ABSTRACT
Teachers find it very difficult to learn about school working conditions before they accept a job offer. Equally, headteachers find it very difficult to learn whether somebody will be an effective teacher through the process of an interview. These informational asymmetries make the process of going out into the teacher labour market to get a new job or hire new staff very risky. Economist George Akerlof’s seminar work, ‘The Market for Lemons’, makes a number of predictions about how this market dysfunction is likely to play out. Interviews with teachers and headteachers describe how we could best overcome these teacher recruitment problems.
