Middle Leaders: Hard to Find. Part 3 – What matters?

Posted on November 10, 2022 by John Howson

This is the final blog post in the series of three posts about re-advertised TLR level vacancies in geography recorded by TeachVac at http://www.teachvac.co.uk. In this post some of the evidence about school outcomes and the need to re-advertise are considered.

The number of schools in the sample is 80 for this exercise. The number is lower than in the previous posts for two reasons. There are a small number of independent schools in the sample and also a number of new schools. Both groups do not have data on Attainment.

Although there are discussions about the utility of the DfE’s Attainment 8 measure, this measure in its provisional outcome state for 2022 was used to classify the schools.

Of the 80 school, 24 had an Attainment 8 score better than that of the score for their local authority as a whole. This meant that 56 schools with re-advertised posts were below the average for their local authority as a whole.

Of the 24 schools that scored better than their LA average for all schools, eight were located in London; three in the South East and two in the East of England. Thus, 13 of the 24 might be seen as schools in London and the Home Counties where house prices might restrict the ability of teachers to move into a particular area.

Not only did the schools re-advertising perform worse in Attainment 8 than local schools, but in the case of 41 of the 80 schools they were also below the average for all schools in England.

Another characteristic of the schools re-advertising was that in 53 out of the 80 cases, the school re-advertising had a percentage of pupils on Free School Meals at some point in the last six years that was above the national average for England, in some cases markedly so.

Of course, other factors, such as the time of year of the initial advertisements may make a difference in terms of the need to re-advertise, but many of the schools in the sample experienced more than one round of re-advertisements for their TLR vacancy.

Another interesting feature is the presence of six schools from one large Multi-Academy Trust in the sample of 80 schools and three from another large MAT. Is their presence just a matter of the size of the MAT? Perhaps, in some cases, they have taken on schools in challenging circumstances that might seem less attractive places in which to work. Some of the schools are in parts of London with high housing costs, and that may be another issue.

Some years ago, during the coalition government there was a trial scheme designed to place middle leaders in schools finding recruitment a challenge. For some reason, Yorkshire and Lancashire authorities were selected for the trial. At the time the choice of area seemed odd to me. As it was, for several reasons, the scheme never progressed beyond the trial stage, although various potential bidders did contact me about participating in possible bids.

The data for this study came from TeachVac. Schools can have access to TeachVac’s data and analysis by signing up to the vacancy matching service. The basis cost is just £1 per vacancy match made with a teacher with a maximum cost of £500 per year. Schools should go to www.teachvac.co.uk to sign up and see whether there are any special offers either for groups or for different types of school.

Middle Leaders: harder to find? Part 2 – geography

Posted on November 6, 2022 by John Howson

In the previous post I considered some of the evidence about the vacancies for promoted posts in geography and whether there were issues that were becoming more challenging. The evidence seems to point to the fact that post-pandemic, and especially in 2022, recruitment has become more of a challenge.

The question discussed in this post s whether the challenge affects schools across England as a whole or is confined to certain regions. Evidence from previous studies of the market as a whole have indicated that schools in an around London fact more significant recruitment challenges that schools located further away from the capital and its large graduate labour market.

The evidence for promoted posts in geography where there the data shows a strong presumption of a re-advertisement is shown in the table.

	Schools with re-advertisements
Regions	Number	All Schools	% with re-adverts
London	49	968	5.1%
South East	29	983	3.0%
East England	20	709	2.8%
West Midlands	9	608	1.5%
Yorkshire & The Humber	6	440	1.4%
East Midlands	5	502	1.0%
North West	4	644	0.6%
North East	1	264	0.4%
South West	2	537	0.4%
Total	125	5655	2.2%

Source TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk

The evidence from the table would seem to confirm the presumption that schools in London and the Home counties do indeed find recruiting teachers of geography for positions related to promoted posts with TLRs or other allowances related to the job title than schools elsewhere in England. This holds true even after taking into account the number of secondary schools in the region covered by TeachVac at the present time. However, overall re-advertisement rates are not high even in London, although they may well be on the increase.

