Secondary school recruitment: 2025/26 update
25th June 2026 by Timo Hannay [link]
Update 25th June 2026: See also this update and this commentry from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.
In April we published an interim analysis (and accompanying joint report) on secondary school recruitment activity in England. With peak hiring season now past, this post brings us up to date with the latest data. It includes adverts that appeared up to and including Friday 5th June 2026.
As before, we are very pleased to have conducted this work in collaboration with the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Teacher Tapp. Special thanks to the Gatsby Foundation for providing funding. Please also see this accompanying blog post from Teacher Tapp and our new joint report, which features survey data from Teacher Tapp as well as a selection of the secondary school vacancy advert data presented here.
Consistent with our preliminary report , we find that:
- Secondary school recruitment advertising rates have continued at very low levels compared to previous years, though with variations by subject, type of school and location.
- Across all subjects, teacher vacancy adverts on secondary school and college websites were 27% lower than during the same period last year and 48% lower than the most recent pre-pandemic year. Technician adverts were down by 12% and 36%, respectively.
- Headteacher turnover is also at a low level, especially among secondary schools.
- As before, some of the fall in advertising activity might be explained in part 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 low headteacher turnover and softness across the whole UK labour market.
- None of this should be taken to mean that schools are adequately staffed. On the contrary, as explained in our joint report, survey data from Teacher Tapp indicates ongoing shortfalls and disparities in school staffing.
Teaching rolls
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 1st June 2026. (See Footnote 1 of our previous post for details of how the data were gathered.)
Across all subjects there has been a precipitous decline since the heady post-pandemic peaks of 2022 and 2023. The numbers of recruitment adverts are now well below those of even the mid-pandemic period. We discuss possible reasons below.
(Use the menu below to select a subject area to view. Hover over the lines to see corresponding data values.)
Figure 1: Weekly teacher recruitment advert counts among secondary schools in England
Figure 2 shows the same data, but with academic years overlaid to make comparisons easier.
Weekly numbers of adverts show the seasonality most clearly, but cumulative data make the year-to-year differences easier to see. Across different subject areas – arts, English, humanities, languages, maths, science and technology – advert numbers in the 2025/26 academic year (black line) have lagged those of all previous years in our data set. (Show all subjects again.)
(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.)
Figure 2: Teacher recruitment adverts among secondary schools in England
Figure 3 shows the changes by subject area, comparing the 2025/26 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 -20% (maths) and -36% (languages). The differences compared to before the pandemic were even greater, ranging from a -38% (arts) to a -58% change (languages).
In terms of absolute numbers of adverts, science showed the largest decrease since before the pandemic (-3,066 adverts), while arts showed the smallest change (-1,164 adverts). In total, we have so far found 5,954 fewer adverts than last year (blue columns) and 14,813 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 3: Change in secondary school teacher recruitment by subject
Figure 4 shows numbers of teacher adverts by school location and type, adjusted for their different teacher population sizes. Values correspond to equivalent periods from September to June just before the pandemic (2018/19, red columns) and in 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 these 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 advertising rates before the pandemic were London and the South East, but this year regional differences have been far less marked. Consistent with our interim report, schools with higher proportions of children who are eligible for free school meals (FSM) tended to advertise at slightly higher rates than those with lower proportions of FSM pupils.
(Use the menus below to explore different school groups and subjects. Hover over the columns to see corresponding data values.)
Figure 4: Relative teacher recruitment rates at state secondary schools by location and type
We have previously used a clustering algorithm to group schools according to their local socioeconomic environments. Figure 5 shows relative advertising rates for each of these clusters, revealing some differences in demand by subject. As we also saw in our interim analysis, poor urban areas show a relatively high numbers of adverts for maths teachers compared to, for example, 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.)
Figure 5: Relative teacher recruitment rates at state secondary schools by subject area and school cluster
Technical help
Figure 6 shows weekly numbers of technician recruitment adverts on secondary school and colleges websites. Absolute numbers are about an order of magnitude lower than for teaching roles and the seasonality is less clear-cut, though there are usually noticeable peaks in June and September.
Across all subjects, advert numbers during the current 2025/26 school year have been down at around the levels seen during the middle of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Though not shown on the graph because it missed the cut-off date for this analysis, we observed a modest seasonal peak during the week commencing 8th June 2026, though in keeping with overall trends presented here, it was modest compared to previous years.
(Use the menu below to select a subject area to view. Hover over the lines to see corresponding data values.)
