CLOSED – WIN one of FIVE copies of children’s history book
World history author Christopher Lloyd’s new campaign Absolutely Everything! aims to connect knowledge back together. The real world is more amazing than anything you can make up! That’s the message from children’s best-selling non-fiction author Christopher Lloyd as he launches a major new initiative to raise awareness amongst educators, parents and students in the importance of an interconnected, cross-curricular approach to knowledge and education. Christopher Lloyd has kicked off a new campaign Absolutely Everything! with a series of lectures at the prestigious Royal Institution in Mayfair, London. During the talks, Christopher demonstrated how it is possible to guide an audience ranging in ages from aged 6 – 96 through the history of the world in just 60 minutes, using nothing more than a giant timeline, a series of everyday objects and a multi-coloured storytelling coat. Christopher Lloyd says: “For too long knowledge has been chopped up by adults into meaningless chunks through timetables, syllabuses and learning objectives that prevent young people from learning in a more interconnected way. Actually, the real world is not like that at all. Only by connecting knowledge back together again can children learn to think out of the box, develop critical thinking skills and become their own self-learning systems.” Christopher Lloyd’s Absolutely Everything! campaign includes the development of a new curriculum for teachers in the UK that embodies these philosophies – it mirrors similar efforts in the US by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie, who are donating $2 billion to create a new generation of schools inspired by his Montessori education, that will provide a more holistic, contextualised approach to learning. Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder says: “The gift of a Montessori education ultimately enables children to become individuals, who can think for themselves, think of others, and think out-of-the-box,” Said Bezos. “We believe it is no accident that two of the three most successful companies in the world (Amazon and Google) were founded by former Montessori students. Jeff Bezos, Larry Paige, and Sergei Brin were given the opportunity, in the microcosm of their Montessori classrooms, to develop the skills required for success in today’s world.” Christopher Lloyd’s lectures at the Royal Institution were just the start of a multi-layered campaign designed to raise awareness of the value of a more interconnected, narrative approach to knowledge and learning. Also recently launched in the UK and the US is Christopher Lloyd’s new world history book called Absolutely Everything! aimed at all ages 9 upwards that takes readers on a journey through everything from the beginning of time to the present day. The Absolutely Everything! campaign will continue with a range of new initiatives over the coming months. These include: The Absolutely Everything! charitable foundation that offers grants to schools and home learning groups to receive workshops for educators in how to build successful cross-curricular learning strategies as well as inspirational cross-curricular lectures for students. A new Absolutely Everything! Curiosity Curriculum currently being piloted, that takes the existing National Curriculum Key Stage 2 framework aims and objectives and re-organises them into a coherent, narrative structure that provides an alternative cross-curricular, integrated approach to teaching and learning. The publication of Absolutely Everything! (4 Oct 2018), a book for 9+ year-olds that tells the story of the history of the world in a fun and engaging way. For more details on the new world history book Absolutely Everything! please contact Lucy Allen on 01732 464621 or email info@whatonearthbooks.com or visit www.whatonearthbooks.com To enter our competition to win one of FIVE copies of Absolutely Everything!, worth £16.99 each, please click on the link below: a Rafflecopter giveaway *The administrator of this competition is QA Education Magazine (“administrator”). By participating in the competition, each Entrant unconditionally accepts and agrees to comply with and abide by these Official Rules and the decisions of Administrator, which shall be final and binding in all respects. Administrator is responsible for the collection, submission or processing of Entries and the overall administration of the competition. Entrants should look solely to Administrator with any questions, comments or problems related to the Competition. Administrator may be reached by email at socialmedia@euromediaal.com during the Promotion Period. * This giveaway will close at 12.00am, 17th December 2018. * The prize is one How to become an expert in ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING book. The prize is non-transferable, non-refundable. There is no cash alternative. * Open to UK residents aged 18 or over, excluding employees of the Administrator, the