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Government ‘exploring’ national teacher vacancies website plan

The government is considering setting up a national teacher vacancies website in response to complaints by schools over the cost of recruitment and job advertising, Nicky Morgan has revealed.

The education secretary told the Association of School and College Leaders annual conference in Birmingham today that she was “very interested” in the idea of a central website which allowed school leaders to avoid the high costs of using supply agencies.

Her comments come after it was revealed some schools were spending tens of thousands of pounds with agencies to fill gaps in their workforce.

Expanding on her comments during a press conference after her speech, Ms Morgan told journalists the government recognised schools were spending “a lot of money” on agency fees.

She said: “People have called for this for quite a long time. There must be a better way for the profession to find teachers and advertise vacancies, so it’s something we continue to explore with the profession.”

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9 Comments

  1. K.Haw

    This would be an amazing idea. It would cut the astronomical cost to advertise and would be a one stop shop for those looking for a job. Everyone is a winner. This can’t happen soon enough.

  2. wizzobravo

    AAAARRRGGH! Get rid of this incompetent buffoon!

    There are vacancies unfilled because there are not enough teachers to fill them, or the job advertised is not sufficiently attractive to risk leaving the post that you are accustomed to.

    Most teachers are reporting intolerable workloads and so are beginning to leave in droves, especially the more experienced practitioners who may be taking advantage of early retirement. Education is losing a vital group of incredible, experienced professionals because they no longer want to work in this fiasco that we call state education.

    How bad is it getting. Even Ofsted are becoming aware that no-one wants to lead schools. Who would? Not when everything you have worked hard to preserve and protect can be smashed on the basis of one cohort’s data.

    These morons have tinkered with the machine so much they haven’t noticed that it’s only running on three wheels, and the oil needs changing. We’re heading towards an engine seizure folks, and Ms Morgan is the mechanic who’s going to fix things? I don’t think so.

    • Janet Downs

      It’s called. ‘Acting first; thinking later’. That was the description given to the DfE’s approach to education reform by the Education Select Committee’s chair. I agree – although I might disagree with the ‘thinking later’.

      • wizzobravo

        It’s amazing how badly reported such a comment was? It’s a pretty damning verdict. What is the DfE going to do about it? I guess it’ll be the usual.

        Nada.

  3. Joseph Dunn

    I taught in the UK for almost 20 years before coming to Canada.I cannot believe how the government is treating the teachers there.It was inevitable that something like this was going to happen given the fact that teachers were up against it from all sectors of society.Canada treats teachers with respect and pays them a decent salary for the important work they do.This work is just as important in the UK and yet there are problems and teachers are getting out at an enormous rate.I really want to congratulate the UK teachers for the great job that they do and hope they get the recognition they so richly deserve.

  4. Joseph Dunn

    Yes they recruited from the east of Canada not the west.I have taught in Alberta for twenty years and immigration has been strong and many schools have been built in the time I have taught.Teachers who have come from other parts of Canada and the UK have been given jobs without the nonsense of Ofsted and the low salary they receive in the UK.It really is a question of moving across the country and across the pond if you seek a better life.I do not regret leaving teaching in the UK for one moment and the surplus being talked about is not in Alberta as this province is still keen on teachers who are willing to do a good job and make a life for themselves here in Canada.

  5. Is it just me getting a sense of deja vu here? Was there not a previous attempt to to this. As I recall in foundered as it was a bit of a chore to get anything posted easily. These things tend to happen when you send a web designer to do what is to a degree a recruitment professional’s job. If this is to work, it has to be mega simple and require minimum if any additional effort from the user. There are job aggregator models out there that could provide a template.

    I also recall that schools had to chip in and this in itself was a barrier despite low fees.

    Without critical mass it will fail again. If schools were directed to post every role they have on their website in a particular format then it would be a relatively straightforward task to scrape all the jobs from them. Then we need to work out who is going to pay. Advertising opportunities could be offered as the access to market would be phenomenal. However, do the proposers of the idea want to let the Agency foxes into this particular henhouse and what is the likelihood of positive coverage in media outlets that rely on ‘rec ad’ revenues?

  6. Yes Tom it has been tried by Government before and failed as has the NHS jobsite, its not about the job board it is about the shortages of available teachers and the high numbers leaving the profession.
    In some parts of the country you could post the job on the church noticeboard and fill it for free, in other areas you have to spread the net as wide as possible and this will always cost money.
    We started the first teacher job board in the UK in 2000. Eteach was created to divert and disrupt the market away from the media group and recruitment agencies that were ravaging the sector and still are even today due entirely to the shortages of teachers.

    Eteach carried some 46,000 vacancies last academic year and provides the lowest cost per hire for its member schools. Our websites receive some 1.1 million visitors per month and is used by 7500 schools and colleges. If more schools adopted this approach they would SAVE money.