Figure 6: Weekly technician recruitment advert counts among secondary schools in England
Figure 7 shows the same data with each year overlaid for easier comparison. As in Figure 2 above, weekly data demonstrate the seasonal patterns, but cumulative data better reveal the year-on-year differences. Across all subject areas, 2025/26 (black line) showed lower activity than previous years, but the gap was narrower than for teacher adverts.
(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 7: Technician recruitment among secondary schools in England
Figure 8 shows the percentage changes by subject area. Across all subjects, there was a drop of 12% compared to last year, and 36% compared to the most recent pre-pandemic year. In terms of numbers of adverts, there were 217 fewer adverts across all subjects compared to the equivalent period last year and 943 fewer than the year immediately preceding 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 8: Change in secondary school technician recruitment by subject
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 less readily available). Across all subjects, the regions with the highest rates of advertising in 2025/26 (blue) were the South West and the South East. The lowest rates were in London and the West Midlands. The biggest decreases between the most recent pre-pandemic year and the current year were in Yorkshire and the Humber and London. These are slightly different to the patterns reported in our interim analysis. Schools with higher proportions of children who are eligible for FSM and schools located in poorer areas have tended to advertise at lower rates – the opposite trend to that seen for teachers. Across socioeconomic clusters, too, 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 9: Relative technician recruitment rates at state secondary schools by location and type
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. These patterns are essentially the same as reported in our preliminary report.
(Use the menu below to explore different school groups. Hover over the columns to see corresponding values.)
Figure 10: Relative technician recruitment rates at state secondary schools by subject area and school cluster
Headcounts
In addition to teacher and technician vacancy adverts, we also track headteacher appointments (note: not recruitment) using data from the Department for Education (DfE). For methodological details, please refer to our previous report. Figure 11 shows the number of headteacher changes at primary and secondary schools in England up to the end of May in the current school year (2025/26) and for the seven preceding school years. The annual peak is invariably in September, with raised turnover also evident in January and April.
Year-on-year changes are easiest to see using cumulative data. Across all schools, 2025/26 has shown relatively low turnover, but not exceptionally so. However, this hides the fact that headteacher turnover among primary schools is about normal, while that among secondary schools it as low as it's ever been over the last eight years.
(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.)
Figure 11: Number of headteacher changes at schools in England
Hire or lower?
As we discussed in our interim report, there are a range of possible reasons for the unusually low numbers of secondary school recruitment adverts that we have found during the 2025/26 school year:
- The general weakness of the UK labour market, which is likely to affect school hiring too, especially among secondary schools, which rely more on domain expertise relevant to other sectors.
- An 'echo' of the mid-pandemic slump in school hiring during 2020-2021, with staff who delayed job moves then not yet ready to progress to their next role.
- Reduced hiring due to squeezed budgets and falling pupil rolls, though as discussed in our previous post the official data are currently equivocal about the effects of these factors on hiring.
- Schools may have simply become less likely to post vacancies on their websites, relying instead on commercial recruiters and jobs boards. On top of this, school websites might have become more likely to reject requests from online crawlers, especially in light of recent increasing levels of AI bot activity.
We consider it most likely that the current slump in advert numbers is caused by a combination of these factors: a genuinely low level of staff turnover amplified by changes in recruitment methods and website administrative practices.
To get the full picture, please read our joint report. We also welcome feedback; please write to us at: [email protected].
The paths to enrichment
18th June 2026 by Timo Hannay [link]
Update 18th June 2026: See also this update and this commentry from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, as well this coverage in Schools Week.
Especially for pupils in Years 6, 11 and 13, the school year in England ends with a crescendo of formal testing. Yet education should be about much more than cramming and examining, and the government would appear to agree. Last November, to coincide with the publication of the Curriculum and Assessment Review, the Education Secretary announced that there would be "a new enrichment entitlement for all that includes civic engagement, culture, nature and adventure, and sport". Ofsted would also assess these activities during their inspections. The schools white paper that followed in February 2026 went on to say that the DfE would "publish the Enrichment Framework this academic year." It has now been released.
To help inform debate on this important topic, we present here an analysis of current extracurricular and enrichment provision among mainstream state secondary schools in England, as described on their own websites. We would like to express our thanks to the Gatsby Charitable Foundation for supporting this work.
In summary, we find that:
- School clubs and societies vary widely in type and scope, with Duke of Edinburgh (DofE), football, reading, drama and art being the most common.
