International Schools Staffing Crisis
Since January 2024, 10k Schools has continuously monitored every major education job portal, to develop evidence-based insights into key talent trends affecting UK and international schools
The data presented here is a detailed analysis of international schools’ job posting activity specific to the TES portal throughout 2024
This report outlines a summary of key findings, followed by a deep dive into cause and prevention that may help schools avoid the same issues in the next hiring season.
OF ALL INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS WHO POSTED JOBS ON THE TES PORTAL DURING 2024
55% HAD OPEN TEACHING VACANCIES FOR IMMEDIATE START IN AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 2024
475 SCHOOLS RETURNED FROM THE SUMMER BREAK TO
AN AVERAGE OF 3 UNFILLED TEACHING VACANCIES
AT THE PRECISE TIME THAT SCHOOLS SHOULD BE EVEN MOST VIGILANT ABOUT SAFER RECRUITMENT
THERE IS A CLEAR DECLINE IN OBSERVANCE OF SAFER RECRUITMENT STANDARDS
Vacancy Distribution – By Job Type
Perhaps the most surprising finding, was that so many schools were starting the year with unfilled leadership vacancies (54), while 8 schools were looking for a new Principal/Head Teacher for an immediate start.
Similarly, 56 schools were starting the year with at least one Department Head vacancy open.
No Data Found
Senior & Middle Leaders Vacancies
In the international market ‘things happen’ – so maybe the 8 vacant Principal roles could be attributed to unforeseen circumstances which causes a Principal to not return after the summer.
But to have 54 Deputy / Assistant Head vacancies open, alongside 56 Department Head vacancies raises a serious question about the quality (or absence) of succession planning, that nobody inside the school is deemed ready (or willing) to step up.
Succession Planning or Reacting?
Succession planning is a practice that we’ve rarely seen in action in schools. It happens, but only at a superficial level, lacking adequate long-term planning around succession, professional development and critical jobs.
The result of which is the need to react quickly often at a time when talent is scarce, which leads to more unsatisfactory hiring outcomes. It can be the start of a vicious circle, especially if a school is resource constrained
There’s a vast gap between what most schools think succession planning is, vs how it’s looked at and executed by the world’s most successful organisations. While schools may not be Apple or Google, there’s no reason they shouldn’t adopt the same principles of talent management.
Linking Succession Planning to Professional Development
Succession planning isn’t about promotion, it’s about recognizing potential in people, setting clear development plans to help them bridge the gap…..but it’s also about having explicitly clear recruitment plans in place in the event a vacancy opens that your talent pool aren’t quite ready to fill.
Every year, you must evaluate your “Bench Strength” to ensure no nasty surprises – especially in an international schools where many factors can combine to cause vacancies to arise at short notice.
Development of high-potential employees should be targeted towards clear objectives for the school with PD budget having a clear allocation towards short term and long-term outcomes.
Professional development should be about the organization’s clearly identified needs, not ‘just because’ x employee wants to undertake y development.
How does your school’s Professional Development budget balance short term wins vs critical jobs and succession planning?
Do you maintain a clear Succession Plan, Bench Evaluation and Critical Jobs evaluation?
Vacancy Distribution – Specialist Teachers
While it’s perhaps not surprising to see that science subjects (when combined) were the most problematic vacancies….
When we break this number down, in fact by far the biggest problem right now in the international education market, appears to be a lack of qualified English Teachers
No Data Found
Specialist Teachers – The Need for Data
The issue with English teachers has been gathering pace for a few years now, and we’d heard whispers from several of the biggest K12 companies that they had data showing some surprising trends around the world.
This is the first detailed analysis available to all, that has shown that contrary to popular perception, sciences and maths are not the biggest current issue for skills shortage globally.
This ‘surprising’ outcome contrary to popular logic, may flag why there are so many English teacher vacancies are still open – as the shortage has caught many schools by surprise.
Too much of what schools do around HR and planning, is based on ‘feel’ or intuition because of an absence of hard data, but intuition is often based on common logic rather than any grounding of reality.
This issue wouldn’t be a surprise for schools modern hiring tools such as ATS / Applicant Tracking Systems with inbuilt analytics. 10k Schools for example not only counts the number of candidates and which application source they came from, but also the number/percentage of qualified candidates.
Schools must get better at capturing and tracking data from their hiring processes to identify year on year declines and inform critical job planning.
