I recently saw an ad by the Teacher Development Agency for new teachers. It struck me as odd as there now so many teachers who don't have a hope of finding work mainly due to the new workforce rules which allow non qualified staff into classes.

I sent them an e-mail asking for information on how much they spend on advertising. Thee figures blew me away.

They spent an unbelievable £8, 082,722.42 on advertising in several formats during 2007-2008. This represents a £500,000 increase from the previous year. That would be enough to employ almost 400 teachers. The money that is thrown at these education quangos is becoming obscene.

Out of curiosity I had a look at what sort of budget the above department has. I came across some interesting figures such as:

"We are able to provide the cost of taxi travel claimed by Departmental officials from administrative budgets for 2007-08 and 2006-07 as follows:"

2007-08 £247,738
2006-07 £268,857



"The data provided is based on rail bookings dealt with by DCSF's Business Travel Provider Carlson Wagonlit Travel. Location details are not recorded for travel using hire car and grey fleet, only the mileage is recorded.

The annual travel costs for rail travel between sites are as follws"

April 08-Feb 09 - £840,984

2007-8 - £834,433

2006-7 £1,254,536



"Details of expenditure on private sector consultants incurred by the Department in 2007-2008 is £4,863,000.00.

The expenditure recorded relates to admin costs and does not include costs that may be charged to a programme account."



"The Office for Government and Commerce (OGC) framework agreements for Organisational Consultancy ? Organisational Development Education and Children?s Services, provide rates across a range of consultancy grades including Junior Consultant, Consultant, Senior Consultant, Principal Consultant, and Managing Director/Partner. The daily rates differ for each organisation, but, across all the agreements, the range is £475 to £1900, as at April 2008."



So we are all losing our jobs because we are not "economically viable" but the department can spend almost £5 million on consultants in one year. The more I look at stuff like this the angrier I get.

With all the talk about budget restraint and belt tightening while supply teachers see their jobs fly out the window I had an interesting look at the deadweight GTC's budget for 2009-10. Read them and weep:

Registration: £4.4m

Communications - £3.7m

Regulation: £3.6m

Governanace, fee collection and administration: £3.5

Networks and the TLA: £3.4m

Policy and research: £2.5m

So that's a total of a staggering £21 million of teachers' registration fees. Of that they are spending £3.7m on "communications" which I assume means advertising etc. Then there all the other departments such as OFSTED and ESTYN, the TDA, the DfES, the Department for Children, Schools and Families, and so on. If it wasn't serious it would be funny.

After pondering the current state of education I was reminiscing when teachers could actually get a job and I came across this old chestnut brought to us by the DfES back in 2003. It was a report with an almost quasi-fascist title; "Workforce Reform-Blue Skies." Its main points were:

* The school of the future will deliver "personalised learning" through school teams including support staff

* Deregulation freeing schools from the need to have a full complement of qualified teachers should be exploited

* Teacher numbers should be cut to pay for a better adult:pupil ratio.

*Targets for recruiting teachers should be replaced with targets for higher-level assistants

* Support staff will play bigger roles in direct teaching and teachers will become "ruthlessly focussed on expert teaching, planning and pupil assessment"

* Funding will be tight with new reforms paid for from existing budgets

* The best classroom teachers may eventually be paid more than school leaders

At the time, ministers tried to distance themselves in a way that they wouldn't have looked out of place on the set of Yes, Prime Minister. Also, some anonymous junior civil servant who was responsible for the report was blamed.

However, a few years on minsters have finally got the chance to start implementing at least some of these ideas with the perfect excuse of the recession. They are not so stupid as to do it all at once. First of all you replace all those dispensable qualified supply teachers with non-qualified staff to ease the burden of those down trodden permanent staff who will be thankful of all this new free time. Once teachers get used to this Trojan Horse staffing, redundancies will be made to permanent staff all because of the recession and budget restraints.

Its funny how the budget restraint argument doesn't apply to things such as the illegal acts of aggression, sometimes referred to as a wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan which costs the UK over £2 billion per year or the Olympics which is estimated to cost almost £10 billion.

I suppose no-one can accuse the government of not getting their priorities straight.

I came across an interesting discussion post when I was looking at the Times Education Supplement website today.

Someone had sent emails to OFSTED asking for their position on the use of unqualified staff such as cover supervisors. He posted their responses. The first one was the usual meaningless management speak type answer. The second response contained this unbelievable statement,

"Currently, we do not have hold a view that using unqualified teachers is detrimental to teaching and learning."

Apart from the error of the use of the words "have" and "hold", this is an incredible admission from the body that is supposed to uphold standards in education.

Imagine the NHS saying the exact same thing but about doctors. They would be laughed at.

I remember seeing a UNICEF study from 2007 which measured the quality of childhood based on a number of factors including education. Thee UK came last out of 22 European countries. With attitudes like OFSTED's, is it any wonder?

I recently sent an email to all the major political parties regarding the increasing use of unqualified staff in schools. The only response I got was from Plaid Cymru. I was given a rather incomprehensible response as follows:



"Plaid Cymru believes that the ability of schools to serve children and their families successfully is wholly dependent on the commitment and hard work of Wales’ teachers and support staff. Our aim when in Government will be to provide teachers with the support and training to give them genuinely professional status. Plaid will ensure that children are taught by qualified, registered teachers supported by classroom assistants. Plaid will create a clear training and career pathway for classroom assistants supported by a national pay frame. We will also guarantee a year’s teaching experience to all teachers who are newly qualified in Wales to ensure they can complete their Induction year and become Qualified Registered Teachers.

We believe that the National Assembly for Wales should seek to create a new Teaching Profession for Wales; robust and confident in its ability to offer learners the highest quality of education, expecting rigorous standards of its members and attracting to it, the very best of our citizens. In order to achieve this, it is of fundamental importance that we improve recruitment to the teaching profession at primary and secondary level. This will require improvements in salaries, working conditions and career progression, designed to raise the perception of teaching and the public esteem in which the profession is held."



All I wanted was an answer to the question on where they stood on a swell of qualified teachers who now have little or no hope of ever teaching in a school again because of the rapidly increasing use of unqualified staff. It is happening right now. Is my question that complicated?

While I was looking at some education stats today I came a cross some interesting information on the General Teaching Council's website. There budget for 2009-10 is a staggering £21.1m almost all paid for by teachers' registration fees. This is a break down of their budget:

Registration: £4.4m
Communications - £3.7m
Regulation: £3.6m
Governanace, fee collection and administration: £3.5
Networks and the TLA: £3.4m
Policy and research: £2.5m


You might notice the £3.7m for "communications". This includes, I imagine, the salaries for non-jobs such as a Media Relations Adviser, Communications and PR manager and a Marketing and PR Manager. Why on earth does an organization which oversees teachers in schools need to spend almost £4m of our money advertising themselves? Are they trying to sell something?

I am going to see if I can get a breakdown on what they spend some of this money on and salaries. Watch this space!