Music in schools

The DfE carries out regular ‘wave’ surveys of teachers and school leaders in order to discover answers to specific questions about what is happening in schools. The most recent (June 2022) survey can be found at School and college panel: omnibus surveys for 2021 to 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

There are lots of interesting questions in the latest survey, but the one that caught my eye was about music provision in schools. The data from the responses are separated into primary and secondary schools, as well as an overall figure for all schools.

Despite the frequent attacks on funding for music in schools, it is still an activity that takes place in most schools. This may be because Music is a statutory subject in the national curriculum for all children in primary school and for the first years of secondary (from key stage 1 to 3). Although academies don’t have to follow the National curriculum.

Most schools responding to the survey offered musical instrument lessons (89%), singing lessons (85%), and the opportunity to watch a live performance at school (71%). However, it is not clear whether this is to all children or just some.

Other activities that were less commonly offered included providing a space for rehearsals and individual practice (65%), the opportunity to watch a live performance off-site (58%), and a termly school performance (54%). For all activities, schools that were not offering them this academic year were unlikely to have plans to offer them in the future. These were more likely to be provided by secondary schools than primary schools.

Schools with the lowest proportion of Free School Meals (FSM)-eligible pupils were more likely than those with the highest proportion to offer a termly school performance (67% vs. 49%), to provide a space for rehearsals and individual practice (75% vs. 59%), to provide musical instrument lessons (97% vs. 84%), or to provide singing lessons.

This difference is also true for other activities as schools with the lowest proportion of FSM-eligible pupils were more likely than those with the highest proportion to offer singing lessons on a one-to-one basis (28% vs 9%) and small group basis (68% vs. 48%). Meanwhile schools with the highest proportion of FSM-eligible pupils were more likely than those with the lowest proportion to provide them on a whole class basis (81% vs. 68%).

Furthermore, Schools with the lowest proportion of FSM-eligible pupils were more likely than those with the highest proportion to provide musical instrument lessons on a one-to-one basis (77% vs. 39%). While those with the highest proportion of FSM-eligible pupils were more likely than those with the lowest proportion to provide them on a whole class basis (69% vs. 53%).

Schools with higher proportion of FSM-eligible pupils also seemed less likely to offer pupils a chance to play in an orchestra. The survey doesn’t ask whether this is due to such schools having fewer music specialists on the staff than schools with a smaller proportion of FSM-eligible pupils.

Interestingly, there didn’t seem to be any questions about the type of music schools teach and how it might relate to different cultures from around the world? Perhaps that is a series of questions for another survey.

The differences between schools with different levels of FSM eligibility is a disappointing finding and might be worth looking at in relation to the levelling up agenda.

New research on teacher supply

The NfER has today published a detailed report on teacher supply and its implications for learning. Teacher supply and shortages: the implications of teacher supply challenges for schools and pupils – NFER Many of the conclusions in their report will not come as any surprise to regular readers of this blog. After all, there have been many posts discussing the issue – even as recently as the post on whether PE is now a shortage subject – during the lifetime of this blog.

Whilst I find most of the conclusions unsurprising, there are some that are interesting.  Figure 15 suggests that a higher percentage of responses from schools in the North East than in London fell in the ‘most difficult’ category, although to be fair, schools in the North East also topped the percentage in terms of response of ‘least difficult’. It may be that the starting salary in London is still high enough to attract teachers not yet interested in buying into the housing market and content to share rented properties.

I am surprised at the reported level of recruitment challenge faced by schools in the primary sector, where supply ought to be more than adequate across most of England.

The overall conclusion that schools are only able to provide some teaching by the use of non-specialist teaching must be of concern. The alternative is to stop teaching certain subjects either entirely or to limit the number of groups offered a subject. However, for key subjects, such as mathematics and English not teaching the subject is not possible in most schools.

The authors of the report also concluded that ‘challenges with teacher recruitment may also be having a disproportionate impact on schools with low Ofsted ratings, and school leaders’ efforts to improve outcomes. There is likely to be a complex relationship between a school’s Ofsted rating and recruitment challenges, rather than a simple effect of an Ofsted rating downgrade making it more challenging to recruit.’

