Pagination links

I'm having a little trouble with pagination links, I'm building a jobsite and on the front end when viewing jobs the pagination works fine with no problem.

In admin I have a similar method that lists jobseekers, it is here that I'm having the trouble, the pagination links appear on this page and when I click the links the results appear to be changing correctly, i.e the next set of 12, but the actual pagination link doesn't change.

the url ends with, /admin/jobseekers

when I click the first pagination link the url goes to /admin/jobseekers/12

Then I click the next pagination link and I get /admin/jobseekers/24 and so on as it increments by 12 each time, the results are also correctly serving each set of 12.

So I have discovered that the pagination itself is working but the problem is with the actual pagination links:

So when the page loads the pagination links are like:

<ul class="pagination">
<li class="page-item"></li><li class="page-item active"><span class="page-link">1</span></li>
<li class="page-item"><a href="http://codeigniter.local/admin/jobseekers/12" class="page-link" data-ci-pagination-page="2">2</a></li> 

etc etc

Now the error happens when I click '2'

The link structure isn't changing, number one should become a hyperlink and number two should be just a span, but for some reason it does not change, it's like the links are stuck in the same format with number one being a span and all the others after it are links.

I've been trying to figure this out for days and just cannot get to the bottom of it, I'm sure this must be something simple that I am overlooking but I just cannot pin point where the cause is.

Like I said I have a job list method that works fine and I have tried to mirror the code but still the links will not change, could anybody please advise? Does somebody with more experience recognise this issue and might know what it is?