What the first 1,000 headteacher adverts tell us

Posted on March 8, 2026 by John Howson

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.

The war: bad news for schools?

Posted on March 6, 2026 by John Howson

The longer the current conflict, centred around Iran, continues, the more anxiety there must be within the DfE. After all, the DfE is the second largest spending department, after spending on the NHS and Social Care. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) ranks as the third largest spending department.

Recent trends within the DfE have included increased expenditure on special needs, and post 16 schemes to reduce the number of NEETS. I assume there is also monitoring the implications of falling rolls in the school sector under way.

I guess that there might have been some hope that one trend – more spending on SEND – might be balanced by less spending on the core school grant as a result of falling rolls. By abolishing a separate High Needs Block, the additional SEND spending could disappear into the core grant, leaving schools to sort out the mess on the ground.

This is not the post to discuss the relationship between DfE and NHS spending on SEND, and how the 2014 Act, unless amended, could be used by parents to hobble school’s discretion on how they meet the education requirements of pupils with EHCPs, especially if the Tribunal Service remains as it currently is. Suffice to say, there will become a point where SEND funding starts to impact on the rest of the DfE’s budget that is, if the total spend doesn’t increase.

Digression aside, my main concern is the extent to which increased spending on defence could hit the DfE’s budget? Spending on schools’ accounts for the lion’s share of the DfE’s budget, and I cannot see how it can remain unaffected as spending on the MoD increases, as it now inevitably will do, however short-lived the current war is.

There are also pressures from within the school system as a result of the White Paper’s non-SEND initiatives to be taken into account. I don’t know whether anyone has worked out the full cost of every school becoming an academy. But replacing 150 with 160+ local authorities after local government reorganisation, with perhaps ten times than number of academy trusts won’t come cheap.

Using civil servants to administer the system will be more expensive than using local government officers. One only has to look at the £38mn it cost to run the EFSA, and the £14mn it costs to run the Teacher Regulation Agency to wonder whether anyone in Whitehall has done the maths on full academisation of schools?

However, it is the military situation that must be the real concern for schools. Let’s assume that going forward the MoD needs an extra £15bn per year in expenditure in order to meet is 5% target of government expenditure: possibly even more if conscription is again on the agenda, after being through ruled out during the 2024 election campaign.

Increase defence spending, and unless the government has spare revenue to play with, and it seems likely that other budgets will be hit. Ring fence SEND spending, and what might be the consequences?

As staffing is the biggest item in any school’s budget, in the end any further slowdown in spending may well leave schools facing a choice between cutting low paid non-teaching staff or high paid teachers, burdened with student loan debt.

So, what might we see.

MATs closing schools that cost more to run than they bring in from funding steams and ‘unofficial’ parent support. At present, any transport costs will be incurred by local authorities, so that won’t deter closures.

Schools axing courses that cost more to run than the share of pupil funding they generate. On the wider scale, this might affect small sixth forms. After all, these are often staffed by the most expensive teachers, and can be a financial drain on the resources for Key Stages 3 and 4.

Will MATs be more ruthless than local authorities when it comes to closing small sixth forms, because they have no councillors worried about re-election demanding a school retain its sixth from? This is likely to be a real issue for Reform in the south of England where 11-18 schools are the norm. If Reform want a return to selective schools that also will come at a price.

If SEND spending is ring-fenced, and demand for EHCPs for mental health issues continues to grow, at some point it will eat into the funding for other pupils. At what point will there be a pushback?

Of course, a quick war, and peace in the Middle East, plus a less bellicose Russia, might mean there will be no threat to funding for schools. And government income might rise to cover the extra spending. Who knows, but it is better to hope for the best, and plan for the worst.

If I use Pupi Teacher Ratios as a measure of what might happen, then the unwinding of the benefits of the peace dividend since the late 1990s might have a more profound effect on the primary school sector than on secondary schools, although my guess is that neither sector will be unaffected. (PDF) PTRS OVER TIME: A REVIEW OF PUPIL TEACHER RATIOS BETWEEN 1974 AND 2024 AND TWO PERIODS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT RE-ORGANISATION PTRS OVER TIME: A REVIEW OF PUPIL TEACHER RATIOS

The other interesting question is what will happened to salaries, and how far the outcome of national salary discussions will fetter schools spending choices? Perhaps one for another blog to discuss in more detail.