 However, they further comment that ‘… our survey data suggests there seems to be an association between a low Ofsted rating and increased recruitment challenges. These recruitment challenges may exacerbate the challenges of improving the quality of education in the school, whether through leaders doing more teaching reducing leadership capacity, lower-quality teachers being employed, or other related factors.’ Whether recruitment challenges have resulted in the downgrading of outstanding schools also reported today is an interesting question that merits further study.

In a fortnight’s time the DfE should publish the 2022 ITT Census and that will provide schools with a picture of the recruitment round for September 2023 and January 2024. It seems likely that once again recruitment targets will be missed, thus providing schools with more of a dilemma over staffing.

Perhaps, NfER might next year look in more depth at the actions that the DfE might take to ensure a fair distribution of teachers between schools in what is in some subjects now becoming a scare resource. Should every school have access to at least one specialist in every curriculum area?

The NfER might also investigate the extent to which post-entry subject enhancing CPD makes any difference to the expertise of the teaching force.

Do your best, but stick within the rules

The recently issued report on a capital project at a single academy trust school may well exemplify why the DfE is no longer seemingly in favour of such single academy arrangements Investigation report: Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Penrith – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) The report ended by stating that the Trust had ‘overclaimed by, and was paid, £1,502,393.40 (£269,193.56 + £1,204,779.04 + £28,420.80)’ for the various works.

It is clear that the work undertaken benefitted the school, but since there was a limited pot of funding for this type of capital work, other schools presumably will have missed out on access the funds that should have been returned to the DfE according to the report.  The school is now transferring from a single school trust to join a multi-academy trust in the same region.

A detailed analysis of the evidence in the report reveals that at least one trustee had concerns about the way the project was being handled, and that cash could be claimed back by the DfE.

In former times, would internal auditors at a local authority have been more diligent in preventing the transfer of funds from the specified project to other needs? What is clear is that because the school had been rated as ‘outstanding’ by ofsted in its previous form it had not had an inspection since becoming an academy. Might an inspection team have noticed if they had visited the school during the period of the project: who knows, but it would not have been the focus of attention.

This type of report is rare, but the school is not unique in being the subject of such a report. Doing the best for your school or schools is a long-established principle providing the scheme is undertaken within the rules.

I well recall a local authority in the 1960s where their building branch was very good at gaming the system. In those days, LA listed capital projects in order of priority and the Ministry specified which projects would be funded. This authority would often come back during the financial year to ask if there was any unspent capital as a project that was unfunded had moved up the order, normally because a developer had started to build a new estate faster than expected and places were now needed sooner than anticipated for the pupils living in the new houses.

Eventually, the government moved from selecting actual projects to providing a cash sum and letting local authorities decide their own priorities. The change placed the onus on the authority to decide the order of priority.

As there is never enough capital funding for schools – Ted Short and Mrs Thatcher when Labour and Conservative Education Ministers in the 1960s and 1970s both wanted to rebuild pre-1906 primary schools, but were frustrated by economic circumstances – and the present economic state of the nation is likely to once again to put capital funding under pressure, and highlight the need for a fair and just allocation system that all responsible for schools will adhere to operating properly.

Teaching staff ratios worsens in secondary sector

The DfE has published the latest Education and Training Statistics for the four nations of the United Kingdom. As education is a devolved activity, each nation choses how to use its funds in its own way. The remainder of this blog refers to outcomes in England. Education and training statistics for the UK, Reporting Year 2022 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk)

The largest expenditure item in schools is staffing, with teaching staff taking the largest share of that budget. One measure over time of the trend in that spending is the Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR). The ratio allows for changes in pupil numbers are well as in funding. When pupil numbers are falling but funding increasing, PTRs sometimes fall – i.e. show an improvement as there are then fewer pupils per teacher. In the primary sector, this is sometimes talked about in terms of class sizes, but such a measure is less useful in the secondary sector, so allow for comparisons in trends, PTRS are a more useful measure.

At present, pupil numbers in the primary sector are in decline, whereas they are still rising across the secondary sector as a whole. This is reflected in the trends in PTRs.

PTRs for school sectors in England
	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22
Nursery	England	21.9	22.8	23.5	21.8	23.4
Primary	England	20.9	20.9	20.9	20.6	20.6
Secondary	England	15.9	16.3	16.6	16.6	16.7
Special	England	6.2	6.2	6.3	6.2	6.3
Total Maintained	England	17.9	18.0	18.2	18.0	18.0
(1) In England, special schools include pupil referral units.
(2) In England, the primary pupil-teacher ratio includes local authority (LA) maintained nurseries.

