School Direct
Top tips on recruitment
Updated April 2014
Overview
 UCAS Teacher Training System – entry profiles
 Develop your marketing approach
 Other tools on offer to support you
 Plan your selection process
 Professional skills tests
 Support from NCTL
 Contacts
UCAS Teacher Training
 UCAS opened to applicants on 21 November and it is mandatory for
all schools to use the system. Further details are available at:
http://www.ucas.com/members-providers/teacher-training
 You should be clear on how you will accept additional information
from applicants outside of UCAS, as the applicants are unable to
make changes to personal statements once submitted.
 Consider moving applicants across other lead schools and
providers, where appropriate, to ensure good applicants are not lost
where allocations may not be available. Please refer to the latest
UCAS guidance on how to make changes.
 Consider carefully how an applicant searches. The name of your
alliance can be supplemented with the name of the lead school in
order to enhance search possibilities.
UCAS Teacher Training: Entry profiles
Keeping your entry profile on UCAS as up-to-date as possible is
important as it gives potential applicants specific information to help
them make informed decisions about the courses they apply for.
Some ideas to help boost your profile to applicants are:
 Focus on “Why train with us?” section of the entry profile
 To use the drop down boxes and your entry profile if you offer a
PGCE so it comes up in searches
 Do you offer any post-ITT training or qualifications awards e.g.
leadership development programmes or Masters?
 Your SD salaried rates and/or the fees for fee-based places
 Do you want to apply some discretion over three year’s work
experience in hard to fill subjects?
 Provide information on your partner schools - or links to their
websites - and the structure of your partnership
Entry profiles (continued)
 Include the number of places you have in each phase/subject. Keep
it up-to-date e.g. we only have x places left.
 Details on application deadlines, including interview dates and
holiday dates when school staff might not be available.
 Specific entry requirements, e.g. the amount of school experience,
including any minimum requirements e.g. 2:1 & GSCE.
 The timescale for training and how many hours trainees can expect
to spend within schools.
 Success statistics e.g. employment rates, linking to your school
website where you may have further information and/or case studies
on your School Direct trainees and training programme.
 Further guidance on entry profiles is available on the UCAS website
at http://www.ucas.com/members-providers/teacher-training/entryprofiles
Develop your marketing approach
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Consider your ‘unique selling point’. Applicants are really drawn to
some key things including providing SEN placements, enrichment
activities, how much time they will really spend in school – if they are
starting with you on 1 September tell them, they like that!
Be creative - don’t be afraid to think outside the box: bus advertising is
expensive but magnetic stickers to put on school mini buses isn’t!
Use school newsletters, events with parents and the community to
advertise locally e.g. sms to parents to advertise local vacancies
Use strong testimonials or quotes from previous trainees and NQTs
Use local PR opportunities
Ensure that every front line person answering the school telephones
or working in reception is well briefed with the correct details and
contact details.
Record details of where the person saw the advert to inform future
marketing.
Develop your marketing approach
 Link in with providers and schools to maximise applications
locally and regionally
– Look for joint advertising opportunities e.g. through university
magazines, with an agreed format used by all schools linked to
the approach.
– Make links with university careers/employment advisers with an
agreed brief to support SD across the region.
– Make best use of any regional recruitment events. Collaborative
events always draw more potential applicants and are a better
use of everyone’s time and effort. Match make between
applicants and schools.
Develop your marketing approach
Don’t forget to use your school website
 Not only is this one of the most cost effective and widely used
marketing tools, but often first port of call for most candidates
looking for new opportunities.
 Make sure the content is clear, concise, up-to-date (including
relevant dates) and with contact details for more information.
 Signpost your recruitment/School Direct information on your
website's homepage – clearly – and with one-click movement to the
information
 Request that partner/alliance schools or your higher education
institution training partners websites have information about, and
links to, your website.
 If your school has a twitter or facebook account, make this obvious
on your website to help increase your followers. Then use these
channels to announce your offer, events, deadlines etc.
Develop your marketing approach
Applicant insight:
 Behaviour/classroom management is often quoted reason for not
applying to teaching. Can you demonstrate how you will support
trainees gain these skills?
 Physics graduates often want to specialise in physics or physics with
maths and can be put off by prospect of teaching too much general
science. Can they deployed as a specialist across your
partnership/alliance?
Other tools on offer to support you
 Marketing Resource Bank - www.education.gov.uk/sdmarketing.
This is where guidance, top-tips, useful presentations and readymade press adverts are available to use for your recruitment for free.