Attendance and Behaviour Hubs: a DfE initiative

Posted on March 3, 2026 by John Howson

One of the government initiatives that I have just caught up with is the one around attendance and behaviour hubs. The DfE announcement in December when the programme was announced said that:

The regional improvement for standards and excellence (RISE) attendance and behaviour hubs programme is a national initiative designed to support schools in improving pupil attendance and behaviour.

Led by schools with strong practice, it aims to:

support school leaders to reflect on current systems
share effective practice
implement changes

It is aimed at senior leaders with responsibility for attendance and behaviour who are seeking to strengthen their school’s leadership, culture and systems. RISE attendance and behaviour hubs programme – GOV.UK

Yesterday, the DfE updated the list of lead schools, so I took a look at these schools in the South East Region. Today’s list has five primary and five secondary schools as lead hubs.

The secondary schools are located in:

West Sussex

Milton Keynes

Medway

Slough

Portsmouth

Two of these schools are non-selective schools in a location with selective schools; four schools are under-subscribed, with the fifth school having 1150 pupils against a roll of 1058, and it is a faith school.

The five primary schools are located in

Kent – 2

East Sussex

West Sussex

Medway

All have at rolls of at least 400 pupils, although three of the schools are nowhere near their capacity.

How these schools will spread good practice across the region from Milton Keynes to the Isle of Wight and from Oxfordshire to Bracknell Forest will be an interesting challenge.

One option not open to them will be the device used in the Durham coalfield in the 19^th century and recorded on the noticeboard of the school now housed in the Beamish Living Museum.

The notice reads

The following notice has been received from Mr Chatt, on behalf of the Education Committee: –

“Those schools whose average attendance for the preceding month has reached 92% may grant a half-holiday on the first Friday of the month.”

Looking at the DfE’s data for Oxfordshire, the average attendance from September 2025 to start of February 2026 was 95.1% for primary schools; 91.5% for secondary schools and 88.8% for special schools.

On the basis of that data some primary schools would have qualified for the half-day in at least one month. Possibly some secondary schools might have done so as well.

However, it is worth remembering that the schools receiving the notice were Elementary Schools, taking pupils from 5 to 13 or 14, depending upon the school leaving age at the time of undated message. Attendance by the older pupils was probably as much of a challenge in the 19^th century as it is today; albeit for different reasons.

Challenging schools still find keeping a headteacher challenging

Posted on February 23, 2026 by John Howson

Alongside the White Paper, published today by the DfE, The DfE also released a document entitled Schools, school workforce and pupils statistical analysis 2026 Schools, school workforce and pupils statistical analysis 2026

Within this document, I was interested to see a discussion of headteacher turnover by Pupil Premium Decline. This showed that for both primary and secondary schools, but especially for secondary schools, turnover of headteachers was more likely where Pupil Premium levels were higher. Thus, in Band 1, – most deprived – 8.7% of secondary school headteachers changed between November 2024 and November 2025. This compared with just 2.3% of headteacher vacancies in secondary schools in Band 10. The data was taken from the DfE’s own database of teacher records and the School Workforce census.

Readers of my post of yesterday, won’t be surprised by this piece of research Headteacher: recruitment bonus – good value or not? | John Howson

Interestingly, in September 2002, the then NCSL (National College for School Leadership) published a piece of research on headteacher turnover that I conducted for the College. ‘Staying Power: the relationship between headteachers’ length of service and PANDA grades. (PANDA grades were a measure of a school’s performance and schools were graded from A* to E*).

My research looked at secondary schools with either A* or A grades and compared them with schools with E* or E grades.

The research was based upon an analysis of vacancy advertisements for headteacher posts at these schools.

As with today’s research finding, in 2002, A* schools had the greatest percentage of headteachers with more than six years of service, and E* schools the smallest percentage of headteachers with more than six years f service at that school. There were 785 A*/A schools and 780 E*/E schools in the survey.

