Age and Employment: A Study of the Career Destinations of Primary PGCE Students
Elizabeth Bird
Open University
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Conference, University of Sussex, at Brighton, 2-5 September, 1999.
Abstract
This paper presents a quantitative analysis of studies on the early teaching careers of primary school teachers who gained Qualified Teacher Status after following the Open University’s part-time, distance-learning Post Graduate Certificate of Education programme, and compares the findings to available national data. The average age of Open University PGCE students is higher than that for other initial teacher training institutions, and so the key theme is the way in whichmaturity affects entry to teaching.
The findings of the study challenge recent assertions that mature entrants are unable to obtain teaching posts, and indicate that the employment situation for older newly qualified teachers is better than has been suggested. Surveys of employment status produced within one year of qualification indicate that the percentage of newly qualified teachers in employment decreases with age. Open University data shows that the number of mature students in employment increases with time after qualification, and that only a very small minority of students experience difficulty in obtaining posts.
More detailed longitudinal studies of teacher employment are needed to inform policy makers; in the interim, this study suggests that the recruitment of mature entrants should be encouraged.
Introduction and Literature review
To what extent do students who qualify as teachers subsequently enter the profession? This has become a topical issue as a consequence of the current concern with the recruitment of adequate numbers of high quality new teachers. The publication by the Teacher Training Agency (TTA 1998a) of its first profiles for initial teacher training (ITT) has further brought this issue to the forefront by using employment data as a performance indicator for training institutions.
In 1989, Parkes referred to “the current concern about the large number of newly-qualified graduate teachers who do not enter teaching”. More recently, the government Green Paper “Teachers meeting the challenge of change”(DfEE 1998a) noted a similar concern, and Howson (TES, 19/02/99) asked, “Whatever happens to the trainee teachers?”, quoting provisional figures indicating that only two thirds of teachers qualifying in 1996 were in post by March 1997. However, Pearson (1997, p.49) reported that, “In recent years, over 70 per cent of teachers completing a postgraduate teaching course have moved straight into teaching; while others took time off to job-search.” The House Of Commons Select Committee’s first report (1997) indicates that 80% of those who qualify take up a teaching post either immediately or at some subsequent point (pg3), and TTA (1998a) data gives an even higher figure of 81% of primary-trained newly qualified teachers (NQTs) who qualified in 1997 in teaching employment by March 1998.
These different figures indicate the difficulties in stating a reliable figure for the proportion of trainees who enter teaching. Each of the published sources of national data on teacher employment obtains its data in different ways, and each produces rather different figures for what might appear to be the same statistic – the percentage of newly qualified teachers in employment by March of the year after qualification. However, whatever the figure, there is a genuine concern over the percentage of trainees who do not enter the profession. Most of the sources of national employment data provide figures of around 3% for those who do not seek teaching employment after qualification. This leaves a group of trainees who are still seeking posts nine months after completion of their course. The assertion of Dean (TES,1996) is that this second group comprises a large proportion of those who trained as mature students.
Recently, increasing attention has been paid to the area of mature entry to the profession. This has become particularly pertinent, not only because of the emphasis on success in finding employment, but also because of a context in which the government aims to increase diversity of training routes and is encouraging the establishment of specific initiatives to encourage mature, career-change entrants to the profession (see for example, Millet 1997, Barnard 1998). The Green Paper proposes the establishment of flexible, modular postgraduate teacher training which should be attractive to “more mature career changers” (p.46). The DfEE recognises “the importance of attracting entrants into teaching from the widest possible range of backgrounds, including mature entrants, with experience of other working environments (DfEE 1998a, p.5).
Researchers agree that “maturity is likely to be a positive attribute and the mature applicant for a post a ‘quality product’”, Ashcroft and Peacock (1993, p.57), Chambers (1993). However, there is evidence to suggest that some mature qualifiers experience difficulty in entering the profession, either on account of the extra costs involved in employing older entrants with relevant experience, or as a result of discrimination on account of their age, or gender, or both.
National data on the destinations of those completing courses of initial training consistently indicates smaller percentages in employment as age increases (DfEE, HESA, Smithers 1999a), although, as Howson (1996) points out, “What is obvious is that fewer of the older students end up inteaching. What we do not know is whether this is by choice or because they are unable to find a teaching post”.