The further away from London a school is located, the less likely it has been to need to re-advertise a post in geography with a TLR or other allowance attached. The difference between schools in London and those in either the North East or South West is stark.

The previous posts discussed the issue of the growth of re-advertisements during 2022, and it would seem that schools in and around London have been most affected by the increase.

The next piece of evidence to consider is whether schools with lower-than-average scores in 2022 on either Attainment 8 or Progress 8 are more likely than schools with better scores to re-advertise a promoted post in geography? As an alternative, the percentage of pupils with Free School Meals might also be considered, but the current cost of living crisis may make that indicator less reliable as a proxy for school performance.

One implication of this study is that the operation of the housing market in relation to public sector salary scales may be important when teachers can move form high-cost areas to this with lower housing costs, but not in the opposite direction.

Middle Leaders: harder to find?

Posted on November 4, 2022 by John Howson

What is the job market for middle years like? Has the cumulative effect of several years of under-recruitment into initial training finally started to take a toll on the ability of schools to appoint middle leaders?

To answer this question for all subjects and across the whole country would be a mammoth undertaking worthy of a substantial research grant. However, using data from TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk, I was able to undertake a small-scale analysis of the situation regarding promoted post in geography across England.

These are the initial findings dealing with two issues: length of service as a middle leader and frequency of a promoted post reappearing more than once in any recruitment round for September of that year.

I selected geography because it seems likely many schools will not have more than a couple of TLRs in the subject, and the chance of more than one being advertised in any one recruitment round is unlikely to be high. The data were analysed by date, school, Unique Reference Number (URN) and its geographical location to ensure schools with the same name weren’t miscounted.

A sample of 139 schools where there were at least two advertisements for a post in geography with a TLR revealed the following:

Years between adverts	Number of Schools
2	49
3	51
4	21
5	16
6	2

It looks as if a high proportion of schools in the sample saw some considerable degree of turnover in their geography departments.

The second question is whether turnover has increased in recent years?

	Promoted posts – Geography – Schools with probable Re-advertisements
Year	1	2	3	4	5+
2107	7	0	0	0	1
2018	7	2	2	2	0
2019	13	3	4	4	0
2020	5	2	1	0	2
2021	6	6	3	1	2
2022	46	18	6	3	1

The data in the table would seem to suggest that 2022 has seen a large number of schools with re-advertisements for geography posts with a TLR when compared with previous years both during and before the pandemic but that before the pandemic affected the recruitment policies of many schools there was a trend towards the need to re-advertisement more of these posts.

It may be too soon to determine how far 2022 marks a catching up exercise to deal with the consequences of the covid pandemic on staffing in schools rather than a sign of greater pressure on middle leadership posts. Perhaps, these is an element of both outcomes present in the data? Should the high level of re-advertisements continue into 2023 it would be fair to conclude that hiring middle leaders was becoming more of a challenge.

Future work will centre around whether there is a geographical difference in the schools re-advertising and also whether schools with either higher Free School Meals pupil percentages or lower output scores are more likely to re-advertise?

As pointed out previously in this blog, the presence of a unique job reference number for all advertised posts would make this type of analysis much easier to perform.

The time of year that the first advertisement appears may also be relevant since the unique nature of teacher recruitment that is dominated by resignation dates and the rhythm of the school year may also influence patterns of re-advertisements.

Why do children in London want to go to school?

