Human Resource Management in education: Recruitment and selection of teachers in independent schools

Abstract

Education has been shown to be the foundation of social equity and economic progress, underpinning individual and community, self-sufficiency and sustainability. The correlation between teacher quality and student education outcomes has been well-evidenced in previous research. The purpose of this study was to explore the potential use of Human Resource Management (HRM) theory and practice to identify and select quality teachers for the range of individual and contextually different schools that exist within education systems. The variance between schools in their context, sector, socio economic status and needs, is considerable, consequently individual schools have quite specific local needs when recruiting and selecting teachers. The ability to draw on consistent evidence-based practices may result in not only rigorous recruitment and selection processes but also teacher retention. Effective recruitment, selection and retention of teachers has emerged, in recent studies, to be one of the most crucial school improvement strategies. In order to understand how HRM practices might improve recruitment and selection of teachers in independent schools it was necessary firstly to identify the HRM practices being used. To this end an online survey of school leaders was conducted this was followed by six one on one interviews to enrich the survey data. The results of the survey indicated that a variety of HRM processes were being utilised by school leaders at the functional level with little cognisance of the strategic possibilities nor an HRM evidence-based structure of practices. The interviews supported these findings and also revealed that there is a growing awareness in school leaders that the adoption of HRM informed practices may indeed be beneficial in recruitment and selection of teachers. These results provide a compelling reason for further research and indicate there is great potential for use of HRM expertise and practices by school leaders for recruitment and selection of teachers as part of a suite of HRM practices which may indeed lead to school improvement and eventually to improved social and economic outcomes.