Teacher Talk: Filling The Pipeline - Recruiting in a Crisis

Welcome to our educational blog. Here we explore all things pertinent to education, discuss current topics and provide tips, from research and educational experts, to aid practice.

This edition comes from Sufian Sadiq at Chiltern Learning Trust. A force to be reconed with in education for finding, recruiting and keeping the very best staff. Here he shares his insight and knowledge. Follow him at @unleashingme

The Current Climate

It's fair to say we do lots of recruitment. We've got 19 schools within our trust; many are 1,200+ place secondary schools. Filling vacancies is always a challenge. Part of our success has been that we don't pay for adverts. We've not paid for a single advert in the last few years, which will probably surprise you. 

Five or six years ago, we looked at our number of schools and calculated the spending on adverts and recruitment to be hundreds of thousands of pounds across the trust. For us, adverts were part of the problem, not the solution. When you go to advertise, you're in a very competitive market, and the market has changed. The days of having a TES newspaper in the staff room and browsing through lunch are long gone. 

So we asked ourselves, what do we do well? I'm proud that we can share our practice on a regional and national scale. Whether it's our behaviour guide, our attendance guides, what we make, we share. And we showcase our teaching schools. We invite trust leaders and school leaders on a three-day programme. It has the best lunch, tea, coffee, and refreshments. And the key part is we've not charged a single person for it because of the giveback element. The moral imperative to improve the system is massive for us as a trust. This is a part of that work for us to look at ways to share things we do well. 

The part that gave us the confidence to talk to people about our recruitment strategies was not just that we recruit without advertising across our trust. But last year, we took on a sponsored academy and recruited 43 teachers in a couple of weeks, without advertising, from good and outstanding schools only. That gave us the confidence to say there's something in this formula that we can share with people. There's no quick fix or a magic bullet regarding recruitment. It is a long game. This post will explore some of the long- and short-term wins.

Recruitment

There's a significant supply and demand issue. Looking after a teaching school, I see the quality and quantity of people entering the profession. We have five skits across the region, so we do a lot of teacher development. Unfortunately, numbers are at all-time lows across ITT despite bursary announcements. Teacher recruitment is now a crisis, not just a trough in the system. There's a problem with the attractiveness of the profession as a whole. Gen Zs are saying, "Well, 30 grand for physics. Instead, I want to work from home for a job at X, Y, and Z engineering company, and I don't fancy a role in teaching." So, we need to understand that the power now sits with them. 

Trust leaders and heads, by default, are of a specific age profile to be in that position. You haven't been in the market in the last few years as a new teacher. You've been hanging around the market for a long time. Back then, you got emails saying, "Unfortunately, due to the volume of applications we've had, you've been unsuccessful on this occasion."

Trainees today in my teaching school over the last couple of weeks were asking for advice on how to manage nine interviews in a week. They applied for nine jobs. They got nine interviews. That shift in the pendulum of power now sits with the trainees and those new to the profession. This is unique; they're inundated with choices. 

By doing what we've always done, guess what? In the current market with the economics of supply and demand that we're seeing, if you continue doing what you've always done, you won't get what you always got because the market has shifted so much. The choice now sits with the applicant, and the applicant will decide where they want to go. Some of the attractions are about special offers, but some are about your shop front.

People don't come to you because you're outstanding. What people look at is your shop window. It's the John Lewis effect - the John Lewis Christmas advert. Your visual merchandise makes you want to go into that shop even though you didn't intend to. It's projecting an image of your organisation and your school because that's when they decide whether they want to enter.

Special offers go a long way. Every trust claims that they're poor and the trust down the road is richer. And they say they don't get the people in because the trust down the road pays more. It's an excuse. We don't pay a lot. A point of reflection for us is that we always have to ask, "Is our offer good enough?"

The offer goes back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. People aren't asking for a considerable amount of money. There's the odd variation, where someone goes to break the scale instead of signing them on M1 or M2. We usually say, "Don't do that." Unless they've got prior experience, don't break the pay scales because you'll pay for it later. But we often say things like the perks of buying into this discount and health schemes. Are they absolute game changers? No. 

The biggest game changer is values. What do you stand for? What do people say about you in your locality? What do you give back to others? Because everyone wants to reach that point of self-actualisation right at the top.

Everyone wants to be happy. And that happiness is essential. But there's only so much you can get from a web page. We put out lots of happy content. We're talking about how much fun it is in our job, how much we enjoy our schools, how much we value being around children, and what we love about children's success. We talk about all of those things.