Posted on October 23, 2022 by John Howson

Last week, the DfE published some interesting data on attendance during the autumn and spring terms s of the past few years. The figures, as the DfE acknowledges, are affected by the progress of the covid pandemic. Nevertheless, it is interesting to look at the 2021/22 autumn and spring term data for overall absence as measured by local authority. The data are for upper-tier authorities, so in the remaining ‘shire counties’ it isn’t possible to drill down to district council level. Such data would be especially interesting as it would allow better comparisons between district and unitary councils and the urban borough of London and the Metropolitan areas. Pupil absence in schools in England: autumn and spring terms, Autumn and Spring Term 2021/22 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk)

Even with out this data, the dominance of the London boroughs in the table as ranked by lowest levels of absence is very plain to see. Only Trafford and Bracknell Forest break in to the list of the top 25 local authorities with the lowest overall absence rates for autumn 2021 and spring 2022 terms, a fact demonstrated by the regional data in the table below. Camden seems to be something of an outlier in the London data with rates for overall absence well about the average for its companion boroughs.

Absence rates by region, autumn and spring terms 2021/22
	Overall absence rate	Rate of sessions recorded as not attending due to COVID circumstances	Percentage of persistent absentees – 10% or more sessions missed
North East	7.90%	1.10%	24.30%
North West	7.30%	1.20%	22.30%
Yorkshire and The Humber	7.60%	1.20%	23.00%
East Midlands	7.40%	1.30%	22.10%
West Midlands	7.60%	1.40%	23.30%
East of England	7.50%	1.50%	23.00%
South East	7.40%	1.60%	22.20%
South West	8.00%	1.40%	24.70%
Inner London	6.30%	1.30%	18.70%
Outer London	6.40%	1.20%	18.80%

Source: DfE

Inner London, has the lowest overall absence rate for the period, followed by the Outer London boroughs. The South West, a region with no real urban outside of the Bristol Region, had the worst overall absence rate, ahead of even the North East that featured in my recent post about unauthorised absences this September. Absent without leave | John Howson (wordpress.com)

The DfE’s data on overall absence covers primary, secondary and special schools and it would be interesting to see the data by sector for each local authority. Are the areas where the DfE has pupped in extra funds performing better than those with just the National Funding Formula and high Needs block to rely upon? Although above the regional average, the percentage figure for Blackpool is by no means the worst in the North West, so hopefully, the funding is making a difference.

As might be expected, the overall absence rate for the secondary sector at 9.2% in Spring Term 2021/22 was higher than in the primary sector, where it was 6.7%. Both included a 1% figure for covid related absences. In 2018/19, before the pandemic, the secondary sector recorded an overall absence rate of 5.6% and the primary sector a rate of 4.1%. Not surprisingly, it seemed easier to encourage primary school pupils back into school after the pandemic.

Ensuring pupils are back in school must be the first step on the recovery in learning, and there must be thoughts about the missing adolescents and how they can be encouraged to start learning again. Might that affect judgements about future funding, or will the government write off these young people and their learning?

Can state services save money for schools?

Posted on October 22, 2022 by John Howson

When I first started writing this blog, back in early 2013, now nearly a decade ago, one of my mistakes was not to create an index. With more than 1,300 posts later, to do so now would be a labour of love that at present I don’t have the time for. The lack of an index means I am largely dependent upon visitors throwing up links to former posts to supplement my own memory of issues such as Jacob’s Law – discussed in the previous post.

Today, I have been reminded of a post from January 2018 about costs and savings in the education system that is relevant to the present economic situation. You can read the full post at Not Full Circle? | John Howson (wordpress.com) but one key paragraph was this:

“…. I wonder whether another stage in the cycle of government contracting is starting to emerge. In the immediate post-war period of central planning, public bodies often ran most services. There was no profit element to consider, but cost controls were of variable quality. The Thatcher era saw a mass transfer of services to private companies, with an expectation that costs would fall. Maybe some did, but others didn’t and some benefitted from the proceeds of technological change that drove down costs, but didn’t create competition and didn’t always drive down prices.”

This 2018 post had built upon an even earlier one from July 2014 Private or public | John Howson (wordpress.com) that dealt with the issue, concerning even then, of the cost of outsourcing children’s services to the private sector with no control over rising costs.

