One year ago, in response to surging teacher recruitment, the government decided to cut financial incentives for teacher training. It dramatically reduced the bursary payments that are made to trainees and eliminated the retention payments made to teachers in the first five years of their careers.
Many commentators, including EPI, felt that decision was misguided: the bump in recruitment was likely to be temporary and the new recruits would be less attached to the profession than the typical entrant.
Last week, the Department for Education released the latest data on recruitment to initial teacher training and, alongside other recent evidence, it begins to justify those concerns. Here are five charts that explain what is going on.
Return to normal for overall recruitment
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After nearly a full year of increased applications to initial teacher training (ITT), rates have returned to pre-pandemic levels. Since May this year, the level of applications has been well within the previous range. The overall number of applications for ITT in 2020/21 is still 7 per cent greater than in 2018/19, but the monthly figures show that applications are falling and the increases we’ve seen overall this year are unlikely to persist into next year.
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Revealing the true scale of subject recruitment problems
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The headline figures show that the department once again achieved its overall recruitment target for 2021/22 but that was achieved with a 36 per cent over-recruitment for primary ITT and an 18 per cent under-recruitment for secondary ITT. Within secondary teaching the problems are particularly visible in shortage subjects.
Targets are set for recruitment to each subject and there are some in which the number of entrants is commonly below half of the target level. Physics, design and technology, and modern foreign languages are among the subjects with the poorest recruitment record, and they are also the subjects in which schools find it hardest to recruit and retain teachers. Recruitment improved last year but still missed the targets in these shortage subjects; however, the alarming fall in some subjects is largely due to a change in the targets themselves.
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New targets
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The department has, this year, changed its approach to recruitment targets. It has previously aimed to maintain the existing pupil-teacher ratio, measured by the average of the previous few years. That means, when recruitment targets are missed and the pupil-teacher ratio rises, the next year’s recruitment target is revised down. Over time, falling recruitment leads to a declining number of teachers, higher pupil-teacher ratios, and falling recruitment targets. That means past targets have failed to reflect the true scale at which expertise has been lost in shortage subjects.
The new target-setting process changes that. The department says the targets are not revised down to the same extent when earlier targets are missed, which means the new targets are a better reflection of the true need in schools. It is no surprise that the new model has led to the target for physics recruitment nearly doubling since last year. However, it might be a little surprising that some shortage subjects, such as languages, mathematics and chemistry have still had their targets reduced this year.
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The department has not yet published the details of its new model so it may still be some time before we understand exactly why the targets have changed as they have. To get a sense of the impact that previous under-recruitment has on the target, we have plotted the degree of under-recruitment last year against the change in this year’s target.
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The chart shows, for example, that biology over-recruited by 86 per cent last year and has had its target cut by 27 per cent this year. At the other end of the spectrum, physics under-recruited by 62 per cent and had its target increase by 89 per cent this year.
On the whole, subjects have had their targets revised in the manner one would expect: over-recruiting subjects have had cuts to their targets and vice versa. However, there are a few clear exceptions. Modern foreign languages (MFL) under-recruited by 30 per cent by has had its target cut by 36 per cent, and mathematics and chemistry also missed their targets before having their new targets cut.
There are also several subjects that have over-recruited but still had in increase in their targets. The most notable – it did not even fit on our chart’s scale – is classics, which exceeded its target by 152 per cent last year and still had its target revised up by 48 per cent. Music and business studies are two other subjects that had their target increased by far more than one might expect from past recruitment performance.
Unfortunately, until the department publishes the model, it is impossible to know how these seemingly anomalous targets were generated. Obviously, a simple chart does not capture the complexity of the labour market dynamics embedded in the department’s model. However, it may also be that the changes represent the subject priorities of this government.
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A mixed picture on diversity
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The diversity of the teaching workforce is far from representative of the population, which has long been a concern. This year’s recruitment provides a mixed picture on that front. The good news is that 21 per cent of entrants belong to a minority ethnic group, up from 14 per cent in 2015/16. However, only 28 per cent of entrants were male and, among primary trainees, it was only 16 per cent.
There was a slight increase in the proportion of male applicants in 2020 after the pandemic struck but that has been more than erased this year. Male applicants are also less likely to be placed in a training programme than their female peers.
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Retention is more mixed
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Not only did the pandemic encourage trainees in to teaching but it also discouraged teachers from leaving or moving. In the 2020/2021 school year, teacher retention increased and there was a precipitous decline in movement between schools. Most commentators expected that to recover as the pandemic eased, and it appears to have done so in primary schools. TeacherTapp’s surveys indicate that mobility among primary teachers has returned to pre-pandemic levels.
However, there is still far less churn in the market for secondary teachers. Not only do the surveys bear that out, but SchoolDash’s reporting shows that the number of job advertisements for secondary teachers is lower than it was in 2020. This has made it easier for schools to fill posts in a buyer’s market, but the great resignation does not yet appear to have touched schools. It is still possible that may happen in the coming years as the non-teaching labour market continues to recover.
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Implications for policy
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The overall picture is one of a gradual return to pre-pandemic levels of teacher recruitment and retention challenges. There is no indication yet that the pandemic will leave a lasting impact on the teaching workforce and the government has sensibly announced a return of the retention payments it cancelled last year.
The revision of the recruitment targets for subjects is welcome and responds to some of the concerns that have been raised about the allocation process in recent years. However, it would be helpful to see the new Teacher Workforce Model published for wider scrutiny, as happened with its predecessor, the Teacher Supply Model. The government has chosen not to lift bursary payments closer to pre-pandemic levels, despite the upward revision of many recruitment targets. That is a decision it may choose to revisit if teacher supply problems escalate and as more evidence emerges about the effectiveness of the bursary scheme.
