ATS for Education

Applicant tracking systems support safer recruitment practices by making sure every hiring step is documented, auditable and consistent. Structured workflows allow schools, colleges and academy trusts to track key checks such as references, safeguarding declarations and right-to-work verification. This creates a clear, compliant recruitment trail to support both internal governance and Ofsted inspections.

Digital Right-to-Work (RTW) and DBS checks are run directly through our ATS. All checks are completed online using approved partners, without having to leave our system. This streamlines your workflows, ensures compliance, and keeps all sensitive personal information safe within our GDPR compliant system.

Yes. Our bespoke education hiring software supports recruitment across multiple locations. It gives central HR teams oversight of all activity, while providing individual schools with their own controlled access. Dedicated HR and Hiring Manager portals ensure hiring managers see only the roles they are involved with, while HR retains full visibility.

The system allows you to set a ‘house style’ and brand identity for the whole Trust, while still giving schools the freedom to write their own job descriptions, ads and communications. This structure ensures consistent hiring policies and retains local autonomy. Shared templates and documents ensure consistency, reduce duplication, and simplify reporting across the group.

Education recruitment usually follows the academic calendar, but there are always exceptions. Whether it’s emergency mid-year teaching cover or temporary operational support, an ATS helps teams plan ahead, build talent pools, and screen and shortlist applicants quickly.

HR teams can safely store details of previous applicants for recurring roles while remaining GDPR compliant. By building DBS and RTW checks into application workflows, you can also significantly speed up time-to-hire. Together, these tools help reduce pressure during busy periods and ensure you always have a secure list of contacts ready for short-notice cover.

Absolutely. Our custom-built ATS allows you to devise as many different hiring workflows as you need. So, whether you’re hiring a caretaker, a finance officer, a KS2 teacher or a lunchtime supervisor, your hiring process is tailored to fit that role.

Choose screening and approval loops that make sense, build talent pools for parent volunteers or quick apply routes for temporary operational cover. Our pre-built templates and seamlessly integrated pre-employment checks, such as DBS and Right to Work, speed up time to hire while keeping every stage of your hiring transparent, auditable and compliant.

Over time, yes. While an ATS won’t eliminate your need to use agencies, it can significantly reduce how often you rely on them.

By building and maintaining a talent pool, schools, colleges and trusts can re-engage suitable candidates directly rather than going back to market, or to an agency, each time a vacancy arises. This reduces agency spend, improves hiring continuity, and gives education providers greater control over both recruitment quality and cost.

Data insights from your ATS also play a key role here. By identifying the most successful hiring platforms and channels, you can refine and optimise your approach over time, making your recruitment increasingly self-sufficient.

Reach ATS works with all major UK job boards and gets preferential ad rates as a result. Using the Reach Online service can help reduce ad costs further, giving you a more cost-effective alternative to agency spend for many of your recurring vacancies.

An ATS creates a single, shared view of recruitment activity, eliminating the need for manual updates, email chains or separate spreadsheets.

Role-based access means that each user sees exactly what they need to. Our dedicated Hiring Manager portal allows hiring teams to review and progress candidates, share notes and leave structured feedback, while HR retains full oversight of all live vacancies, compliance and process through the main HR portal. Multi-stage approval workflows, task alerts and notifications ensure the right people sign off at the right moments, maintaining momentum and accountability.

For strategic oversight, Reach ATS supports Power BI integration, enabling real-time reporting dashboards that give senior leaders and governors a detailed picture of recruitment performance across the organisation – from time–to–hire to cost–per–hire to source effectiveness and more – supporting informed, evidence-based decision-making at every level.

Yes. Reach ATS integrates with a wide range of third-party systems including digital compliance check providers, HRIS and payroll platforms. Integration via API enables secure data transfer, with all employee data centralised and held securely in accordance with GDPR.

Once a candidate moves through offer and onboarding, their data flows seamlessly into your wider HR tech infrastructure, removing the need for manual re-entry and potential human error along the way.

Reach ATS ensures every candidate is assessed fairly and consistently by standardising job adverts, evaluation criteria and approval steps across an organisation. This reduces risk, supports equality objectives and helps institutions demonstrate robust, fully auditable recruitment practices when required.

Reach ATS AI assistants can also support initial screening and ranking of candidates, further removing the potential for human bias and significantly reducing shortlisting time, without ever compromising quality of hire.