With a year on year shortage of teachers entering the profession, it is more important than ever to support training and ECT teachers through the process of finding an employer that will give them the best environment to develop into established teachers for years to come.
In 2007, the advice I was given about choosing the right school was very limited. There were more teachers than there were jobs available, and our mindset was about getting a job, not choosing one. The focus taken by our course lecturers was on how we should respond best to questions in an interview, which we roleplayed with real employers. The advice I vividly recall about the whole “getting your first job” process was:
1. Do not discuss pay at all on the day, it is rude and you take what they offer you.
2. If offered, accept the job on the spot (typical practice in schools).
3. If they want you to start your first job in July (i.e. you will get paid over the summer break) you have done very well.
In 2024, the landscape for teaching is now very different. Firstly, there are more jobs than there are teachers, so just as the housing market can shift in and out of favour for both buyer and seller, so too can teachers benefit from the state of education at any one time. Right now the market is very much in favour of the applicant.
That being said, it is not easy for teachers to learn everything about a school before they apply for a job there. It is possible (and encouraged) to visit the school before interview (not just to show willing, but because it will expand your time on site before any offer is made to you), and the more desk based research you can do, the more you will know both for your own decision making, and to regurgitate during the interview itself. If you can have a candid chat with someone who works there, or even better, used to work there, you may be able to glean some level of insight into the culture of the school. This information could be biased, so teachers need other ways to build up a picture of their potential new employer before putting their name to the dotted line.
What do long serving teachers say about finding the right school?
Having worked across a number of schools, both independent and state, I feel sufficiently confident about what I would be looking for if I were seeking my first teaching position today.
After speaking with a handful of established teachers, it was apparent that we shared a number of similar “assessments” that we would use to identify a school worth applying to. Additionally, we also all shared experiences of the “red flags” that would see us heading to the door, or rejecting an offer, if we were in the process of interviewing.
To support teachers entering the profession or those struggling to find the right school, here is a summary of the advice longer serving teachers would tell their younger, less experienced selves if they could, to avoid joining a “bad employers”.
Definition: Bad Employer
A school which employs you under the premise of many promises and commitments, displays a culture and work environment against which you base your decision to join, but ultimately both of these change once you are in post. A bad employer will have you back on the TES within the first term.
BEFORE
How to work out if the school is worth applying to…
1. Visit the school on a non-interview day.
This should be very common practice for established teachers who want to see the school running on a “normal day”. An interview day can sometimes be anything but “normal”. Students can be carefully selected to ensure every contact point with the applicant is a positive one, staff can be on their best behaviour, or even worse, hidden from sight on the day to avoid any negative conversations. Getting to see how the school is functioning day to day is a powerful insight into what your own day to day might be like as an employee. The key here is to visit on your terms, so that you can see the school as it is, warts and all.
2. Review the website, and look for signs for the school being open and welcoming. This could include:
– Being able to contact a wider list of members of staff. This allows you to potentially connect to staff in different positions within the school, department, etc, and ask questions.
– The news/notices section is up to date, and covers positive cross-school activity. It may be an alarm bell if there are lots of talks from the police, or maybe not, but more importantly, how proud is the school of all of its staff and students’ achievements.
– The website provides access to curriculum plans, subject by subject, with overarching visions for each faculty/department, and some central ambition for the school as a whole.
3. How modern is the application process?
If you have to physically print out the application form, fill it in, and then scan and submit it, it might be a sign of a school struggling culturally to modernise. Schools who seem careless, delayed or disorganised in how they handle your interest and eventual application are possible red flags (but not always).
Compare this with a school where the application form can be completed digitally, the process is easy to follow, and you receive notification of your submission in a timely way, these are all good signs. If you get a personalised call at any time during the process, and this provides you with more information, expectations of timescales, or welcomes early questions, these can all point to a well organised school, where staff are all pulling in the same direction.
DURING
What are the warning signs to look for on the day of interview
1. Chaos
Sounds simple to see, but it depends on what you might judge as chaos. One teacher I spoke to before writing this told of a school where applicants were hurried around the school to avoid being in the “open” when students arrived on site. Between lessons, the applicants were locked in classrooms whilst the “pusher” moved students out of the building and into the playground. The staff room was up many flights of stairs, this felt more like it was a way to defend the high ground rather than a simple layout decision.
