When broken down step by step, in-house recruitment can take senior leaders up to 30 hours of their own time. That includes:
And that’s before notice periods and onboarding delays add weeks of further disruption. For a busy leadership team, 30 hours can mean a whole week’s worth of strategic time lost to admin.
Even once an offer has been made to a successful applicant, schools often face extended disruption. Notice periods, safeguarding vetting, and training requirements can leave a site short-staffed for more than 10 weeks.
In that time, senior leaders frequently find themselves stepping in to cover urgent site issues - everything from opening and securing the building to unblocking toilets and repairing furniture. Tasks that take attention away from what matters most: teaching, learning, and school improvement.
For a single school, 30 hours and two months of disruption is a challenge. But in a multi-academy trust, those numbers multiply. If just a handful of schools are hiring, the cumulative effect can equate to months of lost productivity time across the trust.
That’s valuable time that could otherwise be spent delivering improvement plans, supporting staff, and focusing on pupil outcomes.
The reality is that recruitment disruption doesn’t have to be inevitable. Schools and trusts that look carefully at their current processes often uncover surprising opportunities to save time and reduce risk.
For many leaders, there are three big challenges:
By focusing on these areas, schools and trusts can cut months of operational interruption down to under two weeks. The result is less time spent firefighting site issues, and more time for leaders to focus on what really matters: driving teaching and learning forward.
We’ve put together a detailed breakdown of the hidden costs of caretaker recruitment, uncovering where leadership time is really being lost and how schools can take back control of the process.
Inside, you’ll find:
By approaching recruitment differently, schools and trusts can save weeks of leadership time, reduce risk, and avoid the disruption that comes with vacancies dragging on.