Tag Archives: teacher supply

Golden Helloes for overseas nationals

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Yet another scheme has emerged from the portals of Sanctuary Buildings to help stem this years’ teacher supply crisis. The International Relocation Payment Scheme  International relocation payments – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) is designed to attract non-UK nationals to either teach or train to teach languages or physics. Up to £10,000 will be available for successful applicants and the scheme has different rules for non-salaried trainees; salaried trainees, and teachers.

Both fee-paying trainees and salaried trainees should receive the IRP around the end of their first term and teachers will also receive their payment at the same stage of employment subject to them teaching the appropriate subjects.

For teachers the rules include the following:

To be eligible, teachers must meet all 3 of the following requirements.

Firstly, you must have accepted a languages or physics teaching job in a state secondary school in England on a contract lasting at least one academic year.

Teachers of all languages (except English) offered in English state secondary schools are eligible to apply for the IRP. The language or languages can be combined with another subject, but must make up at least 50% of teaching time.

Physics can be combined with another subject, but must make up at least 50% of teaching time. Teachers of general science are also eligible to apply for the IRP if they are teaching the physics elements of general science. It can be combined with another subject, but general science must make up at least 50% of teaching time.

Secondly, any teacher must come to England on one of the following visas:

  • Skilled worker visa
  • Youth Mobility Scheme
  • Family visa
  • UK Ancestry visa
  • British National (Overseas) visa
  • High Potential Individual visa
  • Afghan citizens resettlement scheme
  • Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy
  • Ukraine Family Scheme visa
  • Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme

Thirdly, and teacher must move to England no more than 3 months before the start of the teaching job in September.

How to apply for the IRP

Any teacher applying will need to have started their teaching job in a state secondary school to make your application. Teach in England if you trained outside the UK | Get Into Teaching GOV.UK (education.gov.uk)

Applications will be open from 1 September to 31 October 2023. This is a short window for applications.

The obvious question is what happens if a recipient of the cash quits as soon as the funds have cleared their bank accounts, and returns home? I am sure that vetting will do everything to prevent such an occurrence, but the question is at least worth asking.

It is interesting that the DfE only cite their own job board as a source of vacancies despite the fact that the tes and TeachVac often have a wider  range of job opportunities than the DfE site.

As usual, this new scheme ignores the really serious shortage subjects such as design and technology; business studies and computing.

The DfE will need to ensure schools understand the scheme as they will be receiving applications for these posts almost immediately. They will need to be able to ensure timetables that meet the requirements, especially in the sciences where most vacancies are advertised as for a ‘teacher of science’ and not a teacher of physics.

Will the scheme succeed? It is only for 2023-24 at present, so might be regarded as a trial. Previous schemes, have disappeared. I don’t recall the evaluation of this one from 2016 mentioned in a previous blog post. More on BREXIT | John Howson (wordpress.com)

On a similar topic of recruiting teachers from overseas, in December the DfE issued tender RFX159 – Supply of teachers qualified outside of England. This specified within the terms:

‘The Contractor must work in consultation with the Client Organisation to prepare a Business Brief, which may include, but not be exclusive to, the following: a. scoping of the work required by the business area in respect of; i) single or multiple recruitment campaigns targeting qualified maths and physics teachers primarily from Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and USA. Further high performing countries subject to agreement. Ii) Any other recruitment and supply of teachers to English schools.’

Schemes such as this one will not solve the teacher supply crisis that secondary schools have been experiencing for far too long. After all, the Select Committee was concerned enough in 2015 to mount an inquiry and the situation now is far worse than it was then. We must not fail a generation of young people.

Mixed news on ITT applications

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Snippets from the STRB Evidence

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The DfE has released their evidence to the Teachers’ Pay Review Body, the STRB. The government doesn’t shy away the problems with recruitment into teaching and departures from the profession, but, as might be expected, it does put the best possible face on the data. For instance, it noted that primary pupil numbers were now falling, and that secondary pupil numbers were likely to peak soon. However, it also noted challenges with the number of new graduates likely to be entering the labour market.

