Tag Archives: recruitment

Is the teacher supply crisis over?

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“As part of our Plan for Change, we are already seeing green shoots, with two thousand more secondary school teachers training this year than last and more teachers forecasted to stay in the profession.” DfE Press Release 22nd May 2025

Good news is always worth repeating, so the release continues later:

There are encouraging signs that this is working with two thousand more secondary school teachers training this year than last, a 25% increase in the number of people accepting teacher training places in STEM subjects, and more teachers forecasted to stay in the profession.  DfE Press Release 22nd May 2025

Good to see the DfE confirming the data showing the improvement in teacher supply, at least at the national level. The secondary trainee numbers increased from 13,000 in 2023 to 15,000 in 2024. This was a substantial increase on the previous year. With targets lowered for 2025 entry in some subjects, and the primary sector, perhaps the sector can breathe a small sigh of relief, at least for the rest of this decade?

For those that missed it, here’s what I said on LinkedIn in April

What do English and Classics have in common? They are the only two subjects where ‘offers’ on PG ITT courses are still below those of April last year. As I predicted last month, the decade long teacher supply problem may be finally coming to a end. Falling school rolls; underfunded pay settlements squeezing PTRs – watch for my analysis of PTRs from 1974 to 2024, coming soon – and a tightening labour market in graduate level jobs for new graduates all mean good news for the DfE. The task then is to hang on to those teachers already in the system; a 4% pay rise will help here. Around 1,300 of the additional applications this year are from those under-24: just what is needed for the long-term health of the profession. Even better, most of the additional applications are coming from within the UK, with RoW applications 1,000 lower than last April. too early to crack open the champagne, but could make the research the DfE are going to commission on the workforce interesting. Also, need for help with teachers looking for jobs writing their letters of application and careers advice.

And what I said on LinkedIn in March

The ITT numbers for March 2025 are interesting. The gentle trend downwards in primary, and upwards in secondary applications (in most subjects) continues. The former is of concern, the latter is not enough to see all vacancies filled in 2026, even with the expected cuts schools are facing in their workforce between now and then. Dig a little deeper, and a couple of interesting facts emerge: a third of applications come from just two areas, London and the rest of the world.
The second fact is that career changers numbers are on the decline, but new graduate numbers are once again on the increase. This is entirely to be expected with a labour market where jobs for new graduates may be harder to come by this year, and those in work are less likely to take the risk of becoming a teacher with no job guarantee at the end of your training; a fresh student loan to repay, and a loss of earning for a year. If we do see a real downturn in the job market, then expect the decade long crisis in teacher supply to disappear. At present, the jury is out on this point. The question mark about interest in English and drama continues this month, with ‘offers’ in English some 200/300 where they might be expected to be. Generally, it is the arts and humanities where there has been little growth (art and design excepted) in interest. Despite the continued decline in applications to train as a primary sector teacher, it looks as if all the growth in applications to train as a secondary teacher have come from women.

Are teacher redundancies inevitable?

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The blunt answer is probably yes. Falling rolls, and a pupil driven National Funding Formula mean that even if a pay settlement is fully funded, some schools won’t be able to cover their present levels of expenditure with fewer pupils.

In the past 50 years, during periods when school rolls were falling, some redundancies took place, but new entrants from ITT often bore the brunt of the disappearing jobs. I recall doing a radio interview around 2010 about new teachers stacking shelves in Tesco because they couldn’t find a teaching post. For some primary school trainees, it might yet come to that state of affairs again.

The key issue for the next few years is, how will HM Treasury react to falling rolls when it sees funding for schools is now largely pupil driven. The creation of a National Funding formula so heavily tied to pupil numbers was a big risk. It was easy enough to turn a blind eye at the time the Formula was being created, as rolls across the country were on the increase. However, those of us with a longer vision could foresee that when rolls were falling, school budgets would quickly come under pressure. With staffing the largest component of school spending: less cash means less staff, even when there was the buffer of high levels of reserves accumulated for a ‘rainy year’.

In the past, HM Treasury has generally allowed the spending department at Westminster responsible for schooling o keep the same funding levels, even as rolls were falling, and when schooling was a local service councils could also prop up schools from Council Tax. I doubt that such an approach will be possible this time.