sponsor, their families and anyone else professionally connected with this promotion. * There is one compulsory entry which requests that to enter the competition you answer a question based on ‘How to become an expert in ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING book’ information. Additional entries are available. * The prize winner will be asked to provide their email address so that contact can be made to arrange prize delivery, and their name and county be published in the next issue of the magazine * By entering the competition, you grant the Administrator permission to add your details to the mailing list, share your email address and any other personally identifiable information with the other competition Entities for the purpose of administration and prize fulfillment, including use in a publicly available Winners list. * Entries will only be accepted as instructed and any entrant that does not complete the qualifying requirements will be disqualified * The winner will be chosen using the random entry selector built into the widget. * The winners will be informed by email within 5 days of the closing date, and must respond within 5 days to claim their prize. If there is no response within the 5 days and new winner will be drawn at random. *This prize draw is governed by English law and the courts of England shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising in connection with it. For further T&C and our privacy policy please see here Euromedia Associates Ltd: Privacy Policy https://www.iubenda.com/privacy-policy/66331438/legal
Protecting Students Online Through Safeguarding Software
Craig Fearnsides, product expert at Smoothwall monitoring solutions, talks to QA Education about the rise in teen suicides in the digital era… The number of teen suicides has risen dramatically in the past seven years. Cyberbullying is clearly more widespread and more impactful than face-to-face bullying. Why do you think this is? “There are a number of contributing factors, however it boils down to a constant access online and potential negativity. Now more than ever young people are in possession of more than one internet connected device and spend much of their social time interacting online, even when in physical proximity to their social groups. What this means is that passing comments or off-hand replies are now permanently accessible to be dredged over and read into, creating an echo chamber of negativity that would not otherwise be possible.†How does RADAR work? “Smoothwall RADAR is an intelligent real-time monitoring solution that alerts safeguarding staff to incidents as they happen. RADAR monitors both online and offline keystrokes, and can capture static imagery, video streaming and webcam activity when activated. The intuitive interface for RADAR gives safeguarding staff a visual picture of incidents in real-time, both during and outside school hours on any supported device.†What is its impact on teens, and have you been able to research on RADAR’s effectiveness? “At Smoothwall we have been building up our monitoring and filtering offerings and incorporating anonymous statistic gathering; these are fed into the Smoothwall Insights programme which informs our product marketing and direction. Although we cannot separate out RADAR from overall monitoring, we do notice interesting trends across the Smoothwall estate.†Is RADAR for use on personal devices or school devices? “RADAR is software based so is designed for use on school owned devices, although with RADAR Lite we are able to plug into the Smoothwall web filter, meaning that we can monitor web traffic and search engine usage without the need to install software.†Does RADAR work with all social media apps? “For Windows and macOS, RADAR monitors all keystrokes typed and content viewed on the screen, including applications such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.†Do teens need to give their permission for RADAR to be used on their devices? “In certain circumstances students do need to give their permission for RADAR to be used, although schools usually include this within their Acceptable Use Policy and don’t allow the use of school resources without accepting it. However, since September 2016, The Department for Education has stipulated that all schools should have appropriate filtering and monitoring in place.†How much would RADAR typically cost for a secondary school to implement? “RADAR is delivered as Software-as-a-Service therefore there are no servers to manage and maintain keeping implementation costs down to a minimum. Deploying the RADAR software is usually achieved with group policy, SCCM, or an MDM solution, all of which are familiar to schools meaning that the software can be rolled out by a school without needing additional resourcing. RADAR is licensed on a per-pupil basis and there are price breaks for all sizes of schools to keep it very competitive within the market.†See smoothwall.com for more safeguarding options.
