School hiring in autumn 2025

24th October 2025 by Timo Hannay [link]

Update 24th October 2025: See also this coverage from Tes.

As we reported back in July and April, secondary school recruitment in England was unusually muted in 2024/25. This has led to two further questions from our collaborators and correspondents:

Can we say anything more about the reasons why?
What's happened so far in the 2025/26 school year?

We'll take those in reverse order.

The fall

Figure 1 shows the number of teacher vacancies we found each week on school and college websites during September and early October 2025. (See here for details on how we gathered this information.)

The most recent pre-pandemic year, 2019 (red line), was very similar to previous years (not shown) and serves as a convenient baseline. The mid-pandemic years of 2020 (yellow) and 2021 (green) showed a marked decline, followed by a strong rebound in 2022 (light blue) and 2023 (dark blue). Then, instead of doing what we might have expected and returning to 'normal' pre-pandemic levels, the numbers of adverts in 2024 (purple) undershot and were similar to mid-pandemic levels. So far in 2025 (black) they have fallen even further and are at the lowest levels we've seen since we began tracking these trends in 2017. (Show all years again.)

The year-to-year differences are even more evident when looking at the data on a cumulative basis and are broadly consistent across different subject groups: Arts, English, Humanities, Languages, Mathematics, Science, Technology and Other. (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. Hover over the lines to see corresponding data values.)

Figure 1: Teacher recruitment adverts among secondary schools in England

Notes: 'Arts' includes Art, Music, Dance and Drama; 'Humanities' includes History, Geography, Politics, Law, Economics, Philosophy and Classics; 'Science' includes Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Psychology; 'Technology' includes Computing, Engineering, Design & Technology and Food Technology; 'Other' includes Business Studies, Media Studies and Physical Education. Dates on the horizontal axis are for the 2020-2021 academic year. Values for 2019 correspond to periods exactly 52 weeks earlier and those for 2021 to 52 weeks later. The offsets for other years are as follows – 2022: 104 weeks, 2023: 156 weeks, 2024: 208 weeks, 2025: 261 weeks. This aligns days of the week at the expense of a slight mismatch in dates.

Sources: Secondary school, sixth-form college and FE college websites; SchoolDash Insights; SchoolDash analysis.

Figure 2 shows the same data for technician vacancy adverts. Broadly similar trends are evident, though with some differences in timings as we emerged from the pandemic and a somewhat less precipitous drop in the prevalence of adverts over the last few months. Looking at weekly data, activity so far in 2025 (black line) is below not only pre-pandemic levels in 2019 (red), but also the mid-pandemic activity in 2020 (yellow) and last year, 2024 (purple), which was previously the lowest we had seen. (See all years again.)

See also as cumulative data and across different subject groups: Arts, Science, Technology and Other. (Show all subjects again.)

Figure 2: Technician recruitment among secondary schools in England

Notes: See notes to Figure 1 for subject definitions and an explanation of the dates used on the horizontal axis.

Sources: Secondary school, sixth-form college and FE college websites; SchoolDash Insights; SchoolDash analysis.

Headhunted

Are the same trends evident in school leadership positions? A bit. Figure 3 shows the numbers of schools that changed their headteacher during each month since September 2019. This is based on headteacher names reported by the Department for Education (DfE), not on recruitment ads, so should be considered a trailing (rather than leading) indicator of actual staff changes. As far as possible, we have filtered out changes that do not correspond to an actual change of head, such as new surnames and spelling corrections.

This is best viewed as cumulative data. Following a dip during the pandemic in 2020/2 (yellow), there was a rebound and overshoot in 2022/23 (light blue). Last year, 2024/25 (purple) was once again very similar to pre-pandemic levels in 2019/20 (red). So far this year, 2025/26 (black), the trajectory has been somewhat on the low side, but not hugely so, especially when we allow for the fact that the data for October 2025 only include the first half of the month. In short, headteacher turnover is a bit muted, but not to the degree that teacher and technician hiring appear to be. (View monthly data again.)

