The search for a new teaching post can be daunting. First there is the nerve-wracking interview, followed by the prospect of getting to grips with an unfamiliar school and building up your reputation with students from scratch. But as a job hunter, you now seemingly have one thing in your favour: the recruitment crisis. 

School leaders’ union the NAHT’s most recent survey into teacher recruitment found that schools struggled to fill vacancies across all roles in 2016. School leaders who took part in the survey reported that 79 per cent of posts were difficult to recruit for; 62 per cent recruited were filled with a struggle, and respondents were unable to recruit at all for 17 per cent of posts.

With schools desperate for teachers to fill roles that are currently sitting empty, it has surely never been easier to find a new job in teaching?

Not necessarily, says John Howson, a teacher supply -expert and honorary fellow of the University of Oxford. He explains that the recruitment crisis does not mean that job seekers can take it for granted that they will walk straight into a teaching job.

“It’s all relative,” he says. “If you are a physicist or a good-quality maths teacher, you will have no problem finding a job. If you have trained in a subject such as history, art or PE, then it’s likely that things will be a little harder...but all evidence suggests that the dominant factor is location.” 

What are your chances?

The TES Teacher Recruitment Index (bit.ly/TESRecruitmentIndex), which tracks secondary schools’ ability to successfully recruit teachers, provides some context for how location can impact on your chances of finding a job. 

Although schools in all regions report having to work incredibly hard to attract talent, the index shows that recruitment is more difficult in London and the East of England, while schools in the North West and East Midlands find it easier to fill posts.

The TES index is based on data from secondary schools only, but the NAHT recruitment survey, which includes responses from primary schools, found broadly the same pattern and identified that the shortages appear “to be more severe in London and the South East”. One reason for this, the NAHT suggests, is the high cost of living in these areas. Of the respondents based in London, 60 per cent said that their recruitment difficulties could be attributed to high housing and living costs.

“Like many other people, teachers are being priced out of the housing market across the UK, with property prices soaring way beyond salaries - an increasingly serious barrier to recruitment,” says Russell Hobby, the union’s general secretary.

If high house prices put people off working in London in the first place, they can also lead to greater teacher turnover. Howson notes that while those who commit to training in London might initially resign themselves to higher living costs, things can change after a few years of teaching.

“After five years in a London flatshare, they may decide that they’ve had enough and want to relocate to somewhere they can live more comfortably,” he says.

Another contributing factor to the recruitment problems in London and the South East, he adds, is that the state sector is competing with a larger independent sector in these areas, which means that there are fewer teachers to go around. 

In the North West, on the other hand, where living costs are lower, far too many teachers are being trained, according to Howson. And because teachers tend to look for work in the area that they trained in, this drives up competition for jobs. So the best bet for flexible job hunters might be to forsake the North and concentrate their search on areas where the cost of living is higher, such as the East of England.

But Sarah Wright, a senior lecturer in primary education at Edge Hill University in Lancashire, doesn’t think the answer is that simple. 

“Lots of trainees worry about finding their first teaching post. There is a myth that it is really hard to do. But, in fact, many of our trainees get the first job they interview for, and even if they don’t, they don’t tend to struggle,” she says.

“I think there are some big misconceptions. Often, people who work in teacher recruitment will come to speak to our trainees and tell them that it will be really difficult to get a job here in the North West and so they would be better off going abroad to work somewhere like Dubai. But that’s not the reality I see. I think that people on the ground have a different experience of the jobs market to people working in recruitment.”

The situation is by no means impossible, then, if you have your heart set on job in the North West. However, there are other circumstances besides location that you still need to consider. 

For secondary teachers, the subject you teach certainly has an impact. The TES index shows that your chances of getting a job are better if you teach design and technology, maths or sciences, while competition is greater in subjects such as art and design, history and PE. 

According to Howson, this variation is largely down to supply and demand. Not enough people with maths and science backgrounds are choosing to enter initial teacher training. On the other hand, initial teacher training courses for subjects such as history are more likely to be oversubscribed. So, if you teach in one of these subjects, you may need to be a little more flexible about what you’re willing to teach to guarantee a job.

“If you are a history teacher, be open to looking for humanities jobs instead of looking exclusively for posts where you will only teach history,” Howson says. And, he adds, if you are able to teach a second subject, make sure that you mention this in your application forms. 

“If you are a PE teacher with a degree in sports science, you may be able to pick up a bit of biology, which will make you more attractive to schools.” 

Changes to the national curriculum can also drive demand, Howson points out. For example, he says, when the computing curriculum changed in 2014 to place greater emphasis on coding, schools had lots of vacancies for people with coding expertise. However, there have been far fewer vacancies of this kind in 2016, as many of the people who filled the gaps previously are still in post. 

This suggests that job seekers would be wise to keep a close eye on the changing requirements for their subject to make sure they emphasise the most desirable aspects of their experience when applying for jobs.

List of requirements

Subject and location will be at the top of the list of -requirements for anyone searching through job ads, but teachers have another important question to bear in mind: what kind of school they want to work in.

Unsurprisingly, the NAHT survey indicates that candidates may stand a better chance of securing a job if they are applying to work in a school that requires improvement rather than one with a higher Ofsted rating. The report revealed that schools judged with the lowest Ofsted ratings faced “a consistently greater struggle to recruit”. 

However, the writers of the report are keen to stress that the findings in this area should be “considered with caution”, as this is the first year that the survey has taken Ofsted ratings into account, and also because the numbers were small for some of the roles surveyed. 

Wright similarly warns against making sweeping statements about whether it is easier to get a job in a struggling school, explaining that, really, it is all about personal preference.

“As an NQT, I knew I wanted to work in a ‘requires improvement’ school, so those were the roles I looked for,” she says. “Of course, we have trainees who only want to work in ‘outstanding’ schools, but they are not necessarily the majority. There is a lot of variety in what new teachers are looking for.”

Despite the current recruitment crisis, securing your next job in teaching is bound to take a bit of leg work. Being flexible about what and where you teach might help you along the way, as will nailing down the type of school that will best suit your skills. 

But the way to give yourself the best chance possible may simply be to get your application in early. This is because most teaching jobs start in September, to coincide with the beginning of the academic year, so schools begin advertising as early as possible, often in January. 

Schools will then recruit very quickly and posts will begin to be filled, meaning that the closer to summer it gets, the fewer schools will be advertising for the coming September. 

“The later you leave it, the more difficulty you will have,” says Howson. “So, start your hunt early, straight after Christmas, if you can.”