It is common knowledge for everyone with an interest in education that primary and secondary schools across the UK are finding it more and more difficult to attract and retain teaching staff.
The route of the problem is evident: numbers of pupils in schools are increasing year on year whilst the DfE’s targets for recruitment of new teachers are not being met. In addition to this, last year alone 42, 000 teachers left the profession and the pull of sunshine and tax free earnings culminated in 18,000 teachers leaving for schools abroad. It is not surprising that adverts for teacher vacancies are not yielding the same success as they were 5 years ago.
So how can schools improve their recruitment and retention of teachers?
Key Skills Education is an inner London based education recruitment agency providing teachers and support staff for schools and education centres across London and the Home Counties specifically for long term and permanent positions. The success of Key Skills has been achieved by understanding the problems faced by schools in recruiting high-calibre teachers and improving retention of the teachers once they are in post.
Search and Selection Process – Advertising can still be an effective way of attracting teachers for any specific teaching role, we here at Key Skills Education advertise for teachers and support staff all year round – if there are good teachers actively looking for work then we want to know about them!
However, with the current teacher shortage this however is no longer a sufficient way of finding quality teachers within restricted timescales. We have pioneered innovative search techniques that enable us to tap into passive teachers, who may not be actively looking for a new post immediately but will be at some point in the future.
We continually invest heavily to attract the highest quality teaching staff, focusing on keeping in contact throughout the year, listening to their career motivations and understanding when they might be looking to progress their career.
Through our extensive network we are able to reach high-calibre teachers and support staff looking for positions in London and the Home Counties that are not available to our competitors. It follows that many of our staff work exclusively with us and have done for some time – schools that work with Key Skills Education as their education recruitment agency will have access to this exclusive network of teachers and considerably improve the schools chances of finding good to outstanding teaching staff for any given vacancy.
Retention of Teachers – Recruiting the right personality for your school plays a significant part in creating an ethos for success and ensuring a harmonious working environment, which in turn improves staff turnover. Having a successful strategy for retaining teachers starts at the recruitment stage – this is where schools can benefit from using recruitment experts.
All our consultants here at Key Skills have completed or are working towards specific qualifications in recruitment to ensure highest quality of practice. Interviewing teachers is an integral part of a recruitment consultant’s day-to-day responsibilities. We have therefore made it paramount that our consultants are highly trained interviewers, experts in uncovering the right character attributes that will ensure they are a good match for schools we are working with.
We are not just looking for teachers with a consistent work history, we are also looking to uncover classroom practitioners who have the right character attributes to fit into the unique personality of the schools we are working with and have the drive and enthusiasm to compliment the ambitions at the school. Our proficient team of consultants aspire to meet all the schools that we work with so as to accurately understand the kind of individual that will be a success at the school.
Once teachers are in post, schools benefit from our continuous dialogue throughout the academic year which allows us to resolve any minor issues before they escalate.
If you would like to learn more about Key Skills Education and the services we provide, please check out our website at www.keyskillseducation.co.uk.
