Every year, over £0.5bn is spent on recruitment agency fees in public sector schools alone. That’s a staggering £30,000 per school! Whether it’s agency fees for temporary staff or permanent staff (including temporary to permanent fees), online job advertising or other indirect recruitment costs like admin and consultancy fees, this much-needed money is being diverted [...]
How a London Primary school now saves thousands on agency fees The Background Primary School in Inner London, 420 pupils Since October 2018, the school has engaged a KS2 teacher, Claire*, via a traditional supply agency. Claire was speculatively marketed to the school via an email. Coincidentally the school had a sudden need [...]
The Retention Crisis is seldom spoken about, especially compared to its more prominent twin, The Recruitment Crisis. Nonetheless, the figures associated with Retention Crisis are deeply unsettling. Eager to understand the story behind these figures and the optimal response strategies, we were fortunate enough to attend an eclectic smattering of talks on the subject at the [...]
Introduction The DfE’s long-awaited ‘Recruitment and Retention Strategy’ was released today and, as you might expect, there is plenty to discuss and dissect. Broadly, we echo the enthusiasm of other pundits and industry leaders. The Recruitment and Retention Strategy (RRS) is bold, well-informed and could rewrite the fundamentals of how the teaching workforce is organised. [...]
The past year has been filled with several calls for schools to offer more opportunities for part-time and flexible work to teachers. The reasons are straightforward: Teaching is gripped by a recruitment and retention crisis, both at the national and local scale. More teachers are leaving the classroom – and often the education sector entirely – than [...]
Hold tight, teachers. The blissful freefall of summer holidays is only just around the corner. Only a few weeks until it’s the season of late nights, lie-ins and low-key lounging. But for many, this time of year can be a little bittersweet. Because cometh the end of the year, cometh a parting of ways for [...]
Introduction Outrage at public sector cuts is now so routine, that it’s hard to feel any authentic anger towards the government. But ire, in this instance, is appropriate. With school funding set to remain flat for the next two years despite inflation, schools are fated to have to make their own cuts – most worryingly, [...]
Part way through writing this week's chapter of our anthology on teacher stress, I came across a post on the Derby University blog that expressed all I had in mind - except with more insight and erudition than I can quite manage. So with their permission, we have a guest post from Dr Sarah Charles and [...]
As the festive season ebbs into distant memory, accompanied by all of its good cheer, people are once more ready to feel bad about things. Cue a slew of articles last week once more highlighting the stress epidemic gripping the profession. What’s new here? Not much, except that stress is spreading. Metastatic, its migrated to [...]
With both pupil numbers and demand for teachers set to rise in the near future, it will become increasingly important for school leaders not just to recruit, but to retain good staff. New models for better retention are required. The number of teachers joining the profession has roughly counterbalanced the number leaving it in recent [...]
