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Celebrating 100,000 Blog Visitors: A Thank You to Readers
Yesterday evening this blog received its 100,000 visitor, according to WordPress statistics. I would like to say a very big thank you to everyone that has read a post on this blog since I started it, way back in early 2013. According to Chat GPT, only 5% of blogs started in that year still survive. This blog not only survives, but is also thriving.
From time to time, WordPress suggest I make a charge to visitors to read previous posts. I have steadfastly ignored those blandishments in favour of open access for all. I am sure that policy has helped gain me extra visitors.
However, writing a blog does take time and effort, and if you know a library that might like to book of the 2013 posts, some of which WordPress no longer allows access to, please suggest they buy the book either as a e-book from Amazon or as a paperback from myself through the email at: dataforeducation@gmail.com
Once this book has covered its costs, I will publish another on the 100 most read posts – with a bit of commentary as to why they might have received so much attention. To date, posts about teachers’ holiday entitlements lead by a long way. It seems like the myth of long holidays is deeply engrained in the public’s psyche.
As someone that failed their English Language examination at age 16, I never thought that I would write a column for the TES between 1997 and 2010, and this blog since 2013. Sub-editors taught me a lot, and on-line software has helped. Interestingly, I have experimented recently with turning the text of a blog post into a webinar conversation. If you ae interested, I will leave you to search the 2026 posts for an example.
In the past, comments were more frequent that they are these days, although ‘likes’ still seem to crop up from time to time. My thanks to those that ‘like’ every post I write. I am not used to having such a fan base.
My especially thanks to, Janet D, Frank S and Sue B for their many comments. Along with teachingbattleground, they make up the most frequent commentators over the years on my posts. Frank was at school with me, and I still remember his part in TCS plays.
Where now for the blog? Well, I hope to keep it going for some time yet, as there is certainly plenty of material to write about. My special field is the labour market for teachers and, especially, headteachers, where I have more than 40 years of data from my research. Later today, I will post, as my next blog post, about how my findings compare with a report that was published yesterday. AI can do some things, but it still has much to be taught to make it even more useful as a research tool.
So, once again, thank you to my audience, whether you have just read one post, have delved into the archive as part of research for a project, or are one of the small number of regular readers.
30th April update
A, my thanks to you, the readers for the best April ever for the blog. 2,000 readers over the courses of the month!
Thank you.
Headteacher vacancies – a changing trend in advertising date?
One of the advantages of studying the same field for more than 40 years is the opportunity to investigate interesting hypotheses.
But first, a bit of background. When I started collecting vacancies for headteacher posts in state schools in England, way back in the 1980s, an advert in the TES was virtually the only source for jobseekers, so data collection was easy. The exception was the 12 months in the 1980s when News International titles, including the TES, were affected by a strike that prevented publication.
From around 2000 onwards, the TES had both print and on-line vacancies to check for headteacher vacancies. These days the main source of data are the DfE vacancy site, at least for headteacher vacancies. Even so, some schools still advertise in the TES, and a few on regional job boards, especially in the North East region.
My first hunch, not really a hypothesis in the 1980s when I started the work of collecting headteacher vacancies was that faith schools had more difficulty recruiting a new headteacher than other schools, based upon the number of such schools re-advertising. An early analysis supported the hunch, and the challenge facing faith schools is still with us in an increasingly secular society.
My next hypothesis was that most vacancies for headteachers came as a result of retirements. For a number of years, the annual study of senior staff vacancies I conducted for the NAHT validated this hypothesis, at least for headteacher vacancies.
In the days when all schools in the state sector were linked with a local authority, headteachers retiring at the end of the school-year might inform their governing bodies of their decision to retire at the last meeting in the autumn term. The result, a rash of advertisements for headteachers in January, and the bulk of vacancies for headteacher posts were either advertised or re-advertised between January 1st and 30th April.
As a result of the increasing number of schools that are now academies, I have created a new hypothesis. I wonder whether the absence of any real local governing body for each academy might have resulted in headteachers postponing announcement of their retirement to the Trust until a later date in the term starting in January and, as a result, advertisements for headteacher vacancies are now being skewed to the second half of the first quarter of the year, with fewer January advertisements?
Now we are in April, it is possible to consider the data, and compare the data for 2026 with 2006 and 2018 – sadly TeachVac didn’t collect headteacher vacancies in 2016, but at that time just concentrated on classroom teacher vacancies.
