The announcement that vacancies across the economy have picked up will be good news for those teachers unable to find a teaching post. As is normal, August is a quiet month for teaching vacancies, although there are some new vacancies still being posted every working day, as those registered with TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk can testify.

Of course, with many of their administrative staff working term time only contracts, schools in some cases will be saving jobs for the return of those staff who can then post them on the school website and elsewhere.

The return of jobs in the wider economy is likely to affect recruitment into teaching as a career, especially if the bounce in wage growth were to continue while wages in public sector positions were affected by a government imposed wage freeze. The first real evidence on how the wider economy is impacting upon teaching as a career will come with the new recruitment into ITT season, although that will be further complicated by the new arrangements controlled by the DfE. Data should be available by late autumn.

Evidence from TeachVac shows that it is growing in use as a platform for teachers looking for teaching jobs and still has many more teaching jobs on offer than the government site run by the DfE. Registrations at https://www.teachvac.co.uk/ continue to grow

Mutterings about the changes to the ITT curriculum and the degree of DfE control over the sector may have an impact, especially if some universities decide to offer ITT outside the government envelope and continue with research and professional development activities as their main focus.

Although the country will need to train fewer teachers in the years to come as the fall in the birth rate impacts on schools, the system cannot withstand too high a degree of uncertainty and reorganisation with there being some effects on the labour market for teachers. No doubt the private sector will be watching carefully what happens as it still draws on the government funded university sector for many of its new teachers.