Good News on Teacher Recruitment: What It Means for Trusts

For the first time in several years, the education workforce story is not a single story. One part of it has improved. Another has moved the other way. For multi-academy trusts, the two need different responses.

The good news, and how long it might last

Secondary teacher vacancies have fallen to their lowest level in five years. Postgraduate recruitment for secondary initial teacher training rose by about 11% for 2025/26. This brought around 17,000 new entrants into the system. Analysis from the National Foundation for Educational Research shows the same trend. Retention has improved. Teacher workload is slowly coming down.

That is a better starting position than trusts have had in some time. It is also, as the NFER has been careful to say, one that rests on conditions that can change. Pay competitiveness and workload are the two that matter most, and neither is settled.

An easing market changes the useful questions. When supply is tight, recruitment is mostly about filling the post. When it loosens, the same effort buys a better appointment, and the advantage goes to organisations ready to move.

Bring hiring decisions forward. In a tight market, it made sense to wait and see what resignations brought. With more candidates in the system, trusts that advertise early and interview quickly get first choice. This is most true in subjects that are hardest to fill.

Treat flexibility as an asset rather than a concession. The government's teacher supply plan puts flexible work and workload management at the center of its retention plan. It also commits to doubling full maternity pay from four weeks to eight. Trusts fit well here. Part-time and job-share roles can be hard to schedule in one school. They get much easier across several schools.

Use the group, not just the school. A strong candidate who is not right for the vacancy in one school may be right for another six weeks later. Trusts that keep a shared, properly handled view of applicants waste far less of the interest they have already attracted.

Watch where the recovery has not reached. Improvement is uneven. Some subjects, phases, and areas remain hard. Specialist SEND, SEMH, and behavior support roles are competitive almost everywhere.

The half of the workforce moving the other way

School support staff now make up more than half of the school workforce. The NFER’s 2026 report found something that often surprises people outside the sector. School leaders say teaching assistants are harder to recruit than teachers. And while teacher retention has improved, the support staff exit rate has increased.

Two drivers stand out. One issue is pay, which falls under the School Support Staff Negotiating Body and national policy. It does not sit with individual employers. The other is career progression, and that one is squarely within a trust's control.

This is one of the clearest cases where the trust model has a real advantage over the standalone school. Progression for a teaching assistant in one primary usually means waiting for the higher-level role to come free. Across a group of schools, the same person has a clear path. It can include specialist support and higher-level teaching assistant roles. It can also include pastoral or inclusion roles. For some, it can lead into teaching.

Four things trusts can do without new funding:

Map the progression that already exists. Most trusts have more variety in their support roles than they have ever set out in one place. A single clear map shows where a TA can go. It also shows what each step asks for. It costs nothing. It can change how the job looks to someone deciding to stay.

Advertise support roles internally first. Fill a vacancy in one school with staff from another school. The trust keeps someone who knows its systems. The person also gets the progression they wanted.

Make training role-specific. Department for Education research found that most support staff get some training. However, far fewer get training tailored to their role. That gap is a retention issue as much as a quality one.

Ask why people leave, and write it down. Support staff departures are often treated as routine in a way teacher departures are not. Trusts that track reasons across their schools often find a few fixable causes, not a general drift.

Two different jobs, one underlying advantage

The teacher market has given trusts something they have not had for a while. It offers a window where planning ahead pays off. The support staff picture shows something else. It suggests we need a clear career path. This path should be for people who do most of the inclusion, pastoral, and intervention work. They are currently leaving faster than before.

What both have in common is that the answer sits at trust level. The advantage of the model is being able to act once, across several schools, rather than repeatedly in each.

The same logic applies to recruitment itself

That advantage is easy to lose in how schools buy recruitment. Where each school arranges its own agencies, a trust gets different rates for the same role. Compliance is checked to different standards. There is no shared view of who has been placed where. There is no way to move a strong candidate from a school that cannot use them to one that can. Nobody holds a picture of what the trust as a whole is likely to need next term.

Working with a single recruitment partner across all schools changes that. Terms and rates are agreed once. Vetting and compliance follow one standard. This standard is shown consistently. It is available to the central team, not in twelve separate inboxes. Candidates who are not right for one school stay in view for the others. And because the partner can see demand growing across the group, recruitment can be planned, not reactive. The same subject shortage may appear in three secondary schools. SEMH support is also always needed after the October half term.

That is the difference between a supplier and a partner. A supplier responds to the vacancy in front of them. A partner knows the trust's structure, understands how each setting differs, and has candidates ready before the request arrives.

Working with NextGen Teachers

NextGen Teachers works with schools and trusts in primary, secondary, SEN, college, and sixth form settings. We recruit supply and long-term teachers and teaching assistants. We also recruit behaviour, pastoral, SEN, and SEMH support staff.

We work with trusts as one consistent partner across every school in the group. You get one set of terms, one compliance standard, and a vetted candidate pool based on the trust’s needs. As a DfE-approved supplier on the Crown Commercial Service RM6376 framework, we can be appointed directly. We also hold APSCo Compliance+ accreditation. This is on pre-agreed terms, with no tender process needed.

If you would like to talk about how this would work across your trust, we would be glad to hear from you.