Fee-paying schools plan campaign to lure teachers from state sector

INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS are planning a national campaign to lure student teachers from the state sector.

The move follows complaints that the teacher shortage has spread to fee-paying schools. Leading private schools have already been forced to offer perks to new staff, including private health care and higher pay, to attract high-calibre recruits, according to an Independent Schools Council survey published today.

The council announced plans to increase the private sector's contribution to government efforts to recruit more teachers. However, it also wants to persuade newly qualified teachers to start their careers in independent, rather than state, schools.

Dick Davison of the council said the first priority was to increase the pool of graduates coming into teaching. But the second aim was to address the "misinformation" that deterred many student teachers from applying to independent schools.

"Until the pool of teachers is extended, all schools - both independent and state - are going to find it difficult to recruit staff," he said. "But there is a good deal of misinformation about teaching opportunities in independent schools. There is still a degree of ignorance in teacher training institutions and that is something we plan to work to overcome."

Although few fee-paying schools had unfilled posts, more than half (55 per cent) of headteachers believe finding good-quality staff had become much harder over the past 12 months, the survey found.

Almost two thirds of schools reported fewer applicants for teaching posts and nearly half said the overall quality of candidates had dropped, according to the survey of almost 300 independent schools.

One in four independent schools believed that the high local cost of living was hampering efforts to recruit teachers, while one in five blamed high housing costs. Nearly 60 per cent of private schools were using perks such as private health care and reduced school fees for teachers' children to recruit extra staff.

Four in ten schools set their own salary scales above those of all competing schools, not just state schools, to attract teachers. One in four schools offered new staff financial help with their relocation expenses.

Independent schools are also persuading staff to stay. Nearly 60 per cent of schools offered a pay rise to teachers thought likely to leave.

Chris Tongue, headmaster of St John's School at Leatherhead, Surrey, said independent schools were offering a wide range of perks. "The survey confirms that, although many of them are experiencing increasing difficulty in finding good teachers, our schools are successfully avoiding the worst effects of teacher shortage," he said.

The largest teaching union condemned the council's plan as unhelpful to the state sector.

A spokeswoman for the National Union of Teachers said: "The vast majority of teachers do not want to leave the state sector. State schools are desperately short of thousands of teachers. It is not helpful for the independent sector to behave in this way."

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