Secondary school recruitment: 2025/26 interim report

16th April 2026 by Timo Hannay [link]

We're delighted once again to be collaborating with the Gatsby Foundation and Teacher Tapp to analyse the school recruitment market in England. As before, our particular thanks go to the Gatsby Foundation for funding this work. For the full picture, please see our joint report, which incorporates survey data from Teacher Tapp as well as a selection of the secondary school vacancy advert data presented here. This blog post takes a deeper dive into the latter, as well as exploring recent headteacher turnover across primary and secondary schools.

It's important to note that peak hiring season for teachers is typically in late April or even early May, so we expect further activity over the next few weeks. But there's already a lot we can say about current trends, so we are providing this early analysis in order to inform ongoing hiring decisions during this busy period. We will issue a further blog post in June or July, once the high season has passed, to report on what actually happened.

In summary, we find that:

• Secondary school staff turnover and hiring appear to be at very low levels, albeit with some differences by subject, type of school and part of the country.
• Across all subjects, teacher vacancy adverts on secondary school and college websites are so far 32% lower than during the same period last year and 46% lower than the most recent pre-pandemic year. Technician adverts are down by 13% and 36%, respectively.
• Headteacher turnover is also at a low level, especially among secondary schools.
• Some of the fall in advertising activity might be explained by spurious factors such as reduced posting to school websites and increased use of commercial jobs boards, but this does not appear to fully explain the effects seen, which are also consistent with widely reported softness in the overall UK labour market.
• This does not mean that all is rosey in school recruitment. As described in our joint report, schools do not consider themselves adequately staffed, reflecting other constraints, notably budgets. Furthermore, teachers have not become any less likely to express an interest in changing jobs, potentially presaging higher turnover when general labour market conditions improve.

 

Teacher tallies

Figure 1 shows the number of teacher vacancy adverts found on English secondary-school and college websites during each week from September 2017 to the week commencing 23rd March 2025. (See Footnote 1 for a description of how the data were gathered.)

Across all subjects there are clear seasonal cycles, with annual peaks in late April or early May. Academic years 20217/18 and 2018/19 showed very consistent patterns and levels of activity, but this was followed by two subdued years during the pandemic of 2019/20 and 2020/21. There was then a rebound, with activity during 2021/22 and 2022/23 not only much higher than that seen during the pandemic, but also compared to 'normal' pre-pandemic years. In contrast, the numbers of adverts found last year (2024/25) were considerably lower than earlier years, even those during the pandemic. Activity this year has so far been lower still.

These patterns differ somewhat by subject area: compare numbers of adverts for teachers in arts, English, humanities, languages, maths, science, technology and all subjects together.

(Use the menu below to select a subject area to view. Hover over the lines to see corresponding data values.)

Figure 2 shows the same data, but with each academic year overlaid using differently coloured lines to make comparisons between years easier. As observed above, the general annual pattern is for activity to be relatively low during the autumn term, rising in the spring and early summer term, then declining again in the summer.

This seasonal pattern in the weekly data was very consistent before the pandemic, with 2018/19 (red line) providing a useful baseline. By comparison, activity was subdued in 2019/20 (yellow) and 2020/21 (brown), coinciding with national lockdowns and school closures. 2021/22 (green) saw much greater activity, rising to even higher peaks in 2022/23 (light blue). This fell a bit in 2023/24 (dark blue) before collapsing to mid-pandemic or even lower levels in 2024/25 (purple). So far in 2025/26 (black), the numbers of adverts have been lower still – indeed, the lowest we've seen since we began tracking these things in 2017.

It is also useful to compare cumulative numbers of adverts, which make the differences across all years easier to see. You can explore patterns by subject area too: compare arts, English, humanities, languages, maths, science, technology and all subjects.

(Use the menus below to view weekly or cumulative data, and to select different subject areas. Click on the figure legend to hide or view individual academic years or to show all of them together. Hover over the lines to see corresponding data values.)

Why are we seeing such low numbers of adverts, and is it possible that this is an artefact rather than a real effect? In short, while there are reasons that we might be detecting a smaller proportion of vacancies than in previous years, there are also reasons to believe that much of the observed effect is real. We explore this question in more detail below.

Figure 3 summarises the changes seen so far this year by subject area, comparing the current school year with equivalent periods last year (blue columns) and during the most recent pre-pandemic year (red). Looking at percentage changes for both years together, all subjects showed year-on-year changes of between -25% (maths and arts) and 42% (languages). The differences compared to before the pandemic were even greater, ranging from a -31% (arts) to a -56% change (languages).

In terms of absolute numbers of adverts, science showed the largest decrease since before the pandemic (-2,107 adverts), while arts showed the smallest change (-555 adverts). In total, we have so far found 5,087 fewer adverts than last year (blue columns) and 9,256 fewer than in the most recent pre-pandemic year (red).

(Use the menu below to switch between percentage changes and changes in numbers of adverts. Hover over the columns to see corresponding data values and numbers of adverts.)