The last element in recruitment that schools don't do very well is you can't sell what you don't know. And sometimes there's a difference between salespeople. Is the sales process of talking about it and giving the customer a great experience brilliant? But a skill required now, when supply is so low and demand is so high, is the ability to close a deal after somebody is interviewed. And we don't train people to do that.

Here's a typical scenario. You're a great person in the classroom; you get a job as the head of history because you're a great history teacher with a history degree. You did well as the head of history because you organised schemes of work well, you're a geek, and you got an assistant head role to help with other geeky subjects. You're now responsible for geography, sociology, history, and RE; you've got this massive power base. And now, we put you in an interview. And we say interview someone. And at the end of the interview, we say, "Choose who you want and then call them."

Who's made that person an expert to close a deal? 

Closing a deal is a skill. And you'll need to find out who in your school can close that deal when you're getting interviews. If you're in a trust, find the one person in the trust who can close the deal. 

What tips for closing the deal?

Understanding and getting to know the person is critical. Understand what the leverage is - everyone has something different that motivates them. You've got to scratch beneath the surface. It's knowing what's really important to that person and what they're looking for. That's what gets them over the line because they've decided they want you. 

But they've also had a couple of other interviews. And what you haven't said is, "Let me find out a bit more about you. What are you thinking? What are your other options? But what about this opportunity? Let's go back to what's important to you. For example, finding out that being close is important because you've got a young family. Let's try and understand that. How can the school support you with that?  

The Three terms

There's long-term, medium-term, and short-term. And you've got to do long and medium-term work simultaneously. You've got to be careful of the short term.

The short term throws money at the problem; the long term is what you need to start thinking about. The problem isn't going away anytime soon. The Dubai attraction is not going away. People are training. We traditionally had people training in Ireland straight for jobs in the UK. People are now training in Ireland and heading straight for Dubai. You also look at 3-day and 4-day weeks. You're not going to compete. The central location? You're not going to compete. It's understanding that the best way to win this game is to have a long-term view. We're going to have to invest in growing our own. How many TAs do you know in your trust or your school? How much investigation have you done about their degrees and their background? There is so much trapped talent in our TAs and in our parents. You might have someone who's got a biochemical degree in X University who has chosen to be a stay-at-home dad or a stay-at-home mum because they want to support their family, but you can get them between 9:30 to 2:30. And having a great teacher between 9:30 to 2:30 is better than having a supply teacher or no teacher at all. 

We're still stuck in the mould, so if you want to work for us, you've got to apply to us. We're not stepping out and investigating who's around us, who's in our community, who are our people. Your TAs, if they've got a degree, are already committed to your school. There's sometimes a reason if they've got a degree and chosen to be a TA. Usually, it's about family commitment, family planning and working around that. Let's start investing in them. What about the ones who have tremendous potential, loyalty, and dedication? Can you get them through degree apprenticeship routes and into teaching? What about thinking about that person who has seven years of experience as a TA and loves the school - their passion for the school is something you can't buy. How do I invest in them? So think about those that you can invest in in the long term. 

Think about your relationship with ITT providers. ITT providers are desperate to work with schools. As a school, you want to work with every ITT provider. Relationships with ITT providers are essential to get people invested in you. A tip is to use the money you're ploughing into adverts to put on a session for your ITT provisions every year where you say, "Right, do your session in our school. We're going to provide breakfast. We're going to provide lunch as well." We don't even need to say hello. The fact that people walk through the gate at your school is the best possible advert you can have. Believe it or not, 21-22-year-olds are now talking about the quality of breakfast and lunch in schools more than they are about the culture in the school. So, building and investing in those relationships means that the £2000 spent on catering for 35-40 people has not gone to waste. That would pay better dividends than your advert in any broadsheet.

The medium term is marketing. But marketing is a dirty word in education. Well, it is where we are. We are operating like businesses. A lot of us are in the roles we're in because our organisations are operating like big businesses. And marketing in the world that we live in is the way we communicate. 

Teachers are usually the most vocal about marketing. Some will say, "Oh, I feel really uncomfortable about the whole marketing thing." "Yeah, but at lunchtime, you were talking about how I had to stop at Waitrose on my way home." You don't say that about Lidl, though. The Marks & Spencer and Waitrose shoppers love talking about how they have to stop over at these stores. Why is that? It's not just a yoghurt; it's an M&S yoghurt. And that whole concept exists in every aspect of our life. We're products of marketing, whether we like it or not. We then can't say that in the public sector, we're not going to market. Well, that's how people make decisions. We all make decisions based on marketing. 

