Disadvantaged schools recruiting fewer ‘strong’ teachers, analysis shows

Schools with high levels of disadvantage are finding it more difficult to recruit high-quality teachers than those with less advantaged cohorts, new analysis suggests.

A new report by SchoolDash and Teacher Tapp shines a light on how schools with poorer pupils are still struggling to recruit teachers they deem “strong”, and are more likely to hire candidates they have doubts about.

One of government’s core policy ambitions is to halve the disadvantage gap between pupils, by the time they finish secondary school.

Schools broadly find recruitment easier…

An earlier Teacher Tapp and SchoolDash report found the teacher labour market is “contracting” with secondary vacancies hitting an historic low.

It suggested this is because schools are anticipating falling pupils rolls, while a weak wider labour market is suppressing teacher turnover.

Against this backdrop, the new report finds schools are generally finding it “markedly easier” to recruit than two years ago.

The proportion of teachers reporting no applications or a weak pool of candidates at the school they were working in within the last year has almost halved from 39 per cent in May 2024 to 21 per cent in May 2026.

Fewer schools extended closing dates (26 per cent, down from 39 per cent), interviewed without being able to appoint (30 per cent, down from 41 per cent) or made reluctant appointments (27 per cent, down from 35 per cent).

… but disadvantaged schools struggle

However, the picture is far from even.

The report looked at the outcome of recent recruitment by school disadvantage level, and found “a clear gradient”.

Almost half (49 per cent) of the most affluent state schools reported appointing a strong candidate, compared to just 36 per cent of the most deprived schools. Among fee-paying schools, this figure was 61 per cent.

The report also found disadvantaged schools were more likely to appoint a candidate about whom they had reservations (36 per cent, compared to 31 per cent of the most affluent schools).

Meanwhile, nine per cent of the most disadvantaged schools had been unable to appoint a teacher, and gave up or covered the role internally, during the last year.

This compares to just three per cent of the least deprived schools.

The data was gathered via a Teacher Tapp poll of more than 2,400 teachers, who were asked about the most recent teaching role they were involved in recruiting for this academic year.

The report also found that applicant pools “are themselves stratified by advantage”.

Around one-quarter (24 per cent) of the least deprived schools reported having several strong applicants to choose between, compared to just 16 per cent of the most deprived schools.

Meanwhile just eight per cent of the least disadvantaged schools said nobody appointable applied, compared to 15 per cent of the most deprived schools.

Job market ‘contracting’

As suggested in April, the new report – which comes after the 31 May teacher resignation deadline – shows secondary vacancies have hit an historic low.

SchoolDash has monitored the volume of job adverts posted by secondary schools over the last nine years.

It shows secondary job adverts are down by 27 per cent on last year, and 49 per cent beneath pre-pandemic levels in 2018-19 – an “unprecedented” scale of decline.

The drop is consistent across all subjects, even traditionally hard-to-recruit ones like maths and science, where adverts are down 20 per cent and 28 per cent.

Languages has seen the biggest drop since before the pandemic, at 58 per cent.

Meanwhile at primary – where teacher demand has been falling for several years amid falling pupil numbers – recruitment appears to have stabilised at a relatively low level.

SchoolDash doesn’t monitor primary vacancies, but Teacher Tapp polling suggests the proportion of primary teachers reporting their school has not yet advertised any jobs this season is around the same as last year, at 30 per cent.

Market ‘deeply unequal’

Professor Becky Allen, co-founder of Teacher Tapp, said the labour market “has seized up” with schools not replacing staff, meaning fewer opportunities, and fewer teachers leaving.

“Even this tighter market is deeply unequal,” she said.

“The most advantaged schools still appoint a strong candidate far more often than the most disadvantaged, because disadvantaged schools simply attract weaker applicant pools. An easier market on paper is not an equal one.”

Meanwhile Jenni French, head of STEM in Schools at Gatsby Charitable Foundation, said: “It is concerning that disadvantaged schools continue to face the weakest applicant pools.

“A fall in advertised vacancies must not be mistaken for a problem solved.”

An Education Policy Institute (EPI) report last year also suggested secondaries were finding it harder to recruit teachers with subject expertise.

The proportion of lessons taught by teachers with a relevant degree in disadvantaged schools had dropped to 47 per cent since 2016-17. This was 10 percentage points lower than the most advantage schools – a gap that had widened by four percentage points.

Earlier this week, analysis by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) highlighted schools with higher disadvantage are also losing primary pupils at more than twice the rate of those with the lowest disadvantage.