At that time, I was establishing TeachVac www.teachvac. To demonstrate how costs of recruitment advertising could be reduced. I concluded the post with the comment that;

“In a time of cutbacks on government expenditure, as we have witnessed during the past six years, it is inevitable that staffing costs will come under pressure, and the debate between cutting wages or cutting services will rage. Sometimes there is a third way, and a new technology or a different approach, can achieve the same service level for lower costs. Is that what we ought to be striving for in education? The only other alternative to preserve service levels is higher taxes.”

This debate about the profit element, and where the most cost-effective system can be found, is once again a live one as the country faces a new round of coping with living beyond its means and the consequences of a foolish attempt to ‘dash for growth’ when other global factors were pointing towards the need for sound government.

How to make savings in a devolved system such as schooling in England is an interesting question. Perhaps we should start with the role of the DfE. Is it there to provide services on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis, such as their vacancy site or is it there to bring together the different players to work out the best value approach for schools. If the latter, how does it enforce such a best value approach? Perhaps the annual audit report should make a comment to governors about where a school spending exceeds a benchmark?

TeachVac is currently in the process of creating an index on recruitment showing the position that a school sits both locally and nationally. Such an index would provide evidence to show the degree high spending on recruitment was necessary and justified.

Can something be seen as ‘too cheap’?

Posted on October 14, 2022 by John Howson

Someone told me this morning that TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk was too cheap to work. Schools would not think that offering matches of their vacancies at £1 a throw would work because schools did not believe it could ever be delivered for such a low price. The suggestion was a price point of £5 per match.

It is an interesting matter to debate. TeachVac was established to demonstrate that matching candidates to teaching vacancies where the job matched the aspirations of teachers seeking a job need not be an expensive undertaking with modern technology. That was eight years ago.

The owners of TeachVac would be delighted to take £5 per match, but it would not be true to the original philosophy of demonstrating that modern technology can drive down prices. What such efficiency gains do for the notion of ‘growth’ is another matter entirely.

Anyway, the current £250 offer of 12 months of unlimited matches for secondary schools is proving attractive, especially now that the free service is restricted. Why should some schools pay, and other schools receive the service for free?

TeachVac are also now offering a health check on a school’s vacancy profile, identifying those vacancies that should cost relatively little to fill, and those where schools could struggle.

Here is a suggested framework for schools to consider.

RECRUITING A TEACHER – are you receiving value for money?

The no worry about the cost approach:

Take out an annual subscription to a service such as the tes; hire a recruitment agency; join several job boards

The make effective use of your expenditure:

Calculate how many vacancies you have in a typical year
Divide these into classroom teacher; promoted post; leadership vacancies
Profile the months that the jobs have appeared throughout the year
Review the subject areas
Check against the ‘difficult to fill index’ by TeachVac for each vacancy and local competition
Review the current strategy for value for money

For mainly easy to fill classroom teacher vacancies, especially early in the year:

Use School web site and review interested after 48 hours

If little response, consider move to a paid search procedure

For more challenging vacancies:

Use most cost-effective search procedure

For most challenging vacancies

Consider using agencies on a no-find no fee basis. May be expensive, but might cost-effective.

Calculate the overall cost of different approaches in terms of ability to fill each vacancy against current expenditure.

Absent without leave

Posted on October 13, 2022 by John Howson

The DfE has an experimental dashboard recording weekly pupil absence data for overall absence and authorized and unauthorized absences at the local authority level. https://department-for-education.shinyapps.io/pupil-attendance-in-schools/ So far, the dashboard has data from 14,580 schools for the 30th of September data.

I have just extracted one list from the dashboard. This is the25 local authority areas with the highest percentages of unauthorized absences in the secondary school sector.

