Newsom (1963)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Contents, Introduction, Principal recommendations

Part 1 Findings
Chapter 1 Education for all
Chapter 2 The pupils, the schools, the problems
Chapter 3 Education in the slums
Chapter 4 Objectives
Chapter 5 Finding approaches
Chapter 6 The school day, homework, extra-curricular activities
Chapter 7 Spiritual and moral development
Chapter 8 The school community
Chapter 9 Going out into the world
Chapter 10 Examinations and assessments
Chapter 11 Building for the future
Chapter 12 The teachers needed

Part 2 The teaching situation
Chapter 13 What should secondary imply?
Chapter 14 An education that makes sense
Chapter 15 Attainments and achievement
Chapter 16 The subjects and the curriculum
Chapter 17 The practical subjects
Chapter 18 Science and mathematics
Chapter 19 The humanities
Chapter 20 School organisation and staff deployment

Part 3 What the survey shows
Chapter 21 The 1961 survey
Chapter 22 The boys and girls
Chapter 23 The work they do
Chapter 24 The men and women who teach them
Chapter 25 The schools they go to

Acknowledgements

Appendix I List of witnesses
Appendix II Sex education
Appendix III Deployment of teachers
Appendix IV Letter to Minister on teacher training
Appendix V Statistical detail

Index

A report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England)

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1963
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Appendix III The deployment of teachers and the education of the average child
[pages 272 - 276]

This evidence has been submitted by Mr RF Goodings and Mr S Pratt of London University Institute of Education. They wish to stress that this is a personal submission, not a document from the Institute as such.

1. We start from two truths which we hold to be, though not self-evident, at least incontrovertible. First, the strength of an educational system depends upon the quality of its teachers. However enlightened the aims, however up to date and generous the equipment, however efficient the administration, the value to the children is determined by the teachers. Secondly, there is in this country a desperate shortage of teachers.

2. From these propositions it follows that the education of practically all children must in some measure suffer. We are concerned to suggest that it is the education of the children of average and less than average ability which will suffer most. The effect for them will be so serious that unless some solution is found to this problem, all other beneficial proposals for their education must be rendered almost wholly nugatory.

3. The quota system secures that no area shall exceed a certain nationally defined maximum staffing establishment. It does not and cannot necessarily ensure that the less fortunate areas shall not fall below a certain minimum. It places a limit on the affluence of the rich but only partially alleviates the poverty of the poor. And differences of this kind tend to increase not decrease. An area becomes short of teachers because it is, for various reasons, unattractive. It becomes increasingly unattractive once it is generally known to be seriously short of teachers. These forces serve to deprive certain areas of the quantity of teachers they need if they are to fulfil their statutory obligations to their children.

4. It is less generally recognised that the same kind of forces operate as between types of school. The selective schools which cater for both ends of the ability range i.e. the grammar and the ESN [Educationally Sub-Normal] schools, can both offer attractions to teachers which are not available to the schools which cater for the average. In the grammar school the sixth form gives more than prestige and academic standing - both powerful inducements in themselves. It rapidly raises the Burnham group of the school and consequently breeds graded posts from which even staff who do not themselves teach the sixth can benefit. A similar salary advantage is added to that of small classes in the ESN school. There is also a vocational satisfaction in helping the sub-normal which is less easily felt in teaching the average. The effect is that the teaching resources of an area reach the secondary modern schools last. In a scarcity situation the average child has the poorest access to the essential educational resource - teachers. And again a disparity of this kind tends always to increase. The more teachers a school has, the more it is likely to get. Conversely, heads of understaffed schools are often reluctant to advertise all their vacancies since they will know that their chances of recruiting anybody at all diminish proportionately with the length of the list.

5. We have so far considered the quantitative effects of the teacher shortage on the secondary education of the average. But shortage of numbers is almost invariably accompanied by a qualitative shortage which greatly exacerbates the problem. An advertised vacancy in a favoured area will generally present the authorities with a choice of applicants. And, since it is reasonable to assume that most appointing authorities, whether heads or administrators, are professionally competent, the best teacher secures the post. A shortage area will therefore be able to recruit only from among others' rejects who similarly are likely to be, in one way or another, less satisfactory teachers. This remains true even when the quantitative staffing position is apparently satisfactory. So again as between types of schools; the average child gets substantially less then his share of the outstanding teachers.

6. Clearly, and mercifully, there are exceptions; an excellent teacher may wish to teach in a generally unfavoured area because his home or his fiancée is there, or in a secondary modern because he feels he particularly wants to work in such a school. But these exceptions do not significantly disturb the general pattern. An outstanding teacher drawn to a shortage area for non-professional reasons will usually seek appointment in a selective school. And since he is good and the area is short he will get the post. A vocational impulse which leads a first-rate teacher to seek work with non-gifted children very often inclines him to the least able of all - the ESN. The exceptions to the picture we have outlined seldom, therefore, benefit the average child.

7. The pedagogical implications of this situation scarcely need to be stressed. No one would suppose that the average child needs less or less competent teachers than any other, though it might be argued that he needs more and better. Certainly the C and D streams in a secondary modern school might well benefit disproportionately from small classes and the best of teaching. Simply as a matter of social justice their claim to a bigger share of such resources is undeniable, but these are precisely the children for whom the provision of both sorts is the least satisfactory. Further, solutions to a serious staffing shortage seldom benefit the average or can be sought in terms of their needs. Thus, for example, the creation of an extended course may attract teachers but will often only impoverish further the provision within the school for the less able. Advertisements offering 'opportunities for work with backward classes' are rare indeed.