There was also an association between the PANDA grade and readvertisement rates. 8% of A* vacancies for a headteacher were re-advertised compared with 14% of E* headteacher vacancies, and 49% of schools rated as E.

As headteachers often move from headship into retirement, the age profile of the teaching profession is a factor affecting turnover. A younger profession means fewer headteachers reaching retirement age.

However, the thesis that the more challenging the school, the shorter the term of office of a headteachers, still seems as credible today as it was half a century ago. Whether the government’s policies as foreshadowed in the White Paper will help to change this pattern of turnover and length of service will be interesting to watch.

Headteacher: recruitment bonus – good value or not?

Posted on February 22, 2026 by John Howson

Following suggestions that the DfE might pay a £15,000 recruitment bonus/golden hello to encourage people to take the role of headteacher in a challenging school, I though I would look at the most recent data regarding schools failing to appoint a new headteacher at their first attempt.

The data covers 789 schools that have advertised for a headteacher between 1^st August 2025 and the 20^th February 2026 on their the DfE vacancy platform or since 1^st January 2026, the tes jobsite as well.

Of course, some schools still have active vacancies that have yet to reach their closing date, so the data are probably an underestimate. The 789 is lower than might be expected number of vacancies from looking at historical data. Is it possible that some MATs no longer advertise headteacher vacancies nationally?

Anyway, there have been 80 schools that have so far readvertised their headteacher vacancy. Of these schools,

50 were primary schools

14 were secondary schools

16 were special schools

13 were Roman Catholic Schools

17 Church of England

2 other faiths

48 Not faith school

Regionally, the picture is as shown in the table.

REGION	READVERT	ADVERT	% READ
SE	5	89	6%
SW	6	91	7%
WM	8	101	8%
YH	10	108	9%
NW	12	107	11%
EM	10	81	12%
L	12	92	13%
EE	13	97	13%
NE	4	22	18%
ENGLAND	80	789	10%

The North East data shows how percentages can be misleading as two of the four schools are special schools. Without those two schools, the percentage drops to a below average 9%.

A bonus of £15,000 might look attractive to someone thinking of a headteacher post in a primary school, but with many secondary headteacher vacancies being advertised with a starting salary in six figures, would £15,000 be enough to attract candidates to apply for the vacancy? How does it compare with subject bonuses for working in such schools?

A review of the 14 secondary schools for percentage pass at Grade 5 in English and mathematics from the DfE website, shows a range of outcomes

22.8
27.0
32.9
33.5
38.5
39.5
40.2
43.7
49.8
51.3
51.5
62.3
64.6
83.5

However, it would suggest that re-advertising secondary schools do appear to have below average outcomes. However, four of the schools posted their vacancy just before Christmas, and that might be more of reason for the re-advertisement than their GCSE score, that is unless the school has to re-advertise for a second time after an early 2026 re-advert.

Special schools do seem to have difficulty attracting a head teacher, so a bonus there could potentially be useful as an inducement, especially as taking such a headship often involves a house move.

Overall, if the scheme just covered secondary and special schools, it might cost the DfE around £1 million a year. Add in primary schools, and the cost could be much higher.

However, it does seem clear that a school’s results may not be the only barrier to a school recruiting a headteacher easily.

There needs to be certainty that there are sufficient candidates will, able and experienced enough to move into headship. There the DfE certainly has a role to play.

White Paper: bad news for rural primary schools

Posted on February 22, 2026 by John Howson

Tomorrow, Monday, we will see Labour’s White Paper in full. For now, we have copious leaks and SEND and other matters, such as how to tackle the outcome gaps between the most deprived pupils and their more fortunate fellows either sitting alongside them or in other schools to whet our appetite.

The replacement of Free School Meals as a measure of deprivation has been long overdue, but it will be interesting see, as schooling moves from a local service to a national service, administered in a similar fashion to the NHS, whether the civil service will be any better than local politicians at managing the performance of the school system.

Making all schools academies will be the final nail in local government’s interest in schooling. Once SEND is handled nationally, it will just leave admissions, mainly on-line these days, to be removed from local management.

However, the changes already foreshadowed in the leaks mean that there will be winners and losers. Assuming that H M Treasury might fund some of the SEND changes, there is unlikely to be any new money to support schools to improve.

