Teacher contact ratio is a topic of perennial importance but attempting to work out what the ideal figure should be is always a frustrating business, says Sam Ellis.

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Those who attended Hull University in the late 1960s may remember someone who subsequently became an MP and who, when speaking at student union meetings, made an art form of voting in abstention no matter what the proposal. (I give a further clue to his identity; he recently served as a judge for a well-known literary prize.)

Throughout my teaching career, I worked with colleagues who could apply this same skill to any decision concerning a choice of two things. Today’s topic, teacher contact ratio, would frustrate them greatly.

In a timetable, teachers are either in planned curriculum contact with students or they are not. We need to define terms, however. ‘Planned curriculum contact’ are those periods on teachers’ timetables that should also be on the school’s curriculum plan. These include class lessons and support periods where teachers work with pupils on a planned and regular basis, within classes or outside, or in inclusion situations. A school can decide what it includes in the planned contact category, provided it works in consistent manner.

Local decision

Some schools might count an element of ‘on call’ as teacher contact time; others would run that out of management time. That is a local decision but it needs to be consistent. Periods that are not planned curriculum contact are those like PPA and management time.

Periods for ‘rarely cover’ would fall into this category but given that they will be used very rarely I would question the value of that. Time teachers may spend working with pupils on an ad hoc basis during management time is not planned curriculum contact.

Just because everyone in the room has a nose does not mean that the room itself has a nose. The reverse is true for contact ratio. The whole staff contact ratio is a useful statistic but the values for individual members of staff are not. The chart shows an ineffective school with the teacher period allocation in a 25-period cycle.

If you divide the total teaching load (=103) by the total in the “employed” column (=190) you get the contact ratio which is. 0.54 in this case. For reference, if this was the value in a real state school it would be in financial ruin! Typical values for this statistic are in the 0.7 to 0.8 area.

Aspirational value

There is no magic number when it comes to contact ratio. You can compare values between schools but I suggest that is best done through discussion; statistics from the web can be misleading. I would use a reference target of 0.78 (10 per cent PPA + 10 per cent management + 2 per cent error = 22 per cent, leaving 78 per cent or 0.78 contact). Some schools will be able to work above this value; in others it will be aspirational.

The contact ratio should be used as a planning tool. With a contact ratio of 0.78 the average teacher teaches 0.78 × 25 = 19.5 periods. Given a curriculum plan for a future year of say 1,950 teacher periods a school with a contact ratio of 0.78 would need 1,950 ÷ 19.5 = 100 full-time equivalent teachers.

Shifting the contact ratio is a key financial driver, as illustrated in previous Leader columns. See www.ascl.org.uk/resources/library/funding_tools for support materials and more detail concerning contact ratio and some exercises.

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Teacher	Roll	FTE	Employed	Teaching load	PPA	Management	Other non-contact
Sneezy	Main Scale (NQT)	1	25	19	2	0	4
Sleepy	Main scale	1	25	22	3	0	0
Dopey	Main scale	0.6	15	13	2	0	0
Doc	Head of dept	1	25	18	2	5	0
Happy	Head of year	1	25	16	2	7	0
Bashful	Assistant head	1	25	10	1	14	0
Grumpy	Deputy	1	25	5	1	19	0
Snow White	Head	1	25	0	0	25	0
Totals		7.6	190	103	13	70	4

•  Sam Ellis is ASCL's funding specialist
  

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