Moray Council’s advertising spend on teacher vacancies has plummeted – despite the ongoing recruitment crisis.
Depsite having to advertise for nearly 300 classroom vacancies last year, the Press and Journal can today reveal that the cash-strapped authority spent just £19,689 on advertising the jobs in 2016/17.
By comparison, £111,026 was spent in 2015/16.
Last night, the authority – which is trying to plug a £23million shortfall before March 2019 – said the savings were the result of a growing shift to online advertising and a more targeted approach – including using military publications to try and attract ex-forces and current personnel’s spouses.
And it insisted the change in approach has not had any impact on the number of applications for posts.
Recruiting teachers for Moray has been a long-running problem, with potential candidates reportedly put off due a lack of affordable housing.
Four years ago, the authority advertised 167 vacancies in the calendar year – with that number well exceeded even by the end of October last year, with 293 posts advertised.
However, some of those jobs were for maternity cover, with the council currently having eight more teachers on the books than this time last year.
And last month, desperate council bosses revealed they planning to send a recruitment agency to Australia to bring some of the surplus teachers there back to Moray.
Councillors also agreed to investigate new ways to entice staff, such as paying employees to retrain as teachers and handing out “golden hellos” on top of relocation packages.
Last night Tim Eagle, chairman of children and young people’s committee, said the imaginative ways of bringing new staff to the region were part of the reason for the decline in advertising spend.
He said: “My understanding is that last year the education department did a lot of huge advertisements in major teaching publications, which cost thousands of pounds each. They also did a big DVD, all of this was designed to get our message out there and look for more teachers.
“Despite needing a lot of teachers, the department knew we were also very short on money and so that was pulled back a bit in the last year to focus on getting the message out but not spending the big bucks on advertisements.
“As was mentioned at the last committee there is a slightly different tack now, as we look to find out what supply teachers we have within Moray already and what teachers we have that are not working and talk to them about why they may not want to work and see if we can provide better routes.”
The authority has confirmed that the funding for 2016/17 was used to pay for adverts in school leaver, postgraduate and Student Rag magazines in Glasgow and Edinburgh as well as armed forces magazines.
A council spokesman said: “The council spent significantly on various campaigns and adverts, including inserts in high-profile specialist publications aimed at the teaching profession.
“Reviewing feedback from candidates, most people applying for teaching posts were doing so through the myjobscotland website, as this was the recognised route for people keen on teaching in Scotland.
“Reducing our spend on hard copy adverts has had no impact on the number of applicants for vacancies, and it’s appropriate we continually evaluate the effect of advertising to ensure value for money.
“Our work to attract teachers is ongoing, and we will continue to work with the traditional media to highlight the issues we are facing and to attract people to come to Moray to work.”