Recent trends have seen education recruiters increasingly deal directly with schools, but the trend of devolution of the agency spend power is already on the turn, according to the chair of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) Education Sector Group.

“The government is devolving more and more power down to the schools,” says chair John Dunn, a director at education recruitment group People to Keep. As a consequence, “I think schools are going to be left increasingly to be the final decision-maker”.

A decision that academies will take, he suggests, is to club together. “What we need to watch as a business is at some point the academy groups will turn into group buyers” looking to purchase recruitment services on a model more akin to managed services provision, he suggests.

Dunn says he is told by some people that this consolidation is “happening in a small way already”.

The group, which met at the end of February, also agreed with the REC’s intention to revamp the cancelled Quality Mark standard for education recruiters.

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