Category Archives: technology

Big increase in teacher vacancies across London

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At the end of the first quarter of 2023, it is interesting to look at the trends in vacancies for classroom teacher vacancies in the secondary sector. I thought that London would be a good place to start such an analysis. The boroughs are a well-defined area that covers two pay zones: Inner and Outer London.

I the first quarter of 2023, TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk recorded some 2,528 vacancies from secondary and all-age schools in the capital’s boroughs.

London
201820192020202120222023
January655983125139411771451
February60791413247658211674
March92214321430118120712528
April1032139395310281770
May1490175491818652683
June5267954179571289
July118221112150411
August79884854210
September328507324528920
October479636430550913
November471598397667946
December273439243372594
Source: TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk

The total for the quarter was a new record , and was some 25% above the figure for the first quarter of 2022; itself a new record for the period since 2018. If the trend continues then May’s number will exceed 3,000 in a month for the first time. April is usually quieter than either march or May due to the Easter holidays. How the Coronation will affect may’s vacancies is a matter for conjecture at present.

Government Office Region: London
Local Authority: All

Top of Form

Subject20222023Percentage +/-
Art114145+27%
Business128130+2%
Classics3128-10%
Computer Science221362+64%
Dance58+60%
Drama111105-5%
DT288360+25%
Economics11586-25%
Engineering10-100%
English464551+19%
Geography239350+46%
Health and Social Care3124-23%
History148196+32%
Humanities1849+172%
Law36+100%
Mathematics522646+24%
Media Studies2337+61%
MFL310369+19%
Music158179+13%
Pastoral4581+80%
PE172234+36%
Philosophy1416+14%
Psychology7273+1%
RE192242+26%
Science744866+16%
–Biology8485+1%
–Chemistry111104-6%
–Physics124172+39%
SEN9489-5%
Sociology4248+14%
Total43055280+23%
Source TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk

Yesterday, I posted the data for England as a whole and the picture for London broadly follows the national trend but with some much higher percentage increases in the first quarter of 2023 over the same period in 2022. For instance, computing vacancies are up by 64% and geography by 46%. Whether it is a result of the increased concern over the mental health or rising pupil rolls in parts of the capital, but pastoral post vacancies have increased by 80% when compared with Q1 in 2022. However, SEN vacancies fell by 5% year on year.

Outer London boroughs dominate the top of the table for vacancies recorded in the secondary sector by borough (These include both state and private school teaching vacancies – hence the total for the city of London).

Local AuthorityQ1 2023
Barnet371
Croydon336
Enfield248
Bromley247
Hillingdon236
Hounslow230
Ealing223
Bexley214
Harrow212
Southwark208
Redbridge199
Westminster197
Sutton172
Wandsworth170
Newham161
Richmond upon Thames159
Greenwich158
Brent155
Hackney144
Merton143
Camden141
Kingston upon Thames141
Waltham Forest141
Barking and Dagenham129
Lambeth128
Lewisham117
Tower Hamlets117
Haringey112
Hammersmith and Fulham87
Havering75
Islington71
Kensington and Chelsea51
City of London26
Grand Total5519
Source: TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk

With the issues of low numbers of trainees, schools in London without access to Teach First’s High Achievers programme may struggle to recruit staff for September and certainly for January 2024 appointments.

Teaching not attracting new graduates

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Might history become a ‘shortage subject’ in the teacher labour market? Such a question seems fanciful in the extreme. However, the latest batch of data about applications for 2023 postgraduate courses for ITT where the trainees will supply the 2024 labour market shows the lowest March number for ‘offers’ since before the 2013/14 recruitment round. I am sure that providers are being cautious about making offers, but there does seem to be a trend developing, with non-bursary and arts subjects faring worse than the science and other bursary subjects and the primary sector applications still continuing at a low rate.

Art, religious education, music drama, classics and ‘other’ are subjects where the offers made by the March reporting date were below the March 2022 number. Most other subjects were reporting higher offer levels than in March 2022 – a disastrous month – but below previous years. Design and technology is an exception. The recovery from the low point of March 2020 in that subject continues. However, the number of offers is not yet such as to inspire confidence that the target for 2023 will be met. Offers in art and design in March 2023 were less than half of the number in March 2020.