The recently formed Association of Teachers Against Ageism (ATAA) provides case histories of some of those who have been unsuccessful in obtaining employment (Jackson, 1999). A common theme among these personal histories is the appointment of young NQTs in preference to mature entrants or re-entrants. Smithers (1999b) writes,
“It has been suggested that the apparent bias against older teachers is an unintended consequence of financial delegation”.(p.3)
There is a certain amount of evidence to support this view (eg. Chambers (1993)). Huckman and Hill (1994) studied Local management of schools, and quoted one head teacher:
“We’ve recently appointed someone younger and cheaper, but I’m uneasy about whether she’s going to be as good as the one we haven’t appointed, but she’s on a fixed term contract anyway.” (p.191)
A memorandum submitted to the House of Commons Education and Employment Committee, reports that contributing head teachers had drawn attention to,
“The financial constraints which sometimes forced them to appoint the youngest and the cheapest rather than the best” (Robinson et al, 1997 p.90).
While the financial issue is clearly a real one, Smithers (1999b) and Jackson (1999) have suggested that this represents only part of the picture, and that ageist employers, who prefer to recruit younger teachers, discriminate against mature entrants. George and Maguire (1998) suggest that mature women are further discriminated against on account of their gender. This is particularly because,
“Head teachers may worry that family commitments may make mature students (especially women) less serious about their careers….” (Ashcroft and Peacock 1993, p. 69).
The issue is, however, by no means a simple one of ageism, with some students and schools seeing maturity as a positive attribute.(Whitehead et al 1997,1998)
All available national data on NQT employment indicates the position at March in the year after qualification. It may be that the higher percentage of mature students not in post and still seeking employment is a consequence of different patterns of job-search, rather than of discrimination. Certainly, there is an indication (Whitehead et al 1998) that some older mature students may not make applications until some time after the completion of their course. Also, as recognised by the TTA,
“Local vacancy rates may limit opportunities for newly qualified teachers to gain a post in the year after they qualify. This factor may be even more relevant in the case of distance learning and two-year undergraduate courses, where trainees tend to be from geographically less mobile groups (for example, those who have families). (TTA 1998a introduction pg. 4)
Mature entrants may also apply for different types of posts. It is likely that the type of post sought, as well as geographical considerations, will affect the applicant’s success in the job market. The casualisation of the teaching force, with an increasing proportion of teachers employed on fixed-term contracts (Williams 1997), has implications for new entrants to the profession, with newly qualified teachers the most likely to be appointed on fixed-term contracts Millet (1997 p.16).
Case histories from the Association of Teachers Against Ageism (Jackson 1999) indicate that many of the teachers concerned have been employed on a short term, part-time, or supply basis, and that the difficulty they have experienced is in obtaining full-time, permanent positions.
In 1989, Parkes wrote, “Little is known about the performance of mature PGCE students as compared with their younger counterparts” (p.232). There still appears to have been little large-scale, systematic, comparative study of the entry of mature entrants to teaching. Whitehead et al(1998) state:
“To date, there has been a lack of empirical evidence comparing student cohorts entering different types of training provision” and that “if diversity of training routes is part of the policy agenda to meet problems of teacher supply, then it is important to discover whether students….succeed in obtaining jobs in teaching”.(p.268)
The original aim of the study reported here was to address this issue by establishing the extent to which Open University primary PGCE students, who gained QTS after following an ‘alternative’, part-time, distance learning route, did obtain jobs in teaching, and to compare their success in finding employment to that of the national cohort. In the course of this work, it became apparent that the issue of mature entry to the profession was of great significance in considering the employment of Open University students, whose age profile is very different to that of students following traditional PGCE courses. Therefore, this paper presents findings relating the employment status of the students to the age at which they achieve QTS, and examines these in relation to the issues of mature entry to the teaching profession which have been identified in the research literature.
The employment of NQTs:
(i) National data:
DfEE data National figures for the destinations of those completing courses of initial teacher training are published annually by the Department for Education providing information as at 31st March. The published data gives the numbers of those in full- or part-time service in England and Wales, including those employed in maintained and independent schools and other educational establishments. It does not include supply teachers. DfEE data is combined data for both primary and secondary trained teachers. The overall percentages of NQTs in service as calculated from the DfEE data are only 68% and 66% for completers in 1995 and 1996, respectively. The 1998 DfEE publication (96 completers) notes that the figures for those in service are provisional, and will rise due to late receipt of annual service returns. Percentage figures include those for whom service details are not known in the ‘not in service’ category. As a result of this, the DfEE figures should be considered as a ‘bottom line’ figure, which may well considerably underestimate the true number of those entering some form of teaching employment.
