Wanted: an education in quality assurance

Jo Faragher

In a week where Michael Gove, the education secretary, is said to be planning to scrap the traditional ABC grading system, you’d be forgiven for thinking schools have enough on their plate.

When it comes to bringing in supply staff, or maternity cover, it helps school management teams to rely on agencies they can trust, who are compliant and carry out all of the appropriate safeguarding checks.

They now face a situation, though, where that assurance could come from a number of avenues. Earlier this month the REC launched REC Audited Education, which replaces its earlier ‘gold stamp’, the Quality Mark.

This has angered fellow recruitment industry body APSCo, which itself is looking into offering its own quality assurance scheme for education recruiters, and had approached key figures at the REC earlier this year about joining together to form a common, industry-wide standard. 

For schools, there is no legal obligation to use an agency that carries one of these quality marks. But it could be argued that there is a moral one – it needs to show its parents and governors that its suppliers are ethical and thorough. If we ultimately see more than one assurance scheme, agencies will vote with their feet and sign up to one or the other. Schools, on the other hand, could suffer from a lack of consistency.

Elsewhere, there was more news on the jobs market this week, with recruitment technology specialists Broadbean serving up some recruitment industry intelligence from the vats of data it holds on clients and candidates. Encouragingly, both permanent and temporary vacancies increased on a month-on-month basis, according to its analysis. 

However, the picture was not all rosy, with the Office for National Statistics warning that the period of falling unemployment appears to have come to an end. Unemployment in the UK rose to 2.52m in the three months to the end of March, up 15,000. The total number of people in employment fell by 43,000 to 29.7 million, added the ONS, yet good news for recruiters is that the number of vacancies is at its highest level since 2008. 

Commenting on the statistics, Gerwyn Davies, labour market adviser at the CIPD, said the labour market remained a ‘battleground’ for jobseekers. “With five unemployed people for every vacancy registered with Jobcentre Plus, there are twice as many unemployed people chasing vacancies as before the recession.”

Encouragingly though, some areas of recruitment are showing glimmers of opportunity. The public sector – beleaguered by government cuts over the past few years – has become a popular destination for accountancy and finance contractors, according to umbrella company services provider giant group. It found that more than half (51%) of all finance contractors move into the public sector, while investment banks, perhaps surprisingly, are more cautious about contractor recruitment.

Matthew Brown, managing director of giant, had this to say: “[This survey] paints a positive image of a growing contractor opportunity, one which we expect to continue as new public sector developments bring about greater opportunities over the next few months.”

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