So, what of overall progress in attracting graduates into teacher at the half-way point in the recruitment cycle? This March, there were 25,163 candidates compared with 23,264 in March 2022. However, the overall increase of just under 2,000 more applicants is fully accounted for by the 2,600 more candidates shown as applying from outside of the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. London has nearly 400 fewer candidates this March compared with March 2022 as measured by the location of the candidate’s application address, and the East of England, down from 2,213 in March 2022 to 1,955 this March.

Applications are being sustained by an increase in career changers. Candidate numbers in the age groups below 25 continue to fall, with just 4,027 candidates in the 21 or under age grouping. By contrast, this year there are already 600 candidates in the 50-54 age grouping compared with 449 in March 2022. The number of candidates recorded as over the age of 65 has increased from 12 in March 2022 to 25 this March! The bulk of the career changers seem likely to be men. The number in this group has increased from 6,525 in the March 2022 data to 8,037 this March. However, the number recruited has fallen from 562 to 419, perhaps indicating that many of these older men are in the group applying from overseas?

All the increase is in applications for secondary courses. Those applying for primary courses has fallen from 28,391 in March 2022 to 27,874 this March. By comparison the secondary applications have increased from 32,551 in March 2022 to 40,193 this March.

The increase in applications from outside of the United Kingdom may well be the reason that every route into teaching has registered an increase in unsuccessful applications compared with the figure for March 2022. It would be interesting to know whether or not Teach First has seen a similar increase in applications from outside the United Kingdom.

Once the overseas applicants have been removed, the picture for March 2023 is mixed, with bursary subjects generally doing slightly better than other subjects. However, the real concern must be the loss of interest in teaching among young home graduates. Such a decline is very worrying.

Compelling case for paying teachers more

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The DfE has produced some interesting statistics about the labour market looking forward to 2035, and how the need for workers might change during that period. Labour market and skills projections: 2020 to 2035 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) Two key impressions are that the demands of the labour market will be for ever more skilled and educated workers, and that teaching faces a massive replacement issue during the period between now and 2035, mainly of women if based upon the present structure of the labour force in education.

The growth period in employment in the education sector between 2015 and 2020 that resulted from both the raising of the learning leaving age to 18 and an increase in the school population that was a consequence of an upturn in the birth-rate will largely have been absorbed by the labour market by the mid-2020s, with only higher education still to see the effects of the demographic upturn. Higher education might well find those extra home based undergraduates balance any loss of earnings from a decline in overseas students if governments fail to realise the economic, social and political importance of overseas students to both the economy and society.

A period of growth in the public sector always makes it harder for The Treasury to accommodate wage demands from public sector workers such as teachers. This is especially the case where governments aim for a low taxation economy. However, going forward, the pressure for the education sector will come from competition from other sectors of the economy for highly qualified workers also need ed to become teachers.

As I see it, the government has two alternatives, either reward teachers at a level of pay and conditions that attract and retain sufficient staff to maintain an output from the school system that is sufficiently well-educated as to provide for the needs of the economy going forward or let our national competitiveness slip, with consequent effects on the standard of living for future generations.

Governments can try to extract a price for rewarding teachers with bigger class sizes, but that approach may make teaching less attractive as a career. More likely, and the Oak Academy may be a harbinger of change, the relationship between labour and capital in teaching – in the form of technology – may change significantly going forward. This may also be accompanied by structural change in how schooling is managed for change.

However, unless there is some forward thinking across education, not just in thinktanks and groups such as FED, the risk is one of drift and a pulling apart of our education system to create an under-educated group and inflationary pressures in the labour market due to a smaller than required pool of new entrants to the highly skilled workforce.

Today’s discussions about the significant increase in unauthorised absence and the pool of pupils missing up to half their schooling is a warning sign that should not be ignored. A national revival plan for education based on sufficient teachers and engagement with parents to encourage a return to schooling for the absentee pupils should be a major consideration.

Sadly, I fear the present government hasn’t the wherewithal to start such a task, let alone achieve it in the present parliament, despite the many government MPs that won seats in 2019 where this is a critical issue for the future wealth of their local economies.

Do means matter?

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The DfE has published some performance data for academies and multi academy trusts Multi-academy trust performance measures (key stages 2, 4 and 5) – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) The outcomes are quite rightly heavily hedged about with qualifications about how schools have become academies, and also that schools differ in size, character and parental choice. Indeed, I wonder whether the original reason for why a school became an academy, perhaps more than a decade ago is still relevant?