In other examples, applicants were unable to use USB pens to put their lessons onto the screen, because of network security, despite this not being communicated before the day. Printing requests for lesson handouts were not completed due to having no paper/time/someone to do it, the interview room was empty/locked/damaged/double booked/missing equipment/being cleaned, delaying the start of the interview lesson, and increasing the sense of pressure on the applicant.
Schools are busy places to work, but if an applicant cannot arrive on time and be greeted, taken through a planned series of interview stages, and leave on time, this could be masking wider school failings.
2. Existing staff give you insights into the school
It is really important to talk to people who work at the school, especially those not involved in the process of interviewing you. You’re not there to catch the school out, but you are about to commit to a decision which could impact your career, so it’s only right to source information from as many different people as possible.
What could staff say that could be a red flag?
– Any mention of high staff turnover. If the churn is high (something really hard to decipher by looking at the website/TES/online), then this could be a sign of toxic culture or significant change going on at the school. In some instances, change is good and can lead to opportunity, in others it can be a sign that leadership, culture or environment are not right, and you might want to reconsider the school, even for the time being.
– Lack of leadership visibility. All schools need a visible, active and present senior leadership team. This would typically include the Head and Deputy, and then the Assistant Heads, and potentially associate Assistant Heads (if the school has them). Heads of year could also fall under this category. The main thing is that a visible and active leadership is a good sign that everyone is there to support one another, and the wider culture of the school is one of collaboration. The opposite of this would be a leadership hidden away, and potentially all of the day to day problem solving is left to the staff below leadership. This can lead to an “us and them” culture, which often links to a culture of blame and a failure to work together. Schools can be tough and challenging, but if all staff are pulling in the same direction, tough and challenging should not be a reason to avoid joining a school.
– The relationship between the school and its Multi Academy Trust. This was not a consideration for teachers until MATs became a government push, but today we live in a world where we have the additional consideration to make about the Trust that the school belongs to, as well as the school itself. If a school is or is not in a MAT, this could be an indicator of its ambition and longer term intentions, and staff will likely give you an insight as to whether the MAT is a good one or bad one to be part of.
A secondary school might be part of a small MAT with local primary schools, which is fine and quite common, and often this helps with recruitment of Year 7’s and some level of curriculum sequencing and transition.
Where schools are part of much larger MATs, how do staff talk about the schools relationship with that Trust? Did the school join voluntarily or was it bought/absorbed/forced to join? If any of the latter are the case, this could be a sign of issues in the school, or potentially a signal of issues for the schools future. Some MATs are so large that they are capable of accepting larger than normal staff churn. They may also centralise and dictate the curriculum to all schools, so you as a staff member may have little say over what you are teaching, the pedagogy behind it, and potentially how both of these will be used to judge your performance when in post. MAT membership can represent a significant loss of ownership to the schools leadership, and may filter down to you as a teacher.
MATs can potentially be great places to work, providing opportunity to collaborate, develop and progress in your career. They can also be places where staff have little control over important decisions about the schools day to day, which can be equally frustrating and stifling for your career.
3. No chance to talk to students
As much as a school can select the “right students” to talk to you, ask them enough questions and you will quickly expose information that may sway your decision about the school one way or another. If you have the opportunity to have a student guide you around the school, ask them questions that may reveal some insights. For example:
– Do you receive many detentions/punishments?
– What school trips and events do you enjoy the most?
– Do your teachers change often?
– What’s the best part of your day here at school?
– If you could change something, what would it be?
If you have a chance, ask students questions you might expect an Ofsted inspector to ask. There may be a chance, whilst a lesson is going on, to ask students what they are learning, is the lesson always like this, what is the worst thing about the school, etc? Students are less likely to adapt their answers to sway your decision than a member of staff might, and will therefore give you something honest to analyse and build your judgment about the school upon.
AFTER
What to look out for when you are offered the job?
1. Does the school feel pushy or insistent on a decision?
Some teachers who contributed to this blog recounted times where they were told it was “policy” to have a decision before applicants leave site, or it’s “the norm” that the offer is accepted or rejected straight away. This is all, ofcourse, nonsense. But if a school seems or appears pushy, start to step back and consider whether there is something going on.
The school may equally take a long time to consider a decision. This could be a sign that you are not first choice (i.e. the first choice was offered the job, mulled it over, and rejected the offer, and now the school is coming to you), or that the school is slightly less organised than you would hope, given the importance of the decision you are making.
