How to recruit and retain high quality teaching staff

Sometimes finding and recruiting high quality staff for your school is only half the battle. While CER Education can take the stresses of recruitment off your hands, once you’ve got the staff it’s down to school leaders to ensure they stay.

It’s important to create a school environment that encourages staff to stay with you for their whole career from an NQT right through to senior management.

CER Education shares its guide to recruiting the best staff for your school and ensuring they’re in it for the long run.

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1. Recruit right

Make sure you ask the right questions throughout the recruitment process to ensure that the successful candidate fulfils all the qualities that make them not only a great teacher, but also a good fit for your school.

As well as ensuring the candidate ticks all of your boxes, make sure that your vacancy ticks everything they are looking for in a future career. You want to hire staff that will join you for the long run, not just using you as a stepping stone.

If you’re offering incentives make sure that the candidate is truly interested in a teaching career and not simply the perks.

2. Invest in staff training

Offer continued professional development (CPD) to staff to display your interest in their career growth. This will not only show your commitment to them, but also your commitment to creating a highly skilled faculty.

Personal and professional development are important factors and if you tailor training to an individual’s specific needs and aspirations you are helping them to pursue a role that they are truly passionate about.

By helping your staff to better themselves and offering exciting training opportunities, you will ensure that you have the highest quality teachers on your payroll.

3. Build relationships

A key piece of advice is to make sure you know what makes your staff tick. Find out what motivates them so that you can truly get the best out of them.

It’s important to remember that each teacher is different, and teachers from the same department will have different interests and abilities. Allow them to play on these interests both inside and outside of lessons.

By getting to know your staff you may discover they have many skills and talents beyond just the subject they teach. Use this information to encourage them to pursue their passions throughout the curriculum in both time-tabled lessons and also in after school clubs and enrichment activities.

4. Challenge your staff

Take teachers out of their comfort zone to upskill them. This will show them that you are confident in their ability to handle more responsibility.

By buying into your staff you are not only creating confident future leaders, but also adding value to your team and creating a well-rounded school faculty.

Keeping staff on their toes will keep their role fulfilling and help them to grow confident in areas they may be wary about.

5. Be a strong leader

Make sure that you both listen to and deal with any issues and concerns raised by staff.

While you want to be respected it is also important that you assert your leadership and let them know that if they are faced with any issues you have the power to solve them.

Most importantly, value your staff and offer both support and encouragement in times of need as well as celebrating successes. If people are valued they are more than happy to give back when needed to.

6. Create a dream team

It can be so easy to get caught up in budgets, ratings and grades but it’s essential that you try not to lose the essence of what teaching is all about!

School leaders must create a healthy and welcoming workplace for staff and a great way to do this is by creating a confident team that work well together and encourage each other.

Socialise and hold team building sessions outside the classroom to allow staff to get to know you, and each other, in a social setting. This is especially significant when welcoming new staff or NQTs to the faculty and it will help to create a much smoother transition.

About CER Education

If you need help with recruitment, CER Education has a dedicated NQT adviser who works with colleges and universities across the country recruiting the North West’s finest NQTs ready for placement.

CER’s permanent consultant has built up an enviable portfolio of contacts with a network of teachers ready to either re-locate or fit in to one of the many roles across the country.

To find out more about how CER Education can help you recruit and retain high quality teaching staff head to: cer.co.uk