What struck me at first glance was that as the secondary sector becomes dominated by academies there is a reduction to the mean (average). Various Secretaries of State have wanted all schools to be above average, as this exchange with Michael Gove when in front of the Education Select Committee revealed. Michael Gove’s Kafkaesque logic – Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK’s progressive debate However, I don’t think he was the only Secretary of State to fall foul of this aspiration. Academies in the group forced to change their status because of under-performance not surprisingly do less well than those that chose to become an academy.

The key question for the current Secretary of State must be what do you take from this data in terms of the ‘levelling up’ agenda? I don’t think the present incumbent of the post of Secretary of State for Education has been asked the question about averages, but that shouldn’t stop her asking the question about what policy changes are needed based upon these outcomes?

As an additional discussion point, the secretary of State might like to ask her officials two further questions. What is the relationship between the schools in these tables and the percentages of NEETs produced by different types of schools, and how can schooling work to help ensure as many as possible of our young people eventually enter the labour market at the end of their initial education and training journey? After all, we should all be life-long learners.

After last year’s aborted attempt to make all schools academies, and the mauling of the Bill in the House of Lords there is still a need to ensure the middle tier works to the best advantage for all children. Whether there is a role for local democracy in schooling is still a live issue, but not one that will feature highly at the next election.

But, regardless of who runs schools, there is still work to be done to achieve excellence for all and that no child is left behind, to quote just two aspirational messages from past attempts at improving the outcomes for our schooling system.

Of course, without sufficient teachers, the risk is of deterioration not improvement in outcomes; not what the Chancellor wants to see if the economy is to continue to grow.

Teacher Recruitment Crisis: is the end in sight?

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Yesterday, Silicon Valley Bank hit a bump in the road. Most readers won’t have heard of this American bank that has created a niche for itself by lending to technology start-ups, including in the famous Silicon Valley, south of San Francisco.

However, might yesterday’s event prove as significant as Northern Rock’s fall from grace was in the first decade of the century at marking a turning point in the business cycle. If it does, then whatever the outcome of the current teachers’ pay dispute, teaching will look like a safe haven in a disturbed economic order. And, as in past bouts of turmoil, more people will seek to become teachers in any uncertain times, and those that quit for pastures new will seek to return in greater number.

Three years ago there was a spike in interest in teaching as a career when lockdown and the covid pandemic looked as if it would create disruption in the labour market. The furlough scheme and other government initiatives meant that spike in interest in teaching as a career was short-lived. 

The banking crisis of 2008 led to record numbers of graduates seeking to train as a teacher, reaching 67,000 applicants in the course of the 2009/10 cycle. By contrast, in 2021/22 cycle the total number of applicants only reached 39,288 according to DfE data: less than two per place.

Of course, by tomorrow, Silicon Valley Bank will no doubt have calmed investors and the risks will have been reassessed. However, the fundamental point about the relationship between the health of the economy and teaching as a career, at least in England where there is a well-developed labour market for graduates, will still hold good. Booming economies are bad for teaching as a career: recessions encourage more to consider teaching as a career, and current teachers not to take the risk of leaving.

Government statisticians are still predicting the possibility of a mild recession in the United Kingdom at some point this year, so perhaps we can predict the end of the current recruitment crisis in teaching?

Sadly, I think it will take more than mild recession to bail out the teacher labour market, at least in the secondary school sector. Falling rolls helps, as the divergence between the labour markets in the primary and secondary school sectors is now starting to make clear. Ironically, a high pay settlement, not fully funded for schools, would also reduce demand, but push up class sizes and affect the quality of learning in other ways.

However, if a recession doesn’t bail out the teacher labour market, might the very type of companies that the Silicon Valley Bank supports help out? Teaching as an occupation has made remarkably little use of technology to support the teacher pupil interface. The government might well set up a research institute to identify how to improve the capital/labour relationship in teaching so as to widen the range of qualifications acceptable to become a teacher. They might focus less on subject knowledge and more on human interactions and motivation as a means of promoting learning. They might also reduce teacher’s workload by taking away as many administrative chores as possible.