- Based on our taxonomy of 75 club types, a median of 13 and a mean of just over 15 different kinds of club were offered per school. But this varied greatly by school type, with large, urban schools, and those with low deprivation, high attainment and/or high Ofsted ratings tending to offer more.
- There were also disparities in the types of clubs provided. For example, specialist biology, chemistry or physics clubs (but not general science clubs) were more common in schools with lower deprivation, higher attainment and better Ofsted ratings. Maths, computing and STEM clubs also shared some of these trends.
- The analysis revealed regional preferences too, from cycling clubs in the North East to rugby in the South West.
- Among schools with high deprivation, breakfast clubs were the most over-represented (while also being a rather different kind of 'club') and Duke of Edinburgh awards were the most under-represented.
- Many other trends were apparent. For example, schools with high proportions of ethnic-minority or EAL pupils were more likely to provide debating and university-entrance clubs, but less likely to provide rugby or role-playing games. Rural schools were more likely to offer DofE, but less likely to offer basketball. Catholic schools had many more activities concerned with faith or singing, but very few of them had an LGBTQ+ society.
To find out more, read on.
First a few words about our methods. The information analysed here was obtained from school websites by an automated web crawl conducted in January 2026. This resulted in a cache of 2.3 million web pages, PDF documents and other file types. Plain text was extracted from these and filtered based on its semantic content in order to identify pages that putatively contained information about school clubs or societies1. This resulted in approximately 78,000 pages, which were then fed to OpenAI's gpt-5.4-mini large language model (LLM) along with a prompt giving instructions to list any specific school clubs or societies unambiguously mentioned in the text. The resulting lists for each school were then keyword-matched against a manually curated taxonomy of 75 club types, providing a matrix showing the presence of absence of each club at each school. This was supplemented with manual spot-checking, especially for schools or clubs with unusually high or low numbers. The LLM's performance was found to be comparable to that of a diligent human curator, with very few blatant errors. Of 3,446 mainstream state secondary schools in England, we obtained substantial website content from 2,945 (85.5%) and at least some club information from 2,591 (75.2%).
Of course, this analysis also relies on school websites being comprehensive, accurate and up to date, which, to say the least, is not always the case. In addition, we have aggregated some clubs (eg, different types of instrumental music, foreign languages or niche sports) into single categories, which will tend to understate the total number of distinct clubs on offer. We also have no measures of participation in each club. For all these reasons, what follows should be considered indicative rather than definitive.
Figure 1 shows the proportions of school websites that mentioned each of the 75 club types in our taxonomy. The most frequently occurring were Duke of Edinburgh (DofE) awards, football, reading and drama, all of which were found in more than half of websites. Science clubs were of middling frequency, but separate biology, chemistry or physics clubs (including topics such as medicine, biochemistry and astronomy) were relatively rare.
If anything, these are likely to be underestimates, especially for the most common types of clubs. True, there is a possibility of false positives (ie, mentions of clubs that were not in fact offered by the school), but it seems more likely that we are under-reporting as a result of failing to find the relevant information on the school website, or it being absent in the first place. As a reference point, we understand that around 230-300 state schools in England provide a Combined Cadet Force, or CCF, club (depending on whether we include 'junior partners' that piggyback on another school's CCF provision). This is contained within our 'Cadets' category (which also includes other similar kinds of clubs). Of these, 198 school websites specifically matched the terms "Combined Cadet Force" or "CCF". This suggests that we found 65%-85% of relevant schools. Bearing in mind that we only had website data from about 85% of schools in the first place, this suggests that we identified most, though probably not all, relevant schools within our sample set.
(Hover over the bars to see corresponding data values.)
Figure 1: Prevalence of secondary school clubs by type
How many different types of clubs does each school provide, and how does this vary by school location or type? That information is shown in Figure 2, which provides both mean (blue columns) and median (red) values. Median values tended to be somewhat lower because mean values were influenced by a small minority of schools with very long lists of clubs. That said, both mean and median values displayed similar trends.
Across all schools, a median of 13 and a mean of just over 15 different types of club were offered (see rightmost columns), but this varied a great deal across different groups of schools. In general, large and urban schools, or those with sixth forms, offered wider ranges of clubs. Consistent with this, so did those with higher proportions of ethnic-minority or EAL pupils. The same was true of grammar schools, and those with fewer low-attainment pupils or higher Key Stage 4 attainment. Schools with lower levels of in-school deprivation or local deprivation, as well as those with higher Ofsted ratings, also had broader provision. And so did certain types of faith schools, as well as those in particular regions, notably London and the South East.
