School jobs in England: autumn 2026

Open adverts by role group

Role groups come from each advert’s job title and Teaching Vacancies category. Base: 1,775 adverts.

Safeguarding and DSL roles

34 adverts had “safeguarding”, “DSL” or “DDSL” in the job title. That is 1.9% of all adverts. Many DSLs are headteachers or senior leaders whose adverts don’t name the role in the title, so this undercounts jobs that include DSL duties.

Across full-time-only safeguarding adverts with an annual figure (n=27), the median advertised range was £37,300 to £40,400. Some of these adverts also fall in other groups: pastoral and welfare (18), attendance (2), SEND and inclusion (1), teachers (2).

How often adverts mention safeguarding

Two measures from each advert’s description. “Mentions safeguarding” counts any use of the word, including the standard statement that a school is committed to safeguarding and promoting children’s welfare, so it shows how often safeguarding is mentioned, not how many jobs carry safeguarding duties. “Names the DSL role” counts adverts that mention a designated safeguarding lead or deputy, for example “DSL”, “DDSL” or “designated safeguarding lead”.

Bars run from 0 to 100%. The safeguarding and DSL group is defined by its job titles, so it would be expected to score high on both measures.

Early career teachers and visa sponsorship

Methodology

Sources

Job adverts: Teaching Vacancies, the Department for Education’s free job service for schools in England, read from its public API and each advert’s page on 20 October 2026. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Schools: Get Information about Schools (GIAS), the DfE’s register of schools, file of 20 October 2026, for school type and the number of schools in each region. Ofsted’s management information on state-funded school inspections is held alongside, but no figure in this report uses it. Both are under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Snapshot

Adverts open on Teaching Vacancies when the data was read on 20 October 2026. 1,591 of the 1,775 (90%) were posted in the 30 days before; the oldest was first listed on 21 February 2024. This is one day’s snapshot, not a count across the term.

What’s counted

Only adverts in the seven role groups we track: safeguarding and DSL, pastoral and welfare, attendance, behaviour, SEND and inclusion, teachers, and headteachers and senior leaders. Other school jobs on Teaching Vacancies, such as teaching assistants, admin, catering and site staff, are not included unless their title puts them in one of these groups. Role groups are assigned from the job title and the advert’s Teaching Vacancies category, using fixed patterns; an advert can be in more than one group.

Region is the region on the advert. Contract type, hours, phase, “suitable for early career teachers” and visa sponsorship are as the school entered them on Teaching Vacancies.

Per 100 schools: adverts in a region divided by the number of open state-funded schools there in GIAS (academies, free schools, local authority maintained schools including nurseries and pupil referral units, and community and foundation special schools), times 100. Independent schools, non-maintained special schools and FE colleges are not in the denominator, though a few adverts come from sixth form colleges.

Pay

From each advert’s pay rows marked as yearly, preferring the full-time-equivalent row, then the pay scale row, then actual salary. In that row, the first figure in pounds between £10,000 and £200,000 is the lower figure. If it is followed by a range (“to”, or a dash) and a second figure, that is the upper figure; otherwise the two are the same. Smaller amounts, such as TLRs and SEN allowances, are skipped.

Medians use only adverts for full-time posts (not part time, and not “full or part time”), so that pro-rata salaries for part-time posts don’t pull them down. Hourly rates are left out. Some full-time support roles are term-time only and quote the actual salary, which is less than the full-year figure. Medians are not shown for groups with fewer than 10 usable adverts.

Safeguarding mentions

The advert’s description, with formatting removed, is searched without regard to case. “Mentions safeguarding”: the text contains “safeguard” (safeguard, safeguarding, safeguarded). “Names the DSL role”: the text contains “DSL” or “DDSL” as a word, “designated safeguarding lead”, “designated safeguarding officer”, “designated safeguarding person” or “safeguarding lead”.

Limitations

• Adverts are not vacancies. One advert can be for several posts, and some posts are advertised more than once.
• Teaching Vacancies is one of several places schools advertise. Many jobs are advertised only on school, trust, council or commercial sites, so these figures are not a count of all school jobs in England. The same job can also appear on several sites. This report counts only Teaching Vacancies adverts, each once by its web address, but a school can post the same job twice.
• Teaching Vacancies records the job role the school chooses. Some adverts listed as “Teacher or lecturer” are for other posts, such as cover supervisors, early years practitioners or minibus drivers. We count them as listed. By their job titles, about 100 of the 1,247 teaching adverts are for posts other than teacher.
• 5 adverts are open-ended, such as speculative applications or pools of early career teachers, rather than for a particular post.
• A single day’s snapshot reflects the time of year. Autumn term figures are not comparable with spring or summer without adjusting for that.
• Role groups, pay figures and safeguarding mentions come from free text with fixed patterns, so some adverts will be misclassified or have pay we could not read.
• Small groups (fewer than about 30 adverts) can change a lot from one day to the next.

Trends

From 20 October 2026 we keep a daily summary of the same figures, so later reports can show change over time.