JCL Skills Solutions
411 followers
October 1, 2025
When leaders ask, “What happens if we don’t act?” The answer is all around us. Doing nothing in the face of growing pressures is no longer an option, it comes with heavy costs.
Teacher vacancies in England are now six times higher than pre-pandemic, forcing schools to rely more on unqualified or non-specialist staff. Nearly 6 in every 1,000 teaching posts went unfilled last year, double what was typical before 2020.
Meanwhile, in the past three years, around 115,000 teachers chose to leave the profession for reasons other than retirement, about 37,413 left in 2023/24 alone. South West Londoner, According to the Gatsby / Teacher Tapp report, just 60 percent of teachers now expect to remain in the profession in three years’ time, down from 75 percent before the pandemic.
These trends strain school budgets, complicate timetabling, and erode morale. But the challenge is multiplied when overlaid with rising demand for SEND support.
In January 2024, 1.6 million pupils in England had Special Educational Needs (SEN), with 434,000 holding an EHC plan up 11.6 percent year-on-year. SEN support (without EHC) also grew to 13.6 percent of pupils. The total proportion of pupils with some kind of SEND reached 18.4 percent, up from 17.3 percent the prior year.
Financially, the scale is massive: the number of children with EHC plans has increased by over 71 percent since 2018, from about 253,679 to 434,354 in 2024.
When budgets tighten and expectations rise, staying static means allowing gaps to grow, especially in schools already stretched in terms of staff, training capacity, and funding.
The costs of inaction are not always obvious, but they are real:
- Disruption for pupils who need consistency: frequent changes in staff undermine trust and progress, especially for children with complex needs.
- Reduced morale and burnout: staff covering roles outside their expertise carry extra stress, which leads to more exit decisions.
- Increased use of agency or supply cover: expensive, inconsistent, no guarantee of SEND experience.
- Less capacity to support leadership or development: when everyone is firefighting, there’s no time to grow.
- Greater risk in inspections or performance monitoring: gaps in provision, particularly for SEND, draw scrutiny.
Over time, these accumulate into a cycle: poor retention leads to gaps, gaps lead to lower outcomes, which in turn leads to more pressure, instability, and expense.
A Strategic Option, Our Level 5 Specialist Teaching Assistant Apprenticeships
This is where the Level 5 Specialist Teaching Assistant Apprenticeship emerges as more than just a training route, it is a strategic tool in building capacity, resilience, and sustainable staffing solutions.
- Plug from within: instead of recruiting externally, you develop expertise in your own team.
- Specialist support for SEND: the training includes modules on assessment, behaviour, intervention strategies, inclusion practices, and mentoring.
- Retention through growth: staff who see a career path are more likely to stay and invest in your school’s long-term future.
- Cost-efficiency vs agency use: the investment in trained staff often pays back through reduced reliance on supply.
- Impact across stakeholders: better support for pupils, assisting teachers, confidence for governors and parents.
If your school is facing gaps, retention issues, or SEND pressures the Level 5 route offers a proactive option.
Join Our Q&A Webinar – 8th October, 6pm
Want to see how this could work in your school? On 8th October at 6pm, Claire (our MD) and Neil (Course Leader & former Headteacher) will host a live Q&A session. They’ll walk you through:
- Why doing nothing is no longer viable
- What the Level 5 apprenticeship covers
- Real stories of impact
- How to get started with funding and enrolment
👉 Register your free place now https://shorturl.at/QXqfD
The real cost of doing nothing isn’t visible in budgets right away, it shows up in staff turnover, pupil disruption, and missed potential. But it’s not inevitable. With the right pathway and investment, you can turn disruption into growth, gaps into strength, and uncertainty into confidence.
If you’d like to talk through how this could be done in your school email getintouch@jclss.co.uk or call 0330 0245809. Let’s turn cost into opportunity together.
Source Links::
https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/teacher-labour-market-in-england-annual-report-2025/?
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/mar/13/teacher-vacancy-rates-record-high-england-report?
https://www.ascl.org.uk/Help-and-Advice/Inclusion/SEND/Summary-of-June-2024-DfE-SEND-data?
https://nasen.org.uk/news/sen-data-january-2024?
https://ifs.org.uk/publications/spending-special-educational-needs-england-something-has-change?
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