The present Funding Formula is heavily biased towards pupil numbers. Great when rolls are rising, but bad news for small schools when rolls fall. If the formula is altered to move more money towards schools with significant numbers of pupils not achieving expected standards, where will the cash come from?

Might small rural primary schools with good attendance and excellent results see their funding cut in real terms? If so, what are the consequences likely to be? Trusts will be reluctant to keep schools that cost more to run than they bring in through funding open, and will have no incentive to do so. Afterall, any travel costs will be paid for from the local authority under present arrangements.

I can see the local government organisations saying that if local authorities don’t run schools, then they shouldn’t have to pay any transport costs. Taking £46 million off Oxfordshire County Council’s budget would pay for an awful lot of pothole repairs, not to mention bolstering other services.

For those local authorities currently receiving little funding from central government, removing schooling entirely from local government would be an unexpected bonus. On the other hand, there would, as with the NHS, be no local democratic accountability. Education rarely features during general elections.

One bonus of a national school system is that the government might feel able to create a universal system for secondary schools, some 61 years after Circular 10/65 and on the 50^th Anniversary of the 1976 Education Act.

Without democratic oversigh,t ignoring the 2006 rules about closing small rural primary schools will be much easier. Small one form entry faith schools in urban areas with good results have even less protection. It is worth studying the results for primary schools in Haringey to see the parts of the borough that might be winners and those that might be losers if funding doesn’t increase overall.

As someone that started teaching in Tottenham in 1971, when we had ‘areas of exceptional difficulty’ payments introduced into ‘Education Priority Areas’ it is interesting to see how stark the divide between schools on opposite sides of the railway line north from Kings Cross still remains.

So, will the government close that divide? But will it be at a cost to rural primary schools in Oxfordshire, my current home?

Violence in schools: what will SEND White Paper say?

Posted on February 20, 2026 by John Howson

There is an interesting interview on the BBC website with one of the teachers stabbed at a school in Wales in 2024 Ammanford stabbing victim Liz Hopkin criticises knife crime plan for schools – BBC News I was sorry to hear of the incident, and would like to express my sympathy for the teachers that were the victims and the students that saw the attack.

What makes the story interesting to me is that the stabbing was by a girl and that she later received a sentence of 15 years in detention. The girl was just 13, and the picture shows a multi-tool knife that might better be described as a ‘bladed instrument’.

Regular readers will know that in January 1977, I was stabbed in the classroom, when I was teaching a Year 11 class, by an intruder aged 15 who had been a former pupil at the school. Sentencing at that time for young people meant he received a six-month detention in custody from a judge at the Old Bailey, after pleading guilty to aggravated burglary. In those days, The Metropolitan Police would not consider a charge such as attempted murder, as the intent to kill was not clear. Presumably, it was in the attacks in Wales? The responsibility of us all | John Howson

Even without all the details, but reading the BBC article, I think that 15 years in detention was a questionable sentence, and I wonder whether it was upheld on appeal? There may be a case for a deterrent sentence, but reading between the lines of the BBC report, this young person clearly had issues identified by the school. That doesn’t make the action acceptable, but does raise questions about the length of sentence, especially when some of those accused of murder have shorter whole-life sentences.

Murders with a sharp instrument were down in2024/25 compared with the previous year.

“New figures from the Office for National Statistics show that police-recorded offences involving a knife or sharp instrument in England and Wales fell by 9% in the year ending September 2025, with 50,430 offences recorded.

This marks the second consecutive annual decrease and brings knife crime levels below those seen before the pandemic.

While this reduction is welcome, knife-enabled offences remain significantly higher than in previous years. Levels are still around 54% higher than a decade ago, and serious violence and robbery continue to account for a large proportion of recorded offences.” Knife Crime Statistics | The Ben Kinsella Trust

We must, as a society continue to do more to reduce violence, and to protect those in the frontline, including teachers. However, I don’t advocate Knife arches for schools, but I do think this is an area within SEND that needs more attention. Whether a reassessment of EHCPs at the end of primary schooling would help is an interesting question, but I would hope that risk assessments already take place. I would be interested to know if the girl in question has an EHCP at the time the crime was committed?

