Schools tackle the teacher shortage with RPO

A modern solution shrinks the teacher shortage

More and more primary schools, secondary schools and other educational institutions are facing a teacher shortage. Teachers are retiring and few new teachers are coming in to replace them. And because people with a Pabo (primary teacher training) or teacher training degree are scarce, schools have a huge challenge ahead of them again this year. Still, there are new ways to make recruiting in education just that little bit easier.

Lots of subsidies, little result

The teacher shortage has long been known to the government, which in 2023 made a subsidy scheme available for education regions experiencing it. A subsidy scheme is also offered for career changers (people who move into teaching from another sector). Yet both teachers and career changers are hard to find despite the hefty investments, RTL Nieuws reports. That's because schools often search in the same way and in the same places. MeesterBaan, a widely used job board specifically for jobs in education, is full of vacancies, for example. According to the NOS, the number of vacancies on this platform rose from 30,000 to 35,000 in 2023.

RPO shakes up the labour market

The vacancies have to be filled before July for the next school year, and again this year that's a challenge for many schools. Yet for a number of years now there has been a modern solution that can also help school groups find new colleagues: Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO). With RPO, companies looking for staff can outsource their recruitment. It combines interim recruitment with online campaigns that are shown to the ideal target group.

The vacancies are actively shared on relevant social media channels and job boards such as Indeed, and certainly MeesterBaan too. This way agencies find teachers in a modern way, and the labour market in this industry gets a good shake-up as well. The result: lots of new teachers in front of the class quickly, at a low cost per new employee, and much greater name recognition in the region. Because all of this is done in the name of the organisation. Pro Contact has already used RPO for several schools, and has achieved great results with it.

More colleagues for the same money

So the end of the growing teacher shortage is in sight, if schools change the way they search. That way they can find both teachers and career changers with RPO, taking the pressure off within a relatively short time; a method many municipalities, for example, already use. So it can make a difference for education too, because in this industry there simply isn't enough money available for freelancers either. With RPO, people who want to work as employees are easier to find.

Sources

RTL Nieuws

NOS