“We simply add another point or two to their salary and that normally secures them.” So one headteacher explained to me the process of recruiting that most endangered of species, a physics teacher.
When Michael Gove first relaxed the strictures of the national pay scale and unleashed performance pay, we were still largely unaware of the scale of the recruitment crisis coming down the line.
Neither Mr Gove - then education secretary, but too busy these days basking in President Trump’s orange glow to worry about details of the English teacher supply model - nor most education observers gave much thought to what would play out if there were a drought of applicants.
What happens, as my friendly head observed, is that school leaders use freedom over pay not as a way of rewarding excellence, but simply to recruit staff in shortage subjects. Thus, physics teachers are paid markedly more than their friends in other departments only because of the discipline they teach.
But none of that is new - I’ve lost count of how many leaders have angrily outlined the problem to me. What is new, however, is the government’s reforms to the National Funding Formula (NFF) for schools. And there are some interesting parallels to the introduction of remuneration reform to be drawn. Restructuring teachers’ working conditions just as the teacher supply model is about to fall over is not wholly dissimilar to rewriting the funding mechanism for schools at the very same moment that flow of cash into schools becomes a trickle. In short, one might characterise it as unorthodox policy-making.
As such, the government’s apparent determination to push on with its new funding formula might be easy to write off as foolhardy.
But I’ve an alternative: I’m going to call it brave.
Why now for the funding formula?
It is worth remembering what happened the last time there was real talk of a new funding formula, one that would balance out the very obvious inequities in the way schools around the country are funded. As Mr Gove and his team had several tilts at the problem, often getting close to unleashing their funding formula to the world, ready to finally sort out one of education’s great injustices. Downing Street would then wade in and order it shelved: it was too politically sensitive.
Experts may believe that 2017’s version of the new funding formula is about as good as you can get it, but it’s still a political quagmire. Schools who were told their funding was safe are finding out that it isn’t, and inner-London schools that bask in media spotlight and endless political visits are going to see very real cuts.
All of which begs the question, why do it? Are ministers mad to commit to this at the very moment the penny is being pinched in schools across the country? Why now? To which the obvious answer is, why not?
The country is distracted by the insanity of brexit and education has its own equivalent in the form of new grammars. If heads are preparing to face cuts anyway, why not introduce a few more while they’re in the mindset. Teachers might notice: but there’s every chance most parents will put it down to austerity, which is about to bite very deep in schools.
Theresa May’s team may not notice either. They appear convinced, probably rightly, that the government’s success will rest or fall on Brexit, not education funding mechanisms. Why not be brave and do the right thing, while all eyes are elsewhere? Could it be what Homer Simpson once memorably described as a “crisitunity”?
If Justine Greening thinks she can get away with it and that the political stars are aligned, she is right to make this courageous political move. Just don’t botch it up: we don’t want to have to go through this again.
Ed Dorrell his head of content at the TES
Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow TES on Twitter and like TES on Facebook