So how do you say you're the best school, organisation, and trust? How do you win that confidence? How do you tell that story? Marketing is about telling a story. It's about great messages. It's about having a brand. It's about glueing things together with that brand. So when people talk about our brand, there's no surprise,

I want them to say they always do fun things. They have chat events. They're always giving back. They're such friendly people. We want that. That's not an accident. We want those associations of feelings, values, ethics, and morals with our brand because that's creating a story about trust. And doing that on multiple platforms is essential.

The Opening Of An Envelope

Community, community, community. It all starts there. You can be a central hub, a physical building in the community. You open your doors at 7 a.m; you shut your doors at 7 p.m. You don't go out because you say, "We've got lots on at the moment". We've got so many competing priorities. I would love to do more in the community. That's the problem. We frame going into the community as a charitable giveback from schools rather than an absolute necessity. Improving educational outcomes by getting the parents onside and raising aspirations for kids in the community - but it is also advertising because the best advert is you out in the community, your schools out in the community. So we make sure we turn up to the opening of an envelope. That's our mantra. You can have any event in Luton. You invite us!

There was a tree planting in a church a couple of days ago. The bishop, the vicar, some fantastic 80-90-year-old folk, and myself were there. I saw the event advertised and messaged the vicar and the bishop to say, "I want to come. I want to turn up." And if I'm not invited to an event, I like to ask, "I noticed you have this award ceremony. Can I come along? I would like to be there."  I will turn up because everyone else will be there, so we've got to be there. We tell our schools that if you're on a leadership pay scale, you've got to do one event per half term in an evening. We're in a recruitment crisis - asking to attend something in the community is not unreasonable.

I turn up to a lot of stuff with my own children. If there's a firework event in a school down the road in the community centre, I'll take the kids with me. I take the kids with me for tree planting. I'll take the kids with me for litter picking. It's an excellent experience for them. We pass on the same values. If I'm modelling it, then our schools and their leaders start modelling it, and they start doing it. And guess what? When you turn up to the opening of the envelope, you talk to the person next to you. They say, "Oh, it's been such a pleasure meeting you," and you're thinking, "Right, this could have been a bad event because everyone is over 80 years old," and then they say, "My daughter's a deputy head in a school." "Oh, great. Well, you could tell your daughter you met me." We don't need an immediate result - we do it because we care. We do it because we love doing it. But the dividends pay off. 

Somebody asked me, "Why are we doing this free course?" And I said, "We're doing it, and it's costing us, but we do good things. And that's the real motto: do the good stuff, and people will talk about you. And somebody will say, "You know, I've heard that you guys are nice. And I want to work for an organisation like yours."

If we're recruiting in our Luton schools, it's no point taking some of our head teachers. It's about bringing young leaders that have progressed through the ranks quickly because that's a walking, talking role model right there of somebody else thinking, "Wow, I want to be like them. I want to be an assistant head before I'm 30. He's young, he's capable, he's talented. I'm young, capable, and talented. And if he can do it, guess what? I can, too." And that seeing is believing part is essential.

Different events have different audiences. So you've got to think about who you're sending. You've got to get the right people in the right places. That is us curating and saying, "That's great, but all of those are graduates. We'll send some of our younger teachers doing great things because they'll click with the graduates."

It's about showcasing and giving platforms to our different voices: our black teachers and female leaders. It's about ensuring that the groups that don't often want to work in particular organisations or can't see themselves succeeding can see that this trust is a value-driven organisation. And it's not just about the head teacher, the traditional model of 'look at me on my website page, my welcome to you', all high and mighty. The market's changed. Gen Z doesn't care about your position and how many years you've done. They're deciding in very different ways. Video content is one of them.

On Twitter, we're targeting teachers. We want educators to see our credibility in that landscape. On Facebook, we know it's parents. For our primary schools, we know that the parent population is now changing into an Instagram generation because Facebook has an older profile. But it won't be long before primary school parents are the TikTok generation - and they are also our Gen Z teachers of 21 and 22. Our 22-year-old teachers are consuming Instagram Reels, Snapchat and TikTok video content.

To not understand it, for us not to be putting out content, we've got to accept we're only advertising to a group that is 50 plus. And that's okay, but it is limiting. If you're advertising on the mainstream advert platform, you've got to remember that 22-year-olds don't know the broadsheet names from 15 years ago. They don't know they exist.