Specialist Teachers – Critical Jobs
We mentioned earlier that critical jobs may not be the ones you think
We heard last year from a prominent school who closed their German program because of the difficulty hiring qualified teachers in that subject. “German Teacher” was very clearly a critical job if being unable to hire meant closing a program.
Did the school concerned look beyond advertising on the TES or have a clear plan in place for what is clearly a critical job? Unlikely.
The same concepts apply to critical jobs planning as for middle and senior leaders – a critical job is simply one which is recognized as hard to fill, and thus requires a specific plan beyond advertising the job on TES each year – e.g. using German media or agents.
Risk Mitigation
Don’t get your school in a ‘vanity subject’ position where an entire program is dependent on one teacher – if you can’t grow a niche program within 2 years to a point where multiple teachers are needed (and thus staffing risks are halved) consider discontinuing it.
Ensure you maintain a critical jobs register with a detailed and documented recruitment plan for every specialist teaching position, including specialist publications and other sources of candidates – relying on the job board you subscribe to or the agents you’ve used for years is a failure to plan
Get contract renewals locked down super early for specialist positions
If the teacher doesn’t renew immediately when offered, you know you have a potential problem – mobilise your recruitment plan immediately to start talent pooling
Safer Recruitment
Of the 882 international schools who posted a job on TES since 1st January 2024
It’s impossible to know what happens behind the scenes,
But a visible absence of the most basic requirement to protect schools against unsuitable individuals would indicate that it is unlikely the school is following best practice or accreditation body requirements on employee verification.
Safer Recruitment – It Gets Worse
Of the 474 schools who posted a job on TES in August and September.
It should be of extreme concern to school leaders and national regulators that the proportion of schools not following international best practice declines significantly from 51% to 65% when schools are desperate to hire.
At the time of year there is typically a ‘reason’ why a teacher is available. Whilst many educators are available for very good reason, it’s fair to assume that there are also many who have been terminated or ‘agreed to leave’ their previous school late in the last academic year, hence their availability later in the hiring cycle.
So at the very point when talent is scarce and hiring decisions are likely to be most compromised, the data demonstrates that MORE schools under pressure of time, become LESS vigilant.
Summary – It’s all about the DATA
Schools are fighting an existential talent shortage crisis completely blind, because of a lack of actionable insights into their hiring processes
The common thread through all the challenges schools face, is the need for data to help schools achieve better outcomes.
A great example is that most schools’ hiring data sits on TES or multiple job platforms – which offers zero actionable insights………..why…..because job boards withhold the data from you, to keep you reliant on them.
It’s also very labour intensive to screen candidates across multiple platforms, and perform any meaningful analysis that can be fed back into how you can select better in next year’s hiring cycle.
To obtain data, schools need to rethink key HR / talent processes to ensure they are designed to collect actionable data, and to begin to invest in higher quality HR programs to ensure scarce resources are targeted on achieving better talent outcomes.
We support schools with cutting edge HR data analytics & process automation software, and access to HR talent on a ‘Pay as You Go’ basis, at a price everyone can afford:
10k Schools Technology
Automated shortlisting of candidates from TES/Teach Away etc
Automated Safer Recruitment Verification
Targeted Psychometric Assessment for Every Candidate
Employee Engagement Insights
Automated Central / Employee Safeguarding Register
10k Schools Advisory
At 10k Schools we recognize schools find HR challenging – we also recognize that schools can’t afford the global HR leadership talent that a large K12 may be able to.
We’re able to address that balance with fractional leadership – our team are all Ex-Chief HR Officers from Global or Regional K12 organisations, with a wealth of experience supporting schools around the world to achieve the best talent outcomes.
Starting at $1000 per month, we’re able to augment and develop your current team, systems, policies and processes to help your school win the war for talent
Why does 10k Schools Care?
Our unique platform uses real time data insights to help school leaders understand the critical need to use evidence-based rather than intuition-based approaches to hiring and retaining talent.
10k Schools stands for a modernisation of the role and expectations on the HR function within schools, supporting school leaders and HR teams with data insights which help them better understand what is really needed to drive better selection, retention, employee engagement and wellbeing.
As schools, we have become increasingly adept at using data to prescribe learning solutions and school improvement plans, yet we use barely any data to prescribe solutions to talent management challenges
Amidst the Global Teacher Shortage, the single biggest threat to upholding and enhancing the quality of teaching and learning in schools worldwide, is access to talent.
We don’t source talent, and we don’t recruit teachers
We enable you to work smarter and more efficiently.