Source DfE November 2022

Primary school PTRs remained constant in 2021/22 compared with the previous year, whereas in the secondary sector they continued to worsen, reaching their worst aggregate level since before 2016/17. The small number of state-maintained nursey schools came under the greatest pressure, with their PTR almost returning to the record pre-pandemic level recorded in 2019/20.

Most of the remainder of the data are for the United Kingdom as a whole, and not dis-aggregated into the national levels. Across the United Kingdom as a whole, Expenditure on education in real terms increased by 5.4% from Financial Year 2020-21 to Financial Year 2021-22. Expenditure on education as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) decreased by 0.2 percentage points.

Later today, the Chancellor, in his autumn statement, may well announce cuts to the education budget in England. Any significant cuts to revenue funding will have repercussions for the 2023/24 data when it is published later in the decade. PTRs may well worsen significantly, especially if teachers are offered a pay increase anywhere near the current rate of inflation.

However, past experience in previous ‘hard times’ has shown that schools do everything to protect teachers’ jobs and will first cut everything else in the budget to the bone. Today, a MAT in Oxfordshire has made that clear Oxford and Abingdon schools face choice of heating or teaching – BBC News My guess is, as she picture shows it will be the heating that is cut and not the teaching.

Are schools offering permanent posts?

What type of tenure is on offer in teaching vacancies posted during the autumn term? Research by TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk reveals big differences between the primary and secondary sectors in the type of tenure on offer this autumn.

TeachVac classifies vacancies into one of three groups: Permanent positions; temporary positions or posts arising from maternity leave.

The data is collected from vacancy adverts posted by schools on their web sites.

From the start of September 2022 up to 14^th November: an arbitrary date with no other reason for selection than that I am writing this blog on the 15^th November, the data collected was as follows.

	Classroom Teacher posts
Primary	Maternity	Permanent	Temporary	Total
Sep-22	491	611	326	1428
Oct-22	432	838	427	1697
Nov-22	169	460	376	1005
	1092	1909	1129	4130
Secondary				Total
Sep-22	554	2678	184	3416
Oct-22	553	3035	267	3855
Nov-22	276	1648	178	2102
	1383	7361	629	9373
Grand Total	2475	9270	1758	13503

Source TeachVac

Two facts stand out. The secondary sector advertised more vacancies than the primary sector, and there was a difference in tenure of advertised vacancies between the two sectors. This is obvious if the actual numbers are converted into percentages

	Classroom Teacher posts
Primary	Maternity	Permanent	Temporary
Sep-22	34%	43%	23%	100%
Oct-22	25%	49%	25%	100%
Nov-22	17%	46%	37%	100%
	26%	46%	27%	100%
Secondary
Sep-22	16%	78%	5%	100%
Oct-22	14%	79%	7%	100%
Nov-22	13%	78%	8%	100%
	15%	79%	7%	100%
Grand Total	18%	69%	13%	100%

Source TeachVac

Less than half of the posts advertised in the primary sector have been permanent positions, compared with 79% of vacancies in the secondary sector. Maternity leave vacancies are also much higher in the primary sector than in the secondary sector, accounting for a quarter of all vacancies in the primary sector and a third of the September vacancies.

Despite the downturn in the birth-rate nationally, primary school teachers are still it seems taking time out to raise a family. However, the downturn in pupil numbers across the primary sector must be affecting school budgets, because pupil numbers are an important element of school-funding these days. With any teacher leaving at Christmas for maternity leave not likely to return until January 2024, many schools may not be certain of their school rolls, and hence funding, beyond the summer of 2023.

With the Autumn Statement on Thursday, and the data from the recent NAHT Survey of schools, it seems likely that more schools will resort to temporary appointments in the future as they consider their budgets going forward.

Past experience from the time of the Geddes Axe of a hundred years ago and the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s suggests that class sizes will increase and teacher numbers decline, if funding is again put under pressure, although that outcome needs to be balanced by the number of teachers quitting the state-school sector.