The first thing to note is that there appear to be fewer headteacher vacancies advertised in 2026 compared with either 2006 or 2018.
| Year | JANUARY | FEBRUARY | MARCH | TOTAL | |
| 2006 | TOTAL | 509 | 394 | 442 | 1345 |
| 2018 | TOTAL | 358 | 380 | 339 | 1077 |
| 2026 | FIRST | 175 | 203 | 289 | 667 |
| 2026 | READVERT | 13 | 22 | 85 | 120 |
| 2026 | Total | 188 | 225 | 374 | 787 |
Source Headbase 2006; TeachVac 2018; John Howson 2026
In 2006, the demography of the teaching profession was very different to that of today. Many more headteachers were approaching retirement in 2006, and often decided to retire before reaching the then official retirement age. Nowadays, there is no official retirement age, pension rules have changed significantly, and I suspect the actual number of headteacher retiring each year has decreased.
However, the more interesting piece of data relates to the percentage of vacancies recorded each month. In 2006 and 2018, data collection did not distinguish between first advertisement and re-advertisements during the three months, but counted all but ‘repeat’ vacancies published.
The 2026 data collection exercise I conduct is based upon a collection date, accurate to within three days of a vacancy being published, and a re-advertisement data based upon a new closing date more than four weeks after the original closing date for the vacancy for a headteacher. Re-advertisements with an April closing date have been assigned to March for the purpose of this exercise on the basis of three to four weeks between vacancy being published and closing dates.
| Year | JANUARY | FEBRUARY | MARCH | total | |
| 2006 | TOTAL | 38% | 29% | 33% | 100% |
| 2018 | TOTAL | 33% | 35% | 31% | 100% |
| 2026 | FIRST | 26% | 30% | 43% | 100% |
| 2026 | READVERT | 11% | 18% | 71% | |
| 2026 | Total | 24% | 29% | 48% | 100% |
Source Headbase 2006; TeachVac 2018; John Howson 2026
The data does seem to offer some support for my hypothesis, as January only accounted for 26% of vacancies in 2026 (24% if re-advertisements are included) compared with 38% in 2006, and 33% in 2018, when academies were already a feature of the school landscape.
March 2026 accounted for 48% of headteacher vacancies, compared with 33% in 2026, and 31% in 2018. In a future post, I will delve into the issue of re-advertisements that accounted for five per cent of the vacancies in March 2026.
At some point, I will compare academies and non-academy state schools to see whether their advertising patterns for headteacher vacancies in the first three months of the year vary, and will report my findings in a future post.
Reviving Music Teacher Bursaries: A Necessity
Regular readers of this blog will know of my campaign to see the music bursary restored to graduates training to be teachers of music. Recruitment to ITT is well below the same level as last year, when there was a bursary.
Music teacher shortage: the situation worsens | John Howson and more recently ITT – 9 subjects with fewer offers than March last year | John Howson
I was therefore delighted to see this speech by a Labour peer in a debate in the house of Lords on Thursday.
The review found that inequalities in music education are substantial, with music showing the widest disadvantage attainment gap of any subject, driven by unequal access to instrumental tuition and wider inequities in school and community resources. I have also raised with Ministers the fact that music teacher supply is a related problem. Since 2010, we have seen persistently high vacancy rates for music teachers. In fact, in 2023-24, that vacancy rate was among the highest of all subjects, and the Department for Education has missed its music teacher recruitment target in 12 of the past 13 years. There was a small increase in recruitment during 2024-25, after the brief return of the £10,000 bursary, but recruitment still reached only around 40% of target.
The conclusion is clear. The music teacher bursary must be restored. The Government’s opportunity mission makes it clear that we want high-quality music and arts education for every child in all state-funded schools. The curriculum review has recentred music and arts as core to a rounded education, not as optional extras, and it has challenged the narrowing of the curriculum that has squeezed music out of timetables, particularly in disadvantaged areas. Debate: Curriculum and Assessment Review – 26th Mar 2026 my highlighting
I would also welcome the comments in that debate by both Baroness Sue Garden and Tim Clement-Jones, Liberal Democrat Peers.
Despite the pressure on government finances, there really is a need to find a way to attract more graduates into training as music teachers. Any failure to do so will risk a Labour government committing the sin of removing music from out state schools, and leaving the subject residing just in the independent sector and international schools staffed by teachers trained in England.
Not only does music give great pleasure to many, it is also a major expert industry that the government ought to be nurturing. Two good reasons to reintroduce the bursary.
