Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Professor John Howson, Data for Education.info

The Committee intends to look mainly at two areas:

Proposals for a College of Teaching

School Direct

1. Proposals for a College of Teaching

1.1 There is much to be said for an independent body that regulates matters of professionalism in relation to those with Qualified Teacher Status. Such a body might set standards for entry into the profession that were acceptable to public, private and quasi-private employers of teachers as well as monitoring issues to do with teacher supply and employment independent of government and the professional associations of teachers. The abolition of the General Teaching Council for England increasingly looks like a hasty and ill-judged move that was more about meeting a pre-election pledge regarding the abolition of Quangos than a properly considered policy decision. The lack of a professional body for a group of more than half a million teachers whose expertise is employed by schools across the world is damaging to the profession as a whole, and too closely ties teaching to a government controlled enterprise at a time when government is seeking less involvement in matters such as teacher supply.

2. School Direct

2.1 A major change is underway in the approach to the training of teachers in England. The Committee discussed this as a part of its Report- Great Teachers. Essentially, the responsibility for training is being moved from higher education to a mixed economy of higher education and the employers of teachers, with a possibility that it may return entirely to employers at some point in the future. At the same time, Qualified Teacher Status has been granted to more individuals through multiple different entry routes as shown in the table below.

2.2 Three key questions arise in relation to School Direct at this point in time:

Current recruitment into School Direct.

The primary phase.

Future policy.

Table One

ROUTES INTO TEACHING

ROUTES INTO TEACHING	HE INVOLVED	COST TO STUDENT
CERTIFICATION + QUALIFICATION
HIGHER EDUCATION GRADUATE	YES	SIGNIFICANT
HIGHER EDUCATION UNDERGRADUATE	YES	SIGNIFICANT
CERTIFICATION
SCHOOL DIRECT SALARIED	POSSIBLY	MINIMAL
SCHOOL DIRECT TRAINING	POSSIBLY	VARIABLE
SCITT	POSSIBLY	VARIABLE
TEACH FIRST	LIMITED	MINIMAL
TROOPS FOR TEACHERS—NON-GRADUATE ENTRY	TO SOME EXTENT	MINIMAL
RE-CERTIFICATION
OTT	NOT USUALLY	LIMITED*
EU TRAINED TEACHERS	NO	MINIMAL*
OTHER APPROVED TEACHERS FROM USA, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND & CANADA (may require work visa)	NO	MINIMAL*
APPROVED HOLDERS QTLS (basically FE lecturers)	NO	MINIMAL*
		* but cost of acquiring original teaching qualification not included

2.3 Current recruitment into School Direct:

More than 900 schools are directly involved in the School Direct scheme for 2013–14. These schools operate through providers that range from large institutions to the individual schools themselves. Tracking the progress of recruitment following the large-scale government advertising campaign in the autumn of 2012 has been challenging. Recruitment to higher education courses is tracked weekly in considerable detail and comparisons can easily be made with previous years.

2.4 Tracking School Direct this year is a labour intensive activity that few have been prepared to undertake. This is what I wrote in March about the state of recruitment this year:

For the purposes of this blog I reviewed the data provided on the DfE web site regarding the total number of places on School Direct, and how many remained available at the middle of March in two subjects. Physics was chosen because it has traditionally been a “shortage” subject, and even those not offered a salary can claim relatively generous bursaries. By contrast, history has not been regarded as a shortage subject, and those not on the salaried scheme may find little by way of financial support to help them through their training.

The results when I looked on the 15th March were that only 4% of the “salaried” School Direct places for Physics were shown as “unavailable”, as were just 6% of the “non-salaried” Physics “Training” places. That’s a total of 29 places out of 572 on offer for Physics shown as “unavailable”, and presumably, therefore, filled. In history, the position was better, with a quarter of the 336 places shown as “unavailable”, and presumably filled.

Now it is too early to be sounding alarm bells but, with the Easter holiday fast approaching, schools probably won’t be holding many more interviews until sometime in April. By the end of that month there will be just four months before the new school year when the School Direct candidates will be expected to start their training. By now Teach First has usually closed its book to new applicants, but this year even that programme is still accepting applications in the sciences, mathematics, computer science/ICT and English.