Higher education institutions. long the butt of government attacks over their role in ITT might take heart from table C3 that shows them outperforming schools in the percentage of men recruited onto both primary and secondary postgraduate ITT courses. SCITTs seem to have had a poor year in 2022/23 in that respect. High Potential ITT (Teach First to the rest of us) had a good year in 2022/23, after three poor years of recruiting men to their programme. However, their overall recruitment fell from 1,661 in 2019/2020 to 1,393 in 2022/23, although that was not as dramatic a fall as for the School Direct Salaried programme; down from 2,492 to 661 during the same period.

Salaried schemes accounted for 10% of entrants in 2019/2020, but only 6% in 2022/23. This is despite the growth in apprenticeships for graduate entrants.

Despite the anxiety about the departure of heads, leaver rates fell between 2016 and 2020 across England, from 10.6% to 8.9%. However, I expect the 2021 figure to show an upturn to reflect the fact that many heads stayed in post in 2020, to see their schools through the worst of the pandemic.

The teaching force in England is one of the youngest in the OECD, with a quarter of classroom teachers, and a third of unqualified teachers under the age of 30 in November 2021. There are still disproportionally more men in senior positions than there are women. However, at the classroom teacher level, three out of four of all teachers were women, across all sectors covered by the STRB.  

The number of newly qualified entrants fell from 26,780 in 2015 to 20,435 in 2020, presumably due to a combination of factors including the pressure on school funding; the start of the decline in primary school rolls and the problems with recruitment onto ITT courses in some secondary subjects, leaving schools having to make other arrangements.

Perhaps the most worrying figure in the DfE evidence is the fact that 8% of teachers in special schools in 2021 were unqualified. This compares with 2% in primary and 3% in secondary schools. Although the actual number is only a little over 2,000 people, compared with the 6,100 working in secondary schools, this is a disappointing situation for a sector where research earlier this week also showed teaching conditions to be poor.

Surprisingly, only 1,753 schools were using recruitment payments in 2021, although they were concentrated, as might be expected, in London and the South East. However, one wonders why the 66 schools in the North East needed to use such payments, and whether it might be a coding error in the Workforce Census? Maybe, they were all trying to recruit physics teacher or design and technology staff?

It will be interesting to see what the STRB makes of this evidence and how the current pay dispute is settled.

Recruit now or never

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: TeachVac

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

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

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

False Market

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Last year, 2022, saw a large increase in recorded vacancies for teachers. That increase has continued in the first six weeks of 2023. TeachVac has recorded a 31% increase for the period from the start of January up to 10th February 2023. Recorded vacancies for the secondary sector increased from 8,617 to 11,304 with increases in most subjects except; classics, economic, sociology and Engineering. Increases in music were in the order of 50%, and 59% in geography.

Although the increase in computing vacancies was only 41%, such was the lack of recruitment into training for courses that started last September that there will shortly have been sufficient advertised vacancies to provide a post for every trainee likely to be available for September. Design and technology, as a subject, is in a similar situation, even though a few more trainees were recruited in 2022 than in the previous year.

Business studies has already recorded enough vacancies for every trainee to have been able to find a job. Schools now recruiting for that subject will find the task ever more of a challenge as the year progresses.

For those of us that regularly watch the labour market for teachers, the question must now be; how accurate a reflection of reality is the current market data? Indeed, is measuring vacancies any longer a worthwhile exercise? Are schools just re-advertising vacancies that they cannot fill or advertising posts they expect to have to fill to try and capture the small number of candidates actually looking for vacancies?

Normally, I would not expect new entrants to the profession to have started job hunting this early in the year, except in subjects such as history and physical education where the supply of candidates regularly exceeds the number of vacancies on offer and it makes sense to start job hunting early.