Make Noise/Lots of Voices - Marketing

Make noise, lots of noise, across lots of platforms. If you're going to advertise, be smart. That part is critical. So when we advertise, we do it in windows across the trust. The big window is January. We let all the schools collate their jobs and put them out simultaneously.

The process is a countdown. I think about this window like a football transfer deadline. We're counting down from when the transfer window opens, so we have a deadline. We have a deadline for when the jobs are submitted from all of our schools pre-Christmas. We then have the adverts made. We tell the schools, "Get people to put out unique content." We don't dictate the content. It needs to be natural, organic, and unique content from individuals as to why they should work for us. We encourage leaders to do it but say, "Please encourage those with big followings."

You will have people with insane followings. A makeup artist who works within our school has 45,000 followers on Instagram. How are we not talking to her? She's the most powerful person in the organisation in the world of marketing. And different people have different networks and different circles. Marketing is all about circles. If multiple people do it, you have overlap, like a Venn diagram, and you reach new areas of the market. We call them brand ambassadors. We want people to talk about why working for us is brilliant. 

We encourage our head teachers to ask teams and leaders to get online. Some say, "I'm not a social media person, I like to keep it private." We're not asking for that - we want the business end. So, as a leader, can you join LinkedIn? Please do. We don't dictate how you do it, but what we say is we need different voices. We need faces. We need people to see the message being reinforced by others. 

The trickle effect is when others see leaders doing it, people lower down in each school start saying, "Well, I'm going to support that. I'm going to do it as well." And that learned behaviour and role modelling is seeing that what was once a handful of us on Twitter is now multiplied, amplifying that noise. And then what I'm looking at is views. 

A paid advert would not get me 35,000 views, but I'm getting them organically. I'm getting it through people, which carries far more weight than a cold organisational brand. A brand doesn't have the human elements of emotion. So, how do I bring that advert to life through people? I need people to become ambassadors and educate them, talking about it at our head teacher and senior leader meetings, and we need to encourage it. But also, we incentivise it. We'll reward you with £200 if you refer someone and they are selected for a final interview or successfully hired. We're big believers in network recruitment.

People will only refer to good people. It's far cheaper than paying a recruitment company. We're incentivising our own people to shout about how great it is. So our people feel motivated. They do the hard legwork of inviting, attracting, and persuading the talent and almost closing the deal. And then people apply. The hard work has been done. And you've got a win-win of retention and recruitment.

If you're going to do social media, then do it intelligently and intellectually. And for me, a lot of my work now is about looking at search engine optimisation, particularly geofencing. So I'm thinking, "If I know the Institute of Education is in Russell Square, I know they have this lecture for all of their teachers on this day, I know lunch is around this time, I'll advertise for that window on that geo pinpoint location for that small window." It's cheaper than doing it over two or three days over a vast area. You refine because you know where your market exists, especially if they're new teachers who are training. You know where they are. You can pinpoint specific locations.

And if we know that a lot of our teachers come from the immediate vicinity, we know that parents sit in the car from 3 o'clock, the kids break at 3:20, and they're browsing their phones. I put an advert out between 3 and 3:20, a 20-minute slot and concentrated on the specific postcode around the school because I know that's where they are. Guess what? They will see it on their Facebook. That's where the techie experts in my team come in around the use of social media and ad words.

I also know ITTs will be searching Klarna, ASOS, and Shein because the profiles of people I am targeting are 21-22 and graduating. And I know they're doing everything that every other youngster in my family is doing: buying dresses they can't afford from these retailers and putting them on Klarna. If you're searching "Klarna" in our area, in this geography, throwing the ad word that comes in for us on the side, we're appearing on the adverts.

Some of this has been outside my expertise, but if every other business and organisation in the country looks at user behaviour that way, why are we so scared to talk about behaviours as education establishments? We would have clicked 'accept cookies' in the last week about 100 times on various websites we've visited. Cookies track our habits for marketers. Nothing else. But we do it all the time. When we discuss this, we're scared and say, "Ad words and looking at user behaviour, user habits, catching people at the school gate is all a bit wrong." It's interesting.

Knowing your market is key. If I look at the postcode analysis, most of my teachers come from this area. Everyone comes off the A6 - from the surrounding leafy villages. If everyone's coming from those leafy villages, target the leafy villages. I know where they are. 

Meet/Coffee/Speed and Agility

We use My New Term as a forum. I'm constantly telling anyone we meet to put in a talent pool application the moment they come across us. Meeting people is critical. We don't discriminate. You might be a head or a site agent and want to work for us. We meet anyone because everyone has a network. Everyone knows someone amazing. 