Taken together, the fact that the three leading routes used for preparing teachers are finding this a challenging recruitment round means that the government must take notice, and if necessary action.

Now it may be that School Direct partners are just slow in notifying the DfE that they have accepted candidates. It may also be that they are used to recruiting teachers for September largely between March and May, and don’t appreciate the fact that training places have generally been organised earlier in the year than that. Schools may also be expecting a higher standard from potential applicants than higher education has sometimes been able to demand. Whatever the reasons, we will not produce a world-class education system unless we have enough teachers. johnohowson.wordpress.com, 19 March 2013

2.5 Early in May, the government posted data about applications to School Direct. I commented that:

The government released data today that showed around 20,000 applicants had made more than 64,000 applications to become a teacher through the new School Direct route. That’s around seven applications per place, and well above the ratio for the university teacher preparation courses, where applications through GTTR for postgraduate courses rarely hit the level of four applications per place except in very popular subjects such as History, Physical Education, the Social Sciences and Drama. However, since GTTR measure applicants rather than gross applications so on that basis School Direct is probably doing little better than GTTR in terms of applicants per places available. But, without a breakdown of applicants as well as applications by subject and phase to School Direct it is impossible to be sure.

With so many applications to choose from you might expect School Direct to have filled all its places by now, just as Teach First has already closed its door to applicants for this year. But, you would be wrong, if data from the DfE web site is correct. Over the Easter weekend only between 7% and 45% of the salaried places were filled, depending upon the subject, and there was a similar percentage range of places filled on the non-salaried training route. With so many applicants, this means that only between two and 9% of applicants appear to have been offered places on School Direct so far. This is a much lower proportion than for the courses offered by universities through GTTR.

The obvious questions that arise are whether there are better applicants for the GTTR courses than School Direct or are perhaps admissions tutors in universities being more generous in making offers than their colleagues in schools? Take Chemistry as an example, on the School Direct Salaried route, 11% of the places were filled by Easter, and that represented just 4% of applicants being offered places. On the School Direct Training Route 9% of places were filled, and just three% of applicants had been offered a place. By comparison on the GTTR courses 46% of the applicants had been offered a place although this was down on the 51% accepted at the same time last year. Given that it is unlikely anyone without the basic academic degree class bothers to apply, it seems odd that so many applicants have yet to be offered a place through the School Direct programme, especially as applications have been arriving since the autumn.

However, there is still about three months to go, so all is not yet lost, but the government will need to keep a close eye on whether schools are being slow at interviewing applicants that applied sometime ago or whether schools have decided the quality of the applicants are not good enough. There is certainly no guarantee that a flood of high quality applicants will turn up at the last minute, and too many empty places could cause staffing problems for some schools next summer. A teacher supply crisis in the year before a general election would be embarrassing for the government that made much of the large number of applicants to the School Direct programme in its announcement today. No doubt the lack of a similar announcement about the numbers accepted was an oversight that will be quickly rectified. johnohowson.wordpress.com, 8 May 2013

2.6 On 1st June, I commented further that:

I won’t rehearse the various discussions under each of the headings, save to say that earlier this week I worked out that less than a quarter of training places in Chemistry on the School Direct route were being shown as filled on the DfE web site compared with about double that figure for the higher education routes in the subject.

Now, as I have maintained before that difference in acceptances could well be because of schools requiring higher standards than universities from their would-be trainees. If so, then there is little more than three months left to find the trainees to fill the remaining places at a time when the market for graduates appears to be reviving. If the schools and universities haven’t selected from those who have already applied, why should those who apply now be any better in calibre? An analysis of application patterns over recent years has shown that once the rush of applications from finalists who haven’t yet thought about life after university is over there are relatively few other applicants as the summer months pass by. Now, this year may be different, but it is difficult to see why it should be if the overall market for graduates is better than in recent years, as those yet to make a decision about their future have more choice than in recent years, unlike their colleagues in many other European countries. johnohowson.wordpress.com, 1 June 2013