How online learning can help teachers’ professional development
Ask any teacher and they will tell you that ‘teaching’ is just part of it. There is the responsibility to safeguard children in their care, create an atmosphere conducive to learning, the need to adequately prepare students for examinations… There’s marking, teacher-parent meetings, lesson planning… the list goes on. And on… With so many responsibilities, professional development can seem more like a ‘nice-to-have’ than a feasible commitment. But if Headteachers want to commit their staff to a philosophy of professional development; one that is adaptive and flexible and very much grounded in the practical needs of the classroom, online learning can be a useful, affordable, and measurable way of training staff. It can be standardised across the board for universally important subjects or adopted for more specialist matters. FutureLearn, the social learning platform owned by The Open University, has long allied itself with teachers. Partnered with leading universities and industry bodies, it offers a host of courses that teachers may find useful in helping meet their professional development needs. To see all the courses available, look at the Professional Development for Teachers page on FutureLearn. There you will find courses like the University of East Anglia’s ‘Professional Development for Early Career Teachers’, which helps junior teachers navigate the early stages of their career. The course offers advice and support on improving teaching skills and juggling workloads, and invites newly qualified teachers to reflect on and identify professional development needs. Subjects like behaviour management strategies, pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning, and ways to prioritise workload are all explored. The course can serve as a useful adjunct to physical in-school training, or the very basis of such training. Managing Behaviour for Learning is also accounted for. On FutureLearn, the National Stem Learning Centre has a course dedicated to the subject as part of its STEM teaching programme. The course is applicable to all teachers and explores how individual behaviour influences students, how to control emotional responses and how to interact with students. There are techniques for developing consistency in managing behaviour, recognising positive behaviour and building trust in the classroom. Through the experienced teachers delivering the course, learners will be encouraged to actively reflect on their practice and share experiences as part of the course discussions. Also available are more specialised courses, like the University of Bath’s Good Practice in Autism Education course which looks at the many modalities of schooling for students with autism, including general special schools, autism-specific special schools, autism units within mainstream schools and being in a mainstream classroom.It asks what are the benefits and challenges of these different types of education? What are the implications for inclusion? And what constitutes good practice within autism education? It is easy to sound preachy and somewhat out of touch with the realities of the classroom when talking about professional development — and certainly nobody wishes to undermine the demands already being placed on teachers. But so long as Headteachers and key decision makers in schools have a multitude of competing priorities, it will often be challenging to be fully across everything. Nobody can be the eyes and ears of every classroom, much as they may like to be. Empowering teachers to invest in their own career development is possible however, and online learning offers teachers the means to do this in a way that does not conflict with their many and varied competing priorities. Article by: Nigel Smith, Managing Director, Courses and Learning, FutureLearn
Can mindfulness tackle the mental health epidemic?
World Mental Health Day on 10 October gives us all an opportunity to reflect on whether we are really doing enough to support young people and mental health in an ever-changing world. The statistics are alarming: every year one adult in four, along with one child in 10, will suffer a mental health issue. Half of all mental illness begins by the age of 14, but most cases go undetected and untreated. In fact, according to UK estimates only a quarter of those with mental health problems undergo ongoing treatment. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15-29 year olds and is the single biggest killer of men under the age of 45. Helping young people to grow up healthy, happy and resilient is the responsibility of everyone, not least schools, where there is a growing recognition of the importance of building mental resilience from the earliest age possible to cope with the challenges of today’s world. In my experience, for young people suffering from mental health there is a lot bubbling under the surface before symptoms appear, and it is their inability to communicate their feelings that results in actions such as self-harming or even worse. Our approach with 1decision is to support teachers in exploring mindfulness. Children from the age of five have the opportunity to recognise and name a range of emotions including worry, anger and grief, and develop an understanding of their physical effects, distinguishing between those that feel pleasant and those that feel unpleasant or uncomfortable. Within the topics on our feelings and emotions module, there are many opportunities to help students gain the skills to manage their emotions positively and to understand how to seek help in the early stages. Another factor in mental health is the 24/7 online world. When I was at school, any arguments or disagreements were mostly left at the school gate. Now these continue online, often long into the evening. Young people’s likeability today is based on how they feel about themselves and what others say about them on social media – their confidence can be ripped out so easily. Helping children understand the golden rules for staying safe online, and how their online activity can affect others, is another issue we tackle. 1decision has developed supportive materials for teachers suited to 21st century children to explore all of these areas and support children in our media-dominated society. Yet more work needs to be done to build mental resilience. An approach to promoting and protecting adolescent health can help: working on areas such as healthy diet and understanding why we need a healthy mind are crucial. This is where many schools can and do make difference. The outcome of the Department for Education consultation on Relationships, Sex and Health Education, which closes on 7 November, should give schools more direction on this issue. But prevention of mental health begins with better, and earlier, understanding of pupils needs. Hayley Sherwood is creator of 1decision, part of Headway learning resources. For more information on World Mental HealthDay click here.