Figure 4 shows numbers of teacher adverts by school location and type, adjusted for their different teacher population sizes. Values are shown for equivalent periods between September and March just before the pandemic (2018/19, red columns) and for the current year (2025/26, blue). Note that Figures 4 and 5 (as well as Figures 9 and 10 below) omit positions advertised by multi-school federations or trusts because it is hard to associate those vacancies with specific schools. Those kinds of adverts constitute a relatively small but steadily increasing proportion of the total, so the data shown here will tend to understate overall activity. However, they can be informative in comparing relative advertising rates between different types of school or location.

Across all subjects, the regions with the highest rates of advertising before the pandemic were London and the South East, but these regional differences have become all but absent so far this year. Schools with higher proportions of children who are eligible for free school meals have tended to advertise at slightly higher rates than those with lower proportions, and this trend has persisted since the pandemic. There is no similarly consistent trend for schools that are located in poorer areas.

We have previously used a clustering algorithm to group schools according to their local socioeconomic environments². Looking at the differences in advertising rates by cluster, we can see that affluent urban areas tended to show the highest levels of activity before the pandemic. A similar trend is apparent so far this year, albeit at lower levels of activity across all clusters.

(Use the menus below to explore different school groups and subjects. Hover over the columns to see corresponding data values.)

Figure 5 shows relative advertising rates for each of the school clusters mentioned above. Unsurprisingly, certain subject areas – notably science, maths, humanities and English – are in highest demand overall. However, we can also see differences by cluster. For example, in poor urban areas maths is in relatively high demand compared to, say, affluent urban areas, where adverts for humanities teachers are more prevelant.

(Use the menu below to explore different school groups. Hover over the columns to see corresponding values.)

 

Technician totals

Figure 6 shows weekly numbers of technician recruitment adverts on secondary-school and colleges websites. These usually peak in June and September (ie, either side of the summer holiday), though the seasonality is less regular than for teachers. Absolute numbers are also about 10 times lower. Across all subjects, the pandemic caused a noticeable decline followed by a roughly two-year period of unusually high activity between 2021 and 2023. Since then, it has once again reduced markedly. These trends were broadly consistent across the main subject areas: compare arts, science, technology and all subjects.

(Use the menu below to select a subject area to view. Hover over the lines to see corresponding data values.)

Figure 7 shows the same data with each year overlaid for easier comparison. 2018/19 (red line) displayed a conventional seasonal pattern, with peaks in September and June. In 2019/20 (yellow), spring and summer recruiting were depressed by the pandemic and this continued into early 2020/21 (brown). Activity then rose in summer 2021 and continued at elevated levels during 2021/22 (green) and 2022/23 (light blue). In 2023/24 (dark blue), activity declined to almost pre-pandemic levels, then to below this in 2024/25 (purple). So far in 2025/26 (black) it has been somewhat lower still.

Looking again at all years together, the cumulative data demonstrate just how high activity was in the two years following the pandemic (green and light blue), not only compared to the mid-pandemic years (yellow and brown), but also to pre-pandemic levels (red). 2023/24 (dark blue) returned to only just above those long-term norms, while 2024/25 (purple) was below even mid-pandemic levels. So far, 2025/26 (black) is running below this rate.

(Use the menus below to view weekly or cumulative data, and to select different subject areas. Click on the figure legend to hide or view individual academic years. Hover over the lines to see corresponding data values.)

Figure 8 shows the percentage changes by subject area, comparing activity so far this year with the equivalent periods last year (blue columns) and in the most recent pre-pandemic year (red). Looking at both years together, there has so far been a change of -12% compared to last year, but -36% compared to pre-pandemic levels. In terms of numbers of adverts across all subjects, there were 195 fewer than during the equivalent period last year and 701 fewer than before the pandemic.

(Use the menu below to switch between percentage changes and changes in numbers of adverts. Hover over the columns to see corresponding data values and numbers of adverts.)

Figure 9 shows numbers of technician adverts by school location and type, adjusted for their different staff populations (using teacher numbers in the denominator since technician numbers are not publicly available). Values are shown for equivalent periods between September and March just before the pandemic (2018/19, red columns) and for the current year (2025/26, blue).

Across all subjects, the regions with the highest rates of advertising so far this year (blue) were the South East and the South West. The lowest rates were in the North East. The biggest decreases between the most recent pre-pandemic year and the current year were in Yorkshire and the Humber, the East of England and London. Schools with higher proportions of children who are eligible for free school meals and schools located in poorer areas have tended to advertise at lower rates – the opposite trend to that seen for teachers. Across school socioeconomic clusters (see discussion of Figure 4 above and Footnote 2 for explanations), the general trend has been for advertising rates to be lower in poorer areas.

(Use the menus below to explore different school groups and subjects. Hover over the columns to see corresponding data values.)

Figure 10 shows relative advertising rates for each school cluster. Science and technology technicians are in highest demand overall, but there are differences by cluster. For example, science technicians tend to be in highest demand in affluent suburban areas, whilst adverts for technology technicians are more frequent in poor urban areas, a reversal since the pre-pandemic period.