Falling rolls will mean falling income for schools and hence, redundancies. Such a scenario allied to parental choice means that some popular schools will up their marketing, and ride out the crisis, but less popular schools, and I include some faith schools in that group these days, with either face closure or the need to operate with lower costs and fewer staff.

With education probably lower down the pecking order in the forthcoming Spending Review than many other departments of state, certainly below defence and the NHS, and also not scoring highly in polling with voters, I can see HM treasury wanting to clawback some of the expenditure on education necessary when rolls were higher as an alternative to tax increases.

The macro picture doesn’t look great, and the new General Secretaries of the main teacher unions are going to face a tough battle, and almost certainly industrial action against a Labour government. In such action, the losers will be those living in our most deprived communities and not the parents that can make alternative arrangements: just look back to 2020, and what happened when covid hit our schools.

We are already seeing entrepreneurs marketing courses on ‘how to recruit pupils’ to schools worried about falling rolls.

What will be done for teachers either made redundant or unable to find their first teaching post? In the 2000s, I ran a regular career clinic for the ‘tes’, and offered career guidance and seminars for those worried about their futures. Maybe, it is time for some of the bigger MATs to work together to provide a service for teachers. The first action might be to allow those facing redundancy priority look at any vacancies as they arise. With modern technology, posting jobs to a defined group before general circulation seems like a good idea, and could save on redundancy costs if redeployment is possible. Perhaps, I should restart TeachVac now I am no longer a councillor in Oxfordshire?

ITT: less good than hoped for

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The September data on postgraduate ITT curses was published by the DfE yesterday. Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2023 to 2024 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK (apply-for-teacher-training.service.gov.uk) Sadly, there was no last-minute surge in offers for teaching. Although offers for primary courses should be sufficient to meet the number of places on offer, the same cannot be said for the secondary sector.

Amongst secondary courses, only English, history, geography and physical education seem likely to meet their DfE targets. Offers in mathematics this September are less than 2,000 for the first time in over a decade. In music and religious education, it is necessary to delve further back in the archives to find offer levels of 480 across the two subjects. There will be real issues with the supply of new teachers in these two subjects next year.

Although physics and design and technology have seen better offer levels than in recent years, in neither subject will the DfE’s suggested recruitment level be met. I suspect that the numbers actually starting courses this year will only be above last year’s dismal total for all secondary subjects if those with conditions pending are able to convert these conditions into recruited students, otherwise the total may be little different to the seriously low number recorded last year.

In mathematics, the number ‘recruited this year is just 1,340 compared with 1,482 last year. However, there are 516 applications listed as ‘conditions pending’ compared with only 300 in this category last year. Should these ‘conditions pending’ relate to visas and right to enter the country it is possible that the number that transfer into the ‘recruited’ column may be smaller than wished for.

The number of new graduates aged 24 or younger is considerably down on last year, a worrying sign for future leadership recruitment. Less than 5,00o men have been ‘recruited’ this year despite the total number of applicants being 16,470 compared with 11,819 last year. This means that those ‘recruited’ has dropped from 46% of applicants to just 30% this year. Such a dramatic decline must merit some form of investigation to allow providers to understand the cause of the change.

The answer may lie with ‘rest of the world applicants, where only 6% have been accepted this year, compared with 13% last year.

The final outcome for recruitment that will include Teach first must await the publication of the ITT Census, early in December. Although this may show a small improvement over last year’s total, there will not be enough trainees to allow the government to be able to say that it has hit its target and STEM has now really become STEAM in terms of recruitment into teacher preparation.

These figures are such as to warn schools to think carefully about recruitment for September 2024 and especially January 2025. Retention may become an important watchword in the corridors of power.

The other crisis facing schools

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In my experience, editors usually have September, and the national annual ‘return to school’ event, as a time to ask journalists to look for a school centred story. This follows on from the useful two-week period in August when there are examination results to cover in the month when there is often little news from the political scene.