YHA appoints new Director of Strategy and Engagement
Youth charity YHA (England and Wales) has appointed Anita Kerwin-Nye as the Director of Strategy and Engagement. A highly accomplished charity leader with over 20 years of experience in the sector, Anita will take up her role on 1 November 2018. Within her new role, she will further develop YHA’s charitable focus, partnerships and programmes and strategic communications. Anita has worked closely with YHA for a number of years through her work across education, charities, including the Learning Away consortium of which YHA is a member. Founder of Every Child Should, a campaign to ensure all children can access a rich and rounded set of experiences by the time they are 18, Anita is recognised as a national leader in inclusion and access. Welcoming her to YHA, James Blake Chief Executive commented: “Anita will bring energy, insight and impetus to our work in a number of areas, including the development of our charitable focus, partnerships and programmes and strategic communications. “Her knowledge of YHA through her work with the Learning Away consortium, means she is well placed to drive forward YHA’s ambition to be the leading youth charity, providing life enhancing travel and adventure to young people who need it most.†Anita added: “I am delighted to join YHA at such a formative time in its 88-year history. The opportunity to play a key role in shaping YHA’s next fundraising steps to support more children and young people is one I very much welcome “I believe YHA can play a fundamental role in ensuring that all children born today have outdoor experiences at every stage of their childhood and the associated health, wellbeing and life skills benefits.†Anita is James Blake’s first senior appointment to the companies Executive Team since he took over the leadership of the charity last year. Keen to expand YHA’s charitable impact, Anita will take a key role in working alongside James to reach more young people across England and Wales to deliver measurable life changing experiences. www.yha.org.uk
Dyslexia Awareness Week – how to get involved
Dyslexia Awareness Week kicks off today and runs from 1-7 October. Here, we take a look at some of the events planned by the British Dyslexia Association (BDA) and find out about the organisation’s year-round work… Go Green for Dyslexia (sponsored by Nessy Learning) To kick off the week, on Monday 1 October, organisations and schools including M Shed and Brunel’s SS Great Britain in Bristol and Cardiff Bay Barrage will be lighting up green for Go Green for Dyslexia along with 3,000 children in 150 schools donning green for the day. The activity is originated and organised by Nessy Learning who have been making fun, educational software for children since 1999 and offer the complete dyslexia aware solution with a suite of multisensory products aimed at making learning to read, write and spell fun. No Pens Day (sponsored by Touch-type Read and Spell) Every year, new technology continues to reduce the times we need to communicate our thoughts using a pen. With writing using a traditional pen and paper being something that people with dyslexia find particularly difficult, advances in assistive technology make life much easier – these range from increased access to laptops and tablets to dictation software and communicating using totally visual methods like video. No Pens Day celebrates how far we have come with communication technology by encouraging teachers to get their classes to abandon pens for the day and embrace technology alternatives. Local awareness events Throughout the week, local organisations are hosting events to raise awareness among communities of 21st century dyslexia – including at schools like Newcastle College and Kings Norton Girls’ School, at local authorities Wiltshire and Leicestershire County Councils and organisations like the London Grid for Learning. People will be sharing their events and experience through the week using the hashtag #21stcenturydyslexia. Dyslexia Awareness Week Awards Nominations are open through the week for the annual awards. The BDA is looking for pupils, parents, educational professionals and organisations to make nominations to the four categories at this year’s awards. Free Dyslexia Awareness Week webinars The BDA will be running free webinars during this week, including Realising Potential Through Enabling Technologies by Dr Abi James. Dr James’ webinar will explore why technology can help children and adults with dyslexia. Dr James will introduce some of the best technologies available in schools and the workplace, and discuss the ways to utilise them. To register for this webinar and others click here. About The British Dyslexia Association The BDA aims to bring about a dyslexia friendly society. Since its creation over 40 years ago the BDA has worked tirelessly to develop a network of national and international support for individuals who are dyslexic including the development of local dyslexia groups that work with the BDA to provide parents, educators and individuals with dyslexia access to services, training, information and support. Through its activities the BDA strives to achieve its key goals: To build awareness of dyslexia in all sectors of society. Early identification of dyslexic difficulties for all in society. Availability of effective and appropriate teaching provision for all children and adults with dyslexia. Availability of appropriate assessments for all children and adults with dyslexia. Reasonable adjustments for individuals with dyslexia within all sectors of society (including education, employment, training and the criminal justice services). Information is available for individuals with dyslexia across the age ranges and sectors, and for those who support them including effective strategies to help overcome dyslexia related difficulties, and how to maximise the strengths of those with dyslexia. The training activities of the BDA are a crucial part of their work. For those within an education setting there is a wide range of training from dyslexia awareness and identification through to teaching literacy and classroom support strategies. For employers training is available to assist them in implementing reasonable adjustments for their employees with dyslexia and strategies to empower those individuals. Training is delivered through open courses for individuals, onsite bespoke training for groups and summer schools. BDA training events help to raise awareness of dyslexia in all age ranges and sectors of society. The BDA organises around 400 face-to-face training events per year, with excellent feedback; each one bringing us closer to a dyslexia friendly society. In 2015, the BDA launched its eLearning platform the purpose of which was to enable a wider audience to be able to access high quality training in dyslexia support. ELearning enables the BDA to bring quality training and expertise to individuals who would otherwise be unable to access this due to factors such as time and cost constraints or geographical location. Individuals can work through the modules at their own pace and also when and where it is convenient for them to do so. They can be confident in the knowledge that support with their learning and development is available from highly skilled and experienced dyslexia specialists. For more information on the Dyslexia Awareness Week Awards, click here.