In the past, when there were fewer graduate posts across the economy, a recession meant unemployed teachers. This time the outcome may be different between the primary and secondary sectors, with more unemployed primary school teachers than amongst their secondary sector colleagues unless there is a change in funding arrangements.

Is PE now a shortage subject?

What a silly question. Everyone knows that there is an over-supply of trained PE teachers entering the labour market for teachers each year. This blog has said so often enough in the past. In previous years, the combination of over-recruitment onto training courses and a consistent level of demand has always meant that by the end of a calendar year there were always more PE teachers looking for jobs than posts available.

In 2022, the situation is slightly different. Yes, recruitment in Autumn 2021 onto ITT courses remained healthy, but the surge in vacancies for teachers recorded across the board during 2022 has swept PE along with the tide.

Using the index TeachVac developed in 2015, and has used since, to measure demand against the known level of supply, 2022 has seen the index for PE teachers turn negative for the first time ever this autumn.  (The dataset is at the foot of this post). The current index produced a figure of -135 on Friday 11^th November 2022. This compares with a figure of -2273 for design and technology teachers, so it is still of a different order of magnitude but is in negative territory for the first time since I started recording the index.

At this level, the index points to regional shortages rather than a universal issue recruiting PE teacher across the whole of England. There are parts of the country where any late vacancy for a PE teacher for January 2023 can be filled easily. But there are other areas, notably those some distance from providers of training where schools would likely need to rely upon returners or switching their timetable around to cover unexpected vacancies.

Schools with contracts with recruitment agencies might like to check, as I assume they do on a regular basis anyway, how many PE teachers the agency has on its books. Schools should never wait to ask when they need a vacancy filled but should be aware of which agency can supply the best range of teachers to fill unanticipated vacancies. This is, perhaps, an area of recruitment where there is room for some more sophistication on the part of schools and MATs.

So, why the mini recruitment crisis in PE? Perhaps the rising school population plays a part, as does possible departures form the profession as the range of other possible jobs, from personal trainer, to working in leisure centres or teaching overseas has increased. Schools might also have seen PE teachers are useful support for their science and other departments where recruitment has been a challenge for some time now. The use of PE teachers across other curriculum subjects provides a reservoir of talent but can pose an issue for a school with a in-year vacancy if external recruitment does prove challenging.

If this week’s NAHT survey is anything to go by, this will be a short-lived problem as schools see funding decline and staffing number reduced. We shall see what Wednesday’s Autumn Statement brings for schools: good news may be in short supply.

Date	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022
07/01/2022	1149	1120	955	981	1164	1219	1498	1455
14/01/2022	1144	1108	943	970	1148	1199	1488	1427
21/01/2022	1144	1100	930	958	1130	1174	1474	1395
28/01/2022	1141	1093	916	945	1107	1148	1458	1360
04/02/2022	1124	1082	904	931	1082	1121	1440	1339
11/02/2022	1118	1071	891	914	1062	1090	1420	1298
18/02/2022	1117	1066	881	902	1040	1049	1407	1267
25/02/2022	1117	1053	867	892	1026	1029	1390	1241
04/03/2022	1105	1034	850	881	1009	1004	1367	1194
11/03/2022	1098	1017	830	851	984	967	1341	1152
18/03/2022	1088	999	810	842	964	917	1322	1102
25/03/2022	1079	978	797	825	927	891	1297	1056
01/04/2022	1071	968	781	802	897	874	1265	1002
08/04/2022	1071	959	768	785	859	850	1251	952
15/04/2022	1057	939	757	772	838	834	1237	926
22/04/2022	1039	914	744	738	822	825	1208	899
29/04/2022	1021	891	713	690	797	800	1161	829
06/05/2022	1004	876	686	651	740	767	1119	737
13/05/2022	993	857	652	608	683	738	1073	633
20/05/2022	986	834	627	561	635	705	1030	553
27/05/2022	979	817	605	528	590	684	998	480
03/06/2022	962	808	590	521	569	677	978	447
10/06/2022	945	790	568	484	532	659	952	374
17/06/2022	938	772	546	469	501	646	930	315
24/06/2022	930	765	537	455	481	637	914	271
01/07/2022	922	761	530	447	466	628	901	232
08/07/2022	917	756	524	435	454	621	893	208
15/07/2022	915	748	519	425	443	616	886	195
22/07/2022	915	745	517	420	440	612	884	183
29/07/2022	915	745	513	418	438	610	882	177
05/08/2022	915	743	510	416	437	609	879	175
12/08/2022	915	741	506	416	436	609	877	171
19/08/2022	915	741	506	415	435	606	875	166
26/08/2022	915	741	503	412	433	605	871	161
02/09/2022	915	738	501	411	432	604	868	152
09/09/2022	913	736	497	406	425	601	857	132
16/09/2022	903	731	489	400	409	592	842	107
23/09/2022	897	727	482	385	395	584	824	79
30/09/2022	890	716	470	374	372	570	805	42
07/10/2022	882	710	461	355	347	557	785	6
14/10/2022	873	704	452	350	325	545	763	-30
21/10/2022	864	699	441	337	304	530	744	-62
28/10/2022	862	692	435	334	291	517	736	-76
04/11/2022	858	683	430	326	284	512	715	-105
11/11/2022	852	674	421	314	267	501	690	-135
18/11/2022	847	662	409	295	252	486	668
25/11/2022	842	652	402	292	239	477	648
02/12/2022	840	647	395	280	222	462	633
09/12/2022	833	642	388	273	207	452	618
16/12/2022	828	632	384	262	196	447	599
23/12/2022	825	626	378	253	183	436
30/12/2022