This year, editors and their journalists didn’t have to work very hard, if at all, for their ‘return to school’ story. RAAC, and the school buildings saga, was a gift send. Would the story have topped the bill at any other time of year? Who knows, as it is an important issue, but more important say that a reshuffle?

What is clear, is that by focussing just on the school buildings issue, editors are missing the opportunity to take a wider look at the health of our schools. Had there not been RAAC, and the still largely hidden asbestos issue, might the staffing of our schools have been the main story this September?

This is a much more difficult story to sell, as except in rare cases such as a special school reported to the DfE in the summer, schools don’t send children home for a lack of teachers. Instead, they cut subjects from the curriculum – I have been told of a school that is no longer offering languages in the sixth from this September; increase class sizes; reduce non-contact time for teachers and, most commonly, employ what might be considered as under-qualified teachers to teach some groups.

Because anyone with Qualified Teacher Status can teach anything on the curriculum, it isn’t easy to identify the problem, as schools, quite rightly, don’t advertise any shortcomings in the staffing of their timetable. However, extrapolating from the last School Workforce Census that provided a baseline, and adding in the results of new entrants being below the targets set by the DfE through the Teacher Supply Model, it seems clear that some schools are not properly staff this September.

Does this matter? Like the lack of a schools’ database on building issues, we don’t know whether some young people are missing grades in those public examinations we celebrate each August because of staffing issues last year or even earlier in their school lives.

This blog has charted re-advertisements of teaching post against free school meal rates in schools. I wrote a blog on this issue last month, just before the exam results season started Are we levelling up? | John Howson (wordpress.com) I won’t bother to repeat what I said then, but it would be interesting to look at examination results in specific subjects at different centres with different levels of staff turnover for a period of three to five years, to see if there is any measurable effect of staff turnover on outcomes, including entry policies.

My hunch is that it is difficult to create a ‘normal’ distribution curve for results subjects such as ‘A’ level physics if many schools cannot offer the subject, and those that do only enter those likely to be successful candidates.

Editors might like to pencil in a story for January 2024, when secondary schools facing unexpected vacancies will find recruitment even more of a challenge than for this September. What might be the effects on their results in Summer 2024 of an unexpected vacancy, especially if they started the school year this September with both a RAAC and a staffing crisis?

Physics: Better. Arts: worse

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Despite today being a bank holiday, the DfE obligingly published the monthly ITT data on applications and offers for postgraduate courses. Initial teacher training application statistics for courses starting in the 2023 to 2024 academic year – Apply for teacher training – GOV.UK (apply-for-teacher-training.service.gov.uk)

Perhaps not surprisingly, little has changed since the last set of figures published at the end of July. With courses about to start in a matter of weeks, there are likely to be few more surprises left in this round. On the basis of the data, secondary subjects can be grouped into three sets: those subjects with higher offers this year than at any time since 2019/2020, or in the case of physics, since 2015/16; those subjects where ‘offers’ this year are above the number at this point in 2022, and those subjects where the offers this year are below the number in August 2022.

In the first category are: physics -the subject has recorded 729 offers, the highest August number since the 840 of August 2016. However, this is still not a high enough number, even if all those offered actually turn up, to meet the DfE’s target. Also, in this group of subjects are; geography, design and technology and biology. The offers in design and technology will still not be sufficient to come anywhere near meeting the DfE’s target.

In the middle group, of subjects better than last year, but worse than 2021, are: mathematics, English, computing and chemistry.

In the group where this year’s offers are below last year are: art and design, religious education, physical education, music, history and business studies – in this case almost the same as last August.

In the case of music, the 232 recorded offers are the lowest recorded in recent years. This is despite a high conversion rate of 21% of applications into offers.  In religious education, the 259 recorded offers are also the lowest level of offers in recent years in this subject. In both these subjects, this level of offers will not be enough to satisfy the demand for teachers in a normal recruitment round. By comparison, only eight per cent of physics applications have been converted into offers, and in biology the percentage is 13%.

Compared with last year, most of the increase in candidate numbers has come from those age 24 or above. The youngest age groupings of 21-23, have seen an increase of 400 from 10,116 to 10517. By contrast, the 40-44 age grouping alone has increased from 2,477 to 3,621, an increase of more than 1,100 applicants.

