TeachVac records the reason for vacancies as part of its intelligence gathering about the labour market for teachers in England. Each vacancy is classified and placed into one of three categories: permanent position; temporary post or maternity leave vacancy. Where the school doesn’t provide a reason for their vacancy, the default is that the vacancy is for a permanent position.

Regular readers, and those that study the labour market for teachers in any detail, will know that 2022 has been an exceptional year for vacancies, with record numbers being recorded so far this year and approaching 100,000 vacancies across the whole of the 2021-2022 school year.

The lack of any unique job identification number means that it is impossible to know the percentage of re-advertisements in the overall total of recorded vacancies. However, so great has been the increase, even over pre-covid vacancy levels that it must be inferred that there are more vacancies than normal.

To what extent has any growth in teachers taking maternity leave played a part in the increase in vacancies? There has been an increase, as the data in the table below reveals. Between January and June 2021 TeachVac recorded 4,386 vacancies where the cause of the vacancy was as a result of a teacher taking maternity leave. In the same period in 2022, the number had increased to 5,627 by 28^th June. Now, cognisant of my comment above, it is entirely possible that some of the growth in maternity leave vacancies is the result of re-advertisements, but it seems unlikely that re-advertisements account for the whole of the growth in such vacancies.

Maternity leave vacancies recorded by TeachVac

	Primary Sector	Secondary Sector	Total	Date range
Maternity	2564	3063	5627	Jan-June 2022
Maternity	2024	2362	4386	Jan-June 2021
Maternity	3539	4156	7695	All Year 2021

Now it is also possible that more schools are citing the fact that their vacancy is due to a teacher taking maternity leave. The alternative might be to advertise for a temporary post not citing the reason why the vacancy was temporary.

	January to June 2022
	Primary Sector	Secondary Sector	Total
Maternity	2564	3063	5627
Permanent	15925	48787	64712
Temporary	4371	2249	6620
Total	22860	54099	76959
Maternity	11%	6%	7%
	January to June 2021
	Primary Sector	Secondary Sector	Total
Maternity	2024	2362	4386
Permanent	10094	24128	34222
Temporary	3787	1838	5625
Total	15905	28328	44233
Maternity	13%	8%	10%
	2021 – All year
	Primary Sector	Secondary Sector	total
Maternity	3539	4156	7695
Permanent	14079	33370	47449
Temporary	5932	3207	9139
Total	23550	40733	64283
Maternity	15%	10%	12%

However, there has been a significant growth in the number of permanent vacancies recorded this year, up from 34,222 to 64,712 for the January to June period between those months in 2021 and those moths this year in 2022. Again, it isn’t possible to know the extent that re-advertisements are included in the increase. There will almost certainly be more re-advertisement than in a year when the supply of new teachers entering the market was greater than it has been this year, but I doubt re-advertisements are the main cause of the increase.

Keeping in touch with teachers taking maternity leave to encourage them to return, either part-time or to tutoring or in other type of work within the school would be a cost-effective means of not losing touch with a vital resource. The National Audit Office some years ago now commented that retention was much ore cost-effective than recruitment. Perhaps it is time the DfE dusted off a national ‘keep in tough’ scheme?