HESA data Higher Education Statistics Authority data, also published annually, is collected from higher education institutions and gives employment data for students completing undergraduate and graduate courses, including PGCE courses. HESA does not distinguish between those trained for primary and secondary phases. Employment data is for appointments which had been determined by 31 December, and took effect no later than the following March. HESA data gives the fraction of students entering employment of those whose destination is known. For those completing PGCE courses 1996 and 1997 HESA data suggests that the percentages entering teaching employment were about 81% and 85%*[*] respectively for the two cohorts.
TTA Profiles data . The Teacher Training Agency published data on the employment of newly qualified teachers for the first time in 1998 (TTA, 1998a). This compiled data provided by the training institutions themselves. Percentage employment figures as at 2 March 1998 were presented as the fraction of all those who gained QTS. This produced low employment rates for those institutions where the destinations of large numbers of NQTs were unknown. The sector average for primary PGCE completers in 1997 was 81%.
Recalculating TTA employment data as a percentage of those whose destinations are known may give a clearer indication of the employment rate for institutions such as the Open University where a high proportion of students are of unknown destination. This may well give an upper limit to the range in which the true figure lies. The sector average figure, calculated in this way for primary completers in 1997, is 92%. On this basis, for primary PGCE students, we can state that the percentage of students who were in post by 2nd March after completing a PGCE course in 1997 is most likely to lie between 81% and 92%. This indicates clearly that the vast majority of those trained on primary PGCE courses do indeed enter teaching service soon after completion of their course
TTA Standard questionnaires data Most recently, further information about NQT employment has emerged from the TTA’s collection of information using their standard questionnaires (TTA 1998b). ITT institutions were provided with the analysis for students from their own institution and for the sample as a whole. Unlike the other available data, this data provides figures for the average age of respondents. Data indicates that 85% of respondents were in service at the time of the survey, 13th March 1998. This compares with the high employment figures from the HESA and TTA profiles data.
(ii) Open University data:
The Open University PGCE course is an 18 month part-time, distance learning course, starting in February and being completed the following July. The first cohort of Open University PGCE students started in February 1994, and is referred to as the 94 cohort. A basic postal questionnaire is used each year to establish employment information for the cohort who have recently qualified, achieving around 60% response. In order to achieve a higher response rate, non-respondents from the 1997 cohort were contacted by telephone. This was in response to a concern that employment data for institutions with a low response rate appeared in a bad light as represented by the TTA. The telephone follow-up enabled a 90% response rate to be achieved for the cohort by June 1999.
The postal survey of the 1997 cohort gave 62% of respondents in post at October 1998, and 77% at June 1999.The lower October figures, which give the position only 4 months after completion of the course, suggest that many students may not enter posts immediately after qualification.
The other source of OU data is a telephone survey of students carried out in July 1998. 838 interviews were completed, representing a 66% sample. Unlike the postal survey figures, the telephone survey produced data across 3 cohorts, thus indicating employment status 1 year, 2 years and 3 years after completion for the three cohorts, respectively. Of the 838 students contacted in the survey, 247 were from the 94 cohort, 208 from 95 and 383 from 96 representing samples of 63%, 64% and 69%, and of 66% overall.
The telephone survey found that 77% of the respondents were in post as teachers. The percentages are remarkably consistent across the three cohorts, with figures of 78.5%, 75.5% and 76.5% for 94, 95 and 96 respectively, with the highest percentage being for the 94 cohort, for whom the figures represent the situation 3 years after qualification.
It is important to be aware that survey data provides a snapshot of employment information at one point in time. The OU telephone survey indicated that, of the 838 students, 194 (23%) were not employed in teaching at the time of the survey. However, only 131 students (15.6 %) had not taught since completing their PGCE. Of those who had entered teaching, but who were not teaching at the time of the survey, 70% intended to remain within the profession. This suggests that the percentage of the sample that could be considered to have entered the profession is as high as 82% overall, and as 86% for the 94 cohort.
Comparing OU figures for those in post at the time of the survey with TTA Profile figures (1998a) shows that the figure for the OU is below that for the national cohort. A number of sets of national data (HESA 1998, TTA 1998a, TTA 1998b) give figures for those students who were not seeking teaching posts. This data indicates that the percentage of Open University primary students who do not seek to enter teaching after gaining their qualification is below the national figure. Given the particularly high level of commitment demanded of OU students, we might expect this to be the case. The numbers of those who do not seek posts is clearly not a factor that contributes to the difference in employment figures between the OU and the national cohort. Research on mature entrants suggests that the explanation is more likely to lie in the particular age profile of Open University students.