2. Does the offer change after the interview, or does the school change their “tone”
It may be the case that face to face, the school is very warm and welcoming, but now that the process is all over email or phone, the tone has changed. The school may feel less interested in meeting your needs, prioritising their own needs. This might include hurrying you to accept, changing your start date, taking a different pay position, or come across flaky about the specifics of your role, such as how much of your timetable is free, teaching your specialist subject, or even aspects of the wider responsibilities including being a tutor, running a club, weekend commitments, etc.
The key here is to ask for everything in writing. If the offer sounds good, in writing please. If the school wants to change their offer, in writing please. If the school is changing parts of the role you discussed on the day which are now “not possible”, in writing please. Make sure everything is in writing, so that if and when you start the job, if something is not as promised, you can return to the written evidence, and fight your cause.
3. What does the contract commit you to?
As with point 3, what is in writing is what you are committing to in post. If you fail to read the contract details, you are potentially setting up a scenario in which you have little or no ground to defend your position if something goes wrong down the line. For example, you agree verbally to having period 1 off to take your child to school, but this isn’t in the contract. If your new employer then decides not to give you this period 1 off, you are not in any place to come back unless you have this in written evidence and as part of your contract.
Many MATS have centralised policy documents. If you are sent them, read them before signing a contract, and if you are not sent them, seek them out. These documents include everything from notice period, probation period, potential to change your contract or terms of employment, and anything else that might be important. Some trusts may build into the contract permission to move your employment to another school within the trust. This could be a significant change, especially if the school site is not near to where you live. Anything in writing that you sign needs to be checked, and ideally, by someone who has signed a contract of this type (e.g. an experienced teacher). Seek support in any contract issues you have (use your union if you are really unsure), and if in doubt, delay signing until you feel secure.
What does a good school/employer look like?
Here are factors that existing teachers have looked for when choosing a school to join. These are potentially signs that the school is going to provide you with an environment that is supportive, and the school will be a place where you want to stay.
A. You are allowed to visit and warmly welcomed before interview day (you want to see the school on a normal day)
B. The school is frank and honest about its strengths and weaknesses (every school can be an amazing employer if it is honest about what it’s like to work there, and what it is aiming to improve).
C. The school has established its own culture, traditions and routines, which every staff member and student buys into. (a MAT culture artificially applied to a school is not good, but a school with its own culture will more likely have wider buy in)
D. Visible and happy full time staff on the day. (ideally you won’t see lots of agency staff, security guards, etc, and the staff there are happy, look well, and say hello)
E. The school isn’t all about the grades. (Schools who define themselves by their grades may be missing the point of school, which is to develop rounded life long learners, not chase a percentage of 9’s or A stars). Unless you like that grade chasing environment, seek a school that can articulate their wider ambition for their students and staff.
F. Break and lunch times feel like a chance for the school community as a whole to take a breather from learning, not an increased period of stress/noise/commotion in the cafeteria. The school is an organic environment, but if it ebbs and flows in and out of feeling in and out of control, you might be seeing the school on a good day, and a bad day might be less enticing to you.
And finally…
Internal applicants. If you are interviewing against an internal applicant, talk to that person as much as you can. Why are they going for the job? What will they do if they don’t get the job? What would they see as important to achieve if they were in post? Where do they seem themselves in five years? Internal applicants have the same aspiration for the job as you, but they already know the school. This means they can not only identify the positives and negatives of the school, but also their potential motivations for wanting the role. Whether they would stay or leave if they were unsuccessful in being offered the post could also tell you how the school values its current staff.
Making a decision!
The key to making the right decision is to seek out as much information as you can, before you commit. Teachers who have worked at 4 or more different schools will be able to tell you stories of the school they “almost” joined, or the school they left quickly. Schools do not actively present toxic and negative cultures externally, it would be employment suicide, and there is no central place where you can find out what a schools’ culture is like, honestly and without bias.
The important thing to remember is that you are going to commit part of your career to this employer. This is significant. So only join them with the confidence that it is right for you, and you are doing so in good faith as to what the school will offer you. There are many amazing schools out there seeking teachers. They have the potential to enhance and accelerate your career and help you establish yourself as a confident and professional teacher, but they also have the potential to heap undue stress and pressure onto you, which may draw your career or ambitions to a close prematurely. Whilst the decision is ultimately yours, don’t be afraid to ask the question that will help you make the right decision, rather than joining a school and having to live with your regrets.
Phil Holton 