Teacher Vacancy Numbers See Steepest Rise in Over a Decade

The most recent official data on England’s education job market shows the number of teacher vacancies reaching its highest point in over ten years. 

The School Workforce Census, taken in November 2021 and released this month, shows that vacancies for teaching posts reached 1,564 in the current academic year. This year-on-year jump of 46% brings the total number of vacancies to its highest number since the census started in 2010, reversing a trend of small declines in the preceding years. 

The rise in vacancies corresponds to an overall increase in the number of teachers and teaching assistants in the English workforce, with 968,100 full-time equivalent staff working in state-funded schools. This leaves the rate of vacancies largely unchanged at three per 100,000 teachers.

Underneath these headline figures, the census data reflects both the effect of the pandemic in boosting interest in the teaching profession and the waning of that same phenomenon. 87.5% of teachers who qualified in 2020 were still in post a year later. 

12.5% of new teachers leaving the profession after just a year is only a slight increase from the previous year’s figure of 11.3%, but remains higher than the equivalent numbers for 2013-2018. 

After a record low in the 2018/19 academic year, the number of teachers leaving the workforce in the 2020/21 jumped by 12% to over 32,000. This remains lower than the pre-pandemic baseline, but the sharp upward movement indicates that the educational recruitment sector may now be reverting to type after Covid-19 delivered an unforeseen boost to ITT applications and wider retention rates.

The concurrent rise in departures and vacancies hints that the exodus of teachers prophesied by the DfE in April may now be in play. 

The number of teaching assistants in England’s classrooms has risen steadily over the last decade, and this year is no exception to the trend. Almost 267,000 TAs are currently employed in the 2021/22 academic year, a rise of 3.9% from 2019/20. 

It is increasingly clear that we will see more teachers set to leave the profession altogether, leaving a wave of vacancies in their wake. Yet the new data for school and pupil characteristics show increases in both the number of pupils and the number of schools.

An abundance of teachers will be required to cater to these rises if the current growth in class sizes is to be contained. Yet contractions in the supply of teachers point to one thing: schools will have to compete even more vehemently to hire the best educators.

Senior leadership teams may need an enhanced set of tools to entice teachers into their permanent roles. Teaching Personnel’s Permanent Workforce Resourcing service is designed to give schools the edge.

Our expert educational recruitment consultants will manage each step of your schools’ recruitment drives. We can get your message out through sophisticated advertising techniques to our vast pool of educators, schedule interviews, and take the reins of your acceptance and rejection processes.

Permanent Workforce Resourcing allows schools to build long-term talent pipelines that can withstand the ebbs and flows of the job market. Read more about it here.