Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the University of Hertfordshire
Having been specifically asked to address the recruitment of trainees for 2013–14 courses we offer the following observations.
1.Communication between the former Teaching Agency (TA) and the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) has been poor, with documents being posted on the DfE websites without notification to providers. New editions of the School Direct Guidance 2013–14 were produced and initially these were not dated and this lead to confusion for both schools and providers.
2.Plans were not fully in place by TA before recruitment started. Consequently, both schools and the university were not in a position to give definitive answers to questions being asked by prospective trainees.
3.The national publicity and marketing for school direct were poor and misleading information was given. More needs to be done to improve the publicity and information to candidates.
4.Provider staff were not given access to the School Direct recruitment portal until after it had been opened to applicants.
5.Applicants and schools were confused by the application process and provider staff spent a good deal of time responding to questions and concerns, often with regard to problems they could not solve.
6.Information to applicants on School Direct Application System website needs to include details of all schools working with a lead school and their addresses.
7.Initially there was no limit to the number of applications that could be made and there was a problem with closing courses that were full.
8.The fact that candidates can only send their application to three schools is likely to provide a geographical limitation, which is disadvantageous to schools located in areas where the percentage of high calibre graduates among the population is lower and thus the potential talent pool from which candidates can be drawn is smaller.
9.On-going monitoring of the recruitment from under-represented groups is problematic due to the fragmented nature of the recruitment process.
10.The addition of the pre-entry skills tests has exacerbated these difficulties. The fact that applicants could not register for the tests before making an application and that providers had only 28 days from receiving an application to make a decision to interview or reject, meant that many interviewees were offered places subject to passing the skills test. It has become apparent that an effect of the three strikes and out rule introduced this year is that applicants who have failed the test once are delaying their retakes. Skills tests data needs to be easily extractable so advice can be rapidly tailored to the correct applicants An unknown number of those offered places will not be able to begin training in September. It is very unlikely that such withdrawals will be made in time for places to be re-advertised and filled.
11.Information requested/advice given by TA to lead schools by direct email, or via the university, has often been received with very limited time to action—particularly difficult in a busy school where School Direct administration is carried out by staff with a full time teaching timetable.
12.Still uncertainties about how the funding will be allocated for SD (Salaried); initially thought to be via the provider but schools have recently received funding information which they did not understand and did not match their allocations. This information was not sent to providers who were thus not able to assist. This change of approach to funding allocation has significant implications for providers in terms of setting up invoicing processes and gives a poor impression to schools when we are having to ask them for the information from NCLT.
13.Decisions need to be made by schools too early on a long time before they are aware of their actual needs. In the past this didn’t matter as GTPs were supernumerary—however, the finances are such that SD (salaried) are not, hence it is a risk for schools to offer places so early on.
14.Too time consuming having so many unsuitable applications when previously we had good system that worked with GTP.
15.Large number of applicants do not have the prerequisite years of career-type employment, making them ineligible for School Direct Salaried would suggest making the guidance for this much clearer for applicants.
16.People are applying without contacting the lead school first. Would suggest an application form, which does not permit an applicant to proceed to the next page until applicant ticks a box to confirm that he/she had made contact with the school prior to application. Making applicants contact the school would help to reduce applications which do not meet the criteria.
17.People are wasting time applying for training places which are full or closed, because the portal is set up in such a way that the listing of individual places as full or closed, is not possible. The receiving school is also wasting a lot of time in responding to such applicants. Would suggest that the central system be set up in such a way as to permit the flagging of individual subjects/places as full or closed?
18.Lack of applicants for Maths, Physics, Chemistry. Suggestion—is it worth pooling ideas for strategies from different providers?
19.The imposition of deadlines for response does not take into account that in many school-led processes an interview is most often a sequence of interviews. School Direct interviews often have three stages, concluding with an interview with the placement school. This is laudable, but time consuming and unlikely to fit into the 40 working days from application.
20.The additional stages in recruitment may in part account for the slower recruitment on School Direct routes. Schools also report that because there is an implication of future employment, schools are being understandably cautious. There is a feeling that schools’ expertise is in teacher recruitment as opposed to trainee selection and that applicants with potential are being missed in seeking a “finished article”.
21.There is also a concern that an over-emphasis on degree classification has caused many good applicants to be overlooked. The continued fall in the overall number of applicants to ITT is worrying. It is not clear that there are enough applicants, particularly in shortage subjects, with 1sts and 2:1s to meet national recruitment targets.
July 2013