(Use the menu below to explore different school groups. Hover over the columns to see corresponding values.)

 

Headteacher hiring

We do not track headteacher vacancies, but we do monitor new headteacher appointments using data from the Department for Education (DfE). This involves detecting headteacher name changes in the daily data releases issued by the DfE, then filtering out those that don't correspond to genuine staff changes, such as surname changes or spelling corrections. Unlike the advertising data presented above, which are leading indicators of new appointments, these headteacher changes are, if anything, lagging indicators.

Figure 11 shows the number of headteacher changes at primary and secondary schools in England during each month so far this year (2025/26) and for the seven preceding academic years. The annual peak is invariably in September, with somewhat raised turnover also evident in January and April (ie, at the beginning of each term).

Year-on-year changes are easiest to see using cumulative data. Across all schools, we saw about 4,000 total changes each year in the period before the pandemic (2018/19, red line) and during its early stages (2019/20, yellow). Turnover then dropped in 2020/21 (brown) and began to return in 2021/22 (green) before rising well above normal levels in 2022/23 (light blue) and 2023/24 (dark blue). It then dropped back to more normal levels in 2024/25 (purple). So far this year, 2025-26 (black), it has dropped further. (Show all years again.) There are some differences between primary and secondary schools, with the latter showing a much steeper decline this year.

(Use the menus below to switch between monthly and cumulative data, as well a between all schools, primary schools and secondary schools. Click on the figure legend to hide or view individual academic years. Hover over the lines to see corresponding data values.)

 

Hire or lower?

So far this year we have seen a continuation of recent declines in secondary school vacancy adverts. There are a number of possible reasons for this, from the real to the spurious:

• The overall UK labour market is relatively weak. For example, the Office for National Statistics reports that total estimated vacancies (across all sectors, not just education) fell by 9.5% in December 2025 to February 2026 compared to the same period a year earlier. Similarly, the commercial jobs board Indeed reported in December 2025 that overall job postings were 19% below pre-pandemic levels. It would be surprising if schools were not also affected by these national trends.
• The boom in school hiring seen in the post-pandemic period was presumably created in large part by staff turnover delayed by the 2020-21 lockdowns and school closures. If so then we might expect to see an 'echo' of that period in the current data (ie, staff who changed jobs just after the pandemic might not yet be ready to move on). That said, this wouldn't on its own be enough to explain levels of recruitment activity below those seen during the pandemic.
• It is possible that due to some combination of squeezed budgets and falling rolls, schools are reducing staff hiring. If so, we have yet to see these effects show up in the official statistics: our analysis of the DfE census data suggests that pupil numbers at mainstream state secondary schools in England have been broadly flat in recent years, though falling in primary schools and therefore expected to follow suit in secondary schools soon. Meanwhile, teacher numbers rose by about 2% in headcount and FTE terms between 2023 and 2025. See also our previous analysis of staff numbers. However, those are lagging data and might not reflect the situation today.
• Especially when comparing this year's activity with last year's, we should be conscious of the different dates of Easter, which was very late in 2025. That might have affected the exact timing of some hiring activity.
• It is possible that schools have simply become less likely to post vacancies on their websites, perhaps because they rely more on commercial recruiters and jobs boards. Relatedly, school websites might have become more likely to reject requests from online crawlers of the kind we use to collect these data, especially in light of recent increasing levels of AI bot activity. We see some evidence for both of these trends, but not enough to explain the full effects seen. Furthermore, we might expect these to affect teacher and technician adverts roughly equally, but the decline we see in the former has been much greater than the latter.

Taking the job advert and headteacher turnover data together, we conclude that secondary school staff turnover and hiring are currently at very low levels, albeit with some differences by subject, type of school and part of the country. To some extent this reflects soft UK labour market conditions across most sectors.

None of this is cause for complacency. As shown by the Teacher Tapp survey results in our joint report, schools do not consider themselves to be adequately staffed, reflecting other constraints, notably budgets. In addition, teachers have not become any less likely to express an interest in changing jobs, potentially presaging higher turnover if and when overall labour market conditions improve.

All that said, we have not yet reached peak season for teacher recruitments, so it will be interesting to see what happens over the next few weeks. We will report back in the summer.

 

Footnotes:

1. All data were gathered using an automatic process that visits school websites every night and extracts information about any new vacancies it finds there This process does not capture all vacant positions because: (a) not all positions are advertised on school websites, (b) even when they are, they are not necessarily presented in a way that can be automatically indexed, and (c) websites are sometimes unresponsive or otherwise unavailable. The data presented should therefore be thought of as being based not on a comprehensive list of all vacancies but on a subset. However, positions have been detected for a high proportion of schools and these are broadly representative of the overall population of schools.
2. It is important to emphasise that the names we have assigned to each cluster are rough and ready labels, not definitions. Each cluster is formed of schools that are located in statistically similar local areas based on their socioeconomic indicators – specifically, the components of the Index of Multiple Deprivation and the POLAR4 measure of participation in higher education. For further details, see our previous blog post.