School Direct
Top Tips on Recruitment
Overview of Things You Need to Do
 Set yourself up on the UCAS Teacher Training System
 Develop your marketing approach
 Plan your selection process
 Understand the recruitment cycle
 Consider other tools on offer to help you
UCAS Teacher Training
 Opens to applicants on 21 November
 It is mandatory for all schools to use the system
 You should have received a welcome pack from UCAS
following your request for places and returned the membership
application form so that UCAS sends you password details.
 Set up your training programmes and entry profiles in advance
of confirmation of places from NCTL to avoid a last minute rush
at the end of October.
 Schools and providers will be able to see their entry profile and
training programme information from 4th November. Check to
make sure it looks as you intended and is as good as others.
 Further details are available at: http://www.ucas.com/membersproviders/teacher-training
UCAS Teacher Training: Entry profiles
Important as they give potential applicants specific information to
help them make informed decisions about the courses they apply
for. They can be topical and up-to-date.
Some ideas to help boost your profile to applicants are:
 Do you offer a PGCE in addition to awarding QTS?
 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.
 Include the number of places you have in each phase/subject.
Keep it up to date e.g. we only have x places left.
Entry Profiles (continued)
 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
 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.
Develop Your Marketing Approach

Do some research on your area – urban areas always attract more
graduate applicants than rural so you will need a different approach
depending on where you are.

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!

Marketing can be expensive in terms of time and money. Look for low
cost/no cost options and pool resources.

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.
Develop Your Marketing Approach
 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.
 Use school newsletters, events with parents and the
community to advertise locally.
 Don’t be afraid to think outside the box: bus advertising is
expensive but magnetic stickers to put on school mini buses
isn’t!
Develop Your Marketing Approach
 Use feedback and quotes from previous trainees and NQTs.
 www.education.gov.uk/sdmarketing is a Marketing Resource
Bank where literature, useful presentations and advertisements
are available to use for your recruitment for free.
 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
Applicant insight:
 Prospect of a career with future learning opportunities and
early career progression appeals to high fliers and can make
your programme stand out.
 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 specialize 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?
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.
Plan your selection process
 Develop a costed plan which includes time requirements (not to be
under estimated) and resources
 Plan in advance when you want to open recruitment, 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. It’s possible to
conduct a thorough assessment in one day that includes an
interview, classroom-based activity and written tasks.
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.
 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 your successful applicants warm, invite them into school, keep
in touch through newsletters, etc
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.
Consider other tools on offer to help
you
 Use school experience placements to hook in future applicants
as well as undertake early assessment of potential applicants
to your school.
 Subject Knowledge Enhancement (SKE) courses are fullyfunded pre-ITT courses designed to help potential trainees gain
the depth of knowledge needed to train to teach their chosen
subject.
 The subjects that attract SKE funding are mathematics,
physics, computing, chemistry and languages.
 We cannot hope to fill these subjects from the subject’s
graduate pool. We would need half of all physics graduates to
fill the physics PGCE places, for example.
Consider other tools on offer to help
you
 But these subjects can and do attract a very wide range of
graduates including Healthcare and Anthropology for a
Mathematics PGCE and Equine Science, Law and Music
Technology for a Physics PGCE.
 SKE courses help prepare these applicants – who could make
outstanding teachers – boost their subject knowledge before
starting their ITT course.
 These courses can be delivered by a wide range of suppliers –
University Education Departments, University Subject
Departments, another school, Science Learning Centres,
another source or even in-house.
Professional Skills Tests (1/2)
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.
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. Bookings for applicants starting ITT courses in 2014/15 will
open later in 2013. Visit www.education.gov.uk/teachskillstests for
further information.
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:


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 bespoke 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.
 Grad fairs (now – 20 Nov)
 Train to Teach (Feb/Mar)
 Online surgeries
 Premier Plus (Nov-July)
 Career Changer workshops (Jan onwards)
Further details will follow.
You can advertise your own events for free on the NCTL “Get into
Teaching” website which attracts c. 3m visits p.a. - email
WhatsOn.WHERE@education.gsi.gov.uk
Contact us
Your Professional Delivery Lead (PDL) contact details are:
 Firstname Surname
 Email: firstname.surname@education.gsi.gov.uk
 Telephone: 0123 456 789
Please don’t hesitate to make contact if there is anything that you
need support with.
Further information and advice
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Thank you
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