New recruitment procedures for teachers
The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) has announced a new approach to Schools Recruitment.
The Schools Recruitment Service is being established to provide a standardised application system to recruit all permanent teaching and support staff in England. This programme aims to reduce the cost of advertising and fill school staff vacancies through ‘talent pooling’.
Nearly 100,000 teaching vacancies are currently advertised each year – with an annual teacher turnover of 20 per cent. In addition to this, an estimated 50,000 non-teaching positions in schools are advertised annually.
The system will use the latest applicant tracking technology to save schools time and money on their administrative processes. It will allow schools and local authorities to upload their job vacancies, whilst candidates will register, search for and apply for jobs online.
Candidates can submit their job preferences for potential vacancies and receive job alerts for relevant roles that match their criteria – building up a ‘talent pool’, where schools and local authorities can choose to contact suitable candidates directly.
This will better match candidates and cut down the costs of advertising and re-advertising posts, whilst giving schools a greater understanding of the market and which media source is attracting the most candidates.
Schools or local authorities that do choose to advertise externally will have access to discounted advertising rates with key media through the Schools Recruitment Service.
The Schools Recruitment Service will be launched this autumn, with candidates able to register from the summer. It will comply with the Data Protection Act, with all personal, schools and payment details maintained securely and regularly assessed and reviewed.
DCSF Educational Sector Shared Service programme
The Schools Recruitment Service is the first project to be delivered by the Education Sector Shared Services Programme which has been running since the end of 2006. The Programme spent the first six months of its life identifying opportunities for the sharing of services across the whole education sector.
Recruitment was considered as one of the options available to share functions across the education sector, not only for its ability to deliver efficiencies but also to modernise the process of recruitment for all schools and their prospective employees.
The service has been developed in consultation with local authorities and schools throughout England that have been involved for the duration of the project. The Department and Tribal have recently run joint sessions where participants from schools and local authorities have helped shape the Schools Recruitment Service to meet the needs of the wider educational sector before it goes live.
For more information see http://www.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/schoolsjobs