Recruitment and retention update

I’m here with a general update for all things EIB. Firstly, I am sad to report that Fran Cropper, the Recruitment and Retention Officer for the EIB has left her role to take up a promotion with her former team. Fran has achieved so much in her short time with the EIB and has given us our Teach Nottingham website, created a brilliant video promoting Nottingham as a place to live and teach and has forged some excellent partnerships both locally and nationally. We are now looking at how we can build on the work Fran has done and will announce plans for her replacement shortly.

And speaking of recruitment, I attended Transform’s excellent recruitment fair on Saturday 4 February at the Playhouse in the city centre. My role was to promote the TeachNottingham agenda and to share some vacancies from schools who are not in the Transform Teaching School Alliance (TSA). It was a brilliant morning and the turnout was excellent, a real mixture of NQT’s, experienced teachers, people considering the profession for the first time and Teaching Assistants. I shared a stall with Nottingham University who were there to promote the School Direct route and I am not exaggerating when I say they were busy all morning! The interest in this route in to teaching is obviously really high and comes from people with differing levels of classroom experience.

Our TeachNottingham bags went down very well and almost every attendee left with one, which was great because it meant they were spreading the TeachNottingham message as they went about the rest of the day. And I also can’t write this post without mentioning the donuts from the Nottingham Donut Company which were being handed out for free to all visitors. I may very well have left with a box of leftovers..

Attending a recruitment fair like this seems like an invaluable opportunity to fill roles in our schools and Transform have committed to opening up stalls at future fairs for those not in the Transform TSA. If you would like to go, please contact Sarah Heesom at Transform - sarah.heesom@transformteachingschool.co.uk – for details of future events.