While looking after your school, your pupils and everything associated with being a headteacher is extremely challenging, we’d be willing to wager that managing your workforce and ensuring there are no gaps in your teacher requirements ranks highly in your list of work-based issues. Recruiting teachers in a highly competitive market is no easy feat, and securing the supply staff you need can be even more challenging. But how do you make your school more attractive to supply teachers in order to recruit the best available specialists?
Promote your benefits
Every school will have its own unique proposition for staff, but as with selling any opportunity, you need to actively promote why your school is the best place for temporary staff. Whether that’s your location, the curriculum, your facilities or anything else – you need to ensure that your potential supply staff are excited by what’s on offer.
Establish your reputation
Yes, this is a slightly longer-term requirement, however, it will go a long way. Leaders at the very best schools have a different problem from most in that they often have too many applications to work through, and that’s because teaching staff want to work in the best environment. You can’t really fake this and while you can promote your key selling points, the best way of attracting good staff is ultimately to be a good employer and to offer a workplace that provides the support that supply teachers need to thrive. Considering the fact that supply staff often travel extensively for their work, and that word travels fast, one of the most effective ways of promoting your school is through your supply network and providing a good offer to them can make a big difference to your long-term recruitment needs.
Use social media
You might be reluctant to utilise social media for your recruitment of prospective supply teachers, but a huge proportion of teaching staff use various platforms, from TikTok to Twitter, not just for their own personal lives, but also to seek out information for lesson plans or to find material that aids pupil education. And if the audience is there already, you’re missing a trick by not marketing to them, as your competitors likely are.
Use your website
In a similar vein, the vast majority of employers in other industries utilise their organisational websites to promote all types of opportunities, from manual labour roles through to director-level positions, and schools should too. You would be surprised to find who is visiting your website and even if your ideal supply teacher isn’t clicking through, someone in their network may be. Promoting not only your roles on your website, but also the culture and ethos of your school or academy will prove valuable in the long run.
Share staff success stories
Everyone likes receiving compliments, and highlighting to potential staff that they could be working in an environment where they are praised for their behaviour and actions by sharing staff success stories can help to attract more professionals in the future. Most specialists will have worked in environments where this certainly isn’t part of the culture, so ensure that you’re promoting yourself as an employer that rewards those who perform well and you will likely be considered as a much more attractive proposition.
Offer more to your staff
A pay increase would be ideal for many teachers, however, as we all know, this simply isn’t possible for most schools operating in today’s challenging climate. Fortunately, there are ways around this. One relatively modern trend is the growth of workplace wellness and wellbeing as well as the wider increase in the range of employee benefits available. It’s important to provide perks for your staff – permanent and supply – that won’t just aid their working life, but also their personal well-being. Equally, providing the right CPD opportunities can be a considerable draw for supply staff and can enable them to boost their skill sets, benefitting not only their time with you but also the broader education sector.
Find the right agency
You can obviously develop your own talent pools of skilled, flexible supply teachers, however, this is onerous, time-consuming work. It’s significantly more efficient to partner with a firm with extensive geographic reach and a large talent bank to call upon when you need it. If you’d like to speak to us about finding the right supply teachers to help your school thrive, get in contact here.