These comments from a single researcher working alone and unfunded reveal the possibility of a crisis unfolding that will potentially cause a shortfall in teachers seeking to enter the profession in the summer of 2014. With the resources available to the government, anything less than a complete understanding of the situation seems like a dereliction of duty. But, the government at Westminster is in the process of drawing back from direct involvement with teacher supply. In January Mr Taylor, the head of the NCTL told a conference that:

In the future I would like to see local areas deciding on the numbers of teachers they will need each year rather than a fairly arbitrary figure passed down from the Department for Education. I have asked my officials at the TA to work with schools, academy chains and local authorities to help them to devise their own local teacher supply model. I don’t think Whitehall should be deciding that nationally we need 843 geography teachers, when a more accurate figure can be worked out locally.

Department for Education (2013) Speech to North of England Conference by Mr Taylor http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/speeches/a00220299/charlie-taylor-keynote-speech

2.7 Mr Taylor’s comments did not come as a surprise to connoisseurs of government education legislation who had noted that within a Schedule of the 2011 Education Act, Section 11A of the 1996 Education Act was repealed. This was the section, originally enacted in the 1944 Education Act that created a duty requiring that:

“The Secretary of State shall, in particular, make such arrangements as he considers expedient for securing that sufficient facilities are available for the training of teachers to serve in schools maintained by local education authorities, grant-maintained schools, institutions within the further education sector and institutions which are maintained by such authorities and provide higher education or further education (or both).” Education Act 1996

2.8 The issue of tracking recruitment into school Direct should be solved next year by the single GTTR administered admission system providing that the present weekly application data is continued for the new system. It would be a major mistake to suppress this information.

2.9 The primary phase:

While School Direct may work well in the secondary sector, it is more of a challenge to see how the model will handle up to 20,000 trainees that may be needed each year for the primary sector during the period of rapid growth in the primary school population during the remainder of this decade. The training of primary school teachers, and the skills they need, might well be worth a separate investigation by the Committee at some point in the future.

3.0 Future policy:

Unless there is a clear and precise policy for monitoring teacher supply trends, any improvement in the general economy may make attracting graduates to teaching as a career in certain parts of the country, most notably London and the Home Counties something of a challenge. Improvements in minimum degree standards required of teachers have already contributed towards a reduction in applications through the traditional higher education routes even before School Direct became fully operational. Computer Studies/Information technology is not a subject where school Direct has much impact on the training market, but is a vital skill necessary for the future economy. Applications have collapsed over the past two years. Should it be felt necessary to resolve this situation by training more teachers in the subject that will be a test of how the new system produces not just great teachers; but sufficient great teachers.

Graph One

A CUMULATIVE GRAPH OF APPLICATIONS TO HIGHER EDUCATION TEACHER TRAINING IN 2011, 2012 AND 2013 FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE OR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TEACHER TRAINING COURSES

3.1 Should a shortage of new teachers in one or more subjects appear, either in 2014 or subsequently, as possible trainees opt for careers other than teachers with better immediate returns it could well be that the new freedom schools have under the Pay and Conditions Document results in more teachers exerting their bargaining power and starting not at the bottom or the scale but at the top. As has been seen with head teacher’s pay a shortage of applicants has tended to drive overall pay upwards, as might be expected in a market situation.

4. Conclusion

4.1 The creation of a world-class education system depends in a large part upon a world-class teaching force. The changes that the system of teacher preparation is undergoing in England at present provide something of a challenge whose outcome is unknown. After a period of recession, and five years of easy recruitment into the teaching profession, the overall situation may be entering a more challenging period. At the same time, the government at Westminster is both creating new and more devolved routes into the profession and seemingly abandoning central planning, although with no evidence as to where adequate future funding for training will come from if there is no planning on which to base discussions with the Treasury.

4.2 The risks are far higher in the primary sector, where the demand for more teachers to meet the rise in pupil numbers already underway, places an immediate requirement for more teachers to be trained. In the secondary sector, the increase in teacher training requirements may be less immediate, but it will be just as certain well before the end of the decade. The responsibilities of the various interests in ensuring that there are sufficient teachers to produce a world-class education system should be clearly delineated so that all parties are aware of the expectations placed upon them, and their obligations to meet them.

September 2013