As reported previously, when compared with two years ago, the largest increase in candidates is the group applying from ‘the rest of the world’, up from 3,216 to 8,406, an increase of more than 5,000. By contrast, the East of England number two years ago was 3,495 and this year it is 3,440.  The South East numbers are: 4,651 two years ago, and 4,825 this year: a meagre increase.

This data suggests that schools will find recruitment in some subjects that they have not been concerned about in the past, may well become difficult during the 2024/2025 recruitment round unless the consequences arising from the pay settlement depress demand below that seen in the past two years.

Are we levelling up?

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England has a teacher supply crisis in its secondary schools. Not, please note in most areas in its primary schools. Years of missed targets for trainee numbers must have an effect on the labour market unless other sources of teacher supply can be found.

From today the effect of missed targets on examination results will also start to become clear. Will those young people most likely to stay in the local economy have fared less well than those that will disappear off to a university, and then who knows where (likely London in many cases) after graduation, rather returning to their local area where they were brought up. If so, what are the consequences for those local economies?

As the latest in my series on the what happened in the labour market for teachers, as measured by advertisements tracked by TeachVac between January and the end of July 2023, I have managed a quick calculation of number of advertisements for teachers by the Free School Meal percentage of schools. This measurement might suggest whether schools with higher percentages of FSM pupils have more staff turnover?

This is a crude measure because it doesn’t standardise for school size. A better measure is for turnover measured after taking pupil numbers into account and matching the resultant outcome against the percentage of FSM pupils. I haven’t yet had time to do that calculation.

Adverts by school>1010-2021-3031-4041+Total schools
FSM
0-10201162562813460
11-204153231603655989
21-303102551206360808
31-40162150803437463
41-509789502715278
51-603432144589
60+5410111
total122410154811921863098
40+136125653121378
Adverts by school>1010-2021-3031-4041+
FSM
0-1044%35%12%6%3%100%
11-2042%33%16%4%6%100%
21-3038%32%15%8%7%100%
31-4035%32%17%7%8%100%
41-5035%32%18%10%5%100%
51-6038%36%16%4%6%100%
60+45%36%9%0%9%100%
total40%33%16%6%6%100%
40+36%33%17%8%6%100%
Source: TeachVac

There is some evidence from the tables that schools with lower percentages of pupils on Free School Meals do have a lower turnover of staff, and that schools with a higher percentage of such pupil do experience did experience high numbers of advertisements for teaching staff during the January to July 2023 period.

This type of analysis is important because too often the focus is on the student: attendance rates; previous history of examination taking and other factor such as free school meals, but these are not linked to school factors.

Thus, today, BBC Radio 4 has been worrying about the performance of students in the North East compared to students in London. Nick Gibb, The Minister, on the world at One on Radio 4, (I don’t often agree with him), but I do in this instance, suggested it was more a London and the rest of the country difference. However, The Minister didn’t say that there are more independent schools in the south than the north, and that the ability to recruit staff might be a factor in the widening gap in outcomes between those regarded as ‘disadvantaged’ and other pupils.

To ignore staff turnover, is to miss an important component in a system that has failed to train sufficient teachers in many subjects for nearly a decade now. Such shortfall in a market-based recruitment system must surely have consequences?

Secondary School Leadership Vacancies – January to July 2023

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Secondary Leadership Scale Vacancies

The Leadership Scale contains three main groups of vacancies: assistant heads; deputy heads and headteachers. There are also executive head teachers in academy trusts, but those posts are not included in this analysis.

Assistant Head vacancies

Vacancies in the three leadership grades in the secondary sector are sufficiently numerous to warrant consideration for each individual grade of assistant; deputy and headteacher. Although TeachVac collects data from the private school sector, these tables only contain details of vacancies for leadership posts in state schools across England.