Year	Week beginning	Local authority	Absence	Authorised	Unauthorised
2022	26/09/2022	Middlesbrough	11.60%	4.60%	7.10%
2022	26/09/2022	Knowsley	11.00%	4.50%	6.50%
2022	26/09/2022	Isle of Wight	11.50%	5.90%	5.70%
2022	26/09/2022	Sunderland	10.20%	4.70%	5.50%
2022	26/09/2022	Salford	9.60%	4.10%	5.50%
2022	26/09/2022	Hartlepool	9.40%	3.90%	5.40%
2022	26/09/2022	Stoke-on-Trent	9.90%	4.60%	5.40%
2022	26/09/2022	Newcastle upon Tyne	10.20%	4.90%	5.30%
2022	26/09/2022	Gateshead	10.70%	5.70%	5.10%
2022	26/09/2022	Bradford	9.80%	4.90%	4.90%
2022	26/09/2022	Doncaster	10.10%	5.40%	4.70%
2022	26/09/2022	Newham	7.80%	3.00%	4.70%
2022	26/09/2022	Sheffield	8.20%	3.50%	4.70%
2022	26/09/2022	Liverpool	9.80%	5.30%	4.50%
2022	26/09/2022	Kingston upon Hull, City of	9.50%	5.10%	4.30%
2022	26/09/2022	Stockton-on-Tees	8.70%	4.40%	4.30%
2022	26/09/2022	Rochdale	8.90%	4.70%	4.10%
2022	26/09/2022	Blackpool	8.70%	4.60%	4.10%
2022	26/09/2022	Leeds	8.40%	4.30%	4.10%
2022	26/09/2022	Rotherham	8.90%	4.80%	4.10%
2022	26/09/2022	Calderdale	9.30%	5.40%	3.80%
2022	26/09/2022	Barnsley	9.30%	5.50%	3.80%
2022	26/09/2022	Coventry	8.70%	5.00%	3.70%
2022	26/09/2022	County Durham	9.70%	6.00%	3.70%
2022	26/09/2022	Sandwell	7.30%	3.60%	3.60%

Absence rates by geographical area -worst 25 for the end of September 2022

What is striking is the geographical spread of authorities. None in the South West, East of England and East Midlands and only one each in London and the South East. So, from five of the nine regions of England there are just two local authority areas in the list. Whereas the North East contributes more than five authorities to the list, although only two of the five local authority areas heading up the list.

Now, it may be that schools in some areas take different views about what constitutes authorized or unauthorized absences even though there are well-defined categories. Some may also be better at recording data. However, there is another similarity with the areas in the list. Most are areas with either significant pockets or in some cases even larger areas of deprivation within the geographical area.

Some, such as Blackpool, have been Opportunity Areas under previous government schemes to support education. Seven areas had more than 10% of secondary school pupils not in school at the end of September. Such a level of absence might be understandable either later in the year or during the depth of winter, but so early in the school year it is troubling.

Many of these areas have high unemployment levels and would seem to be targets for areas of growth. However, the skills base won’t be there to develop if the education of a proportion of pupils is so disrupted.

Might the current curriculum have something to do with the decision by these pupils to stay away? Government still looks more favorably on training teachers for EBacc subjects than for more directly vocational areas such as business studies.

Interestingly, most of these areas are not ones with significant teacher recruitment issues.

When are deficits called reserves?

Posted on October 11, 2022 by John Howson

Local authorities are currently starting to put together their budgets for 2023/24. Upper Tier Authorities with responsibility for the High Needs block of the Direct School Gant that deals with expenditure on pupils with special needs will be looking at a year-end overspend in many cases that will need to be added to the amount already sitting off-balance sheet in a temporary solution to the problem of how to pay for this expenditure. The money has been spent by the local authority, but not paid for by central government, so it sits awkwardly in an account waiting for a solution.

At some point, if the DfE or The Treasury deems that the local authority should no longer carry the deficit, but fund it from reserves, this would be a major headache for, I suspect, many local authorities, regardless of their political control. In the present financial climate, the solution is more challenging than it might have been a year ago. As a result, I expect the government to ‘kick the can’ further down the road extending the current arrangement until March 2024, and leaving local authorities with even bigger numbers to worry about.