8. We conclude therefore that, if proposals to improve educational provision for the group under consideration are to have any reasonable chance of application on anything more than a token scale, such proposals must be linked with carefully constructed plans to ensure that the country's secondary school teaching strength is deployed in a manner appropriate to the task.

Several measures have been attempted in the effort to obtain a distribution of teachers more nearly concomitant with the aims expressed in the Education Act of 1944. None could fairly be described as positive in nature; all have been either palliatives or pipe-dreams.

9. Reliance on an all-round improvement in the supply of teachers is clearly pointless in the face of a shortage not expected to fall significantly below 50,000 (assuming current policies only) for the next twelve years (NACTST [National Advisory Council on the Training and Supply of Teachers] Seventh Report). Even if the shortage were to be arbitrarily eliminated by raising the 'maximum' size of classes for an interim period to correspond with the supply of teachers actually available, the consequent improvement in the numbers of teachers for children of average ability would not be paralleled by a corresponding increase in the quality, especially in the shortage areas. Only the overproduction of teachers (and the consequent unemployment of some of them) giving the schools at the back of the queue for teachers a worthwhile choice of candidates, would make a significant difference.

10. A more rational policy of siting training colleges in difficult areas may help to bring forward teachers with local ties in these areas but such a policy is increasingly irrelevant when one of the attractions of the teaching profession is the relative freedom of the teacher to seek a post anywhere in the country.

11. Inducements in kind - housing, removal expenses paid, generous provision of study leave, of courses for teachers, and of books and materials for classroom use are important examples - each have their advantages and disadvantages, but there is an overriding disadvantage which they have in common. The existence of the quota scheme implies that some well-placed authorities would, but for its existence, willingly pay to employ more teachers. Since such authorities are as free as any other authority to use inducements in kind, it follows that they would spend money in doing so if their use by shortage authorities (or shortage types of school) became a significant threat to their own staffing position. Inducements in kind are therefore either ineffective or, if effective, self-defeating unless their use is restricted to particular areas, categories of school, or both.

12. The quota scheme has been used as a method of limiting the quantitative maldistribution of teachers between local education authorities. Recent reports suggest that in this it has succeeded admirably, especially in coping with problems arising from the introduction of the standard three year training course. Its major limitation is however a serious one; no account is taken of the distribution of the best teachers who, being generally in the strongest position in competition for the most popular posts, tend to drift away both from shortage areas and from posts in which the principal concern is with the age and ability groups under review. An advantage of the scheme is that it sets a limit to the number of vacancies which can be advertised at any one time and therefore has some inhibiting effect upon the high rate of mobility of teachers from post to post. At the price, perhaps, of some otherwise unnecessary unemployment of geographically immobile teachers, the quota scheme is effective in improving the distribution of teachers; but its influence on the distribution of teaching ability is haphazard.

13. The only effective method now generally employed by local authorities in mitigating the effects of teaching shortages is that of accelerated promotion. Teachers needed for particular posts are offered promotion at a relatively early stage in their careers. The approach has the disadvantage that it is only applicable when a considerable proportion of the available posts carry special responsibility allowances - not a characteristic of posts concerned mainly with children of average and less than average ability. Also, when the technique can be used, considerable ingenuity is required if undesirably high rates of staff turnover are to be avoided.

14. We submit that each of these measures, or indeed any likely combination of them, is inadequate if the purpose is to ensure that the teaching of children within the Council's terms of reference is not to be unduly handicapped by the concentration of the effects of the continuing teaching shortage in this field, especially where schools in shortage areas are concerned. What is needed is a positive deployment policy for secondary school teachers (and indeed for primary school teachers also). By this is meant a policy under which relevant distinctions between various categories of need and between various categories of teachers are made and steps taken, if necessary by adjusting the salary structure for teachers, to match needs with teacher supply so far as the overall supply of teachers permits.

15. As examples of elements contributing to such a policy, the following may be useful. The first suggestion has similarities, at the national level, to the County Unattached system now operating in many areas. It involves the introduction of an element of direction into the terms of employment of some, but not all, teachers with adequate compensation provided for less favourable terms of service. The second suggestion emphasises the possibility of spending money not only to improve the overall supply of teachers, but also to further accepted aims of deployment policy while relying on the inducement principle to select the teachers concerned.

16. e.g. (i) The introduction of a considerable salary differential in favour of teachers who, under contract, would accept direction to any school in the country for which the LEA concerned could satisfy Her Majesty's Inspectors that no suitable applicant was available, would give high quality, geographically mobile teachers the opportunity to work where they were most needed and would give them sufficient reward to compensate for the loss of amenities in an equivalent post elsewhere. Admission to the panel of these contract teachers would be competitive if the differential were adequate, but it is reasonable to assume that LEAs would be most unlikely to make unreasonable requests for the services of 'panel' teachers owing to the possibility of withdrawal of such teachers by Her Majesty's Inspectors.

17. e.g. (ii) It would seem reasonable to draw a distinction between two objectives of salary policy for teachers, which might be pursued through different forms of negotiation.

The use of additional money by the Ministry of Education and the LEAs in order to reach a more satisfactory deployment of the teaching resources available to them should surely be a matter for decision by these bodies alone (although they might well consult the teachers nevertheless). The teachers' response would be made through the lists of applications.

18. We have found it impossible to suggest changes of any promise whatever which do not involve salary changes, although it is conceivable that there may be some such solution. We have also satisfied ourselves that fruitful consideration cannot be given to the Council's terms of reference without giving detailed attention to the problem of the deployment of teachers. We would therefore submit that not only is a positive deployment policy required but also that the broad principles upon which the determination of teachers' salaries are based require close examination if realistic proposals are to be made to meet this requirement.

Richard F Goodings
Simon Pratt
25 February 1963