Of course, as Chair of the Oxfordshire Music Service Board, I have an interest to declare, but that interest isn’t contradicted by the evidence of declining enrolment, re-advertised vacancies and an apparent lack of interest in the DfE about the training of teachers of music for state schools. Presumably, they see this as a DCMS issue, since funding for music services is via the Arts Council.
Funding for teachers is, however, very much the brief of the DfE, and if they cannot find the cash for the bursary the they should urgently start work with the Arts Council to devise a scholarship scheme, such as already exists in certain other subjects. To do nothing is not an option if music is to survive in our state schools.
Demand for SEND places
Yesterday, I wrote about the forecast decline in primary and secondary school places. In the past, less attention has been paid to the need for places for pupils with SEND. However, possibly as a result of the rapid growth in EHCPs, and hence the demand for specialist provision, the DfE has started trying to forecast what it has termed ‘the Local authority pupil forecasts for ‘Local authority specialist provision for pupils’.
This exercise was always going to be something of a challenge since it is taking place against falling pupil numbers, especially in the primary sector, but increasing demand for EHCPs. However, if demand for EHCPs continues to increase, it won’t necessarily mean a demand for more special school places, because some of the increased demand is likely to be met by specialist provision within schools as ‘specialist bases’ are created, often using the spare capacity arising from falling rolls.
At present the DfE data shows that the current stock of special schools is operating at over-capacity by some 10,000 places. At the top of a demographic cycle, such pressure would not be surprising, as schools often take ‘bulge’ classes for a couple of years using temporary buildings rather than built new schools that might not be needed as rolls fall. Whether that is the correct approach in the present circumstances for the special school sector is unclear from the DfE’s data published yesterday. School capacity in England: academic year 2024 to 2025 – GOV.UK
An analysis of local authority data around provision of specialist provision for the period up to the end of the decade reveals large differences across the country in projected need. At one end of the spectrum, three local authorities are projecting grow of in excess of 1,200 places each in the primary sector. At the other end of the spectrum, twenty-four authorities are predicting a reduction in need, with one ‘Reform’ led county predicating a need for 500 fewer places. Interestingly, the adjacent unitary authority is predicting an increase of over 100 places.
Oxfordshire, whose primary and secondary place forecasts were discussed in my previous post is predicting only a very small increase in the number of primary places.
These significant differences don’t seem to be related to either the underlying pupil population or the trend in pupil numbers in the primary sector. This raises issues about how reliable the current forecasting around the demand for SEND places is for policy-makers. Accurate data are important, because of the cost of provision in the SEND sector.
Data on provision of places are also important in helping identify workforce needs. It seems odd that the DfE doesn’t seem to have a unit that brings together trends in pupil numbers and the demand for both places and people to educate the projected school population.
If the DfE did have such a unit then it might look at the costs of small sixth forms and of central overheads by different MATs. It might also look at the issue of small primary schools, and how they might be protected in rural areas, but possibly amalgamated in urban areas. Is a one-from of entry school viable in London?
Hopefully, the data published yesterday will create some debate around the important, but often overlooked, issue of pupil place planning, and the future shape of schooling in the modern age.
ITT: What the poster doesn’t say
I saw several of these posters on York railway station this weekend.
The station seems like a good place to advertise, as York has a large number of university students passing through the station, but I hope the course organisers managed to negotiate a good deal, given the number of posters I saw in and around the station.
I thought the poster lacked a ‘call to action’. Just adding a QR code isn’t enough for me. Why not an arrow to the QR code with ‘click here for more details?’ As it is, the QR code is just sitting there, not doing much.
If I saw the poster, as a possible teacher, two things I might want to know, but are not told, are ‘how much does the training cost’ and ‘will I be guaranteed a job if I am successful?’
I guess the answers to both questions might be so off-putting as to be sensible to leave off the poster. However, as this was York, the starting salary and some idea of what top salaries in teaching are these days might have been a pull factor.
The DfE is currently spending money – not sure how much – promoting their vacancy website as the place to go to for teaching jobs. Might they also want to create a generic poster for railways stations in other university towns to encourage graduates to think about teaching as a career, rather that leaving it ITT providers to do so?
Finally, I am now sure about the strap line of ‘inspiring tomorrow’s teachers today’. It is certainly a catchy phrase, but it doesn’t do much for me.
While in York, this past weekend, I summated one of the amendments to the Lib Dem conference motion on tuition fees. The amendment called for student debt forgiveness for those that work in the public sector for ten years. In my speech, I also suggested the idea of Tuition Fee credits for student on Free School Meals for the whole of their secondary school career.