2022 State Secondary Sector -Assistant headteacher vacancies
GORVacancies
East Midlands102
East of England173
London248
North East39
North West164
South East201
South West174
West Midlands138
Yorkshire & the Humber129
Grand Total1368
2023 State Secondary Sector – Assistant headteacher vacancies
GORVacanciesDifference 2023 on 2022
East Midlands12018
East of England1807
London241-7
North East24-15
North West154-10
South East22120
South West128-46
West Midlands1391
Yorkshire & the Humber13910
Grand Total1346-22

In 2023 there were more vacancies at this level in the South East than in 2022, whereas in the South West there were fewer recorded advertisements than in the same period in 2022. London and the South East regions account for 33% of the vacancies at this level in 2022 and 34% in 2023. Vacancies at this level were rare in both years. However, some schools might have advertised internally or in a form not caught by TeachVac’s recording of the data.

Deputy Head Vacancies

As with the assistant head grade, there were very similar numbers of advertisements for deputy heads during the first seven months of 2023 advertised by state secondary schools in England when compared with the same schools during the same period in 2022.

Deputy Head 2022
GORVacancies
East Midlands67
East of England74
London132
North East28
North West93
South East119
South West74
West Midlands77
Yorkshire & the Humber98
Grand Total762
Deputy Head 2023
GORVacanciesDifference 2023 on 2022
East Midlands725
East of England8612
London1342
North East24-4
North West88-5
South East14728
South West59-15
West Midlands63-14
Yorkshire & the Humber94-4
Grand Total7675

Source: TeachVac

Although the overall total of advertisements was similar in 2023 to the number in 2022, there were some regional differences, with more vacancies being advertised by schools in the south East and the East of England and fewer advertisements in the south West and West Midlands.

 Headteacher vacancies

As with both the assistant and deputy head teacher grades, in the first seven months of 2023 the number of advertisements logged for headteacher vacancies was very similar to the number recorded during the same period of 2022.

Headteacher 2022
GORVacancies
East Midlands26
East of England31
London55
North East18
North West43
South East48
South West54
West Midlands46
Yorkshire & the Humber44
Grand Total365
Headteacher 2023
GORVacanciesDifference 2023 on 2022
East Midlands19-7
East of England4716
London38-17
North East12-6
North West441
South East5911
South West48-6
West Midlands471
Yorkshire & the Humber440
Grand Total358-7

Source: TeachVac

As with deputy head advertisements, there were more advertisements for headteachers in the South East and East of England in 2023, and fewer in London, where at least one secondary school closed in the summer of 2023. It seems likely that some of the increases may be the result of new schools opening following the building of new housing estates in the Home Counties.

Most secondary schools are able to appoint a new headteacher after their first advertisement. However, around 10% of schools require more than one advertisement before they can fill their headteacher vacancy.

As an exercise, all schools with a re-advertisement for their headteacher posts were matched with their percentage of pupils listed as eligible for Free School Meals. The 33 schools identified as having re-advertised their headteacher vacancy were divided into three groups: schools with less than 20% FSM; 20-25% FSM and schools with more than 25% FSM

The analysis showed that in 2023 there were:

12 schools in the less than 20% FSM group

4 schools with between 20-25% FSM group

17 schools with 25%+ FSM, including two schools with more than 40% that had both readvertised twice so far in 2023.

The below 20% FSM group contained two Roman Catholic schools and a Church of England Middle school. These are schools of a type that often finds recruiting a new headteacher challenging.

Repeating the exercise at the end of September might well add some more schools to the list of those re-advertising for a headteacher as schools often wait until the autumn before re-advertising.

Demand for middle leaders in schools during 2023

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Continuing the look at the labour market for teachers during the first seven months of 2023, this post looks at the trend in advertised vacancies for promoted post – largely vacancies with a TLR attached to the advertised vacancy.

Promoted posts

Promoted posts in the secondary sector include the whole range of middle leadership posts from supporting roles with a TLR in mathematics and English departments to heads of subject roles in sciences and languages departments and faculties and also all the heads of department roles across all curriculum subjects; SEND and student support roles taken by teachers.