In a ‘normal’ year there might be around 60,000 vacancies across both the primary and secondary sectors in England and including both state and private schools. The 100,000+ of 2022, and the increase early in 2023, suggests that there must be a considerable amount of either repeat advertising or re-advertising, depending upon how those terms are defined.

This blog has long championed the need for a unique vacancy number to follow a post from creation to its being filled. The current market makes that concept even more pressing. Schools do not need to wait for the DfE to create an elaborate structure, but could start using their URN followed by 2301 so the first vacancy would be xxxxxx/2301 and their tenth xxxxxx/2310. If included somewhere on the advertisement such reference number would be easy for followers of the labour market to handle and would provide a much clear picture of the actual labour market rather than having to wait until the June following the start of the school year and the publication of the data from the School Workforce Census.

Maybe, the government doesn’t want real-time information on the labour market, but without out it schools are at risk of having to rely upon signals from a false market that does not accurately show the real level of demand for teachers.

Recruiting teachers: a real challenge

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This morning a school complained on a social media site that they had advertised a senior maths teacher post, but received no applications at all. Is it right to interpret this fact to mean that there is a real crisis in teacher recruitment? Regular readers of this blog – and thank you to those that sent me comments after the 10th anniversary post last week – will know that I have highlighted the issue of shortage of entrants into the profession that eventually feeds through to create a shortage of middle leaders in some subjects in several posts. The assumption must be that this is what has happened in this instance.

However, while not decrying that analysis, there are some other questions to ask first. Why did nobody from inside the school apply? Is it because the department is full of young and inexperienced teachers that spend only a few years in the school before moving on to posts that pay more?

Was the incentive offered in line with others locally, and enough to attract incomers if the school is in a high-cost housing area?

Why did nobody from the local area apply? Is it to do with the school or the salary?

I asked TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk to look up the data for promoted posts in mathematics advertised by schools during January 2023 for the East of England region, as an example of what the school might expect. There were 27 such vacancies up to the 30th of January, and around 50 registered jobseekers targeting such posts in that part of England. On average that is less than two potential applicants per school. Assuming most applicants make more than one application, let’s assume the school might have expected up to 10 visits to the web site to look at the details of the job, and somewhere between 2-5 applications.

However, early January may just be too early in the recruitment cycle for September appointments for most teachers seeking either a promotion or their first teaching post to have commenced their job searches. January is a great month to be looking for a new headteacher, but may not be the optimal time for recruiting for other posts.

Schools also need to understand how the job board methodology works. When a school posts a new job, it will be matched that day or the next by most boards with registered users that meet the criteria for subject, job level and locality. Although the vacancy will remain on display for anyone searching the site, it is often not sent to existing users again for a period of time.

Job boards should be able to tell schools how many matches they have made with the school’s vacancies. For one Multi Academy Trust in the South East using TeachVac, the current average for all jobs is around 180 matches since September.

I would suggest that schools need to think carefully about each vacancy and plan a campaign to fill the job. A main scale history post advertised in February should be filled by just putting the job on the school’s own website, and if necessary a job board. A physics teacher post for January occurring in November needs an entirely different approach. Is it worth spending the same amount on each vacancy? And how good is your market intelligence?

Are you paying too much to advertise a teaching vacancy?

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

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

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

Turnover             2022                     2021

UK                        £68.2 mn          £54.0 mn

Europe                £  2.9 mn             £ 2.6 mn

Rest of World     £  9.0  mn           £ 9.0 mn

Income

Staff

Management    £61.2 mn          £56.5  mn

All activities      £80.2 mn           £66.1  mn

TES accounts – see link above page 29

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

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

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

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

ITT headlines hide a worrying message?

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Has the current wave of strikes in the public sector over pay affected applications to train as a teacher from graduates? On the basis of the data published today by the DfE 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) the answer would appear to be in the negative, at least as far as the number of offers made and accepted up to 16th January 2023 are concerned when compared with the similar date in January over previous years.