Sadly, I didn’t have time to remind conference that between 1997 and 2010, graduates training to be a teacher on programmes such as those run by Exchange Teacher Training had their tuition paid by the government. Personally, I believe that both trainee teachers and medics should have their fees for post first degree study paid by the government or at least repaid as soon as they start work in state-funded locations. After all, we pay army offices during their training, why not teachers and medics?
Gender expectations: alive and well in T Level courses?
The DfE has released data about entrants to ‘T Level’ courses starting in 2025. T Level and T Level foundation year entrant data 2025 to 2026 – GOV.UK
What is striking about the data are the gender disparities between different courses, and how much work among this group of young people and their families may still need to be undertaken if stereotypes are to be confronted.
For instance, 95.6% of those starting the Education and Early Years course were female, whereas 96.9% of those starting the Building Services Engineering for Construction course were males. Males also dominated the three digital courses, whereas the craft and design course participants were 90.4% female. Males made up two thirds of the Agriculture Land Management and Production, but only 19.7% of the Animal care and Management
There was more parity in courses such as Media Broadcast and Production, the Science courses and, interestingly, the overall total ended up 49.3% female and 50.7% male!
The DfE note that 27,446 learners started T Levels in the 2025 to 2026 academic year, up from 25,508 in the 2024 to 2025 academic year. This represents a 7.6% increase in entrant numbers. From the time series data, it looks as if more women are now taking these qualifications.
Table 3: T Level entrants split by T Level pathway and legal sex, 2024 to 2025 academic year
| Route | Pathway | Female | Male |
| Agriculture Environmental and Animal Care | Agriculture Land Management and Production | 35.8% | 64.2% |
| Agriculture Environmental and Animal Care | Animal care and Management | 80.3% | 19.7% |
| Business and Administration | Management and Administration | 42.7% | 57.3% |
| Construction | Building Services Engineering for Construction | 3.1% | 96.9% |
| Construction | Design Surveying and Planning for Construction | 17.5% | 82.5% |
| Construction | Onsite Construction (discontinued) | 6.9% | 93.1% |
| Creative and Design | Craft and Design | 90.4% | 9.6% |
| Creative and Design | Media Broadcast and Production | 43.8% | 56.2% |
| Digital | Digital Data Analytics (formerly Digital Business Services) | 12.9% | 87.1% |
| Digital | Digital Software Development (formerly Digital Production Design and Development) | 12.0% | 88.0% |
| Digital | Digital Support and Security (formerly Digital Support Services) | 8.0% | 92.0% |
| Education and Early Years | Education and Early Years | 95.6% | 4.4% |
| Engineering and Manufacturing | Design and Development for Engineering and Manufacturing | 9.2% | 90.8% |
| Engineering and Manufacturing | Engineering Manufacturing Processing and Control | 12.0% | 88.0% |
| Engineering and Manufacturing | Maintenance Installation and Repair for Engineering and Manufacturing | 9.7% | 90.3% |
| Health and Science | Health | 91.8% | 8.2% |
| Health and Science | Science | 53.4% | 46.6% |
| Health and Science | Healthcare Science | 72.1% | 27.9% |
| Legal Finance and Accounting | Accounting | 34.5% | 65.5% |
| Legal Finance and Accounting | Finance | 22.6% | 77.4% |
| Legal Finance and Accounting | Legal Services | 64.6% | 35.4% |
| Total | 49.3% | 50.7% |
There are now going to be ‘V Levels’ to add to the mix of qualifications that young people can study for after the age of sixteen. Should we be more worried about the gender split in courses more closely linked to careers than for academic subjects, or doesn’t it matter at all?
Personally, after thirty years of trying to change attitudes to career choices, I find this data somewhat disheartening, especially as the majority of classroom teachers in secondary schools are now women. It seems as if teachers cannot override stereotyping, and we need to do more careers and work experience to challenge entrenched attitudes.
