Can schools offer support roles without interviewing for vacancies?

[Hamsternautss]

Can primary schools offer TA type roles without interviewing for them? For example if someone was volunteering at a primary school and then a month later is now wearing a staff lanyard but there was no vacanciy listed is this allowed? Are schools allowed to fill a vacancy without interviewing?

They could have advertised and interviewed internally?

Yes. There are no laws to say they have to be advertised. That's just a myth

How do you know they weren't interviewed?

I think you perhaps mean "Are they allowed to interview/appoint without advertising the post?"

Yes, they are.

Yes, most openings are never formally advertised. If they are it's often just a box-ticking exercise required by HR before they'll rubberstamp the candidate that was preferred from the beginning.

I know of a school that advertised a headteacher post on the school notice board for 24 hours. They interviewed the only (!) candidate- the existing deputy head- the following day!

To be fair, that was a number of years ago, things are more stringent now for HT posts, but certainly TA posts are often only advertised internally.