But see also the differences between primary schools, where headteacher turnover is in line with last year and with pre-pandemic levels, and secondary schools, where it is unusually low. (See all schools again.)

(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 3: Number of headteacher changes at schools in England

Note: Data for October 2025 covers only dates up to and including Friday 17th October.

Sources: Department for Education; SchoolDash Insights; SchoolDash analysis.

To reason why

Does any of this tally with the main official data source on such things, the DfE's annual School Workforce Census (SWC). Yes, but with the slightly annoying qualification that the SWC lacks both the granularity and the timeliness necessary to properly understand what's going on right now. The best we can do is to look at the proportions of staff positions that schools reported as unfilled or temporarily filled each November, which is when they submit their SWC returns. That's a time of year when schools tend to be fully staffed and vacancies are at a minimum, so the absolute levels are low, but the trends can nevertheless be informative.

These results are shown below in Figure 4. There is a dip in vacancies during the pandemic, followed by a boom afterwards. This has since declined, which is broadly consistent with reduced numbers of recruiting adverts. Note also that the swings seen in secondary schools (blue line) were much greater than those in primary schools (red). All that said, levels in 2024 were not historically low, and we don't yet know what the 2025 SWC will show because those data haven't been gathered, never mind published. So the official data are consistent with the overall picture, but can't yet tell us anything about the extraordinarily low levels of secondary-school recruiting activity we've seen over the last 12 months or so.

(Click on the figure legend to hide or view a line. Hover over the lines to see corresponding data values.)

Figure 4: Unfilled and temporarily filled positions

Note: Data gathered during the School Workforce Census in November of each year.

Sources: Department for Education; SchoolDash Insights.

One hypothesis we posited in our joint annual review of school recruitment in April (a collaboration with Teacher Tapp and the Gatsby Foundation) was that schools might be pruning staff numbers in response to ever-tightening budgets and falling pupil rolls, especially in primary schools.

Figure 5 shows school occupancy rates (numbers of pupils as a percentage of total school capacity) over the last few years. In 2025, overall occupancy rates at primary schools (red line) fell below 90% for the first time since our records began in 2011. Also, as we've reported before, declining rolls are affecting some schools and parts of the country much more than others. Secondary school occupancy rates (blue) have been more or less stable over the same period, but we expect the declining birth rate that is already affecting primary schools to start showing up in secondary rolls any time now. Perhaps tellingly, occupancy rates at secondary schools fell slightly between 2024 and 2025. So it wouldn't be odd if at least primary schools had begun downsizing a bit.

(Click on the figure legend to hide or view a line. Hover over the lines to see corresponding data values.)

Figure 5: School occupancy rates

Note: Originally published here.

Sources: Department for Education; SchoolDash Insights.

However, there's no sign in the official statistics of this actually happening. Figure 6 shows the average number of teachers per school. It might seem like a rather dull graph, but its very flatness is informative. Over the last few years, teacher numbers have been more or less stable in primary schools, while edging up slightly in secondary schools. (The trends for non-teaching staff, though not shown here, are very similar.)

Figure 6: Mean number of teachers (FTE)

Sources: Department for Education; SchoolDash Insights.

Vanishing vacancies

If schools are not reducing teacher numbers then why are we finding far fewer vacancy adverts on their websites, at least for secondary schools? There are a few possible reasons:

Schools might have become less likely to advertise vacancies on their own websites (eg, by relying more on recruitment firms) and/or to block web crawlers of the kind we use to gather this information. These are both plausible, and in our view likely to provide a partial explanation. But we continue to find vacancies for the majority of schools and this effect alone seems unlikely to account for such a large and rapid decline.
Teachers and other school staff are currently less likely to move jobs because a relatively high proportion of them did so just 2-3 years ago in the aftermath of the pandemic. The result could be an 'echo' of the recruitment trough seen during 2020-2021. Again, this seems likely but doesn't fully explain why current activity levels are below those seen during the middle of the pandemic.
The whole UK labour market is in the doldrums – see, for example, this update from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and this report from Hayes, a large recruitment firm. That means fewer alternative opportunities for school staff. For all the current financial stresses in education, which are very real, many might now see it as a safer bet than other sectors.