When you have a coffee with someone, when you meet them in person, even if they don't come up for this job, even if they're not for the next job, I still say, stick with us. It might work out. Think about all the people who've applied to you, where you spent time interviewing them and the ones who came second and third; how many have you called for a coffee to see what they're doing now? They walked into the showroom. They were interested. They just weren't right at that time.

Different situations, different contexts, different scenarios. People reveal themselves in a variety of ways. It might not have worked in that school, in that context, at that point in time. That list is a treasure trove. And that's the one I'm focusing on. They've already shown an interest. And when you meet people, you might think, "Your application was horrendous, but you are amazing."

If they contact you and want to work for you in the current market, meet them as soon as possible. Time is of the essence. The speed and agility to respond have been game-changers for us.

Values – Inclusivity 

People value values. Talk about your values often. Talk about what matters to you. Talk about what you stand for. I want to make a change and stand for something in life. And it's important because people love that. 

The most important thing you want from an employer is someone who stands for values and cares about children and humans. And that human part is essential. Some of the teachers coming into your schools as ECTs now or at ECT 2 didn't even go to university - they were in the bedroom at home with their parents during lockdown. When people grow up, they meet people, learn how to interact and develop empathy. They've not done it. They're missing elements of human leadership: the ability to empathise, the ability to care, the ability to show compassion. 

If I meet you, I'm going to write down your name. And if you tell me something about yourself, I will ask you about that thing the next time I see you because that's how you create rapport with people. You build a bridge between you and another person.

Human leadership and caring about humans; people love people who love people. And everyone wants to be loved. Everyone wants to be happy. We put out a survey around moral leaders. "What's the one word between our families, parents, children, governors, trustees, and leaders that came out around what they want?" The word "happy." 

Happy. Everyone wants to be happy, but actually, that's so deep. How do you make someone believe that you want to be happy and that you want them to be happy, too? Values are important.

Staff Development 

Staff development is vital, but be creative around staff development. How is it that I've told you I'm going to invest in you, and I've upset you that you've got CPD at the end of the work day? Because the CPD is poor. That's not investing. It's a waste of people's time. Don't waste their time. Give people time. People love time. Give them time back.

I'm not pulling back 100 people to talk about something you planned for 45 minutes to deliver to them for 1 hour. No, they're going home. Value their time. And if you're going to develop them, invest in that. And that doesn't have to be in money. It has to be in time and thought. 

We host a leadership supper. Seven or eight people book on. There's a menu. Here's what we discussed for a starter around what we can improve in the trust. Here's the main. How do we do that? What are the ideas? Share. Talking around a table. Historically, everyone loves to sit at a table, eat with somebody else, and talk. 22 & 23 year olds have never done that. You might not have previously sat with people who are not your family in a professional environment. Do those things.

Our 'chai and chat'. We talk about a few triggers to start the conversations, and the conversations are developmental and enriching. We spend £20-30 on coffee and croissants for a few people, and they're getting excited about research. They need a place for that. Be creative around your CPD. Create a social CPD. We sometimes do CPD at a petting farm.  

Career Progression 

Be creative around development, and think about people's progression. Career is important. We rarely talk to people about their careers or how their progression can be mapped out. You can even plan career pathways from the outset when they're thinking about working for you. Say, "You know what, let me map out what a journey in this trust could look like. Although you're starting in this school, you could move here, or you could start as a head of history, but I don't have an assistant head at the moment, and I know you want an assistant head, and I'm going to let you in on a secret. I think two of my people will move on to deputy headship in the next year. If you come in now, you'll develop and get familiar with the culture." But talk about that journey before they join.

Data and Digital

Capture data. Know the data. Know where they live. Know who's interacting with you. Know the profile. In the bluntest terms, "Who's this product for?" No product is for everyone. Not even water, because some people can't afford water in bottles, so it's not for everyone.

Every product has a market. It has a demographic. And you say, "Who's the most typical person applying to us, wanting to work for us? Let's work with that market." That's not to say that people do buy products that might not be their typical profile. I might not be the usual target for that product, but I can still go and buy it. That's okay. But your language, tone, intonation, and how you approach different people must be distinct.

The Insurance

I always talk about the fact that happiness is important to us. I don't wait for people to raise it. Happiness matters to all of us. It needs to be at the front of what we talk about. I always speak about fulfilment in the work that I do.

