit of work on job sharing in the London Education Authority
before it was abolished. There was controversy at that time about
job sharing. Many people do work part-time in teaching, particularly
some who may have left the profession but returned after maternity
leave to work part time. We think there is more room in that area
for people to continue working part time. The part-time route
and job share should be encouraged. I have now discovered there
is a school where the heads job share; two heads share the job
of being a head teacher. People find this rather surprising, but
I do not see why they should.
Q213 Jonathan Shaw: Do you have any
examples from your authorities?
Mr Kempton: I was not going to
give you some examples. I was going to agree that certainly job
sharing and part-time work is increasing. We have been working
with teacher unions on this and we have put out guidance on the
issue, particularly that of the work-life balance. It is important
that we provide opportunities for that. I do not have any examples
to hand.
Q214 Jonathan Shaw: Do you think
that head teachers are really keen on job sharing? Is that what
parents want? Do they want two teachers in the classroom rather
than one? Are you promoting that in your respective authorities
or do people just say it is a jolly good thing and it needs to
be done?
Mr Norman: I have a hunch that
the head teachers are going to have more to say on this than we
are. It is a fact of good employment, whether it be in teaching
or not, with the way the world is developing, that there are an
awful lot of people with many skills and we cannot lose those
skills. It is down to the inventive boss to create ways so that
he or she gets the best value out of it. I am sure they will have
very good answers on that. They are well prepared now.
Mr Lane: I think head teachers
are responsible for the way they appoint and deploy their staff.
You are right that there are some head teachers who will be keener
on this than others, who will be reluctant. All primary schools
are going to have to face this issue in 2005-06 with 10% non-contact
time, half a day a week or a day a fortnight. That will provide
an opportunity to look at the way the class could be taught by
job share for four and a half days a week by one teacher and half
a day by another.
Q215 Jonathan Shaw: You would encourage
it generally?
Mr Lane: Yes.
Q216 Jonathan Shaw: Generally it
is a matter for governors and the head teacher. Can I ask you
about targeting effectively in terms of retention in schools in
challenging circumstances? You have talked about London and the
South-East. Take that a stage further down to schools in challenging
circumstances and schools in disadvantages areas, which is where
we see the highest turnover and where it is most difficult to
recruit and retain. The Government has various cash incentives
with £6,000 for PGCE and the difficult subjects. There are
things like the golden come-backs of £4,000. Do you think
that the Government could use the money more effectively with
targeting? In a leafy suburb, perhaps in Tunbridge Wells for example,
a head teacher would not have too much difficulty but he could
give someone £4,000 to come back, whereas in an inner city
school in London perhaps that money could be used more speculatively
and someone could be given £8,000 to come in. The Tunbridge
Wells people do not need that amount.
Mr Lane: There has been flexibility
of recruitment and retention allowances for some time, which heads
of school have been able to use. It is interesting that only 4.2%
of teachers receive these allowances. Heads and governors are
reluctant to use them, and understandably because they are divisive.
Q217 Jonathan Shaw: How are they
divisive?
Mr Lane: One of the reasons they
are reluctant to use these recruitment and retention allowances
is because they are felt to be divisive, by the staff and by those
receiving them. We share a rather different view. We would like
more flexibility to deal with specific problems. We have started
to do this, particularly with schools in challenging circumstances
and failing schools. This is not without a cost. Often the way
a failing school is turned round is by moving in an experienced
teacher. These head teachers have to be given a guarantee that
they are not going to lose their jobs if the schools remains in
special measures or challenging circumstances, and very often
you have to put extra money into that particular school in order
to attract the teachers. That is a perfectly reasonable thing
to do because some people enjoy the experience of doing that work
and then you can persuade them to move on to another failing school.
This is a job done locally by local government, working with the
schools. National solutions of targeting are not targeting at
all. In fact, that is not necessary a good use of money. We are
talking to Ministers about more flexibility in the local management
scheme to allow us to do this more effectively at local level.
We have had great success in turning round failing schools but
we want to stop them going into special measures in the first
place.
Mr Kempton: The one area where
this has been tried and has been a resounding failure was with
the whole initiative on superheads. There was a feeling, was there
not, that you paid for very expensive and experienced heads and,
if you brought them into schools, they would turn them round?
I have personal experience from Islington and from other places
that the whole superhead initiative was not successful. There
are issues in that area.
Q218 Jonathan Shaw: Mr Kempton there
are examples, perhaps less high profile than the superheads, where
a head teacher has left because the school was in difficulties
and a new head has gone in and the school has been transformed.
I know of two or three in my constituency. It is not a question
that it cannot happen. It does happen. Perhaps it is in the higher
profile ones where it is so difficult.
Mr Kempton: That is not quite
what I meant. Clearly schools are turned around by experienced
and more qualified head teachers. The idea of picking out one
or two individuals and paying them a lot of money and assuming
that they are going to be able to turn things round is not necessarily
something which has been shown to work in practice. As Graham
Lane has said, schools are wary about identifying one or two individuals
and paying them a lot of extra money, which is why the recruitment
and retention issues have not been picked up.
Mr Norman: I was going to pick
up on the challenging circumstances, and I guess we are talking
about the same county anyway. One thing that happens in Kent is
that there is team of 15 heads, I think, who go around and act
as advisors to schools that are in challenging circumstances or
in some difficulty. They feel they are being advised by one of
them. These heads are taken out of their own schools for a two-year
period, or something like that. If the situation becomes worse,
it nearly always happens that the head teacher goes and the chairman
of the governors goes, and in comes a head to take over the school
for a couple of years, and this has normally worked. It looks
jolly good on that head's CV if he can be seen to have done this.
As you point out, it is not a question of superheads or anything
like that; it is just an internal arrangement that seems to work
very well. You were also talking about retention and recruitment
allowances and performance pay; that is the ability to head teachers
to pay their staff in almost any way they like. A good head teacher
can structure the pay inside the school as he wishes. I slightly
feel there is a big muddle about management allowances, which
are used to cover extra pay to go somewhere rather than recruitment
and retention or performance. I rather prefer the latter ones
of those and only genuine management allowances. I may be being
very rude to most schools.
Mr Lane: The point I was going
to make about effective heads is that sometimes you do replace
a head in a failing school with a more experienced one but you
also have to build up the expertise of the staff. What is more
common is twinning of schools. You twin a school with difficulties
with a successful school in the same authority, occasionally even
in another authority, and the staff interchange by mutual arrangement.
That has been very effective in getting schools very quickly out
of special circumstances.
Q219 Jonathan Shaw: You can see a
Hackney-Bromley act?
Mr Lane: I am quite happy to do
that. My own authority, Newham, is now twinning with West Sussex.
1 Employers Organisation, Survey of Teacher Resignations
and Recruitment 1985-86 to 2001: Summary Report, December 2002. Back
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