Vacancy rates for compulsory education teachers remain high, especially in London. However, these rates have fallen in recent years with the recruitment of a number of overseas qualified and non-qualified staff. 6% of advertised vacancies in HE institutions remain open for 3 months or more.

Recruitment difficulties for the HE sector are for:

• academic staff – particularly in law, computing science, engineering, business studies, health and  clinical studies, mathematics
• information technology and computing staff
• administrative and professional staff – particularly senior administrators and finance professionals
• secretarial and clerical staff
• technicians

Recruitment difficulties for the FE sector are for:

• IT specialists
• lecturers in engineering, construction and accounting
• course or programme managers and leaders
• learning support staff

Management recruitment in the further education sector has been most difficult: 11% of vacancies are for senior managers. Recruitment problems are created by a lack of technical and teaching qualifications and the inability of the sector to offer attractive remuneration.

Replacement demands in the education sector as a whole far outweigh the projected expansion demands in this industry. While a net increase of around 200,000 is projected, but the total requirement is 6 times this figure. Over half of this projected increase relates to professional occupations. Other occupations requiring substantial replacements are associate professional and technical occupations, personal service occupations and elementary occupations.

Source: FEnto 2002, HE and FE Sector Report 2002 and Working Futures 2004