Middle Leaders: Hard to Find. Part 3 – What matters?

This is the final blog post in the series of three posts about re-advertised TLR level vacancies in geography recorded by TeachVac at http://www.teachvac.co.uk. In this post some of the evidence about school outcomes and the need to re-advertise are considered.

The number of schools in the sample is 80 for this exercise. The number is lower than in the previous posts for two reasons. There are a small number of independent schools in the sample and also a number of new schools. Both groups do not have data on Attainment.

Although there are discussions about the utility of the DfE’s Attainment 8 measure, this measure in its provisional outcome state for 2022 was used to classify the schools.

Of the 80 school, 24 had an Attainment 8 score better than that of the score for their local authority as a whole. This meant that 56 schools with re-advertised posts were below the average for their local authority as a whole.

Of the 24 schools that scored better than their LA average for all schools, eight were located in London; three in the South East and two in the East of England. Thus, 13 of the 24 might be seen as schools in London and the Home Counties where house prices might restrict the ability of teachers to move into a particular area.

Not only did the schools re-advertising perform worse in Attainment 8 than local schools, but in the case of 41 of the 80 schools they were also below the average for all schools in England.

Another characteristic of the schools re-advertising was that in 53 out of the 80 cases, the school re-advertising had a percentage of pupils on Free School Meals at some point in the last six years that was above the national average for England, in some cases markedly so.

Of course, other factors, such as the time of year of the initial advertisements may make a difference in terms of the need to re-advertise, but many of the schools in the sample experienced more than one round of re-advertisements for their TLR vacancy.

Another interesting feature is the presence of six schools from one large Multi-Academy Trust in the sample of 80 schools and three from another large MAT. Is their presence just a matter of the size of the MAT? Perhaps, in some cases, they have taken on schools in challenging circumstances that might seem less attractive places in which to work. Some of the schools are in parts of London with high housing costs, and that may be another issue.

Some years ago, during the coalition government there was a trial scheme designed to place middle leaders in schools finding recruitment a challenge. For some reason, Yorkshire and Lancashire authorities were selected for the trial. At the time the choice of area seemed odd to me. As it was, for several reasons, the scheme never progressed beyond the trial stage, although various potential bidders did contact me about participating in possible bids.

The data for this study came from TeachVac. Schools can have access to TeachVac’s data and analysis by signing up to the vacancy matching service. The basis cost is just £1 per vacancy match made with a teacher with a maximum cost of £500 per year. Schools should go to www.teachvac.co.uk to sign up and see whether there are any special offers either for groups or for different types of school.

Middle Leaders: harder to find? Part 2 – geography

In the previous post I considered some of the evidence about the vacancies for promoted posts in geography and whether there were issues that were becoming more challenging. The evidence seems to point to the fact that post-pandemic, and especially in 2022, recruitment has become more of a challenge.

The question discussed in this post s whether the challenge affects schools across England as a whole or is confined to certain regions.  Evidence from previous studies of the market as a whole have indicated that schools in an around London fact more significant recruitment challenges that schools located further away from the capital and its large graduate labour market.