Unfortunately the available data can't reliably distinguish between these possibilities. Boring split-the-difference centrists that we are, our hunch is that it's a combination of all of these factors.

If you have a better idea, or just a comment, please write to us: [email protected].

Staff developments

16th October 2025 by Timo Hannay [link]

Update 21st October 2025: Our collaborators at the Teacher Development Trust have just released their comprehensive report, Teacher Development: The CPD Landscape in 2025. Be sure to check it out.

Update 16th October 2025: See also this commentary from the Teacher Development Trust.

As regular readers will know, we pay close attention to the amounts invested by schools in staff development (see our most recent previous analyses last October and June). It's time for a update, which we are once again delighted to provide in collaboration with the Teacher Development Trust (TDT). Expenditure figures come from mainstream state school financial returns to the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA).

Figure 1 shows average per-teacher spending on staff development at mainstream state schools. The lines show values for all schools (black), primary schools (red) and secondary schools (blue). (Show all lines again.) Spending at both primary and secondary schools has fallen since 2018, even in nominal terms. Increases since 2022 have tracked below the general inflation rate. In other words, expenditure has continued to fall in real terms.

(Click on the figure legend to turn individual lines on or off. Hover over the graph to see corresponding values.)

Figure 1: Staff development and training spend per teacher at mainstream state schools

Sources: Department for Education; SchoolDash Insights.

Note: 2024 refers to the 2023-2024 academic year and similarly for other years.

Figure 2 shows 2024 expenditure breakdowns by school location and type for both primary schools (red columns) and secondary schools (blue).

Looking at regions first, primary schools in the West Midlands spent most (£724), while those in London spent least (£507). For secondary schools, London was the highest-spending region (£582), while Yorkshire and the Humber was lowest-spending (£340). London was the only region in which secondary schools outspent primary schools.

Schools with higher proportions of disadvantaged pupills tended to spend more, as did those with lower Ofsted ratings (though the latter trend was weaker). Primary schools with high proportions of ethnic-minority pupils spent less, but this trend was reversed for secondary schools. The same was true for EAL pupils and for urban schools.

In terms of school size, smaller schools tended to outspend larger schools, at least on this per-teacher basis, and single-academy trusts tended to spend more than multi-academy trusts (MATs), especially larger MATs – though they all spent more than LA-maintained schools. Among academies, free schools spent the most. Finally, looking at faith schools, Catholic schools spent the most in primary but the least in secondary.

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

Figure 2: Staff development and training spend by school type (2024)

Notes: School groups are assigned based on current status in 2025. School deprivation figures based on pupils' eligibility for free school meals, with bands defined by the DfE. Small primary schools have fewer than 200 pupils, large ones have more than 360; for secondary schools the thresholds are 700 and 1,200 pupils, respectively. Large MATs are those with more than 10 schools across both phases. Urban, suburban and rural groups use ONS rural-urban categories applied to school postcodes.

Sources: Department for Education; SchoolDash Insights; SchoolDash analysis.

In summary, we observe a continued decline in overall reported spend, at least in real terms. More challenged schools tend to spend more, though they typically have more grant income and less experienced teachers too (see our previous analysis of teacher age bands here). In some cases, such as small schools and SATs, higher relative expenditure might reflect less efficient provision of CPD, so more money shouldn't necessarily be equated to better outcomes. But the overall level in education remains low compared to other industries (see our previous benchmarking) and, if anything, the trend continues to be downwards.

We welcome your feedback; please write to [email protected].

2025