Liz, the victim stated in the BBC interview that

We’re not getting the financial support within schools, within external agencies such as youth services, mental health services, all of those supportive services… all of that is being eroded.”

We do need to ensure that we don’t just focus on SEND in schools, but do ensure the decline in youth services is reversed. It is not good enough just to focus our attention on what happens in schools and colleges.

Music teacher shortage: the situation worsens

Posted on February 17, 2026 by John Howson

Regular readers will know that I have been pursuing a return of the ITT bursary for postgraduates enrolling to train as a music teacher on courses starting in the autumn of 2026. This is a very small -U- turn for the government, but a necessary one for the subject, and its future in our schools and universities.

Previous posts on this blog have demonstrated that the removal of the bursary has already affected ‘offers’ to music courses, with a reduction of around 20 ‘offers’ in January 2026 compared with January 2025. Traditionally, any reduction in early-bird offers is not recovered later in the annual application cycle. Music ITT will miss its target: my reasoning | John Howson

This post looks at competition for teachers of music. There are three main areas for teachers to seek work as a teacher of music in a school: the state sector- including sixth form colleges; independent schools in England; private schools across the globe that seek to employ teachers trained in England.

Our starting point this year is the 367 trainees in music identified by the DfE’s annual census taken in December 2025. Add in Teach First and any late arrivals, and the overall total might be 380 – being generous.

Take of 10% for non-completes and those not choosing teaching as a career, and the labour market might have a supply of 342 trainees seeking work.

By mid-February, there had been 100 advertised vacancies by state schools for teachers of music without a TLR – i.e. classroom teacher posts. A well-used job board recorded 15 classroom teacher vacancies from independent schools in England on a single day in mid-February.

On the same date, the same job board, recorded 99 vacancies for teachers of music from schools across the world. This was made up of 40 vacancies in The Gulf, primarily in Dubai and the other Emirates, but there were 13 vacancies from schools in China, and 46 from schools elsewhere in the world.

Now I don’t expect nearly qualified teachers to apply for these vacancies, but to the extent that these posts are not filled by teachers already working overseas, then these vacancies will take teachers away from schools in England, and create new vacancies.

Assuming only a third of these vacancies are filled by teachers leaving schools in England, and the rest filled in other ways that would be an extra 33 vacancies at present.

Adding together the 100 state school vacancies so far in 2026 to the 15 already recorded private schools in England plus the 33 overseas schools currently seeking a new teacher that might recruit from schools in England that produces a total of 148 vacancies by mid-February, or 43% of the available total of trainees. Increase the take by overseas schools to half of their current vacancies, and not far off half the available pool for September and January could have been offered a job.

Now, some of the vacancies in Egland will be filled by existing teachers changing jobs or returners to the profession, but most experienced teachers will probably be looking for a post with a TLR if seeking a move to another school.

With three months to go to the summer resignation date, and six months until terms start, the pool of available teachers already looks stretched, and this is with trainees that have enjoyed the bursary.

If the lack of a bursary shrinks the 2027 pool, because there are fewer trainees, is removing the bursary a sensible move? In my opinion, it is not, and the government should reintroduce the bursary for trainees starting preparation courses in autumn 2026 to be a teacher of music.

We will continue to monitor the situation and report back through future blogs as the recruitment round unfolds.

Who controls your teaching career?

Posted on February 8, 2026 by John Howson

For a few years in the 2000s, I wrote a weekly column in the TES answering questions from teachers about their careers. For all the time I have been associated with teachers, teaching and our education system, it has been clear to me that for the most part teachers are on their own when it comes to plotting a career path. Not only do they few places to turn for individual advice and encouragement, but they mostly have to finance any career development out of their earnings.

There is an obvious tension between the needs of a school, and the needs of those working within the organisation. Good employers recognise the need to develop their staff, even if it means losing them to another school. So how would you answer these multiple-choice questions?