Highest paid staff in academies: one LA area
Each year academies and MATs are required to publish their accounts. These accounts include a table showing the salary bands for staff paid more than £60,000. Each year, I track the changes for academies and MATs across one geographical area. Sadly, the table isn’t complete for 2025, as a small number of schools and MATs still have not seen their account for 2024/25 published at Companies House.
| MAT | highest salary band in annual accounts | |||
| SALARIES 2024 | 2025 | difference | ||
| 1 | £90,000 | £100,000 | £10,000 | 11% |
| 2 | £140,000 | £151,000 | £11,000 | 8% |
| 3 | £140,000 | £160,000 | £20,000 | 14% |
| 4 | £180,000 | £0 | 0% | |
| 5 | £260,000 | £270,000 | £10,000 | 4% |
| 6 | £110,000 | £120,000 | £10,000 | 9% |
| 7 | £90,000 | £0 | 0% | |
| 8 | £120,000 | £140,000 | £20,000 | 17% |
| 9 | £130,000 | £130,000 | £0 | 0% |
| 10 | £170,000 | £250,000 | £80,000 | 47% |
| 11 | £90,000 | £100,000 | £10,000 | 11% |
| 12 | £150,000 | £170,000 | £20,000 | 13% |
| 13 | £90,000 | £110,000 | £20,000 | 22% |
| 14 | £120,000 | £120,000 | £0 | 0% |
| 15 | £130,000 | £150,000 | £20,000 | 15% |
| 16 | £140,000 | £0 | 0% | |
| 17 | £160,000 | £190,000 | £30,000 | 19% |
| 18 | £120,000 | £0 | 0% | |
| 19 | £190,000 | £200,000 | £10,000 | 5% |
| 20 | £90,000 | £0 | 0% | |
| 21 | £120,000 | £0 | 0% | |
| 22 | £130,000 | £120,000 | -£10,000 | -8% |
| 23 | £140,000 | £0 | 0% | |
| 24 | £140,000 | £150,000 | £10,000 | 7% |
| 25 | £190,000 | £210,000 | £20,000 | 11% |
| 26 | £150,000 | £160,000 | £10,000 | 7% |
In 2023/24 the bands for highest paid staff member in an academy or MAT in this group of academies ranged from £90-100,00 to £260,000-£270,000. In 2024/25 the range, so far, is from £100,000-£110,000 to £270,000-£280,000.
Ten of the 26 reporting bodies (there were 17 with details for both years) saw an increase of more than 10% in the band in which their highest earner was placed. This took at least six of the reporting bodies into a band above that of the salary of the Director of Children’s Services in the authority.
Of course, the salary does not reveal the number and size and complexity of schools within the MAT, not all of which are within the geographical area of the local authority where the schools studied are located. However, there does seem to be an element of the Wild West and Frontierland in general around the issue of salaries for senior leaders.
This lack of control over public spending by the DfE mirrors a long-standing refusal to grasp the nettle of what is an Executive Headteacher, and how should they be remunerated.
If the direction of travel, foreshadowed in the recent White Paper comes about, and all schools become academies, then the DfE will be directly responsible for all schools. If such a situation comes about, then there will need to be clear rules about how much freedom over the spending of public money should be allowed.
Regiments don’t bid up the pay of their colonels, and the salaries for most public sector jobs are not subject to the vagaries of the market: it’s time to look again at how senior staff in the school sector are paid.
Is it justifiable to pay Chief Executives of MATs more than Directors of Children’s Services? Should there be a book of some colour that Trustees of MATs should consult when deciding pay and conditions, and other employment matters. Or should the market remain the deciding factor in deciding the employment rights of the leaders of our state schools in England?
Fine the accountants
Both stand-alone academies and Multi Academy Trusts use private sector accountants to audit their accounts. Each year, a number of MATs and academies are tardy in publishing their accounts at Companies House, where anyone can view the school or MATs handling of public money.
In my experience, it is the same MATs and schools that keep everyone waiting each year and this delay prevents any useful analysis of how schools are using their funds in particular geographical areas.
As usual, I am still waiting to see the accounts for seven sets of accounts for the schools in the geographical area where I track all non-community schools. These missing accounts are mostly the accounts from the same set of schools that were slow in appearing last year and the year before.
I think it is high time that the DfE, now responsibly directly for the funding of academies after the closure of the EFSA, takes some action to ensure all accounts, save those where there are legitimate queries, are posted by the end of January each year. That’s five months after the end of the accounting year, and should provide sufficient time for all accounts to be prepared.
How to deal with those accountants that don’t file by the required date: fine them. The notion of fining for late delivery of documents is well known and accepted. After all, HMRC will happily fine anyone not delivering their tax return by the due date, so why not fine private sector accountants for not filing these accounts on time.
The consequences would be that either the fine was passed on to the school or MAT or the accountants declined to continue handling the accounts in future years. Either way, the fine should help to instal financial discipline in those schools in the non-community part of the state school sector that are either being ignoring or possibly even flaunted the deadlines at present.