The evidence for promoted posts in geography where there the data shows a strong presumption of a re-advertisement is shown in the table.

	Schools with re-advertisements
Regions	Number	All Schools	% with re-adverts
London	49	968	5.1%
South East	29	983	3.0%
East England	20	709	2.8%
West Midlands	9	608	1.5%
Yorkshire & The Humber	6	440	1.4%
East Midlands	5	502	1.0%
North West	4	644	0.6%
North East	1	264	0.4%
South West	2	537	0.4%
Total	125	5655	2.2%

Source TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk

The evidence from the table would seem to confirm the presumption that schools in London and the Home counties do indeed find recruiting teachers of geography for positions related to promoted posts with TLRs or other allowances related to the job title than schools elsewhere in England. This holds true even after taking into account the number of secondary schools in the region covered by TeachVac at the present time. However, overall re-advertisement rates are not high even in London, although they may well be on the increase.

The further away from London a school is located, the less likely it has been to need to re-advertise a post in geography with a TLR or other allowance attached. The difference between schools in London and those in either the North East or South West is stark.

The previous posts discussed the issue of the growth of re-advertisements during 2022, and it would seem that schools in and around London have been most affected by the increase.

The next piece of evidence to consider is whether schools with lower-than-average scores in 2022 on either Attainment 8 or Progress 8 are more likely than schools with better scores to re-advertise a promoted post in geography? As an alternative, the percentage of pupils with Free School Meals might also be considered, but the current cost of living crisis may make that indicator less reliable as a proxy for school performance.

One implication of this study is that the operation of the housing market in relation to public sector salary scales may be important when teachers can move form high-cost areas to this with lower housing costs, but not in the opposite direction.

Middle Leaders: harder to find?

What is the job market for middle years like? Has the cumulative effect of several years of under-recruitment into initial training finally started to take a toll on the ability of schools to appoint middle leaders?

To answer this question for all subjects and across the whole country would be a mammoth undertaking worthy of a substantial research grant. However, using data from TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk, I was able to undertake a small-scale analysis of the situation regarding promoted post in geography across England.

These are the initial findings dealing with two issues: length of service as a middle leader and frequency of a promoted post reappearing more than once in any recruitment round for September of that year.

I selected geography because it seems likely many schools will not have more than a couple of TLRs in the subject, and the chance of more than one being advertised in any one recruitment round is unlikely to be high. The data were analysed by date, school, Unique Reference Number (URN) and its geographical location to ensure schools with the same name weren’t miscounted.

A sample of 139 schools where there were at least two advertisements for a post in geography with a TLR revealed the following:

Years between adverts	Number of Schools
2	49
3	51
4	21
5	16
6	2

It looks as if a high proportion of schools in the sample saw some considerable degree of turnover in their geography departments.

The second question is whether turnover has increased in recent years?

	Promoted posts – Geography – Schools with probable Re-advertisements
Year	1	2	3	4	5+
2107	7	0	0	0	1
2018	7	2	2	2	0
2019	13	3	4	4	0
2020	5	2	1	0	2
2021	6	6	3	1	2
2022	46	18	6	3	1

The data in the table would seem to suggest that 2022 has seen a large number of schools with re-advertisements for geography posts with a TLR when compared with previous years both during and before the pandemic but that before the pandemic affected the recruitment policies of many schools there was a trend towards the need to re-advertisement more of these posts.

It may be too soon to determine how far 2022 marks a catching up exercise to deal with the consequences of the covid pandemic on staffing in schools rather than a sign of greater pressure on middle leadership posts. Perhaps, these is an element of both outcomes present in the data? Should the high level of re-advertisements continue into 2023 it would be fair to conclude that hiring middle leaders was becoming more of a challenge.

Future work will centre around whether there is a geographical difference in the schools re-advertising and also whether schools with either higher Free School Meals pupil percentages or lower output scores are more likely to re-advertise?

As pointed out previously in this blog, the presence of a unique job reference number for all advertised posts would make this type of analysis much easier to perform.

The time of year that the first advertisement appears may also be relevant since the unique nature of teacher recruitment that is dominated by resignation dates and the rhythm of the school year may also influence patterns of re-advertisements.