 | | With the increased number of teachers emerging from training over the past few years, and the number of pupils in schools declining in many parts of the country, schools are able to be more selective than ever before when looking for new teachers.
Schools also seem better able to retain staff than in the past. However, it is not all doom and gloom. Two factors are helping to create new jobs for teachers: the large number of staff who will retire over the next few years, and the Chancellor's investment programme for schools. Some of the funds from this investment programme that was announced before Christmas may be used to create new teaching posts. However, that is for the future.
At the present time, we are in the lull before the 2007 recruitment round really gets underway. However, January does witness the start of the headteacher recruitment season for September appointments. In recent years, the three months between January and March each year have seen almost half the schools that will be looking for a new headteacher for September place an advertisement. Around two thirds will be successful, but the other third will have to re-advertise, in some cases sooner rather than later.
Many of the posts that are advertised for classroom teachers at this time of year are for temporary posts, either to fill a casual vacancy or to replace a member of staff who is departing on maternity leave. There are more of these jobs in some subjects than others.
Last term, for instance, over half of the Art and Design posts advertised were for temporary teachers, as were some 52% of the posts for Biology teachers. In most other subjects, the percentage of temporary and maternity leave posts made up between a third and 40% of the adverts.
Only in hard to fill subjects such as Design and Technology, IT and Mathematics were fewer posts advertised as temporary: these are also the subjects where there are still fewer women teachers, so the number of maternity cover posts are often much lower than in some other subjects.
The other factor that is likely to govern how hard it is to find a job at present is region within England and Wales where you are looking. The further west and north you go, the fewer the jobs on offer, and the lower the turnover, especially for main grade classroom teacher posts. Of the 2,100 or so posts in secondary schools nationally advertised last term, only 85 were placed by schools in the North East compared with over 400 by schools in the South East and nearly as many by schools in the London area.
Although 2005 was a record year for nationally advertised Assistant Head Teacher posts, with over 1,000 posts advertised during the year, there were still relatively few Advanced Skills Teacher posts advertised. Those that were advertised were often in the harder to fill subjects. However, even the small number of ASTs adverts far exceeded the number of adverts for Excellent Teachers. If this grade is being used, it may be to reward staff within a school, and not to attract staff to a school. Whether that was the intention is not clear. It may be that this grade will take time to become establishes; if indeed it ever does so.
So, the message on the job front is, the more you restrict your search, the harder it will be to find a teaching job. If you are looking, good luck.
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