Promoted post 2022
Subject GroupIndependentStateGrand Total
ART55244299
SCIENCE17316991872
ENGLISH10813121420
MATHEMATICS11015131623
LANGUAGES141853994
HUMANITIES6165171
COMPUTING133582715
DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY67750817
BUSINESS STUDIES97502599
VOCATIONAL2109111
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION53484537
PHYSICAL EDUCATION147389536
TEACHING & LEARNING66744810
PSHE3272104
DANCE70242312
SEND115688803
MUSIC118345463
SOCIAL SCIENCES68281349
PEFORMING ARTS7121128
GEOGRAPHY41535576
HISTORY46291337
Grand Total16551192113576
Promoted post 2023
Subject GroupIndependentStateGrand Total
ART39290329
SCIENCE15121312282
ENGLISH9615411637
MATHEMATICS10217061808
LANGUAGES1059731078
HUMANITIES7227234
COMPUTING63691754
DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY52846898
BUSINESS STUDIES71457528
VOCATIONAL8686
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION21447468
PHYSICAL EDUCATION113472585
TEACHING & LEARNING57873930
PSHE7136143
DANCE53278331
SEND103638741
MUSIC110433543
SOCIAL SCIENCES47308355
PEFORMING ARTS4131135
GEOGRAPHY30636666
HISTORY35334369
Grand Total12661363414900
Source: TeachVac

The advertisements for posts at this grade largely mirror the position for advertisements for classroom teaching vacancies for posts with no responsibility payments. Thus, fewer recorded advertisements in business studies and vocational courses, and also this year in religious education, and for leadership roles in special needs departments. One the other hand, there were above average increases in advertisements for physical education, the sciences and English, as well as some of the smaller subject areas such as computing and the humanities.

State schools still looking for secondary subject teachers

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Classroom Teachers and promoted posts

(This is part 3 of the review of the labour market for teachers during the first seven months of 2023 – previous parts have already appeared on this blog. The next part will discuss promoted posts)

Secondary Sector

For many years secondary schools have controlled the location of their vacancy advertising. With the rise of the multi-academy trusts there have been some recent changes in the marketplace. Some trusts have consolidated all their vacancies into a single job board similar to that in use local authorities in the primary sector. Some Trusts have gone further and arranged with one of the emerging players in the recruitment market for them to handle the vacancies across the Trust’s schools.

To date the changes in the marketplace have not significantly dented the position of the ‘tes’ as a key website for vacancies, but there is no doubt that the market is undergoing its largest shake-up since the move from print advertising to on-line advertising.

Then there is the DfE site. Despite several years of operation and cajoling by Ministers and civil servants, schools do not always routinely post their vacancies on this free site. TeachVac and others have demonstrated how an efficient free service and covering all schools can operate at a lower cost to the taxpayer than the DfE site, and provide the government with a better real-time understanding of the working of the labour market.

As the Education Select Committee is currently conducting an enquiry into the supply of teachers, it will be interesting to see whether or not they address this issue when they come to write their report, presumably sometime in the autumn.

Classroom teacher vacancies

The outcome for the first seven months of 2023 was an overall increase of seven per cent in recorded vacancies for classroom teachers.

2022 Classroom teachers only
SUBJECT GROUPINGIndependentStateGrand Total
ART1509921142
SCIENCE93658486784
ENGLISH58541854770
MATHEMATICS67447245398
LANGUAGES49926683167
HUMANITIES50464514
COMPUTING23918052044
DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY22529873212
BUSINESS STUDIES36214741836
VOCATIONAL23494517
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION12212451367
PHYSICAL EDUCATION28717742061
TEACHING & LEARNING30121151
PSHE22104126
DANCE109576685
SEND96279375
MUSIC12010051125
SOCIAL SCIENCES1809761156
PEFORMING ARTS4127131
GEOGRAPHY18418742058
HISTORY15911791338
Grand Total50563490139957
2023 Classroom teachers only
SUBJECT GROUPINGIndependentStateGrand Total
ART12311251248
SCIENCE83764767313
ENGLISH54150765617
MATHEMATICS56852345802
LANGUAGES41430143428
HUMANITIES43645688
COMPUTING22319642187
DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY21830263244
BUSINESS STUDIES32413161640
VOCATIONAL13419432
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION9213381430
PHYSICAL EDUCATION25318752128
TEACHING & LEARNING21129150
PSHE10128138
DANCE106649755
SEND82283365
MUSIC8511711256
SOCIAL SCIENCES1529631115
PEFORMING ARTS3144147
GEOGRAPHY16021912351
HISTORY14212661408
Grand Total44103843242842
Difference 2023 on 2022
SUBJECT GROUPINGIndependentStateGrand Total% change
ART-271331069%
SCIENCE-996285298%
ENGLISH-4489184718%
MATHEMATICS-1065104047%
LANGUAGES-853462618%
HUMANITIES-718117434%
COMPUTING-161591437%
DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY-739321%
BUSINESS STUDIES-38-158-196-11%
VOCATIONAL-10-75-85-16%
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION-3093635%
PHYSICAL EDUCATION-34101673%
TEACHING & LEARNING-98-1-1%
PSHE-12241210%
DANCE-3737010%
SEND-144-10-3%
MUSIC-3516613112%
SOCIAL SCIENCES-28-13-41-4%
PEFORMING ARTS-1171612%
GEOGRAPHY-2431729314%
HISTORY-1787705%
Grand Total-646353128857%