With the recent White Paper once again raising the spectre of all schools becoming academies – one wonders how foundation Schools view that prospect – installing financial discipline from day one should be something the National Audit Office needs to confirm with the DfE is not just a nice thing to have, but a necessity. The NAO might well decide to qualify the DfE’s accounts if it cannot see the accounts for all directly funded state schools within the prescribed time frame.
In my next post, I will consider how salaries for the top earners in MATs within one area have changed between the 2024 and 2025 accounts. With secondary schools now regularly advertising their headship with a starting salary of more than £100,000, and some on even more than £150,000, it is important to know whether Chief Executives of MATs, and executive headteachers are now regularly earning more than the Directors’ of Children’s Service in local authorities.
I guess that they are also earning more than the civil servants that have the ultimate power over the school sector. One wonders what should be the multiple between the salary of the lowest full-time worker in a school and the headteacher? In many case, it cases the multiple is now more than a factor of ten, between the lowest and highest paid staff members in a school: is this too great a gap?
What the first 1,000 headteacher adverts tell us
Between the DfE vacancy site – the DfE claims 98% of schools now use their site – and other leading job boards, I have collected details of 1,000 vacancies for headteacher posts advertised since the start of August 2025.
In the past, the three months from January to March were the most active months for headteacher vacancies, and that may well prove to be the case in the 2025/26 school year.
If the present level of vacancies continues as expected, then the annual total for headteacher vacancies will be around the 1,500 mark for 2025/26. The exact number will depend upon the number of schools that fail to make an appointment after advertising a vacancy and re-advertise.
To some, extent the degree of re-advertising that occurs will depend upon the mix of schools seeking a new headteacher, and the size of that sub-pool. However, the larger the number in the pool, the easier it is to predict trends.
What can be deduced from the first 1,000 vacancies this school year?
As expected, primary schools dominate the list, accounting for 628 of the first time vacancies, and 64 of the re-advertisements – a re-advertisement rate of 10%. Secondary schools accounted 182 first time vacancies, and 16 re-advertisements, a rate of nine per cent, and higher than I would have expected.
In view of the concerns over SEND, it is unfortunate that the 72 first time vacancies for headteachers of special schools have already produced some 21 re-advertisements, a rate of 29%, including a couple of schools that have re-advertised twice.
Interestingly, none of the 13 First schools, and none of the 21 infant schools with a recorded vacancy has seen a re-advertisement to date. In the past such vacancies have proved challenging to fill. This is still the case for junior schools headteacher vacancies, where the 38 vacancies have already generated four re-advertisements.
Nationally, the re-advertisement rate overall stands at 11%. However, that percentage already masks some regional differences.
Region RE-ADVERTISENTS 1ST ADVERT % RE-ADVERTISMENTS
| SE | 7 | 99 | 7% |
| SW | 8 | 103 | 8% |
| WM | 9 | 108 | 8% |
| YH | 13 | 118 | 11% |
| NW | 15 | 125 | 12% |
| EM | 11 | 94 | 12% |
| L | 15 | 99 | 15% |
| EE | 19 | 110 | 17% |
| NE | 4 | 31 | 13% |
| ENGLAND | 101 | 887 | 11% |
The percentage for the North East is affected by two special schools that have re-advertised. London, and the area to the north and east of the capital has seen the highest level of re-advertisements so far, although re-advertisement rates for schools to the south and west of the capital are, to date, much lower.
Faith schools have found recruiting a new headteacher more challenging than non-faith schools. Church of England schools have a re-advertisement rate of 13%, and Roman Catholic schools, one of 16%, compared with the overall rate of 11%.
I had wondered, with vacancies being viewed on-line these days, whether it was a smart move to advertise a vacancy in December, as perhaps candidates might use the holiday period to start job-hunting.
An analysis of the 136 vacancies tracked as appearing for the first time in December, shows that 19 schools, or 14%, have had to readvertise their vacancy, so although no longer expensive in terms of placing a vacancy on the DfE website, ‘the early bird does not always seem to catch the worm’.
Finaly, the highest starting salary recorded so far is £140,000, and 90 schools have offered a starting salary of more than £100,000. At the other end of the scale, the lowest starting salary in an advertisement for a headteacher was £51,773.
Despite staring salaries in excess of £100,00, some 14 of these schools have re-advertised their vacancy for a headteacher. Money, it seems may not be enough to attract a suitable applicant for some schools.
John Howson 