BEST TEMPORARY RECRUITMENT AGENCY 2018

Winner: Class People

Sponsored by: The Recruit Venture Group

Class People is an independent education recruitment specialist, providing supply teachers, teaching assistants, tutors, special educational needs staff and early years practitioners to schools and settings across the South West of England. The company runs a foundation that provides sponsorship to key clients using money that has been put aside to give back to schools. In various schools, it has sponsored a behaviour reward system, sports kit and country dancing t-shirts, and contributed to an end-of-year production. Its corporate social responsibility initiatives include a project that ran over the 2017 summer holidays.

• An example of the company’s contribution to client success is its work with Field Court Junior Academy, which has been a client more than 10 years, during which its teachers have contributed to the school’s success and its Ofsted rating has gone from ‘good’ to ‘outstanding’.

• A challenging vacancy was an Apple education sales consultant for Western Computer. Class People realised this would be the perfect opportunity for a teacher looking to use their relevant experience towards a new challenge, and approached a candidate sourced recently for supply teaching work, who mentioned that he had been looking to leave the teaching profession. The candidate jumped at the prospect of staying in a field related to education but not in the classroom.

• Excellent client service is shown by company’s strong relationships with its schools. Its consultants often give up their evenings or Saturdays to participate in clients’ summer fetes, circus days, face painting or running of bouncy castles. Over the summer holidays, the Class People team took time out of the office to build a pond and nature garden at another school.

• The company’s excellent service to temporary workers is illustrated by its support for a primary teacher who moved to its area from London. He said he left his induction appointment “feeling enthused and ready to face the fresh challenges of teaching in a new part of the country”.

Judges’ Comments:

“As a small private company, they were going the extra mile to deliver exceptional service … the passion and enthusiasm were shining through. We were impressed by their innovation, especially around corporate responsibility.”