teacher recruitment | Schools Week

How to boost flagging teacher recruitment

School leaders and policymakers can do simple, practical things to ensure schools have the quality workforces they need Why Teach?, our recent report published with Pearson, uncovered the top job attractions for teachers across the country. Forty per cent of those we spoke to told us that they first considered the commute from their home […]

Is the teacher shortage real?

One question has plagued the Schools Week office for months: how can every school leader say they are battling a recruitment crisis, and yet we can’t see any statistical evidence of it? Even worse: we can’t see any reason for it. And without that, we haven’t a hope of investigating solutions. So, over the summer […]

“Nobody is forcing any teacher to sign up with a recruitment agency”

Following concerns reported by Schools Week that recruitment agencies were fuelling the teacher shortage by “hoovering up” job seekers and then offering them to schools for thousands of pounds. Below, Darryl Mydat is Managing Director of TLTP Education (The London Teaching Pool) presents the case for the other side. Comments reported from the recent Westminster […]

The good, the bad and the teacher recruitment stats

There are reasons to be cheerful; teacher numbers are up, for starters. But the School Workforce Census for last year shows that recruiting and retaining a top quality workforce is still a major challenge The School Workforce Census (SWF) is the main source of information on school staffing in England. It provides detailed statistics, such […]

We still haven’t got the right training model

Freeing up the teacher training market has some advantages. But if recruitment targets are to be met, the artificial distinction between school-led and university training should be removed The National College of Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) last week announced a new way of managing trainee teacher recruitment for 2016/17. Instead of allocating places direct to […]

Finding the right woman for the job

Figures suggest governors have a gender bias when they appoint headteachers. So what happens when they don’t have a say? I have written before about the apparent gender bias among some governing bodies that contributes to women being significantly under-represented in headship. So I was interested to see what would happen when we took governors […]

College of Teaching: let’s just get on with it for now

The Claim Your College Coalition has put its proposals to the government for a College of Teaching open to everyone interested in education, with chartered membership reserved for practising classroom teachers. Since then, social networks have buzzed with complaints that membership should be solely for teachers. The coalition says that it’s worked hard to get […]

Why the NGA is on a mission to improve human resources in schools

School governors often spend more time governing than trustees in many other charities. Are staffing issues to blame? This is Trustees’ Week, but I imagine almost all academy trustees will be blissfully unaware of it. That’s entirely understandable; as school improvement is prioritised for volunteers with limited time. It is a shame that school governance […]

How can we encourage more teachers to step up to become headteachers?

Rising workloads, stress levels and the pressures of greater accountability are deterring aspiring leaders from applying for headship posts Would you want to be a head teacher? Like most of the heads of year, assistant heads and others that we asked recently, the answer is probably no. Of over 1000 people who completed the National […]