College recruitment before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic

  • FE colleges showed only a brief and modest downturn in online recruitment activity during the pandemic (notably in spring 2020), but an extremely large increase since then, with numbers of adverts up 50% or more in 2021 and 2022 compared to pre-pandemic norms. Things have since subsided to something closer to normal pre-pandemic levels.
  • Unlike schools, FE college recruitment does not appear to be particularly seasonal, with roughly equal levels of activity all year round. However, before the pandemic slightly more recruitment (about 55% of the annual total) tended to happen in the second half of the calendar year (July to December); since the pandemic this trend has reversed, with more activity in the first half of the calendar year (January to June).
  • The most common subject groups for FE vacancies were construction, engineering, digital, business and health. Their proportions did not change much during the course of the pandemic.
  • Like schools, sixth form colleges showed more seasonality, with the majority of recruitment activity occurring in the first half of the calendar year and low levels during the summer. This persisted during and after the pandemic.
  • However, unlike schools and more like FE colleges, sixth form colleges did not show much overall reduction in recruitment activity during the pandemic. They nevertheless did display big increases in the post-pandemic period, with unprecedented peaks in the springs of 2021 and 2022. Activity reduced in 2023, but remains well above pre-pandemic levels.
  • UTCs are smaller in number, so provided less statistically robust results, but overall showed rather similar patterns to sixth form colleges. The main differences were that the post-pandemic increase in recruitment activity was even larger.
  • These results suggest that colleges – especially FE colleges – show different patterns of recruitment to schools and, furthermore, that the COVID-19 pandemic has had substantial, in some cases ongoing, effects. It is not possible to discern from these results alone whether the recent trends are due to a greater propensity among colleges to advertise vacancies on their website, genuine increases in staff turnover or general tightness in British labour markets, but they seem likely to be caused by a combination of such factors.
Figure 1: Further education college adverts by role type (2018-2024)
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 2: Further education college adverts by subject (2018-2024)
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 3: Weekly recruitment advert counts among further education colleges in England (Sep 2018-Dec 2023)
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 4: Weekly recruitment advert counts among further education colleges in England (Sep 2018-Dec 2023)
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 5: Seasonality of further education college recruitment adverts
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 6: Weekly recruitment advert counts among further education colleges in England
Notes: Dates on the horizontal axis are for the 2020-2021 academic year. Values for 2019/20 are those corresponding to periods exactly 52 weeks earlier, those for 2018-2019 to 104 weeks earlier, those for 2021-2022 to 52 weeks later, those for 2022-2023 to 104 weeks later and those for 2023-2024 to 156 weeks later. This aligns days of the week at the expense of a slight mismatch in dates.
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 7: Sixth form college adverts by role (2018-2024)
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 8: Sixth form college adverts by subject (2018-2024)
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 9: Weekly recruitment advert counts among sixth form colleges in England (Sep 2018-Dec 2023)
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 10: Weekly recruitment advert counts among sixth form colleges in England (Sep 2018-Dec 2023)
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 11: Seasonality of sixth form college recruitment adverts
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 12: Weekly recruitment advert counts among sixth form colleges in England
Notes: Dates on the horizontal axis are for the 2020-2021 academic year. Values for 2019/20 are those corresponding to periods exactly 52 weeks earlier, those for 2018-2019 to 104 weeks earlier, those for 2021-2022 to 52 weeks later, those for 2022-2023 to 104 weeks later and those for 2023-2024 to 156 weeks later. This aligns days of the week at the expense of a slight mismatch in dates.
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 13: University technical college adverts by role (2018-2024)
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 14: University technical college adverts by subject (2018-2024)
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 15: Weekly recruitment advert counts among university technical colleges in England (Sep 2018-Dec 2023)
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 16: Weekly recruitment advert counts among university technical colleges in England (Sep 2018-Dec 2023)
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 17: Seasonality of university technical college recruitment adverts
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
Figure 18: Weekly recruitment advert counts among university technical colleges in England
Notes: Dates on the horizontal axis are for the 2020-2021 academic year. Values for 2019/20 are those corresponding to periods exactly 52 weeks earlier, those for 2018-2019 to 104 weeks earlier, those for 2021-2022 to 52 weeks later, those for 2022-2023 to 104 weeks later and those for 2023-2024 to 156 weeks later. This aligns days of the week at the expense of a slight mismatch in dates.
Sources: College websites; Department for Education; SchoolDash and Gatsby analysis.
  1. The websites of all further education (FE) colleges sixth form colleges and university technical colleges (UTCs) in England were visited each weekday night and the contents compared to the previous day in order to detect new advertised positions. Positions were detected by comparing this new text against taxonomies of expected roles and subjects (see Footnote 2). This process does not capture all relevant vacancies because: (a) we only looked for roles that matched our taxonomy, (b) not all positions are advertised on college websites, (c) even when they are, they are not necessarily presented in a way that can be automatically detected, and (d) websites are sometimes unresponsive or unavailable. Note also that, as for schools, a small proportion of colleges recruit at a group level. These adverts are detected by the system but cannot always be reliably associate with a particular institution, so they are omitted from the analysis. The proportions of such colleges have been gradually rising over time and currently stand at 9.7% of FE colleges, 5.4% of sixth form colleges and 9.1% of UTCs. This will also tend to result in under-counting. Conversely, there may be a degree of over-counting too, because: (a) some positions are cross-posted on multiple sites, (b) a single advertisement may contain multiple descriptions of a role that are easily confused for multiple roles, especially by our automated system, and (c) not all mentions of a role are in the context of a recruitment advert. Our ongoing analysis of secondary schools involves manual checking in order to correct for false positives, which typically results in corrections to about 15% of detected positions and a reduction of about 10% in total advertisement counts. Because this study of colleges extends back over many years, manual curation involved only spot checks, so a degree of over-counting is to be expected, albeit offset against potential under-counting. For all these reasons, the data presented here should be thought of as being based not on a comprehensive list of all vacancies but on a subset – effectively a survey of colleges, though one in which essentially all relevant institutions were contacted (via their websites) and in which the vast majority provided a response (ditto).
  2. Positions were detected by looking on each web page for new text that comprised of both a 'title' term and a 'subject' term in close proximity (eg, "Lecturer in Engineering", "Sports Coach" or "Learning Support"). Roles without both a title and a subject were not included because this tends to lead to large numbers of false positives. The taxonomy for titles included 31 different terms grouped into five different types: Coach; Leader; Teacher; Instructor; Support. The results presented here use these types. The taxonomy for subjects used 583 terms organised into a hierarchical structure and ultimately aggregated into 27 groups: Agriculture, environmental and animal care; Business and administration; Catering and hospitality; Construction and the built environment; Creative and design; Design and technology; Digital; Education and childcare; Engineering and manufacturing; Foundation learning; Hair and beauty; Health; Historical, philosophical and religious studies; Languages, literature and culture of British Isles; Learning support; Legal, finance and accounting; Mathematics; Media and communication; Other languages, literature and culture; Performing arts; Protective services; Psychology; Sales, marketing and procurement; Science; Social sciences; Sport; Transport and logistics. Both taxonomies were developed in collaboration with The Gatsby Foundation using vacancies data from the Association of Colleges as well as from the college websites analysed here. We intend to continue developing and using them for future analyses.
 

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