The Primary Teacher's Career Handbook

Keith Richmond, Richard Greenfield

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317602316
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Elementary Education

The Primary Teacher's Career Handbook is invaluable to all those in Primary education. This essential and unique handbook sets out a complete and much needed career development path for Primary School teachers from the stage of seeking a first appointment, through to middle-management, Headship and beyond. Throughout the book, teachers will be shown how to plan their career development by making their present role successful, enabling them to make a smooth progression to achieve their career aspirations.

Offering realistic advice and including pragmatic solutions, which result from years of first-hand experience, the chapters explore key career stages such as:

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• applying for your first teaching post;

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• being successful in your induction year;

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• managing a subject area;

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• professional development and developing as a leader;

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• preparing for Deputy Headship and achieving your first Headship role;

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• building your CV and making an application;

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• interviews; and

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• working with colleagues, parents and governors.

Written to support the work of all those in the field of Primary education, this book is not just essential reading for trainee and newly qualified teachers, but it is an invaluable resource for teachers at every stage of their careers.

CHAPTER 1 From trainee to teacher

DOI: 10.4324/9781315747767-2

Comfort zone

If you have trained as a teacher through the School Direct, or the older GTP, route, it will be the case that most of your school experience and training will have taken place in the same establishment. Although you will have had an alternative and contrasting placement, your principal base for the year will have been your host school. Add to this the fact that the school has sponsored your application, employed you as a trainee and, very likely, is somewhere you have worked or volunteered previously in a different capacity for some time, say as a teaching assistant (TA) or nursery nurse, then you have the possibility of a mix of loyalty and a potential conflict of interest that can work to influence your choice of first appointment school.

There will have been numerous advantages to training in this type of climate. The surroundings, the people and the ethos were familiar to you and you feel an attachment to the school. You had the implicit support of senior management and, in all probability, you knew your school-based mentor personally before you started your training and perhaps worked with them, albeit in a different capacity. This meant that you didn’t waste time getting used to everyday things, such as policies, working practices and customs, and knowing who does what, and you could use much more emotional and intellectual energy in concentrating on developing your style and technique as a teacher and learning the craft. You will also have had a clearer idea of expectations and who best to go to if you needed help and support.

Make no mistake though; there is a downside to this arrangement. Your experience of schools in general will be more limited than trainees working in other programmes who will have had three, or maybe more, placements in a range of schools that they did not choose and of which they had little, if any, prior knowledge. Although admittedly more challenging for them in many ways, it meant they were able to develop strategies for adapting, for making a good impression on their colleagues and finding their way around a strange setting. While the staff at their schools did not know in advance what they were capable of, they also did not know their shortcomings or make prejudgments about their abilities or potential for success as teachers. With this type of training, there is always an opportunity to learn from your mistakes, respond to advice and to ‘reinvent’ yourself in each new placement if you feel that your previous one didn’t work out as you would have wished.

When changing roles in your host school, say from classroom support to professional trainee teacher, there is always a risk, however small, of inciting envy and ill-feeling among your former colleagues – some of whom, perhaps, might resent what they see as your new status. This may not be usual, and many trainees in this situation report nothing but encouragement and support from others, but you should be aware of the risk and avoid any behaviour on your part that could create a problem. The children, too, will know you in a different role and may take a little time to adjust (for example, in some schools, rather surprisingly perhaps, the support staff are called by their first names and the teachers are referred to by their titles, i.e. Miss, Mrs or Mr). Another drawback is that a TA who becomes a trainee teacher sometimes finds teacher colleagues placing expectations on them relating to their previous role, as in ‘you did this or that when you were a TA, why can’t you keep on doing it?’. Old habits and routines can persist and this can lead to pressures and conflict which are best avoided or which sometimes require frank conversations and a degree of assertiveness to resolve them. Being forewarned is the best preparation.

The decisions that have to be taken when you are approaching the end of your training and thinking about future employment prospects as a newly qualified teacher should take account of these issues. For instance, if you stay in your host school you may be changing roles within it for a second time, this time from trainee teacher to a qualified one, with all this implies about the need, once more, to bring about a change in the way your colleagues, and others, view you. Some responsibility for how successful this metamorphosis is rests with the school management itself and how sensitively they handle it with pupils, parents and other staff.

Although your sponsor school has a duty to make every effort to offer you a permanent job on qualifying, they are not obliged to do so and there are many sound and practical reasons why it may not be possible, not least that it could be they have no suitable vacancy. On the other hand they may place an expectation on you to work for them on the basis that they have ‘subsidised’ your training for a year, and they may imply that they see you have a moral duty to repay their support. However, whether you seek a job in your host school or not is entirely a matter for you and the decision should be based on what you see as the best career path and the best means of developing your skills, and not what others think or expect of you. Ask yourself, do you need a different experience, a more (or less) challenging setting for your induction year, or the chance to make an impression on a new set of colleagues as a competent professional? Would you do better making a fresh start with a chance to put into practice all you have learnt without others knowing about any mistakes you have made or difficulties you have had on the way? Alternatively, are you the sort of person who doesn’t settle easily or thrive in new and challenging environments? One who needs the reassurance of the familiar and the comfort of well-known faces and established routines? In short, is your host school the best place to develop your career beyond training, or do you need time out of your comfort zone to develop yourself as an independent, free-thinking professional?

