DfE scores with Sky Sports-style ads for FE

Adverts to drive up interest in FE teaching jobs have proved a modest success, figures suggest.

The ‘Share your Skills’ campaign – which included Sky Sports News-style ads with presenter Mike Wedderburn talking to brickies who became FE lecturers – seeks to draw talent into further education by promoting its “unique benefits”.

Run internally by the Department for Education’s workforce and communications teams since 2022, an FE Week freedom of information request shows the campaign cost £2 million in its first year, £4.1 million in 2022-23, and increased again to £5.1 million for both 2023-24 and 2024-25.

Annual “attitudinal research” of the campaign’s target audience – adults between 35 and 65 years old with two years’ experience in priority sectors such as engineering, manufacturing or construction – suggests the proportion of people considering a job in FE rose slightly from 21 percent in 2021-22 to 25 per cent in 2023-24.

However, the target audience’s understanding of FE teaching only rose by 1 percentage point to 24 per cent over that period.

The DfE said the campaign aimed to “increase awareness, understanding, positive perceptions and consideration” of FE.

It does this by promoting the “high value and transferability of industry expertise within FE teaching and inspires the next generation of workers in key sectors” through a series of paid TV, radio and social media adverts.

The campaign drives traffic to a bespoke campaign website where potential applicants are signposted to vacancies, college website sand the Teach in FE support service.

The FOI request data shows website visitor “sessions” more than tripled from 134,000 in 2021-22 to 457,000 in 2023-24.

In the first two years unique page views hovered around 500,000 annually, while visits to the website’s dedicated jobs board shot up from 32,000 in 2021-22 to 190,000 in 2022-23 before dropping to 124,000 in 2023-24.

The DfE did not respond directly when asked whether it held internal reports on the campaign’s performance but provided these figures as a “summary evaluation” of its impact.

It also said there was no “available data” to show how many staff were recruited as part of the campaign.

Concern about FE teacher pay is considered the key reason colleges and training organisations struggle to recruit staff, particularly in high-demand subject areas such as construction and engineering.

Speaking at the Labour conference last month, skills minister Jacqui Smith said she had “strongly” made the case for FE teacher pay and status to the Treasury following the government’s recent decision to snub colleges from public sector pay awards.

The DfE was approached for comment.