The follow-ups are essential. We tend not to give people get-out clauses. Everyone needs reassurance. It's like when you buy a mattress. Buy a Simba mattress, try it for a month and give it back. Have you ever tried putting the Simba mattress back in the suction of that box again? It's never going to happen. Try giving that to Royal Mail. It will never happen, but what do we need when we close the deal? We need assurance that I can return it if it's not right.

In closing deals, you can say, "It's okay. If you don't like it, come and talk. So why don't you do this? I'll book a meeting now." So in a few weeks, we're going to have a coffee. I call it ‘the insurance coffee’. And just the comfort of knowing this coffee is booked in the diary every month for the first six months is enough.

Everyone needs that insurance policy. And what schools decide to do is, "Well, I'm sorry if you don't like it, then that's a decision you need to make." I can't do that on a mattress. How am I going to make a decision about my whole life? So if I need it in every other walk of my life, there's no problem in allaying their fears.

Closing the deals isn't as challenging as people imagine. A car salesman would say, "Look, there's a warranty with the BMW. You can come back. Don't worry. You're going to be on our service plan. You're going to come back and see us. If you have any problems, call me." Because after-sales is what we're worried about. 

The Pipeline

I sometimes meet people and say, "You know what? I'm interested in you joining our talent pool." And when you say that, it feels like you've been scouted for a big club. It's like, "What? Me? Talent pool?" I hover a lot on people's profiles on LinkedIn. I never press 'connect' but search for "English teacher Luton." And I'll let you contact me. If they contact me and we've got no job, I say, "Join our talent pool", because all I want from the talent pool is to have the agility to turn that into a real job in minutes.

So there's an element of having coffee with the talent pool, but there's a second element: completing your application. If my job goes live at 2 o'clock on Tuesday, I phone you and say, "We've got this amazing job, and I know you were interested, we're interested in you applying." By 2:30, you've applied.

November is the wrong time to complete applications. I get them in July when they're doing sports days, when life is feeling good, and the summer holidays are coming. Get the applications done so that in November, I can say, "Just click on it for now, apply, and don't worry about the interview; we'll meet in the next day or two for a coffee." It's like having a mortgage in principle. If you've got the mortgage in principle, you can throw offers around for houses. The talent pool is our mortgage, in principle. It might expire in 6 months, but it's there.

We've revised how you land on the My New Term talent pool page, where the click button is, to make the process as simple as possible.  It's like the mortgage with the advisor rather than trying to do it yourself online. The advisor makes life easier for you. 

You have to ensure that bureaucracy doesn't kill the process. We don't break the law but are agile - our HR team is super. They work around our principles: manage talent, be responsive, and work at speed.

What about maths or science? 

You train your own, but one of the things is to look where you've got surplus. You may have got PE teachers applying to you from all over the world. We suggest a way to join - to make you train in two areas. And I know you don't want to, but I'm going to tell you why this is amazing for your career. I will tell you how helping you become a maths teacher will make you much richer because you won't ever be short of a job. And I will get good people I can't otherwise place into considering joining us. " I've looked at your GCSEs, and I know you chose to do PE, but you got an A in maths". That's clay I can work with. I can develop that.

People tend to discount applications from staff from different countries based on names. My New Term puts the name right at the end because there are some fantastic mathematics teachers. They're based in the UK. And they're looking for jobs. You've got to help your schools be careful not to fall into biases and assumptions.

Looking at TAs that can develop into mathematicians is essential. If you're a PE teacher and a mathematics expert for key stage 3, that is a creative solution. They might not be able to teach quadratic equations and simultaneous equations, but you will have offered them a career.

Are lots of people with maths degrees suddenly going to train to teach? No, they're not. So, how do we train teachers to be mathematicians? We start investing in the TAs, the parents, and others in the system. And we start looking through candidates we've turned down in the past and say, "Wait a minute, mathematics is universal." So, if you're looking at some of the mastery from China or the maths teaching in India, many schools would turn down many potential applicants because people will discriminate based on accents or names. But if you stand back and think, "I could support you with behaviour if that's an issue", that is an opportunity worth exploring.

Maths is maths. And if they're brilliant mathematicians, they're brilliant mathematicians. Work with them and develop the elements in which you know they're weak. We brought in some teachers in the locality that we knew were originally teachers from abroad, and we did two three-day intensives for them around the pedagogical and signage pedagogy. And we took them off the timetable and said, "Right, if we develop that, that compensates for the small problems we thought we were going to have."