There has been a notable rise in applications from outside the UK, helping with teacher recruitment. Former Department of Education advisor Sam Freedman hypothesises that this tendency reflects the teaching profession’s increasing reliance on immigration. Similar to what has happened in the healthcare industry due to stagnating compensation.
The recruitment numbers this year are similar to those from the previous year. It was one of the poorest years, hiring only half the necessary secondary trainees. Secondary recruiting has increased by 13% over the same time last year despite an overall decrease of 11% in the percentage of primary recruits.
However, Jack Worth, an education economist at the National Foundation for Educational Research, said there has been little interest in teaching from local sources. Foreign recruiting is driving the majority of this rise. There has been a notable surge among the approved applicants for physics—a 300% rise in applications and a 141% increase from the previous year.
The number of the rest of the world’s candidates accepted into basic teacher training increased by 57% over the previous year. Meanwhile, the number of applicants from England has remained the same. The UK’s overall application pool has shrunk by 16%. Worth notes that whereas physics placements abroad have grown by 330%, domestic placements have climbed by 40%.
Government programmes
The surge in foreign applications might be ascribed to the government’s legislative initiatives and a growing interest in teaching in the UK. The spike in applications was probably caused by changes to the international relocation payment and bursary eligibility last year. Especially for physics and modern foreign languages (MFL).
The government has launched programmes like the £10,000′ relocation package’ experiment to alleviate the teacher shortage. This is to recruit overseas instructors and increase bursaries for trainee teachers. Incentives had already been reduced in response to a brief spike in interest during the pandemic. Nevertheless, new policy initiatives seem beneficial to recruitment.
The Department for Education is helping schools manage the flood of applications, which take longer to process and frequently have higher rejection rates. This is part of efforts to expedite the hiring process for foreign teachers.
Read our latest blog – Attracting and retaining outstanding candidates in Healthcare