How might the issue be solved? Before devolved budgets came into being for schools in the 1990s, authorities might just have top sliced their education budget. I cannot see Schools Forum, the body that discusses education funding at a local authority level, agreeing to such a move these days, although the DfE could no doubt mandate it somehow.

An alternative would be to use the precept method, as has been used for social care funding, by allowing local authorities to increase Council Tax by an amount to cover the deficit they have incurred that is not on their balance sheet, but in ‘reserves’. This passes the problem to local taxpayers, despite schooling now being a centrally financed activity.

The government at Westminster could just pay off the figure authorities have in their reserves, either in one lump sum or more likely over a period of several years. But, with their demands for cuts in public expenditure to finance tax cuts, this seems an unlikely option.

Increasing pupil numbers, better healthcare and the acceptance of new medical conditions was always going to put increased demand upon a school system and its funding for pupils with special needs, and especially one that both had not always planned for the changes and was required to do more after the switch to EHCPs from Statements of Need following the 2014 Education Act. A good example of worthy legislation that doesn’t seem to have been fully costed as to its on-gong effects.

Meanwhile, parents probably see declines in service locally, as officers struggle to keep the costs of running the service within bounds. These parents often carry a heavy burden caring for their offspring and fighting a local government system is not something they want to do, but sometimes are forced to undertake. There must be a solution that puts the needs of these young people first.

Not an area for funding ‘cuts’.

Posted on October 5, 2022 by John Howson

At the end of September, the DfE published its annual look at local authority expenditure on education and children’s services. Even though the rate of conversion by maintained schools to become academies is a mere trickle these days, the data on education spending on schools is difficult to judge over time in terms of trends, except to note that these are challenging times for schools. Planned local authority and school expenditure: 2022 to 2023 financial year – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Elsewhere in the budgets of Children’s Services, it is not cuts that are uppermost in the minds of directors of these services, rather how to find the cash to fund continued growth in the need for their work.

At least the growth in the number of Looked After Children (LACs or CLA in government terminology) seems to have slowed to just a one per cent increase. According to the government release, ‘in 2022-23 planned net expenditure on CLA is £5.4 billion, a 10.4% increase from 2021-22. Expenditure on CLA consistently forms the largest proportion of LA spending on children’s and young people’s services. It represents 52.6% of this expenditure in 2022-23, slightly higher than in 2021-22 (51.1%).’

The notes in the government’s data release add that

‘Planned net expenditure increased across all categories for CLA, with the largest rises seen in asylum seeker children (53.0%), education of CLA (17.1%) and residential care (16.2%). The latest data published by the Home Office, shows a rise of 67.0% in the number of unaccompanied asylum seeker children applications for the year ending June 2022. Accordingly, LAs may be anticipating an increase in UASC numbers.’

Elsewhere, the releases notes that that there was a decline of £11.1 million in universal services for young people, presumably to help pay for the increase elsewhere, but that some £5 million extra was spent on targeted service for vulnerable young people.

There is no doubt some relief in the effects of the decline in the birth rate on spending on Early Years support, where fewer children in the age groups means less expenditure at a constant level of service.

The other area of concern for both central government and local authorities is the spending on Special Needs. According to the release, ‘there were 96,000 planned SEN places (September to March) with total funding for the financial year 2022-23 of £916 million. This is an increase of 2,300 places and £20 million since 2021-22, and similar to 2018-19 figures which had the highest planned places and expenditure since 2013-14.’ With the growth in the secondary school population this figure is only set to increase further in the next few years.

After falling from around 17,500 in 2015-16, to a low of 11,300 in 2018-19, the number of places funded in Pupil Referral Units, or PRUs, once again remained above 13,000 in the latest data, with a small increase on the previous year’s number. This is an area where schools, whether academies or not can work together with local authorities to try to ensure as many young people remain in mainstream or special schools as possible and are not sent to PRUs.

Overall, these figures were collected in a period when inflation was still low. Those for next year will reflect how well Children’s Services have been able to cope with the turmoil of the past year and that of the coming winter.

