Teach First has made half of its eight-strong executive team redundant, months after it recruited its lowest number of trainees in four years. The government’s flagship provider for attracting high-flying graduates said the executive team would only fall by three, as it is creating a new executive role. It is currently recruiting a A spokesperson said it was 鈥渕aking this change to bring key teams closer together, further helping them to do their best work for young people from low-income backgrounds”. 鈥淔or example, in the new structure the same executive director will lead the team developing our programmes and the team delivering programmes, supporting more seamless collaboration between them. 鈥淥ur school partnership teams will work more closely with our fundraising teams to get resources into communities.鈥� The move was part of Teach First鈥檚 2023-30 strategy and was 鈥渢he right thing to do at this time鈥�. 鈥淎s greatly valued colleagues are impacted by this change, it would not be appropriate to go into further detail.鈥� However, several new junior roles are being advertised, including a director of service operations and director of recruitment. In April, the provider鈥檚 government contract was extended for another two years, despite recruitment woes. Teach First admitted 鈥渟ignificant鈥� challenges last year when taking on 1,394 recruits, missing its target by a fifth. But the charity said it was 鈥減roud鈥� of last year鈥檚 numbers, 鈥済iven the significant recruitment challenges the whole sector is facing鈥�. It also outperformed the overall teacher recruitment numbers, which fell 40 per cent below the government鈥檚 own target. However, it lost 拢2 million in bonuses. The charity has agreed to 鈥渕ake adjustments鈥� to its approach, including rerunning its autumn institute that allows recruits to apply outside the recruitment window and last year used by 122 graduates. Other new measures include a 鈥渢argeted鈥� campus recruitment campaign and a 鈥渢aster course鈥� that will allow STEM undergraduates to access 鈥渁 bank of online, internship-style content鈥�.
Dan 16 June 2023 The current system is in crisis, with massive shortfalls in recruitment. Pay and conditions are worse than the other options especially for stem graduates. The solution isn’t paying people six figure salaries to bumble around pretending to work.