But, as we have seen in the recruitment of teachers, driving down costs by new technology doesn’t always change spending habits. Pay teachers more: use technology more effectively and create a 21st century schooling system. Now there’s a thought for the ASCL Conference this weekend.

Mixed news on ITT applications

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At a first glance, the data on postgraduate ITT applications and acceptances for February 2023, released this morning by the DfE, looks like good news. Overall applications are up from 51,745 in February 2022 to 56,704 this February, and applicant numbers are up from 19,933 to 21,208 for the same dates in 2022 and 2023.

However, it is important to look behind these headline numbers at two other facts. Firstly, there is a sharp difference in the behaviour of candidates by age groups. There are fewer candidates under the age of 29 this year when compared with last February. The key undergraduate group of age ‘21 and under’ are shown as 3,601 this February, whereas it was 3,778 in February 2022. However, the number of candidates in the 30 to 35 age grouping is up from 2,044 last February to 2,565 in February 2023.

The second point to note is the geographic distribution of candidates. Those from the London region are down from 3,231 to 2,885, whereas those shown as from the ‘rest of the world’ have increased from 1,427 in February 2022 to 3,524 this February. The overall increase in candidates is 1,275 (from 19,933 to 21,208) but the increase from the ‘Rest of the World’ is 2,097 (from 1,427 to 3,524).  

The effect of this change in the location of candidates can be seen in the total applications by phase and subject. Applications for primary phase courses have remained constant at 23,355 compared with 23,967 in February 2022. For the secondary phase, applications have increased from 27,134 to 32,014. However, not all subjects have benefitted from more applications. Art and design; Classics; drama; history; music; physical education and religious education are all showing fewer applications this February than in February 2022.

The good news is that design and technology and physics have recorded more offers than last year. In the case of design and technology, offer levels are the best for February since February 2017. Modern Languages; geography; English; chemistry, biology and business studies have also recorded better ‘offer’ levels than last February. However, numbers are not yet sufficient to be confident to be assured that overall targets will be reached by the end of the recruitment round and the high level of applicants from overseas must be a matter for consideration. A breakdown of overseas versus home applicants by subject would be helpful.

 Overall, fewer candidates have been recruited, (458 against 572) and fewer have offers with conditions pending, (9,827 compared to 10,503). Both the number of candidates rejected and withdrawn are above the February 2022 numbers.

The has been an increase in applicants recorded as ‘male’ from 5,559 to 6,704, whereas applications from ‘females’ have reduced from 14,402 to 14,289.

The question is whether we are seeing a loss of young UK- based female applicants to teaching and their being replaced by older males domiciled outside the United Kingdom. Teaching is increasingly a global profession, and QTS from the DfE may be seen as a valuable qualification. However, the question must be asked whether this trend will solve the teacher supply crisis in England?

Recruit now or never

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How bad is the current recruitment crisis in teaching likely to become, and what effects might it have on the staffing of schools for September 2023? We already know that the recruitment to postgraduate ITT courses for secondary school subjects, whether located in schools or higher education was dire last September. I discussed some of the reasons this week with a researcher. We didn’t discuss the attractiveness of teaching in terms of pay for graduates, as it is well known where on the public/private sector graduate pay scale teaching is currently located.

For this blog, I want to look at the data from TeachVac on the current supply side. Of course, the supply side is influenced by what happens on the demand side of the equation, and we know the increased pupil numbers will increase demand for teachers by secondary schools this year, even if all other factors stay the same; we can also reckon that a worsening of the pay gap will both take more teachers out of state school classrooms and deter more returners while there are other job opportunities available.

TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk has for some years used the data obtained from matching vacancies to jobseekers to also construct an index that measures the health of the supply side in relation to new entrants. A worsening index puts the pressure on certain schools to find other sources of supply or to alter their curriculum.

In my previous post, I discussed the extent to which the current level of vacancies has created a ‘false market’ because of the number of re-advertisements. That factor undoubtedly has had an effect on the supply-side index – hence my continued demand for a job reference number.

TeachVac has been collecting data since 2015, and will continue to do so as long as schools continue to sign up to TeachVac’s £10 per week matching service that provides the data for analysis.

So, what might the current position be, half-way through the two weeks of half-terms across England?

