4 Reasons Why Your School Should Hire New Graduates this September

What do you look for when taking on a new teacher? We’d imagine that aptitude, personability and intelligence all factor into your judgment, but your top priority is likely to be experience. After all, you want to know that whoever you’re recruiting has a proven track record in the classroom and is likely to add value to your pupils’ education. 

However, an extensive CV is not the sole measure of a worthwhile hire. As well as taking on experienced teachers, schools should look to hire younger staff members who haven’t yet had the chance to prove themselves fully. Teaching Personnel strongly believes that schools themselves can benefit from developing the next generation of educators. 

We have written in the past about the benefits of taking on early career teachers fresh from training courses. But there are also several significant advantages for schools prepared to offer temporary work experience placements to those on the next rung down: new graduates. 

Teaching Personnel operates a unique scheme called the Future Teachers Programme. We find placements in schools for talented young graduates who are considering education as a career path. This practical experience working in real classrooms serves as a valuable precursor to formal teacher training. 

The merits of this scheme for the graduates themselves are obvious. But it also delivers real value for the schools that participate. Here are 4 reasons why. 

Each school has its own internal culture and approach, largely informed by senior leaders and stalwart teachers. This means that a school’s institutional outlook - and the systems put in place - will be grounded in the outlooks of older members of staff.

It is only right that a school’s top decision makers should be those with the farthest-reaching achievements. Yet it is also important that schools can keep pace with newer viewpoints, disciplines and ways of thinking that might not have had currency when older staff members did their teacher training. For instance, Nesta are encouraging schools to make more room for creativity and critical thinking in their approaches to teaching.  

Recent graduates are brimming with contemporary perspectives, intelligence and enthusiasm. Their presence in classrooms might well give more experienced members of staff a refreshing insight into how younger would-be teachers (and younger people as a whole) think about and practice education. 

In 2015, the Behavioural Insights Team conducted a study on how positive role models can influence school children’s choices about whether to go to university. One group of students were presented with information cards detailing the financial advantages on future earnings of attending university. Another group sat through a series of talks on the benefits of higher education from a positive role model who had grown up in their local area.

The study clearly demonstrated that this direct intervention from a local role model made pupils significantly more likely to consider applying to university than the appeal to their financial circumstances, which actually made them less likely to do so.

Role models that children can identify with are a powerful force in motivating better decisions. Placing recent graduates in classrooms gives children a relatable contact whom they could approach directly for advice and encouragement. This minor, temporary addition to your workforce might well have a major effect in pointing some pupils in directions that will fulfil their potentials. 

The role of recent graduates in classrooms can be based on the responsibilities involved with a Teaching assistant job. They support the work of the classroom teacher and engage pupils in small group and one-on-one sessions.

According to the Education Endowment Foundation, the evidence shows that this kind of small group tuition is effective. These targeted interventions can be particularly useful in schools’ efforts to get lower-attaining pupils back on par with their peers.

This is why making use of new graduates in the classroom should in no way be viewed as taking a punt or a shot in the dark. All available priors point to the likelihood that putting bright, switched-on and eager aspiring educators in a room with a small group of your hardest-to-reach pupils will result in tangibly positive outcomes. 

Our Future Teachers Programme attracts thoughtful young people who are curious about the potentials of a career in education. How many of them follow through with these plans depends partly on the willingness of schools to take them on and properly nurture their talents.

This presents an opportunity for schools to futureproof their own recruitment pipeline and create their own permanent members of staff in advance. When you take on a subject specialist at the beginning of their career and give them the chance to develop their skills, in two years’ time you may well end up with a qualified teacher with a sense of loyalty to your school.

To make this process as seamless as possible, we allow schools to move their graduates straight onto their own ‘in-school’ teacher training programmes at the end of their placement. 

As well as fulfilling schools’ responsibilities to the next generation, the Future Teachers Programme offers a cost-effective recruitment solution in both the immediate and long term. Taking on new graduates is an inexpensive tool that helps disadvantaged pupils succeed while also saving schools money on future recruitment drives. 

Click here to visit our Future Teachers Programme hub, where you can start arranging a placement for a talented recent graduate at your school.