The Top 4 Trends Changing the Teaching Job Market (and How Teachers Stand to Benefit)

Once upon a time, finding a new job as a teacher was a dependably linear process. A school would advertise a vacancy in a sector publication like the TES, the successful candidate would apply with the relevant local authority, secure a permanent, full-time position and, most likely, eventually progress up to a middle leadership position at the same school.

Recruitment in education operated through such a relatively unswerving pipeline for many years. But in 2022, it seems almost primitively simple. The hiring landscape for teachers has become far more differentiated, with more places to look for a greater range of positions and considerably less involvement from local authorities.

In the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and its particularly acute consequences for education, the job market is again set to change. This may happen gradually but, will in the end, amount to something dramatic. To help teachers navigate the most important trends, we’ve laid out the key factors that will drive change in the teaching job market in the next few years - and how you can turn them to your advantage. 

The teaching profession has long faced a staffing problem, but you might not realise how pressing that problem has become.

This is primarily a crisis of the experienced. Numbers of new recruits to Initial Teacher Training programmes have been relatively large for years, even swelling temporarily during the first stages of the pandemic. The issue comes several years down the line in keeping those teachers, now hardened by many half terms under their belt, in the job.

Recent research by the Education Policy Institute found that 40% of teachers leave the profession after their first five years of teaching. This rises to an estimated half of all teachers working in core subjects like maths, science and languages.

The government has pledged to raise salaries and introduce retention incentives to help tackle this. Yet for the foreseeable future, schools will still find it tougher to fill some of their most important posts.

This imbalance in the hiring market works in a jobhunting teacher’s favour. Schools know that experienced teachers are a scarce and valuable commodity. This strengthens applicants’ hands when negotiating pay packages and working conditions.

If you want further help understanding and maximising your value in the job market, get in touch to enlist the expertise of our specialist educational recruitment consultants. 

Many a middle manager had their preconceptions about employee productivity outside of the workplace happily shattered in the first half of 2020. Yet despite schools being so critically impacted by the pandemic, education has lagged other sectors in facilitating less rigid working patterns.

This is something that will need to change, not least because there is such high demand for it among teachers. 90% of teachers believe that flexible working options in schools could be improved. In schools where flexible working has been introduced, 85% of staff have reported an improvement in their well-being.

As teachers see their peers in other jobs benefit from hybrid working arrangements, we anticipate that the pressure on senior leadership teams to introduce more flexible working patterns will only grow.

To a lesser extent, this pressure is also coming from above. The government has already produced material advising schools on how to implement flexible working policies. Also, while teachers have no automatic entitlement to flexible working, they do have the statutory right to request it once they have worked in a school continuously for 26 weeks. 

We anticipate that the school leaders who cater to teachers’ changing expectations and grant such requests will be those who secure the top talent.

For now, Teaching Personnel is here to give teachers the extra leverage to secure the working conditions that best suit them. Whether you’re looking to move roles or want to broker a more flexible working pattern in your current position, contact us for practical advice and guidance. 

Nobody wants to feel stymied in their job, least of all a young educator looking to make a difference to children’s lives. Yet many teachers are finding their ambitions of moving up to leadership positions frustrated by insufficient opportunities.

Over 50% of education professionals in 2020 didn’t feel like they have the scope in their current school for progressing in their careers. This stasis is made even more galling by the fact that teachers can be routinely demoted once they have reached mid-level positions due to the use of temporary contracts. A major quantitative study on teacher leadership development in 2019 found that middle leaders are almost four times more likely to move down the ranks back to becoming classroom teachers than they are to move up.

Teachers may now need to fight harder to ascend within increasingly sluggish reward structures. This makes easy access to adequate Continuing Professional Development (CPD) training increasingly important for building your portfolio. At Teaching Personnel, we provide such training to our registered educators through our CPD Academy, which features a large range of heavily discounted online courses designed to help teachers upskill.

The Department for Education is also now funding a new suite of National Professional Qualifications (NPQs) to develop leadership abilities. These will be free to take for staff in state-funded schools in England. Teachers can register their interest in time for Autumn 2022 through our partners at Best Practice Network. 

The most recent figures show that 44% of educators are now employed by multi academy trusts. The effects on the recruitment landscape of this considerable increase since 2010 cannot be overstated.

A 2019 paper from the EPI, Ambition Institute and Cambridge Assessment discovered that middle leaders at large trusts are promoted to senior roles at younger ages – and at far higher rates - than their counterparts at maintained schools. The same applies for senior leaders being promoted to headteachers.

High rates of turnover offset this effect to result in no meaningful difference in the overall proportion of staff in leadership roles at either maintained schools or academies. However, the research paints a clear picture of faster progression rates in for those who stay in their posts in MATs.

MATs have also evolved their own distinct recruitment ecosystems, enabling greater fluidity for teachers looking to move posts. A 2017 study from the National Foundation for Educational Research found that staff move between schools within the same MAT at disproportionately high rates. This has resulted in what the study’s authors call ‘internal markets’, where staff can be more readily redeployed to the benefit of more disadvantaged schools suffering from recruitment challenges.

MATs themselves have also innovated in their hiring drives. It is common for individual MATs to set up stalls at recruitment fairs and make canny use of digital marketing techniques to attract candidates.

With more academisation mooted by the Education Secretary, MATs’ sphere of influence within the education world is only set to grow.

Educational recruitment agencies like Teaching Personnel have long cultivated strong working partnerships with MATs across the country. We provide them with educators, consult with them on their recruitment challenges and frequently host their strategic insights through our series of webinars. We are well-placed to help teachers find leadership positions with the most successful MATs in their areas. 

The direction of travel in the educational job market is clear. Teachers, realising their value in a climate of scarcity, will increasingly dictate the terms of their own employment, gravitating towards roles that offer flexibility and ample progression opportunities. An increasing share of these roles will be within multi academy trusts.

Experienced teachers are arguably in quite a strong position to ride these trends to their own advantage. Yet that position can be strengthened further by partnering with a specialist agency.

At Teaching Personnel, we do much more than place educators in short-term, daily supply work. Our consultants work with growing numbers of full-time teachers, helping them understand their saleable strengths and secure positions that satisfy their ambitions.

Our wellspring of expertise and insight into education is available for any teacher to tap into. Whether you’re interested in leaving your current role or progressing within your school, our seasoned sector specialists are ready to advise you on the best strategy. All you have to do is get in touch.