Is Teaching a Vocation: The Distribution of Higher Qualified New Teachers by Challenge

of UK High Schools

Dr John Brown Institute of Education

Research Papers in Education (In press) Vol 30,1 2014

Quality of teachers determines the quality of education

Every child should have a fairly even chance of being taught by high quality teachers

“Every child taught by a high quality teacher” mandated legislation in US No Child Left Behind

Distribution of high quality teachers likely to be uneven across schools

High levels of geographic/social segregation in UK schools concentrates disadvantaged pupils in some schools creating conditions which may deter many teachers

Allen, Burgess, & Mayo, 2012 Experienced staff more likely to leave challenging

schools Challenging schools tend to employ younger teachers

Higher quality teachers unlikely to be distributed evenly between schools

Aversion to challenging schools has always thought to be held in check by vocation motivation Many teachers are thought to be attracted to

challenging environments to provide fair educational opportunities

However, the extent teachers seek challenging schools has never been measured

Vocational motivation never been tested

Measuring teacher effectiveness is highly problematic

Robust methods involve measuring the amount of progress pupils when taught by one teacher

No access to this arrangement of data Next best available Proxy measure, something

related to teaching quality Teacher academic qualifications thought to be

important in ability to teach

How to identify higher quality teachers

United States studies: The selectivity of the University attended - Summers

& Wolfe, 1977; Ehrenberg & Brewer, 1994) Grades achieved to enter university - Ferguson &

Ladd, 1996; Ferguson R. F., 1991 Degrees subject taken and grade achieved -

Aaronson, Barrow, & Sander, 2007; Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2007

All found significant impact of academic achievement on teacher effectiveness

Teachers academic qualifications known to be related to teaching effectiveness

Effective Provision of Preschool Education (EPPE) age 4 level of qualification is among the most important factors predicting outcomes - Sylva, Melhuish, Sammons, Siraj-Blatchford, & Taggart, 2004

…importance of teachers academic qualifications…is reflected in the value education professionals place on qualifications in teacher hiring decisions,

“…a reasonable basis for documenting systematic inequity in the distribution of teacher quality” pp2 (Miller & Chait, 2008).

Teacher Qualifications important in hiring decisions

“…one of the few features common to all the world’s most successful education systems are very high academic qualifications required to become a teacher” - Barber, 2007; OECD, 2003; Tikly, 2013; Auguste, Kihn, & Miller, 2010

So what kinds of schools do our higher qualified new teachers choose to work in?

Other indications of the importance of teachers academic qualifications

All newly qualified teachers in England over three years 2006 to 2009 n = 37,039

First Degree subject and degree result grade Employment history

Qualification Measure - Average entrance requirement (UCAS tariff) over three years to enter the teachers degree subject

This study - Teachers Data

Multiplied by the grade they achieved in this degree. Fourth Class Honours = 1, Third Class Honours = 2, Other Award Pass = 3, Lower Second Class Honours = 4, Upper Second Class Honours = 5, First Class Honours = 6.

Emphasises teachers gaining high grades at university in subjects that have higher entrance requirements

Taking into account teachers performance when at University

School Attainment at age 11 and 16: average points score over three years

School Income Disadvantage: average percentage of pupils eligible for state welfare benefits

School Progress (Value Added): average point score improvement between age 11 and age 16

over three years School Attainment progress accounting for pupils’ advantages

and disadvantages (Contextual value added): average point score improvement between age 11 and age 16

over three years adjusted for income disadvantage, ethnicity, Language

Method - Schools Challenge

Teachers qualifications were significantly correlated with each school characteristic investigated

Results

Correlations between New Teachers Qualifications and school characteristics

e.g. a strong attraction to one kind of schools may produce an overall correlation when there is equal attraction to other kinds of schools

Possibly new teachers are strongly attracted to the highest attaining schools, - but are equally attracted to schools with different levels attainment

But correlations can be misleading

To test whether new teachers attraction to schools were consistent across all levels of characteristics Characteristics divided into 20% groups (quintiles) Analysis of variance was used to test whether there

was any difference in the qualifications of new teacher working in schools with different levels of characteristic

To test whether qualifications differed between any quintile and another other quintile Tukeys Post Hoc tests were carried out