 Subject Knowledge Enhancement (SKE) - SKE courses are fullyfunded pre-ITT courses designed to help potential trainees gain
the depth of knowledge in their chosen subject that they will need to
train to teach. SKE provision is available for: mathematics;
physics; chemistry; computing; modern and ancient languages
and design and technology. A directory of SKE programmes is
now available on our website. If you are a school or provider offering
SKE programmes, you can promote them on the directory. Funding
could be used to bring in Specialist Leaders in Education (SLEs) to
deliver SKE for one of your applicants.
Other tools on offer to support you
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School Experience Programme (SEP) - SEP is a government funded opportunity
for quality prospective teachers in shortage subjects (mathematics, physics,
chemistry, languages, design and technology and computing) to gain experience in
a school prior to starting their ITT.
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80% of School Direct lead schools who are engaged in SEP use it to meet potential
applicants for their School Direct places. SEP schools will have candidates directed to
them by the Teaching Line, as well as funding up to £50 per placement day.
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Provision of school experience should be seen as a recruitment tool as it allows you
to undertake an early assessment of a potential applicant and for the attendee to get
a good idea of what would be on offer in your SD training programme.
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Almost 60% of candidates accessing more than 2 days school experience in priority
subjects through the portal go on to make a successful application. The majority stay
with the school that has run their SEP experience.
Further considerations
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Switch fee for salaried places
– You are able to switch School Direct fee funded places for salaried places - SD
salaried places receive higher applications. A link to 14/15 salary funding rates
is available from
http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/careers/traininganddevelopment/initial/b00
204256/itt-funding-and-allocations/school-direct
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Career prospects
– Offer an enhanced School Direct programme as a career package for trainee
teachers – consider offering a PGCE in addition to awarding QTS; post-ITT
training (e.g. leadership programmes) or qualifications (e.g. Masters). Signpost
clearly on your UCAS entry profile and mention if you are likely to offer a yearin-post following their successful training.
– Prospect of a career with future learning opportunities and early career
progression appeals to high fliers and can make your programme stand out.
Open and fair recruitment - guidance
 The recruitment period must be long enough to allow open and fair
access to places and well communicated to applicants.
 It is for the network of schools in conjunction with their ITT provider
to determine their own selection and recruitment processes (i.e.
timelines for accepting applications, number of applications to be
considered) based on their capacity/needs etc.
 Recruitment activities should be high-quality, open and transparent
and will be subject to inspection by Ofsted.
 ACAS have provided advice about being able to transfer a trainee
directly into a vacant post as they have completed a competitive
interview process prior to commencing training. This provides a
significant reduction in future recruitment costs.
Plan your selection process
 Plan in advance when you want to shortlist and interview etc, and
book the time in people’s diaries (remember the 40 working day
deadline for UCAS)
 Consider whether you can share the load with other school
partnerships or your provider. Or task schools with specific subject
specialism with recruitment for those subjects.
 Make sure you have clear selection criteria in place which meets
the needs of the school and the provider.
 Make sure the process isn’t too onerous and time consuming for
the applicant. They may have applied for other places. You could
conduct a thorough assessment in just one day that includes an
interview, classroom-based activity and written tasks.
 Offer interviews in schools where you know they may struggle to
attract applicants to challenge perceptions e.g. rural / coastal areas.
Selection process (continued)
 Don’t forget you are looking for potential, not the finished article
and some of your applicants might need more development than
others. The area most applicants have least experience in is
engaging with children and young people and supporting their
learning.
 If applicants are not suitable for your partnership, but may be
suitable for other training routes encourage them to apply
elsewhere and actively identify these opportunities to ensure good
applicants are not lost in the system.
 It is common practice to make conditional offers, for example if a
candidate is awaiting their degree results, skills test results, or other
paperwork such as CRB checks.
 Keep in regular touch with your successful applicants, invite them
into school, send them school newsletters and so on.
Understand the recruitment cycle
Primary
 Will self-generate applications, so having an up to date website for
applicants to find, with clear contacts is vital.
Secondary
 You may find that PE, history, art and drama fill up quickly. This is
usual for secondary recruitment.
 Other subjects are slower. English, music, geography and biology
should see a steady flow. Physics, maths, chemistry, modern
languages and computer science will start to trickle in from January
onwards. This will slow down before Easter and start to build again
from mid-May – in line with academic times in universities.
 Develop processes that allow you to assess applicants, offer places
and receive acceptances quickly and for small numbers.