Of course, January is still early in the annual recruitment cycle, and the trend over the next couple of months will be important in determining the outcome for the year as a whole. Such improvements as there are when compared with previous years do not mean targets will be reached with this level of applications, but that if the trend were to continue this year might not be as disastrous as the present cohort of trainees in many subjects.

However, computing is an exception, registering its worst ever January number of offers and acceptances. Interestingly, history is in a similar situation, but I assume that is due to greater control over offers than a real slump in applications. Interestingly, 55% of computing applicants, compared with 52% of history applicants, are recorded as ‘unsuccessful’, so there may be some more questions to be asked about how different subjects handle knowledge levels among applicants?

Overall, applicant numbers at 17.012 are just over 2,000 more than in January 2022. This means that applications are up from the 39,000 of January 2022 to nearly 45,000 in January 2023. Assuming the increase isn’t just down to faster processing of applicants, this must be considered as a glimmer of good news for the government. Even better news for the government, is that the bulk of the additional applications are for secondary subjects. Overall applications for the secondary sector are up from 20,254 last year to 25,063 this year, whereas applications for primary phase courses are only up from 18,300 to 18,824.

The bulk of the additional applications seems to have headed towards the higher educations sector, where applications are up from 18,000 to 22,00. Apprenticeship numbers are stable at just below 1,700, and applications to SCITT courses have increased from 5,400 to 5,800. School Direct fee courses are the other area with a large gain in applications; up from 11,429 to 12,761. Applications for the salaried route barely increased, up from 2,394 to 2,639.

Interestingly, the increase in the number of male candidates in January was larger than the number of women. Male numbers increased from 4,115 in January 2022 to 5,256 January 2023 whereas female applicants only increased from 10,754 to 11,581; still many more, but worth watching to see if there is a trend?

As one might expect with the interest in secondary courses, and the increase in men applying to train as a teacher, applications rose faster from those likely to be career changers than from new graduates. Indeed, the number of applications from those age 22 actually fell, from 2,098 in January 2022 to 2,064 this January. The number of those aged 60 or over applying increased from 34 last January to 72 this January; up by more than 100%.

However, all this good news has to be qualified by the fact that the biggest increase in applicants by geography is from the ‘Rest of the world’ category – up from 1,061 to 2,676. Applications from London and the Home counties regions have fallen: less good news.

Still the overseas applicants do seem to be applying to providers in London, so that may help.

The fact that the good news in the headlines is largely supported by the increase in overseas applicants must be a matter for concern on several counts. If offered a place, will these students turn up, and how long will they stay; will the Home Office grant them visas to teach in England; will places that could be offered to new graduates later in the recruitment round have been filled by these overseas applicants, and what might be the implications for how the recruitment round is managed? All interesting questions for the sector and the government to ponder.

How challenging is teacher recruitment?

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The staffing crisis in the NHS often receives more publicity than the festering crisis in teacher recruitment. This week, TeachVac has supplied data for articles in tes, and by the Press Association. The latter story make many local newspapers, but little impact on the broadcast media that still seems obsessed with the NHS.

Next week, TeachVac will publish its two detailed reviews: one on the labour market for school leaders and the other looking at the labour market for classroom teachers during 2022. Schools signed-up to TeachVac’s £500 recruitment deal for unlimited matches of their jobs can ask for a free copy of both reports. Copies are priced at £100 for each report to non-subscribers. www.teachvac.co.uk

Both reports comment on what is now history. January marks the start of the key recruitment round for September 2023. As part of its data collection, TeachVac, where I am chair, monitors its collected vacancies against the numbers recorded in the DfE’s annual ITT census of trainees. Of course, some of those trainees are already in the classroom on programmes that mean they will be unlikely to be job seeking for September in any large numbers. TeachVac’s index takes these numbers into account when calculating its end of week numbers.