Your school recruited a good new teacher of physics in 2024, straight from a PGCE course. In 2026, do you

A] Keep your fingers cross that by the 31^st May they haven’t submitted a letter of resignation

B] Tell them they can have a TLR to encourage them to stay at the school

C] Discuss their career ambitions with them, and how long they might stay at the school

D] Ask them to teach some mathematics next year, as the school is short of maths teachers?

Might you answer be different if you were the headteacher of

A] a rural school and the teacher’s partner worked locally

B] An urban school with many other schools in commuting distance of your school

C] A school in an academy trust of several local schools

D] A school with falling rolls

Of course, there are no right answers to these questions. But, your instinctive attitude to each possible answer may tell you something about your values with regard to pupils, teachers, schools and education in general.

Should teachers have somewhere to turn for advice about their own careers? There are posts on this blog about how far an entrant into teaching at age 30 might progress in their career. How attuned are schools to the needs of their staff. If a young parent wants a bit of flexibility, does the school either find a way to offer that support or just refuse to even consider the issue: think of everyone else on the staff.

Is career advice a role for the Chartered College of Teachers; for the professional associations; for subject and phase membership organisations; or for all of these, plus leadership teams in schools?

In the late 1970s, I worked in a professional development centre, a place where teachers could come and talk about their aims and aspirations. Do we need such space, either real or virtual today.

Am I right to be concerned about the career paths of teachers, or it everything fine out there these days, with social media available for teachers and many other organisations wrapped around schooling? I would be interested in comments from readers.

I became a teacher because of the freedom it offered me, but I knew I had to manage my own career. Thankfully, I did so, even if some of my decisions might have been different with the benefit of hindsight. But, they were my decisions.

Music teachers: bring back the bursary

Posted on February 5, 2026 by John Howson

Previous posts in this blog have drawn attention to the removal of the bursary for trainee teachers of music starting courses in September 2026. Music is a subject that is short of qualified teachers. As a result, removing the bursary is not going to increase interest in teaching as a career, especially while the current debate about student loans and repayment issues is raging. As trainee teachers mostly pay fees, this could become an issue for intending teachers.

A previous post has shown that the number of ‘offers’ made in January 2026 to applicants for music teacher preparation courses was down from 91 in January 2025, to just 70 in January 2026 Why Music Teacher Bursaries Matter for Education | John Howson

Now, those teachers recruited for September 2026 courses will enter the teacher labour market in time for appointment as a teacher in September 2027. What is happening in the labour market for teachers now?

An analysis of some 57 vacancies advertised nationally in either the TES or on the DfE job board with a closing date between the 1^st January 2026 and the 2^nd February 2026, by state secondary schools, revealed a total of 57 posts advertised. Most were for ‘teachers of music’, with a few promoted posts either titled as head/director of music or some similar phraseology. By the 5^th February, seven of these posts has already re-appeared with a new closing date: basically, if they were genuine vacancies, then they had not been filled, and were being re-advertised.

Should we be surprised that 14% of vacancies advertised in January were not filled. Perhaps not as it is really too early for most trainees to have commenced their search for a teaching post. However, it also suggests that there is not a pool of ‘returners’ waiting to pounce on a job as soon as it was advertised: at least in some parts of the country.

Perhaps even more disturbing, is that two of the vacancies are for Easter appointment: normally, a rare occurrence. There are also some other vacancies with April 2026 start dates still to reach their closing dates. The presence of these vacancies surprises me, as in the past such advertisements would have been a rare sight.

The data on vacancies, albeit from a small sample so far, suggests a market where some schools are struggling to recruit a teacher of music

This analysis of advertisements doesn’t tell the full picture, as it excludes advertisements by the independent sector schools, special schools and those larger primary schools seeking to appoint a music specialist. Add those in and the number of vacancies already advertised this year is probably in excess of 100.

Then there are the posts for teachers of music in international schools that will take teachers out of schools in England. I am not sure whether anyone is keeping track of those numbers, but with the Labour government sanctioning a State School to open branches in India and The Gulf, in support of UK plc’s export drive, that factor will need to be taken into consideration when surveying the labour market as a whole.

In my view, there is now more than enough evidence to persuade any rational government to reinstate bursary for trainee teachers of music. But, does this government take rational decisions? Answers please, on a postcard or in the comment section.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

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