How can young people help to create a staffing pipeline for your secondary school?

Secondary schools need to take recruitment into the classroom and engage young people interested in teaching in order to create a staffing pipeline

The workforce crisis in only getting worse for schools. The latest teacher training census showed that only 59% of the necessary secondary school teachers were recruited this year. To help secondary schools level up their recruitment, they can create a staffing pipeline to engage with the next generation of teachers as they begin to consider their future careers.

How to engage young people in teaching

Securing a staff pipeline for your school starts with your future employees. To connect with them, you can:

• Appoint an enterprise adviser: to connect with an interest in an education career path, you can encourage a member of your staff to be an enterprise adviser. They will work directly with a school or colleges to build their careers’ programme, create opportunities with local employers and inspire students. They will need to be able dedicate around eight hours per month to this task.

• Exhibit at a careers fair: physical and virtual careers fairs provide young people with an opportunity to meet a range of employers and industries. To make your secondary school stand out, why not bring along your newest or youngest employee to share their recruitment experience, or consider a practical demonstration they can take part in? This will give them a small taste of what it is like to work in the education sector. 

• Offer a work experience placement: a work experience placement can be organised directly with your local education organisation, and typically lasting one-to-two weeks. The placement can either be virtual or in person, and you can plan a short project for the students to work on during the placement to give them a greater insight into your school.  

• Offer an internship: internships give young people a chance to work on real and engaging projects with support and mentoring from a member of your team. You can offer placements alongside T-Level qualifications, which require students to undertake both a technical qualification and an industry placement with an employer. You can find more information on how apply to be a T-Level provider here.  

• Appoint an industry tutor: to engage with young people directly, you or a member of your team can work with your local further education college, training provider or university to become an industry tutor as a part-time tutor or lecturer. This is a great opportunity for professional development and would allow a great base for the creation of your staffing pipeline.

Career routes

Engaging young people is a great starting point for creating a staff timeline, but to make the most of it you must be able to offer career routes to young people looking to follow an education career path. To do this, you could:

• Offer a traineeship: for young people that want to pursue an education career path but don’t have the relevant experience for a full-time position or apprenticeship, you can offer a traineeship. A traineeship is a flexible, government-funded programme which can last up to a year. It is a fantastic way to start building up your pipeline with a loyal workforce.

• Hire an apprentice: in your recruitment process it is beneficial to consider which posts you are advertising would suit an apprentice. An apprenticeship will provide industry-standard training alongside their work. It can also help build your staff pipeline by taking on previous trainees. 

You can find all the available government apprenticeship training courses here.