Teach First trims executive team after redundancies

Teach First has made half of its eight-strong executive team redundant, months after it recruited its lowest number of trainees in four years.

The government’s flagship provider for attracting high-flying graduates said the executive team would only fall by three, as it is creating a new executive role. 

It is currently recruiting a chief growth officer, with a salary of £118,750. 

A spokesperson said it was “making this change to bring key teams closer together, further helping them to do their best work for young people from low-income backgrounds”.

“For example, in the new structure the same executive director will lead the team developing our programmes and the team delivering programmes, supporting more seamless collaboration between them.

“Our school partnership teams will work more closely with our fundraising teams to get resources into communities.”

The move was part of Teach First’s 2023-30 strategy and was “the right thing to do at this time”. 

“As greatly valued colleagues are impacted by this change, it would not be appropriate to go into further detail.”

However, several new junior roles are being advertised, including a director of service operations and director of recruitment.

In April, the provider’s government contract was extended for another two years, despite recruitment woes. 

Teach First admitted “significant” challenges last year when taking on 1,394 recruits, missing its target by a fifth. 

But the charity said it was “proud” of last year’s numbers, “given the significant recruitment challenges the whole sector is facing”. 

It also outperformed the overall teacher recruitment numbers, which fell 40 per cent below the government’s own target. 

However, it lost £2 million in bonuses. The charity has agreed to “make adjustments” to its approach, including rerunning its autumn institute that allows recruits to apply outside the recruitment window and last year used by 122 graduates.

Other new measures include a “targeted” campus recruitment campaign and a “taster course” that will allow STEM undergraduates to access “a bank of online, internship-style content”.