Significant differences in the qualifications of new teachers in schools with different quintiles of

attainment at age 16

Significant differences in the qualifications of new teachers in schools with different quintiles of

attainment at age 11

Significant differences in the qualifications of new teachers in schools with different quintiles of

Income Deprivation

Significant differences in the qualifications of new teachers in schools with different quintiles of

Progress age 11 to 16

Interpreting recruitment relating to school progress is problematic As some schools achieve high progress with

higher attainers Others achieve high progress with lower

attainers very different kinds of schools will have the

same progress

The relationship between new teachers qualifications and schools

progress

To test whether higher qualified teacher more often find employment in schools that different progress with different attainers Schools categorised by high and low progress and

attainment High = >.5 SD above the average over three years Low = <.-5 SD below the average over three years

High Progress with High Intake Attainment Low Progress with High Intake Attainment High Progress with Low Intake Attainment Low Progress with Low Intake Attainment

ANOVA F (3, 15,083) = 133.5, p<.001, Sig highest teacher quals - High Progress High Intake

Attainment Sig higher teacher quals - Low Progress High Intake

Attainment Than both

High Progress Low Intake Attainment Low Progress Low Intake Attainment

No sig dif teacher quals between High Progress Low Intake Attainment Low Progress Low Intake Attainment

Differences in qualifications of new teachers working in schools with high and low levels of

attainment and progress

Higher qual teachers more often worked in schools with high progress with high attainers than any other kind of school

Higher qual teachers more often worked in schools with low progress with high attainers than high progress with low attainers Suggesting that attainment levels of schools is

more important to new teachers than the progress they achieve

contextual progress cannot distinguish between progress with advantaged or with disadvantaged

So, schools were categorised same way as progress High Progress High Affluence Low Progress High Affluence High Progress Low Affluence Low Progress Low Affluence

Contextual progress

Sig highest teacher quals - High Progress High Affluence

Sig higher teacher quals - Low Progress High Affluence

Than both High Progress Low Affluence Low Progress Low Affluence

Sig higher teacher quals - High Progress Low Affluence than Low Progress Low Affluence

Results

Higher qualified new teachers more often sort employment in schools that achieve high progress with advantaged pupils i.e. some of the school that achieve some of

the highest absolute academic standards They are next most attracted to schools that

achieve low progress with advantaged pupils i.e. least challenging pedagogic and socio-

economically deprived schools

Higher qualified teachers are more attracted to schools with the least demanding professional/pedagogic and socio-economic conditions than schools that reduce educational inequalities

Analysis so far is informative of the strength of association between qualifications and school characteristics

But does not tell us the size of the imbalance in terms of number of teachers over or under-represented in schools

The size of recruitment imbalances between less challenging and more

challenging schools

If the top quintile highest qualified teachers were distributed evenly between school quintiles , 20% of them would work in schools in each quintile

the percentage actually employed in each quintile was subtracted by the hypothetical amount (20%) if they were even distributed

To provide a measure of the total imbalance across all schools the difference in each quintile was summed

The size of recruitment imbalance

The size of recruitment imbalances between schools with higher and lower

attainment

Affluence

Progress and Contextual Progress

Top 20% highest qualified new teachers were Over represented in higher attaining schools

by 18.3% Over represented in more affluent schools by

14% Recruitment of higher qualified new teachers

is imbalanced in favour of high attaining and affluent schools by around 1/5 and 1/6 of the new teachers workforce

Size of recruitment imbalance

Challenging schools tend to hire more new teachers lose more of their experienced staff - Allen et al (2012)

Therefore estimate of overall imbalance in whole teaching profession likely to be underestimated by any perspective based on new teachers

Discussion

Higher qualified new teachers more often seek and find employment in schools with higher levels of attainment that achieve the highest academic standards with some of most able and advantaged

They are more attracted to schools with the least challenging conditions, both pedagogically and socio-economically – than schools which narrow the gap

Conclusion

Challenging schools recruit from a restricted pool of new teachers

The size of the imbalance is large– possibly around 20% of the teacher workforce

Insofar as we feel teacher academic qualifications are important indications of the quality of teachers…

… these results indicate it will not be possible for challenging schools to narrow the gap as challenging schools recruiting less able teachers will not catch up with school recruiting more able teachers