Understand the recruitment cycle
Secondary
 Consider moving surplus applicants into subjects where you have
vacancies, and using SKE to top up an applicant’s knowledge
Subject
Subject
Art
to
Design and
Technology
PE
English
to
Primary
Professional skills tests (1/2)
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Applicants must have passed the professional skills tests in maths and
English before beginning training. The computer-based tests cover the basic
skills that teachers need to fulfil their wider professional roles in school,
regardless of subject specialism or intended teaching phase. Practice tests
are available on the DfE website.
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New applicants for ITT take the tests after they have applied and they will
need to provide evidence of application when they attend the test
centre. Visit www.education.gov.uk/teachskillstests for further information.
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All applicants will be asked to provide their personal details, which should
match exactly the details in their ITT application form, and the ID they will
use when attending the test centre.
Professional skills tests (2/2)
All correspondence to applicants will be sent by email, so it is essential that a
valid email address is registered. To prevent correspondence going into junk
folders, applicants should add the following email addresses to their contacts
list: skillstests@pearson.com and gtnsupport@pearson.com.
Lead Schools will be able to check applicants’ results by accessing the results
portal. To access results, the Lead School nominates a contact - plan ahead
and ensure you have nominated personnel ready and able to access the
system:
 Search by surname and date of birth:
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Results are shown for each test taken by an applicant.
Further information can be found on the DfE website.
Support from the NCTL
The NCTL runs events in areas which may be finding it difficult to recruit,
inviting potential applicants interested in teaching to come and meet with
providers and schools.
 Graduate fairs
 Train to Teach
 Premier Plus
 Career Changer workshops
 Online events
The most up-to-date event details in terms of dates, times and venues
are on our website www.education.gov.uk/get-into-teaching/events
You can advertise your own events on our website, which attracts 3 million
visits per year by emailing WhatsOn.WHERE@education.gsi.gov.uk
Support from the NCTL
 The NCTL are currently running a series of mini Train to
Teach events across the country which will provide the perfect
opportunity for candidates to learn all they need to know about
teacher training and how to apply
 These events will have many of the same features as the main
Train to Teach events with presentations, advice zone plus an
exhibition area for providers and schools
 If you would like to attend one of these events, please contact
Jane Beere traintoteach@blackberryproductions.co.uk
Date
26-Apr
Location
Southampton
Venue
Date
Thornden School
Winchester Road
Chandlers Ford
Hampshire SO53 2DW
17-May
Location
Venue
London Regents Park Holiday Inn Regents
Park
Carburton Street,
London, W1W 5EE
29-Apr
Bath
Hilton Bath City
Walcot Street
Bath BA1 5BJ
21-May
Preston
UCLAN
The Atrium
Preston
06-May
Shrewsbury
21-May
Brighton
Hilton Brighton
Metropole
King's Rd,
Brighton
BN1 2FU
07-May
Nottingham
Mercure Shrewsbury
Albrighton Hall
Hotel
Ellesmere Road
Albrighton
SY4 3AG
Hilton Nottingham
Milton Street
Nottingham
NG1 3PZ
03-Jun
Plymouth
Holiday Inn Plymouth
Armada Way
Plymouth PL1 2HJ
05-Jun
Oxford
Holiday Inn Oxford
Peartree Roundabout
Woodstock Road
Oxford OX2 8JD
10-Jun
Liverpool
16-Jun
Canterbury
Crowne Plaza Liverpool
City Centre
St Nicholas Place
Princes Dock
Liverpool
L3 1QW
Best Western Abbots
Barton Hotel
36 New Dover Road
Canterbury
Kent CT1 3DU
12-May
13-May
Manchester
Northampton
University of
Manchester
Student's Union
Oxford Road
Hilton Northampton
100 Watering Lane
Collingtree
Northampton
NN4 0XW
Date
Location
Venue
18-Jun
Middlesbrough
Thistle Hotel Middlesbrough
Fry Street
Middlesbrough TS1 1JH
19-Jun
Leeds
Hilton Leeds City
Neville Street
Leeds LS1 4BX
21-Jun
Gloucester
Holiday Inn Gloucester/Cheltenham
Crest Way
Barnwood
Gloucester GL4 3RX
24-Jun
Cambridge
De Vere University Arms Hotel
Regent Street
Cambridge
Cambridgeshire CB2 1AD
25-Jun
Norwich
Holiday Inn Norwich
North Cromer Rd
Norwich
Norfolk NR6 6JA
28-Jun
London Regents Park
Holiday Inn Regents Park
Carburton Street,
London, W1W 5EE
* May be subject to change
Further information and advice
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