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Schools have to promote themselves with strong, professional websites, exciting newsletters and engaging social media posts.  In order to really bring these marketing materials to life and stand out from the crowd of the competition, it is crucial to have a wide range of high quality photographs which showcase the school’s unique curriculum and enrichment offer, fantastic facilities, vision and what parents can expect their child to experience there, as well as prospective staff.

The Grebot Donnelly Training School offers a wide range of courses to suit your marketing requirements and we regularly develop bespoke sessions for schools across the country.

A legal and PR response to the Prevent duty: implications for schools         

We are being approached on a daily basis by schools, Local Authorities and Multi-Academy Trusts who are going to extreme measures in a bid to fill their teaching positions. Whilst we cannot (and will not!) claim to have the answers to the national shortage, we do support the notion that marketing has a role to play.

We are in a teachers’ marketplace and school leaders need to change their recruitment habits in a bid to stand out from the crowd.

• Have you considered your unique proposition for staff?
• How is this being promoted?
• What is the experience of a candidate who comes for interview?
• Or even when an applicant goes through your application process?

The channels you use are crucial. We recommend a combined approach that includes traditional advertising, social media and creative methods such as utilising your teachers’ personal networks through incentive schemes.

Over the past few days and weeks, the news has been filled with speculation on the content of the spending review and autumn statement. The comprehensive review of public expenditure covers everything from health to transport to welfare and, of course, education.

This Thursday the Department for Education (DfE) intend to publish provisional results for secondary schools. For more information on exactly what’s being published you can see one of our previous blogs.

As schools go to increasingly extreme measures in a bid to recruit the right staff, we think there are some key pointers to follow before embarking on a trip to Canada in search of the future generation of teachers.

Ofsted has released an eye-opening report – Key Stage 3: the wasted years? – indicating that pupils’ development in KS3 is hindered because the transition from primary to secondary is poorly handled.

Whilst the bad news continues on the teacher recruitment difficulties across the UK, we challenge schools to consider the importance of teacher retention. From a cost perspective, the investment organisations are making on advertising vacant posts could (and should) be reassigned to creative retention programmes and packages for teachers.