However, the increase was neither consistent across all subjects nor uniform in those subject groupings where there was an increase. Five subject groupings recorded decreases in vacancies during the first seven months of 2023, when compared with the same period in 2022: Business studies; vocational subject not classified elsewhere; teaching and learning; Special Needs without a TLR and the social science subjects not classified elsewhere.

Business Studies and design and technology (a 1% increase) are both subjects that schools have struggled to recruit teachers for many years. Perhaps the reduction in recorded vacancies means that schools have now accepted the difficulty in recruitment and stopped advertising. No doubt that will have affected the curriculum being offered as well.

The 34% increase in vacancies classified as for humanities that may have partly been the result of concerns from pervious years about the shortage of teachers of geography; not actually an issue in 2023. However, there was also an above average increase in recorded vacancies for teachers of geography and the vacancy rate is very different for the rate for history teachers, where demand is much lower. However, for 2024, the reduction in ‘offers’ may make finding even teachers of history more of a challenge next year.

The other key subject with a significant increase in demand, as measured by vacancies advertised was English. The recorded increase in vacancies was some 18%, and was entirely as a result of more recorded vacancies from schools in the state sector.

For most of the other EBacc subject groupings, the increase was in the range of 5-10% in 2023 when compared with the same time period in 2022.

However, independent sector schools as a group recorded a lower demand, as measure by vacancies advertised, during 2023. Down from 5,056 to 4,410, a reduction of 646 vacancies advertised. As will the state sector, there was not a uniform decline and some subject that were in the list of subjects in the state sector that experienced year-on-year declines in vacancy advertising did not do so in the private sector: business studies is one such subject.

The is undoubtedly an unmet demand for secondary school teachers in a range of subjects that will not be met until either recruitment into training increases or more teachers are persuaded to return to teaching in state schools. School and trust leaders would be well advised to focus their attention on retaining staff wherever possible and by whatever means as this is often a cheap option that trying to recruit a replacement member of staff.

Becoming a primary school teacher: worth the risk?

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Classroom Teachers and promoted posts

Primary Sector

The primary sector during 2023 has been noticeable for a decline in advertised vacancies across England in both the private and state school sectors.

January to July each year
Primary Classroom & promoted posts
2022
Count of URNColumn Labels 
Row LabelsIndependentStateGrand Total
East Midlands5321832236
East of England21430523266
London52930193548
North East7257264
North West6321982261
South East39246635055
South West10627242830
West Midlands5320782131
Yorkshire & the Humber6220752137
Grand Total14792224923728
Primary Classroom & promoted posts
2023
Row LabelsIndependentStateGrand Total
East Midlands2516421667
East of England11622542370
London31623362652
North East7608615
North West3916071646
South East24032403480
South West9220892181
West Midlands5016741724
Yorkshire & the Humber3413161350
Grand Total9191676617685
Difference between 2022 and 2023
Row Labels
East Midlands-28-541-569
East of England-98-798-896
London-213-683-896
North East0351351
North West-24-591-615
South East-152-1423-1575
South West-14-635-649
West Midlands-3-404-407
Yorkshire & the Humber-28-759-787
Grand Total-560-5483-6043
Percentage difference
East Midlands-53%-25%-25%
East of England-46%-26%-27%
London-40%-23%-25%
North East0%137%133%
North West-38%-27%-27%
South East-39%-31%-31%
South West-13%-23%-23%
West Midlands-6%-19%-19%
Yorkshire & the Humber-45%-37%-37%
Grand Total-38%-25%-25%
Source: TeachVac

The one region where the data shows a different pattern is the North East and reasons for that difference will be explored in more detail later.

