The Ofsted chief has called for action to prevent recruitment difficulties from creating a “two-tier system”. Addressing the annual conference of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), he demanded that the National College for Teaching and Leadership do more to “get ahead of the curve” on recruitment and said the current teacher training regime was “too disorganised”.
He told delegates at the event in Birmingham: “No matter how much effort we put into raising the status of the profession, I fear we will never properly get on top of the teacher supply issue unless, and until, the National College for Teaching and Leadership starts to get ahead of the curve. Put bluntly, the National College ... has to show leadership. It has to start demonstrating that it is not a waste of space ... and it certainly has to deliver more teachers to your front door.
“Shortages are being exacerbated because the current teacher training regime is too disorganised, too unevenly distributed and too driven by market forces.”
Sir Michael’s comments come as secondary recruitment targets have not been hit for three years in succession. It was revealed recently that only 82 per cent of teacher places have been filled for the 2015/16 academic year, meaning there are more than 3,400 fewer secondary trainees entering the profession this year than are needed. Only three subjects across the board have hit their targets – history (113 per cent recruitment against target), English (103 per cent) and PE (100 per cent).
A survey by ASCL of 900 of its members, released before the conference and discussed in SecEd last week, found that 84 per cent of the respondents fear that the teacher recruitment crisis is having a detrimental impact on the quality of education they are able to provide to students.
Furthermore, nine in 10 said they are experiencing difficulties in recruiting teachers and nearly three quarters said the situation was worse than a year ago.
Sir Michael’s speech picked up on themes within his 2014/15 annual report, published late last year, which raised concerns that across England the number of entrants into teacher training has fallen by almost 6,500 since 2009/10 and was seven per cent below the number needed in 2014/15.
The report warned that national figures were masking “significant local and regional variation” in recruitment. It said poor performance counted against a school’s ability to attract candidates, as did isolated locations, such as with coastal or rural schools.
Furthermore, the location of teacher training providers is not evenly spread across the country, with isolated locations again losing out. One illustration in the report (see below) shows just how many schools judged to be inadequate or requires improvement are situated in areas without close access to providers of secondary initial teacher training.
Two-tier system: Sir Michael Wilshaw’s fears of a two-tier recruitment system were raised in his annual report last year. This graphic from the report shows (as of August 2015) how many poorer performing schools are isolated from their nearest teacher training providers (Image: From Ofsted Annual Report 2014/15. Source: Ofsted and National College of teaching and Leadership)
The report also warns that those schools outside of School Direct teacher training partnerships (about one quarter of all secondaries) lose out because they have reduced access to teachers, while too few initial teacher education partnerships include enough challenging schools, – which are often the institutions most in need of quality candidates.
The report states: “There are large areas of the country with little or no secondary teacher training available, including the more isolated parts of the South East, North West and the East of England. We have to ask whether this cycle will ever break without deliberate and targeted intervention.
“As a result, there is an emerging two-tier system, with one group of schools more able to recruit and another less able to do so. The danger, if this is not addressed, is that this will further intensify the disparity in local and regional performance, and entrench the divide in quality across the country.
“The current situation is that some schools – often the ones most in need of improvement – are finding that they are increasingly isolated. Because of their circumstances, they are cut off from the flow of trainees and new teachers. Though in some cases this is because of geographical isolation, in other cases these schools are lost in a crowd. They may be in urban areas but their context means they are equally alone.”
Sir Michael told the ASCL delegates: “The freedom that good and outstanding schools now have to take more control of teacher training – while a positive development – risks further widening the inequalities in our system because there are few strategies in place to prevent this happening.
“You will know that I have previously voiced concern about an emerging two-tier education system. More and more, we see the best schools in the most popular areas snapping up the best teachers while underperforming schools in poorer or more isolated areas are facing an increasingly desperate struggle to find good candidates. They are trapped in a vicious cycle – unable to recruit because they are struggling, but unable to improve because they cannot recruit.”