Effective School Management

particularly so in a buyer’s market. Tightening the personal profile is a
particularly good way of reducing applicants since it decreases the quantity
by insisting on standards of quality.
The personal profile will, of course, form the basis of the job
advertisement.
Use of advertising media
Choice of advertising media as a means of increasing or decreasing the number
of applicants for a post has the advantage that the strength of the advertising
can be increased if the first attempt does not provide enough candidates.
Whether further advertising increases the quality as opposed to quantity of
applicants will depend on whether the format and location of the advertising
are only such that they reach those who are desperately seeking employment
or whether they will also reach others who are not so engaged but might be
drawn by a really attractive opportunity.
Targeting of non-conventional groups
Understandably, teachers feel considerable concern lest the profession should
be diluted by the introduction of staff who have not been formally trained to
teach. Proposals for ‘licensing’ or ‘on the job’ training have therefore met with
union resistance. This resistance has been reinforced by justified resentment
at failure to provide adequate training places or incentives and the perception
that recruitment of untrained staff threatens the job prospects of unemployed
trained teachers. The use of untrained or informally trained staff is therefore
a practical option only in subjects, locations or times of dire shortage or in the
independent sector.
Whatever the politics of the situation, the school manager can only
broaden scope of choice – and therefore increase chances of recruiting better
staff – by looking outside the conventional target groups of newly qualified
probationers, existing teachers, unemployed teachers and married women
returners. Far from diluting quality, the experience and competence of
unconventional recruits might well enrich and broaden the profession.
Publicity has been given to the recruitment of teachers from other
countries. Other groups that deserve special attention are
(1) early retirers of all kinds;
(2) industrial managers, especially those who have worked in the training
and personnel functions;
(3) local authority officers;
(4) parents who may have no previous teaching experience, but who have
relevant competences; and
(5) social workers.
People in the above and other categories may or may not have thought of
teaching as a possible second career, but it is unlikely that they will have regular

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RECRUITING, EMPLOYING, APPRAISING, DEVELOPING & DISMISSING STAFF
7 9
access to The Times Educational Supplement or to other lists of teaching vacancies.
If they do read these lists, it is unlikely that the advertisements will encourage
them to apply. A well-designed website, with a section devoted to vacancies
which encourages such people to apply, can be a very useful additional source
of applicants.
It is important therefore both to place targeted adverts in the ‘job-hunting’
journals read by these groups and to build up suitable contacts who will help
in finding people through their own organizations. While personnel
managers will not thank you for poaching their key staff, they may be very
pleased to point redundant, retiring or change-seeking executives in your
direction or to encourage their partners to move into or return to the teaching
profession. At least one school in the South East of England relies very
heavily for its staff on the wives of employees of a local computer company.
In times of teacher surplus the target group for recruitment can be
narrowed by, for example, advertising only locally as opposed to nationally.
Building an image of the school as an attractive place in which to teach
One head in an area where recruitment is notoriously difficult asserts that he
never has any problems because staff are ‘queueing up’ to come to his school.