Leaving the outcome for the North East aside, the other regions all recorded declines of between 19% (West Midlands) and 37% (Yorkshire and The Humber), with the average for the England (including the North East) being a decline of 25% for all classroom teachers and promoted posts in the primary sector across England for the January to July months in 2023 when compared with the same period in 2022.

The data for the North East looks less out of line when compared over a longer period of time

North East
 201820192020202120222023
January462946131734
February38315081145
March78591013426102
April88243712544118
May80295218347206
June3610536822102
July75130228
Total373187352431189615
Source: TeachVac

It may be that a change in data collection affected the 2022 data. Many of the local authorities in the North East post the vacancies in their primary schools on a regional job board. However, at this point in time the actual reason for the change must be speculation.

Leadership Vacancies

The leadership Scale comprises three grades: assistant head; deputy head and headteacher (some times written as head teacher). The first two grades are less common in the primary sector than in the secondary sector. However, with the larger number of schools in the primary sector, the number of headship vacancies each year is larger than in the secondary sector.

Primary Leadership
2022
GradeIndependentStateGrand Total
Assistant Head27776803
Deputy Head48891939
Head teacher1514691484
Grand Total9031363226
2023
GradeIndependentStateGrand Total
Assistant Head13586599
Deputy Head37723760
Head teacher1912591278
Grand Total6925682637
Difference
GradeIndependentStateGrand Total
Assistant Head-14-190-204
Deputy Head-11-168-179
Head teacher4-210-206
Grand Total-21-568-589
GradeIndependentStateGrand Total
Assistant Head-52%-24%-25%
Deputy Head-23%-19%-19%
Head teacher27%-14%-14%
Grand Total-23%-18%-18%
Source: TeachVac

As will classroom teacher vacancies, a reduction in leadership vacancies was recorded for the first seven months of 2023 when compared with the same period in 2022.

TeachVac’s data coverage of the primary sector in the private school market is not complete, so the changes here must be regarded with caution. The numbers are also small in some cells, further reducing the usefulness of the data.

Coverage of the state-funded primary school sector by TeachVac has been more comprehensive. The largest fall is in the assistant headship grade. This is not unexpected in a sector that is facing falling rolls. Although the use of the assistant head grade has increased in recent years in the primary sector, it is still less common to see such vacancies than for deputy head or headteacher posts.

London and the South East remain the two regions where assistant headteacher vacancies are most commonly to be found. This year, these two regions accounted for 220 or the 586 state-sector assistant headteacher vacancies recorded between January and July 2023 compared with 257 of the 776 vacancies at this grade recorded in the first seven months of 2022.

The decline in headteacher vacancies recorded in 2023 may be partly down to a reduction in re-advertisements of headteacher vacancies in 2023. As many re-advertisements for these posts only appear in September, the exact position is not certain at this point in the year. However, the decline in headteacher advertisements in the first seven months of 2023, when compared with the same period in 2022, was less than that recorded in the other two leadership grades for posts in the primary sector.       

 On the basis of this data, is primary school teaching a good choice of career at the present moment in time? For those required to pay full tuition fees to train as a teacher, there must be a question mark about the accumulation of an increased debt at the end of the training course and the risk of not finding a teaching post. There are vacancies, but probably not enough to provide a guarantee of a teaching post for every trainee and returner.

Additionally, the implications of the two-year Early Career Framework may make it more likely that schools will either recruit returners over new entrants to the profession or use schemes such as the Graduate Apprenticeship Scheme to train their own teachers.

Further posts will explore the secondary sector data in more detail.

For the first part of this series see: A tale of two markets | John Howson (wordpress.com)