Other training routes

Students who have followed the more traditional university-based routes into teaching, either the one year PGCE or the undergraduate BA/BEd course, will have a different perspective on a first appointment. They will have experienced a number of school placements, possibly away from their home town, and may feel less loyalty towards any of them and won’t necessarily have any sense of obligation. Although possible, it is less likely that they will seek a post in any of their placement schools and their search for a job will be primarily motivated by factors such as location, type of school or catchment. They will not have had the benefit of being paid while training, which most School Direct trainees have, and so financial motives will probably be in the forefront of their plans. The school experience of these students will in some ways be more extensive and varied than those on the School Direct programme and they may find themselves better placed to make decisions about the type of school that will best suit them. Because of the greater range of experience, they may also be seen by some schools as a more ‘marketable commodity’.

These differences apart, the process of choosing and applying for a first post is essentially the same for all those qualifying as teachers and involves planning, thought and judgment and is certainly not something to be rushed into. You may be influenced in your decision by the year group on offer, especially if your practical experience has been limited to a small number of age groups, as is likely for School Direct trainees, but it is important to realise that, as a Primary-trained teacher, you might be expected subsequently to work with any age of children, and you would do well not to limit your opportunities by appearing too fussy at this stage. Instead, versatility and adaptability are desirable qualities that schools will value.

Applying for first posts

The task of looking for vacancies and applying for first posts begins, for many, soon after Christmas in the final year of training. There is an understandable urgency to get things settled, to have a job for September, so that efforts can be concentrated on final practices and assessments, and getting good grades of course. One less thing to worry about!

We are not going to make judgments about the wisdom of making early applications. Individual circumstances will vary and the supply and demand for teachers will change from year to year and according to region, and there is no absolute right or wrong way of going about it. What we will say is that there are, as always, advantages and disadvantages on both sides of the argument that you should consider before acting.

In summary, there are two routes to applying for first teaching posts. Many Local Authorities operate what they call a pool system whereby applicants are screened and given a preliminary interview by a panel of local Headteachers (HT) and, if successful, are offered a teaching post within the Authority that is not specific to a school. Schools in the area will then, over a period, make their vacancies known and will re-interview selected candidates forwarded by the Authority. This is a buyers’ market in which the candidates have limited choice about the schools they are offered or allocated. There is, of course, the reassurance of a commitment by the Local Authority that, once accepted, you will be placed somewhere, but with no guarantee where, or how long you will have to wait for things to be finalised. Sometimes, too, the jobs on offer are in the toughest or least popular schools as these can be the most difficult to fill by other means. Because of the uncertainties involved about when vacancies may arise and how many there will be, some positions are not filled until quite late in the year. So it’s a bit like being picked for sides in playground football, with the ‘best’ candidates going first and others having to wait until the end. Probably the only real advantage of this method is that everyone in the pool gets a job in the end and schools generally end up fully staffed.

There is another way though.

The alternative route involves candidates responding to specific adverts for teaching posts placed by individual schools on the web, in the professional press or in local circulars, and many schools still choose to use this medium rather than rely on the ‘taxi-rank’ principle of the pool. Schools that are not part of the Local Authority, like Academies and Independents, are obliged to advertise in this way, so looking at these adverts can open up a whole new perspective on what is available. Using this approach can, of course, involve having to make many applications and attend several interviews before a post is secured, and there is no absolute certainty that you won’t still be without a position in September. It does mean, however, that you are free to choose from a range of schools and to make some decisions about the suitability, and convenience, of each as a first post for you. The big advantage many see of this type of focused application, however, is the greater element of mutuality in the process and the conclusion that both school and applicant will have made a degree of informed choice. You want to work there and they want to employ you! That counts for a lot.

Applying early in the year by this method has some disadvantage to newcomers, in that serving teachers, who may be looking to move schools, are also in the field of potential candidates, and some schools may prefer to appoint someone with experience. This is a risk that you may not be anxious to take, especially if you find the prospect of a repeated lack of success at interview discouraging. Making an early application is not always the best way, and sometimes you might do better by waiting. This can be a dilemma.