Despite only being at the end of week 2 of 2022, I thought it might be useful to compare 2023 with 2022 at the same point. When looking at the table, it is worth recalling that in many subjects the number of trainees is lower than it was last year, so the supply side is reduced. As a result, it would take a reduction in demand for the index to improve on week 2 of 2022.

Subject13th January 202314th January 2022Difference
Computing76%90%-14%
RE80%93%-13%
Business Studies70%82%-12%
All Sciences85%92%-7%
Music84%91%-7%
Languages87%94%-7%
Mathematics87%93%-6%
English87%93%-6%
Geography87%92%-5%
Art93%97%-4%
PE96%98%-2%
D&T73%75%-2%
History97%98%-1%
Source TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk

Sadly, the reduction in trainee numbers hasn’t been offset by any reduction in demand: quite the opposite. All the subjects in the table are indicating a worse position at the end of week 2 in 2023 than at the same point in 2022; even history.

Design and technology’s apparently favourable position is due more to how badly it was faring in 2022 than to any real improvement, as it still has the second lowest index score in 2023, only business studies – the DfE’s forgotten subject – is in a worse position, and will certainly register an amber warning of recruitment challenges by next Friday.

Indeed, computing and design and technology will both also almost certainly have posted amber warning by the end of week 3! Several other subjects might have amber warning in place by the end of the month.

I am sure that the worsening trend in recruitment is why schools and MATs are signing up to TeachVac’s recruitment offer. At less than £10 per week for all a schools’ vacancies to be matched to TeachVac’s database, with no extra work required by the school than doing what it already does, must be the best deal in town. Schools not signed up with TeachVac will no longer see their vacancies matched each day. The fee for primary schools is just £75.

Is your school using TeachVac?

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Created eight years ago, TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk has already matched nearly 4,000 teaching posts so far in 2023 with teachers and other interested in filling these jobs.

After eight years of being a free service TeachVac now charges secondary schools less than £10 per week -£500 per year plus VAT – for matching all their teaching posts for a year with its ever growing database of new and experienced teachers and recruitment companies. Primary schools pay £75 per year and can be free to academy trusts and other groups of schools that sign-on together with at least one secondary school.

Schools can sign up on the website – use the button to start the registration process or email enquiries@teachvac.co.uk and the staff will answer any queries about the service.

As TeachVac has traditionally had more jobs that the DfE site, it is a better place for jobseekers to register to be sent the links to jobs that meet with their specifications and a few that they might not have thought about. New registrations are being added to the list of those matched with vacancies every day.

With 75% of the teaching posts in 2023 posted by schools in or around London, schools in London, the south East and East of England should be at the front of the queue in signing up to TeachVac. Can you afford to miss out on access to the jobseekers in TeachVac’s database that receive relevant new jobs every afternoon. www.teachvac.co.uk

As an example, those teachers looking for a maths teacher post in North London will have received details of 14 different vacancies over the past two days from TeachVac. If your school isn’t using TeachVac then your vacancy won’t have been one of these sent to TeachVac’s users, if you posted one.

TeachVac is looking to use the income from schools to expand into offering a similar service for non-teaching posts and if enough schools sign-up the additional cost would be minimal. In the school-term, where schools offer a visa service for overseas applicants we will be introducing that fact into the matching service shortly.

TeachVac’s users are loyal, with 75% of all registered users still receiving daily matches,. This allows teachers considering a  move or looking for promotion to monitor the job market in the area where they are interested in working. Feedback tells us teachers used TeachVac to secure their job.

However, there are shortages of teachers in some subjects and TeachVac acknowledges that fact. But by not using the TeachVac platform for less than £10 per week schools can miss out on TeachVac sending their job details to those that are registered with TeachVac. Is it worth the risk for just £10 per week?

Tomorrow, TeachVac will publish an analysis of the first two weeks of 2023 compared with the same period in 2022 and compare the position with the government’s ITT census of trainees expected to be job hunting for a September 2023 post. The figures in some subjects will look extremely worrying.