Subject2023 at 17th FebCurrent figure INDEXPrevious worst INDEX  Year
HistoryNW7644282015
PENW10248812017
ArtNW2952732017
MathsW524
EnglishW375
All SciencesW343
MusicW35
REW10
LanguagesW106
ComputingW-71
GeographyW188
Business StudiesW-79
D&TW-125
NW Not worst recorded W Worst level recorded

Source: TeachVac

The data index is based upon matching the potential ‘open market’ trainee number after discounting those already in classrooms and less likely to be seeking a different teaching post in September against vacancies since 1st January.

There is little surprising in the index data, except perhaps for the severity of the current index figure in some subjects so early in the recruitment round for September.

How the index moves from here depends upon factors such as: when the government asks the Pay Review Body to Report, and whether the inevitable pay increase will be fully funded or whether schools, often already hard pushed for cash after the energy price increase, will be expected to fund the salary increase from current resourcing. This latter choice would undoubtedly reduce demand for teachers, unless it also drove more teachers out of the classroom into other jobs or retirement. With the present age profile of the profession, the former should be of more concern that the latter.

UTCs: will they survive?

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Recently, the DfE published the accounting details for academies and free schools and their Trusts and Committees for the year September 2020 to August 2021. Academies consolidated annual report and accounts: 2020 to 2021 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

There are several interesting annexes. One contains 15 pages of Trusts where at least one member of staff was paid more than £150,000 as recorded in the accounts for that year! However, more relevant for the purpose of this post is the list of schools with deficit balances. The list contains 12 identified University Technical Colleges (UTCs) plus a Trust with 4 UTCs in its portfolio of schools three of which appear to have negative balances in the Trust’s 2022 accounts).

This means that possibly 16 out of the 47 UTC could possibly have been in deficit in this accounting year. Home | University Technical Colleges (utcolleges.org) cites 47 colleges.

This means that at least a third of the UTC sector might have been in deficit in the 2020-21 accounting year. I cannot say that I am surprised. Way back in 2017, this blog contained my post Can UTCs survive? | John Howson (wordpress.com) asking whether UTCs could survive.

I am not opposed to the idea of a UTC, but here is part of what I wrote in a 2106 post on the topic.

‘So, might UTCs be set to become the ‘De Lorean’ of the education world; a good idea, but not financially viable? Having visited the Didcot UTC recently, I can see the attraction of the concept as supported by Lord Baker. But, they do run into a number of challenges. Firstly, changing school at 14 isn’t a normal part of the school scene, so the UTCs have to persuade young people and their parents that the change is worthwhile. Secondly, the schools that they are departing from will lose cash for every pupil that transfers. After four years a school losing ten pupils a year could be £200,000 down on income, but still be trying to offer the same curriculum to its remaining pupils. Lose twenty pupils a year and the cash burn become even more concerning. Some schools might fight to keep their pupils or only be interested in losing those that cost more to educate than they generate in revenue.’ W(h)ither UTCs? | John Howson (wordpress.com)

Since then we have had the National Funding Formula covering two years of most UTC’s rolls, with the other two years being funded by the post-16 funding that has never been seen as generous.

Even with increasing pupil numbers in the secondary sector, the fact that most UTCs recruit at age 14 and don’t have free travel probably restricts their ability to grow unless they are in an area of significant housebuilding, as is the Didcot UTC mentioned above. Even there, the issue of loss at 16 to other institutions or apprenticeships can significantly affect the UTC’s income. For many, being science and technology biased in their curriculum, also affects their outgoings, both in resources and in attracting STEM subject teachers.

So, where will the UTC programme go, even with the support of Lord Baker?

Is ‘A’ Level Physics too easy?

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This is a silly question, but you might not think so looking at the revised data published by the DfE on the 2022 results for STEM subjects. A level and other 16 to 18 results: 2022 (revised) – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

If you look at the percentages gaining the top two grades of A* and A grade, then you might be misled into reaching this conclusion. After all, only 34.4% of those taking biology achieved those grades, compared with 39% in Physics and 38.6% in Chemistry.

The answer lies by also looking at the data for Further mathematics, where 67.8% achieved the top two grades. But there were only just over 14,000 entrants, and 99% achieved a grade from A* to E.

