TES

About TES

Tes, formerly known as the Times Educational Supplement, is a British weekly trade magazine aimed at education professionals - teachers, school leaders, teaching assistants, governors and policymakers. First published in 1910 as a pull-out supplement inside The Times newspaper, it has chronicled British education for well over a century, from the school boards of Edwardian England to the academies, inspections and digital classrooms of today.

Published weekly on Fridays in London by Tes Global, which has been owned by the US investment firm Providence Equity Partners since 2018, Tes combines news, features, opinion, teaching jobs and classroom resources. Its website serves more than 8 million teachers worldwide with breaking education news, job listings, community forums and teaching resources uploaded by teachers themselves. Below is a detailed profile of the publication: its history, ownership, content and place in the education world.

Founding as a Times Supplement

Tes was first published in 1910 as a pull-out supplement in The Times newspaper, appearing monthly from September 1910. Such was its popularity with the growing teaching profession that in 1914 the supplement became a separate publication, selling on its own for one penny. It became a weekly publication in January 1917, and - aside from a suspension between December 1978 and November 1979 during an industrial dispute at Times Newspapers - it has appeared weekly ever since.

The early Times Educational Supplement served a profession that was rapidly expanding and professionalising: elementary education had become compulsory, secondary schooling was growing, and teachers were organising into unions and associations. The paper gave them a shared forum - a place to read about policy, pedagogy and the job market, and to see themselves as a national profession rather than isolated practitioners.

Separation from The Times

For most of its life the paper was published by the company that owned The Times, but in the 21st century its ownership path diverged. Today Tes no longer has any connection with The Times newspaper: it is produced by the London-based company Tes Global, which was acquired by Providence Equity Partners in 2018. Its long-time sister publication, the Times Higher Education Supplement - launched in 1971 to cover universities after the parent paper decided to split schools and higher-education coverage - was sold in 2018 and is now a separate business, Times Higher Education.

The change of ownership marked Tes's transformation from a newspaper supplement into an education technology and services business, in which the magazine is one part of a much larger operation spanning recruitment, software, training and resources.

Scottish and Welsh Editions

Since 1964 an alternative version of the publication, Tess - the Times Educational Supplement Scotland - has been produced for Scottish readers, reflecting Scotland's distinct education system. An edition for Wales, Tes Cymru, was published between 2004 and 2011; its closure, and the subsequent lack of Wales-specific content, has been criticised by Welsh education ministers. These editions underlined Tes's role as a publication that takes the devolved education systems of the UK seriously, even as the main edition focuses primarily on England.

Editorial Leadership and Content

The current editor of Tes magazine is Jon Severs. The magazine focuses on school-related news and features: it covers primary, secondary and further education, with reporting on government policy, Ofsted inspection, curriculum, assessment, teacher workload, recruitment and retention, school funding, special educational needs and behaviour.

Its journalism is written for practitioners: news stories explain what policy announcements mean for the classroom, features explore pedagogy and school leadership, and opinion pages give teachers, heads and researchers a platform. Regular sections have included dedicated coverage for primary teachers, school leadership and the further-education sector, alongside the jobs pages that have long been the first stop for teachers looking to develop their careers.

The Jobs Market and Recruitment

For much of its history the TES jobs section was the definitive marketplace for teaching posts in Britain: schools advertised vacancies and teachers scanned the pages each Friday. The famous education jobs section carried thousands of advertisements, and for generations of teachers the ritual of reading the jobs pages was a fixture of professional life.

As recruitment moved online, Tes built one of the world's largest education recruitment platforms, matching teachers with schools in the UK and internationally. Teaching vacancies, leadership posts and support-staff roles are listed on tes.com, and the company's recruitment services now extend to international schools around the globe.

Tes.com: Resources, Forums and Community

Beyond the magazine, Tes runs a popular website featuring breaking education news and comment, teaching jobs, forums and classroom resources uploaded by teachers. The resources platform - where teachers share lesson plans, worksheets, presentations and schemes of work, some free and some paid - has become one of the largest repositories of teacher-created classroom materials in the world.

The community forums have long been a lively and sometimes unruly staffroom of the profession, where teachers debate policy, share advice and discuss the pressures of the job. Tes describes itself today as much more than a news publisher: for its millions of teacher users it is also an e-commerce platform, an online learning platform, a community forum and a recruitment platform, supported by data science and research into teacher culture and behaviour.

Readership and Circulation

Tes is published weekly on Fridays. Its audited circulation was 58,007 in 2014, and data from the National Readership Survey for January to December 2012 suggested an average yearly readership of around 362,000, of whom around 90 percent were in the ABC1 social category - reflecting the graduate professional profile of its audience. Earlier, in the mid-2000s, the paper sold around 85,600 copies a week with an estimated weekly print readership approaching half a million.

The digital audience is far larger: the Tes website reaches millions of teachers, with the company reporting more than 8 million teacher users. Its readership spans classroom teachers and teaching assistants, headteachers and school leaders, governors, education suppliers, researchers and government policymakers.

Awards and Industry Role

Tes runs some of the most prominent awards programmes in British education, including the Tes Schools Awards (formerly the Tes Schools Awards recognising the best schools and teachers across the UK) and awards for further education and international schools. These events have become fixtures of the education calendar, celebrating excellence in teaching and school leadership.

The brand also publishes the Tes magazine's annual features on the state of the profession, surveys of teacher opinion and influential lists, and its journalism is routinely cited in parliamentary debate and national media coverage of education.

Challenges and Transformation

Like all print publications, Tes has had to navigate the decline of print advertising - particularly the migration of job advertisements online - and the transformation of its business model. Its response has been to build a diversified education services company around the magazine brand: recruitment, supply-teacher services, school software (including products for timetabling, learning management and school operations developed in the UK and Australia), professional development and training.

The company presents this as a natural evolution: with more than 115 years of education expertise, Tes aims to serve schools across the full range of their operational needs, with trusted journalism through Tes magazine at the heart of the brand. Its Australian business, headquartered in Melbourne, represents more than a third of the company's global operation.

Official Website

The official website of Tes is tes.com, offering education news, teaching jobs, classroom resources, forums and information about the weekly magazine.