The complexities of teachers’ contracts and terms of employment mean that they have until the end of May to resign a post before the summer break, so advertisements for September vacancies can still be found in June or even later as schools try to fill posts left vacant by staff leaving at the last minute. However, a school with a vacancy cannot normally offer a post to another teacher from outside at a late stage in the term, because the teacher cannot resign in time to take it up. This leaves Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) with a clear advantage as they are free to accept any post at any time, since they are not yet in a post and bound by contracts. This being the case, it is likely that posts falling vacant at the last minute will tend to be filled by NQTs, unless schools are prepared to cover vacancies with supply or agency staff, which most don’t view as the ideal solution. It’s a fine judgment for applicants to make. Do you apply early and secure a post, even if it means going through the lottery of the pool, or do you hold your nerve, wait until the last minute, and gamble on being appointed somewhere you might judge to be better? The key principle is that once you have accepted the offer of a post it is not the done thing to renege on the agreement if a better offer comes along. People do it, of course, but it doesn’t necessarily do their reputation any favours and should be avoided. Similarly, a school or Local Authority that offers you a post is duty bound to honour the commitment, even if this offer of employment is made only verbally.

It’s worth remembering, too, that some Headteachers actually prefer to employ Newly Qualified Teachers because they recognise them as energetic, enthusiastic, full of new ideas and open and receptive to training and guidance. They see them as keen young professionals who can be moulded into a particular way of working to suit the school and match its needs. On a more mercenary note, some prefer them simply because they are less expensive to employ, since almost all NQTs now start at point 1 on the Main Professional Scale, which historically was not always the case.

It may also be that the post you are offered is on a temporary contract, for example to cover a maternity leave. Although not always viewed as ideal, there is always a chance for you to impress and to have your contract made permanent in due course. Employment Law prevents schools from extending temporary contracts indefinitely so the longer you stay there and the more successful you are the greater the chance of being offered a permanent position.

Choosing a school

There are a number of different types of Primary School that you might choose to work in: Community, Voluntary, Foundation, Academy, Free School, or Independent School. The differences between them are explained in Chapter 5, but it is important to be aware of the subtleties of these differences, and how they may affect your terms of employment and future career opportunities, before making an application or committing yourself to your first year of work.

Notwithstanding the technical and legal distinctions between types of school, the trainee seeking a first appointment should think about the more obvious differences when choosing where to apply. The first of these is pupil catchment. The area a school serves will largely determine its intake and this has perhaps the greatest impact on a school and its ethos. Schools in deprived areas present staff with particular challenges, but equally so do schools in affluent areas or those with varied and high ethnic mixes or high pupil mobility. Urban schools and rural schools also have distinct characteristics that have to be adapted to. The nature of each of the challenges is different and teachers will need to have, or develop, special qualities, skills and attributes to work in each. You may have a personal preference, or your experiences during training may have shown you that you have particular strengths suited to one type of intake. These should form part of your planning.

The size of a school also has an influence on its character and organisation and will affect the way you are expected to do your job. Across the country, Primary Schools range in size from a few dozen pupils to five or six hundred, or even more. A very small school will have so-called mixed-age classes, where two or more traditional age-groups have to be combined to make classes viable, and will have a small staff, frequently with each teacher managing a range of curriculum areas. Senior managers, including the Headteacher, will possibly have heavy teaching commitments and thus may have less time to support you. The atmosphere will be intimate and facilities and physical resources could well be limited because of financial and accommodation constraints. At the other extreme, a very large Primary School will have multiple ‘forms of entry’ creating the chance for collaborative planning and teaching between classes in the same year group. Team work will be more in evidence, which might prove helpful to a new teacher trying to get to grips with the workload and range of demands on time and skills. Roles and responsibilities can be shared and there is likely to be a higher number of ancillary support staff. All subjects of the curriculum will be managed by a named teacher, or ‘co-ordinator’, possibly with specialist skills, to whom you can go for advice. The economies of scale in bigger schools will also make possible a greater range of facilities and resources. The buildings themselves will necessarily be larger and may offer some specialist facilities such as art rooms, ICT suites and group rooms. At the same time, very large schools risk becoming remote, impersonal places and it is not unknown for a Newly Qualified Teacher in difficulties to escape notice for a considerable period if systems of support are not properly in place or if they are reluctant to speak up about their problems.

Some teachers actively seek jobs in Faith Schools. Depending on the religious body concerned, there may be strict criteria in place about who can and cannot apply for posts (for instance, those practising the Faith concerned) and these may be tested by reference or at interview. It is important to recognise also that some Faith Schools can exercise fairly broad control over the personal lives of teaching staff, particularly those in senior positions, so that, for instance, in some situations, divorcees or people in civil partnerships may be frowned upon. It’s one area of employment where Equal Opportunities Law does not always apply. Working in a Faith School may be part of your motivation for coming into teaching, and such schools have a lot to offer, but if you take up a post there, you accept, by implication, the codes of expected conduct associated with the religion concerned.

Finding out about a school

It’s really surprising how many applicants for posts in schools don’t bother to visit them before sending in ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 From trainee to teacher
• 2 First steps – succeeding in your induction year
• 3 Mastering your subject
• 4 Moving to the middle
• 5 Types of school
• 6 Developing professionally
• 7 Returning to teaching
• 8 Working with other adults
• 9 A career in the classroom
• 10 Deputy Head
• 11 Your first Headship
• 12 Preparing your application
• The interview
• Epilogue
• Index