Subjects can try and match each other for difficulty, and so they should, as the amount of achievement needed to achieve the same result should be proportional to the effort required. However, that approach cannot compensate for entry policies. Some subjects seem to have more open entry policies than others. The gateway may be at the start of the course, where only those likely to be successful are selected, as may be the case in Further Mathematics courses, or at the point of entry into the examination, where only those needing the subject for further study and likely to achieve a god grade are entered.

Assuming that computer studies isn’t that much more challenging to those that have studied it for two years than those studying physics for two years, it would seem computer studies has a longer tail than Further Mathematics.

Then there is the issue of teacher supply to consider. How far does their ability to attract staff result in the higher Average Point Score (APS) achieved by private schools over other institutions, and how far does the fact the general Further Education colleges have the lowest APS reflect their staffing or the students that they receive from schools, and the adults engaging in lifelong learning?

And why are the APS scores for ‘A’ levels lower in the Midlands regions than in London and the South East, where there is generally thought to be more of a teacher recruitment crisis. Could the greater incidence of private schools in the latter two regions be part of the answer?

The London Borough of Sutton and Buckinghamshire both rank amongst the highest placed local authorities for A level APS outcomes. Both have selective secondary education. However, Slough, also with selective secondary schools has a lower APS than either Surrey or Oxfordshire that are both non-selective local authorities, although with a significant number of private schools located within their boundaries.

Interpreting examination results isn’t easy, due to the multiple factors that affect the outcomes. Best wishes to the 2023 cohort as they enter the final lap before the start of their examination season. May the travails of the covid pandemic be behind them as they come to the final point of their school or college careers.

Are you paying too much to advertise a teaching vacancy?

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The most read blog post this month is the one from 2020 entitled ‘How much should it cost to advertise a vacancy?’ Teacher Recruitment: How much should it cost to advertise a vacancy? | John Howson (wordpress.com) So far, yesterday’s 10th birthday post comes in second highes, with 20 views as against the vacancy post that reviewed the publication of the tes company accounts for 2019.

Today, the tes group, now entirely shorn of it print heritage, released its accounts for 2021-22 to August 2022. The company, fronted by its UK management, is ultimately owned by Onex Partners V, part of the Canadian ONEX Group of equity investors. Their third quarter report for 2022 identifies an investment of $98 US in the Tes Global (“Tes”), an international provider of comprehensive software solutions for the education sector  18d46e0 f-a5b9-435a-a039-9849ef723683 (onex.com) page 9

So, our major teacher recruitment platform, now offering a much wider staff management service to schools, increased its UK (mainly England) turnover from £54 million to £68 million in the year to August 2022. How important both staff management and the UK are to the profit of ONEX can be determined form the following figures

Turnover             2022                     2021

UK                        £68.2 mn          £54.0 mn

Europe                £  2.9 mn             £ 2.6 mn

Rest of World     £  9.0  mn           £ 9.0 mn

Income

Staff

Management    £61.2 mn          £56.5  mn

All activities      £80.2 mn           £66.1  mn

TES accounts – see link above page 29

So, in the last school year the tes took £68 million pounds from UK schools, the bulk of the money for recruitment and staff management by subscriptions from schools. 84% of staff management revenue came from subscription income and, as the accounts note (page 2) this was a 26% increase in revenue, presumably as more schools and Trusts migrated to subscription packages from point of sale purchase of advertising. The profit for the operating year was £28.7 million compared with £2.3 million the previous year that was badly affected by covid.

The group values its software at £46 million. That leaves me wondering what the book value of TeachVac’s simple but effective job matching service should be? Perhaps the £3 million suggested by our advisers is a little on the mean side.

TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk costs less than £150,000 a year to operate. Being generous, it might cost £500,000 if operating on a similar cost model to the tes. The DfE job site probably costs a bit more, but we don’t actually know how much. The question for schools, MATs and the education sector is ‘How much of the money you are spending with the tes is for the downstream activities on staff management and how much for the job bord and matching service, and is it value for money?

Assume only 10% is for the matching, that could be £5-6 million of the subscription income after allowing for the tes turnover on Hibernia and other activities. TeachVac was established to demonstrate to the sector the cost-effective nature of modern technology over the former print advertising methods of recruitment. Readers can make up their own minds over value for money when comparing the £500 annual subscription to TeachVac that will reduce as more schools sign-up, and the cost of a subscription to tes.