Unlike the previous post, this is not an area of public services where it is easy to areas where cuts can be made without damaging the lives of vulnerable young people.

Dear Prime Minister

Posted on October 4, 2022 by John Howson

Would you like some good news? On your return from Birmingham, you will no doubt be asking Ministers how their departments can save money. Here is one suggestion. I am not unbiased in making this suggestion, as it could benefit TeachVac, the job board that I chair. However, TeachVac was in existence before the DfE started its own version and has consistently shown how to achieve a low-cost approach to vacancy listing as our accounts at Companies House will confirm. Reviewing the DfE site could also save the government money.

We suggested originally that the DfE need only provide a page pointing those seeking teaching posts to available sites in the private sector, and another for schools showing the relative costs of using different sites. However, in response to the Public Accounts Committee, the DfE decided on a more costly intervention and created its own job board.

TeachVac is currently offering secondary schools a deal of 12 months of unlimited matches for just £250 and a mere £50 for primary schools. How much per vacancy does the DfE cost to provide?

Reproduced below is a post from 2020 that further makes the case for saving money on the DfE’s job board. Our monitoring since then suggests that the DfE site has gained little traction in the market and may be losing ground in terms of teaching vacancies uploaded.

DfE and Teacher Vacancies: Part Two

Posted on April 3, 2021

The DfE is spending more money supporting their latest venture into the teacher recruitment market. SchoolsWeek has uncovered the latest moves by the government to challenge existing players in this market https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-leans-on-mats-to-boost-teacher-job-vacancies-website-take-up/ in an exclusive report.

The current DfE foray into the recruitment market follows the failure of the Fast Track Scheme of two decades ago and the Schools Recruitment Service that fizzled out a decade ago. The present attempt also came on the heels of the fiasco around a scheme to offer jobs in challenging schools in the north of England that never progressed beyond the trial phase.

The present DfE site rolled out nationally two years ago this month. How successful it has been was the subject of a SchoolsWeek article earlier this year. https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfes-teacher-job-website-carries-only-half-of-available-positions/ This blog reviewed the market for vacancy sites for teachers last December, in a post entitled Teacher Vacancy Platforms: Pros and Cons that was posted on December 7, 2020.

In that December post, I looked at the three key sites for teacher vacancies in England. TeachVac; the DfE Vacancy site and the TES. As I pointed out, this was not an unbiased look, because I am Chair of the company that owns TeachVac. Indeed, I said, it might be regarded as an advertisement, and warned readers to treat it in that way.

There is an issue with how much schools spend on recruitment of teachers. After all, that was why TeachVac was established eight years ago. The DfE put the figure in their evidence to the STRB this year at around £75 million; a not insubstantial figure.

Will TeachVac be squeezed out in a war between the DfE backed by unlimited government funding and the TES with a big American backer? At the rate TeachVac is currently adding new users, I don’t think so. After all, the DfE site doesn’t cover independent schools, and in the present market I believe that most teachers want a site that allows access to all teaching jobs and not just some. That benefits both TeachVac and the TES as well as other players in the market, such as The Guardian and SchoolsWeek, as well as recruitment agencies.

How much the DfE will need to spend on ensuring they cover the whole of the state-funded job market in terms of acquiring vacancies by the ‘school entering vacancies’ method is another interesting question? As is, how much will it also cost to drive teachers to using the DfE site and not TeachVac or the TES?

A view of TeachVac’s account reveals that TeachVac provides access to more jobs for teachers at less than the DfE is going to spend on promoting their site over the next few months. Such spending only makes good commercial sense if you want to remove a player from the market.

So, here’s a solution. Hire TeachVac to promote the DfE site and use the data TeachVac already generates to monitor the working of the labour market. After all, that was also one of the suggestions from the Public Accounts Committee Report that spurred the DfE into action and the creation of their present attempt at running a vacancy site.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Category Archives: economic