Nicholas Pyke reports on a warning from training supremo Geoffrey Parker of serious teacher shortages ahead. Britain’s schools are heading for staff shortages in nearly every secondary school subject, according to the chairman of the new Teacher Training Agency this week.
Geoffrey Parker told a conference of London heads at St Dunstan’s College, south London, that improvements in the economy threaten a return to the teacher shortages of the late 1980s unless there is a marked upturn in recruitment. The universities have already issued a similar warning, reporting substantial shortfalls across a range of subjects.
Last month the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers blamed the Government’s new training regulations for over-burdening schools and restricting the number of students they can take.
“Department for Education statistics show that primary recruitment is buoyant except in science and maths at key stage 2,” said Mr Parker, formerly High Master at Manchester Grammar School. “But in the secondary phase there are predicted shortages in every subject except one - history.”
Even minor shortfalls could have a serious, cumulative effect, he said.
“An upturn in the economy suggests that over the next two or three years there is the prospect that we might reach crisis point as we did in the late 1980s. We must do very much better in the recruitment of teachers - and recruit them from a variety of sources.”
He said that the TTA wants to attract mature trainees through an expansion of the licensed teacher scheme and is also seeking to appeal to the many thousands of qualified teachers who have left the profession.
The TTA was established by the 1994 Education Act. It distributes funding for all teacher training courses, including those based wholly in schools. The TTA is also responsible for recruitment and for practically-based education research.
Mr Parker warned teacher trainers that some universities and colleges spend unacceptably large amounts of Government money per student.
He described the disparity in funding as “indefensible” and said that TTA officials are devising ways of establishing a fairer system for distributing state funds.
“Universities and colleges will have to justify courses which cost five times as much as similar courses - when that cost is not necessarily related in any way to quality. That’s the state of affairs. Clearly to alter this indefensible situation is a big priority of the agency.”
He pointed out that the same disparities exist with degree courses generally - a matter of concern, he said, to the Higher Education Funding Council.
The main differences are between the “old” universities and the former polytechnics. The latter rapidly expanded at the end of the 1980s, a boom accompanied by dramatic cuts in the cost per student. The older universities, while expanding, have never accepted the same economies of scale.
Professor Jennifer Latto, co-chair of UCET and Provost of Liverpool John Moores University, said that the costings used by the TTA are invalid as they bear little relation to the amount of money that universities actually spend.
“In any case,” she said, “talking of comparative costs is like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
“What’s really happened is that school-based teacher training is more expensive to deliver - as demonstrated by the articled teacher training scheme. The discussions about producing an average price per student is not addressing the issue.”