Outstanding school to become first Academy in Frank Field Education Trust
Wilmslow Grange Community Primary School in Handforth, Cheshire, has been approved to become the lead school in the Frank Field Education Trust (FFET). FFET is chaired by well-respected, long standing local MP for Birkenhead and champion of social justice, Frank Field MP. Its ethos is to promote social justice through outstanding educational provision to improve the life chances of all children and young people, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds, so that they fulfil their potential. Wilmslow Grange will become the first Academy in and is rated Outstanding in all areas by Ofsted. Its results are amongst the top-1000 in the country with a national profile for curriculum development and the inclusion of pupils with Autistic Spectrum Condition and other Special Educational Needs. Wilmslow Grange staff will assist schools that subsequently join FFET with this expertise. It is anticipated that FFET will be announcing the conversion of subsequent Outstanding schools imminently. Tom Quinn, Chief Executive Officer of FFET, said, “We welcome Wilmslow Grange joining FFET. We are honoured that such an Outstanding school should become the Lead school in our Trust and we look forward to them supporting subsequent schools to offer exciting, high-achieving curricula whilst retaining an inclusive ethos.†Mark Unwin, Headteacher of Wilmslow Grange, said, “We are very pleased to be joining the Frank Field Education Trust and find that their high-expectations and desire for a rich, exciting educational experience for all children accords very closely with our own. We believe that our expertise can assist schools within the Trust and promote social justice for the most disadvantaged schools and families in the North West in line with FFET’s vision and we look forward to an exciting next stage of development for Wilmslow Grange.†About the Frank Field Education Trust The Frank Field Education Trust (FFET) is chaired by well-respected, long standing local MP for Birkenhead and long-term champion of social justice, Frank Field MP. The Trust’s ethos is in line with that of Frank himself; it will promote social justice through outstanding educational provision to improve the life chances of all children and young people, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds, so that they fulfil their potential. FFET welcomes schools sharing this ethos to join the Trust and hopes a number will do so over the course of this academic year, with all growth carefully managed and in the best interest of pupils. For more information on the Frank Field Education Trust school, see wilmslowgrange.cheshire.sch.uk
New look Quizalize automates differentiated learning
New look Quizalize provides students with support and extension activities after they finish quizzes, plus these are tailored to their level of understanding and is sent directly to their devices. Quizalize, the award winning gamified formative assessment tool from UK edtech company Zzish – known for its real-time teacher dashboards, has optimised the programme to make it easier for teachers to differentiate their teaching and, for the first time, measure the precise effectiveness of teaching resources at improving student mastery of topics. Both Quizalize and Zzish was created by former Google product manager Charles Wiles, who has a PhD in AI from Cambridge University, and who was inspired to quit his day job and develop the platform five years ago when his teenage son was struggling at school in the bottom sets. Mixed ability learning made easy Teachers’ unsustainable workloads have made headline news for many years, with previous research showing that over 70% of primary and secondary school teachers have pulled ‘all nighters’ to prepare for lessons. The difficulties in teachers sustaining mixed ability or ‘differentiated learning’ methods tailored to each individual student’s needs have also been discussed among professional communities on influential teacher platforms, with lack of time cited as the main problem for successful implementation. Quizalize’s parent company, Zzish, has now optimised the programme’s “Virtual Teaching Assistant†capabilities to automate the processes for differentiated learning. It is expected to significantly save teachers’ time on lesson preparation, results analysis and management of tailored, mastery-based exercises. As well as the capability to identify instantly “who needs help, what they need help with, and how they can be helped†– teachers can now also pre-assign tailored follow-up exercises once students have completed an interactive game or assessment that measures their mastery of a topic. These assessments come as two interactive games – a basketball game called HOOPS and a First To Reach The Flag game. Depending on how students perform on completion of the interactive assessment, these pre-assigned follow-up activities set by the teacher are automatically activated to reinforce mastery over subjects. Levels of mastery are divided into three bands: those achieving 50% or less in the test; those achieving 50-80%, and those achieving over 80%. These pre-assigned follow-up activities can contain links to learning resources, such as tutorial