(Use the menu below to view different school types. Hover over the columns to see corresponding data values.)
Figure 2: Number of clubs by secondary school type
So much for the range of clubs on offer, what about differences in various types of club? This is shown in Figure 3. For example, when looking by in-school deprivation level, there was very little difference in the provision of general science clubs, but huge disparities when it came to more focused biology, chemistry or physics clubs. Broadly similar trends can be seen when looking by local deprivation level, Ofsted rating or grammar school status. Maths clubs varied modestly by in-school and local deprivation, but showed bigger differences by prior or current attainment, and by Ofsted rating. Computing clubs varied little by local deprivation, but more by in-school deprivation and great deal by prior and current attainment, as well as by Ofsted rating. More generic STEM clubs showed less variation all round.
Grammar schools were more likely to offer chess and EPQs, but less likely to offer cookery or dance. Across the regions, cycling predominated in the North East, netball in the North West, citizenship in Yorkshire and the Humber, cadets in the East and West Midlands, social action in the East of England, business in London and the South East, and rugby in the South West. Make of that what you will. Above all, explore these results yourself using the interactive figure below – our brief summary above has barely scratched the surface.
(Use the menus below to view different club and school types. Hover over the columns to see corresponding data.)
Figure 3: Prevalence of clubs by secondary school type
Figure 4 makes it easier to get an overview of these trends. For each club type, it shows the difference between the prevalence across all schools and that across the subset of schools selected in the menu. For example, among those with high in-school deprivation, breakfast clubs were the most over-represented (while also being a rather different kind of 'club' offering an alternative form of 'enrichment') and DofE awards were the most under-represented activity. (Note also that most club types show up as under-represented, reflecting the fact that high-deprivation schools have a narrower range of clubs to begin with.) Those with low in-school deprivation show roughly the mirror image of this, and schools with high or low local deprivation show very similar patterns. Grammar schools tended to have better provision of subject-specific science, music, debating and drama, but were unlikely to have breakfast or homework clubs. Schools with strong prior or current attainment showed broadly similar, if less extreme, patterns. So did those with Outstanding Ofsted ratings.
Many other stereotypes were at least partially confirmed: schools with high proportions of ethnic-minority or EAL pupils were more likely to provide debating, basketball and university-entrance clubs, but less likely to offer rugby or role-playing games. Catholic schools had many more activities concerned with faith or singing, but very few had an LGBTQ+ society. Rural schools were more likely to offer DofE, but less likely to offer basketball. In London debating clubs were most over-represented, while in the North East it was breakfast clubs. Small schools were less likely to offer just about everything compared to large schools.
(Use the menu below to view different school types. Hover over the bars to see corresponding data values.)
Figure 4: Relative prevalence of secondary school clubs by school type
To provide a further perspective, Figure 5 shows how the presence or absence of clubs varies by in-school deprivation (ie, pupils eligible for free schools means, or FSM) and by Ofsted rating. Clubs are organised into colour-coded groups, and circle sizes indicate the overall prevalence of each club type.
Interestingly, these groups of clubs showed a variety of trends. For example, differences in Art club prevalence varied mainly by Ofsted rating. In contrast, Performance clubs varied more by deprivation level. Life Skills and Support clubs varied by both factors: Duke of Edinburgh and Wellbeing tended to be less common in schools with higher deprivation, while Cooking and Breakfast clubs were more common. Debating and University clubs were more common in schools with high Ofsted ratings, while Homework clubs were less common. STEM varied by both factors, with Biology and Computing clubs skewing the most against high-deprivation, low-Ofsted schools, while general Science clubs were much more evenly distributed.
(Explore further by clicking on the figure legend to turn different groups on or off, or double-clicking to show one group on its own.)
Figure 5: Prevalence of secondary school clubs by type
There have been some previous surveys on extracurricular activities (for example, see this 2025 report from the DfE), and the recently published Milburn Report on young people and work mentioned that "Participation [in school enrichment activities] is lower for children and young people eligible for free school meals and children in need." But to our knowledge this is the first large-scale analysis of enrichment activities as reported by schools themselves on their own websites. We therefore hope that this report provides useful insights into an important, often under-appreciated and inadequately researched area of education. Our sincere thanks again to the Gatsby Charitable Foundation for supporting this work. We welcome comments, suggestions and questions to: [email protected].
Footnotes:
