Research methodology

SchoolJobs.uk Research reports advertised school and education vacancies observed on SchoolJobs.uk at a single observation timestamp. It describes what we observed, not the whole of UK education recruitment.

Most vacancies we observe are imported from source feeds rather than posted directly on SchoolJobs.uk. A rise in observed vacancies can reflect our coverage as much as recruitment activity.

This is a current snapshot, not a trend. A single observation cannot show change over time, so no change, growth or decline figure is reported.

What counts as a vacancy

jobs.status = 'live' AND dedupe_status <> 'duplicate' AND canonical_job_id IS NULL AND (expires_at IS NULL OR expires_at > now()) AND (closing_date IS NULL OR closing_date >= CURRENT_DATE) AND schools.approval_status = 'approved' AND title_slug IS NOT NULL. Identical to the authoritative site-count service used by public job search, so Research and the public listing can never disagree.

Duplicate handling

The canonical Phase 2 job dedupe authority. Rows marked duplicate, or pointing at a canonical_job_id, are excluded; Research runs no dedupe algorithm of its own.

Direct and imported vacancies

Vacancies are classified as direct (posted on SchoolJobs.uk) or imported (ingested from a source feed). Both are counted, and the split is recorded on every snapshot.

Canonical categories

Only canonical dimensions are used: canonical role slug, canonical subject slug, canonical phase slug, canonical contract slug, canonical working pattern, canonical location nation/region, and accepted ownership attribution. Free-text location and free-text employer strings are never dimensions.

Missing and unmapped data

Unmapped rows are counted as unmapped and reported as coverage. They are never redistributed, imputed or silently dropped from a denominator without disclosure.

Publication thresholds

A dimension is publishable at >= 95% mapping coverage, publishable with an explicit unknown bucket and limitation note at >= 60%, and insufficient below 60%. A dimension with zero mapped rows is not_measured.

Privacy suppression

Metrics derived from anything other than already-public vacancy or directory evidence are suppression-sensitive: a cell is suppressed below 10 observations or fewer than 3 contributing organisations, and complementary cells are suppressed where differencing would reveal the suppressed count.

Comparing two observations

A change of more than 10 percentage points in the direct/imported split, or more than 25% in observed volume, qualifies or invalidates any comparison between two snapshots. Growth in observed vacancies is never reported as growth in UK recruitment.

Dates

Snapshots are stamped with the observation timestamp of the calculation. Vacancy-level dates use source_created_at where known, first_imported_at only as 'first observed by SchoolJobs.uk', and never relabel first_imported_at as an employer publication date.

Salary

Phase 17 is the sole salary authority. Research references Phase 17 aggregates and snapshots by id and version; it never parses or recalculates salary.

Geography and UK nations

Canonical locations only, with nation held for all four UK nations. Nation-specific phase and qualification structures are respected rather than mapped onto English phases.

Research publishes aggregates only. No candidate, application, individual or single organisation's behaviour is part of any snapshot. A cohort is withheld below 10 observations or fewer than 3 contributing organisations, and a neighbouring cohort is withheld too where a withheld figure could otherwise be recovered by subtraction.

Small cohorts are withheld rather than published, because a very small group can identify the organisation or people behind it.

• Application outcome research — Most vacancies apply off-site, organisation ATS workflows differ, and the internal application dataset is far too small. Public application outcome research is deferred and classified restricted.
• Time to fill — A vacancy leaving the site does not prove a hire, and closure reasons rarely record one. Time to fill is not measurable and is not published.
• Shares of UK education recruitment — we observe advertised vacancies on SchoolJobs.uk, which is not the whole of UK education recruitment, so no such share is published.

A published report is fixed to the observation that produced it. Corrections are published as a new revision with a correction note rather than by editing a figure in place. If a figure looks wrong, report it from the Research hub.