videos on YouTube, practice resources such as PDF worksheets, and extension resources, such as pages on web sites explaining advanced concepts. Each help students at different levels progress and reach the next level of mastery. After students have used or completed the follow-up activity, they are then automatically re-quizzed with the same interactive game in order to measure their new mastery levels and the system then updates data on the effectiveness of each resource in improving learning. Measuring effectiveness of learning resources When assigning differentiated follow-up activities, the integrated search engine provides recommendations for the most effective learning resources for each level of student mastery. The system learns and improves its recommendations as more and more teachers use it, particularly highlighting used resources that have proven to have a high ‘improvement efficacy’ in students. As other teachers in the Quizalize community use specific resources to improve the mastery levels of their students, data is aggregated and the system calculates and provides a predicted percentage improvement in student scores that each resource will deliver when used with students of a particular mastery level. Post-assessment Quizalize also gives multiple views and performance breakdowns on both a class and individual basis using simple bar charts. The views have titles such as “who needs help†and “what they need help with†making It easy for teachers to get the insight they need in real-time so they don’t need to print or download anything if they don’t want to. All the data is safe in the cloud. Charles Wiles, founder of Zzish and Quizalize commented: “Differentiated instruction endeavours to address the individual needs and abilities of every student in a group so that everyone has the best chance of learning. That’s great in theory, but in practice we hear that teachers are struggling to implement this because they crucially lack time. By optimising the capabilities of our Zzish Hub “Virtual Teaching Assistant†that powers Quizalize, we have streamlined this process and automated it so that any assessment app, including Quizalize, can be genuinely useful to teachers on both the lesson preparation, grading and mastery front.†He continued: “We are the first platform to measure “improvement efficacy†of learning resources, and the first platform to measure resource efficacy for students grouped into different levels of mastery. We believe this will help teachers make better decisions around which resources to use for differentiated learning, and it will also drive the quality of resources for teaching and learning to a higher level. We will continue our work to incorporate AI into our systems in order to improve the platform’s predictions of “improvement efficacyâ€, further refining our predictions for how each individual student will improve for each learning resource.†Zzish’s technology is part of the real-time formative assessment movement – a new generation of edtech that works in the classroom itself allowing teachers to make more effective and more timely interventions. The Zzish Hub “Virtual Teaching Assistant†is a universal platform and gives any digital educational application that ‘plugs in’ the ability to provide teachers with real-time insight into student and class performance. Moreover its efficacy based recommendations helps teachers quickly discover the best apps and resources. Such technology is finally demonstrating the power of edtech and has been proven to improve end of year assessment scores by 10% in six months in a group of grade 6 science students in the US. Today, 125,000 teachers and 2 million students have signed up to Quizalize. Quizalize was a finalist in the Teach Secondary’s Technology & Innovation Awards 2016 for its role in improving standards of teaching and learning at Key Stages 3 and 4 during the 2015/16 academic year. It is also a finalist in last year’s E-Assessment Awards for Best Use Of Formative Assessment and was selected by the
How to write CVs for teachers – With CV Template
Caroline Cafferty, Operations Director at justteachers – specialists in matching school staffing needs with the best available teachers, teaching assistants and SEN staff – gives her top tips on how to create a winning CV and write an excellent personal statement to support an application. Competition for teaching jobs is fierce! Many teachers do not realise that an effective CV can make the difference between being shortlisted for the job of their dreams and not making it past the first stage of recruitment. Often NQTs and graduating teachers struggle the most because they may have not written a CV before and they feel they do not have enough experience to make their CV stand out – but this certainly is not the case as schools and agencies always need new recruits. By following these guidelines you can ensure you are giving yourself the best possible chance of success. An application form is simply not enough to get you noticed. Having a teaching CV will enable you not only to sell yourself but to market yourself actively to schools, agencies and potential employers. It also requires relatively little time investment – great while you are still completing your studies, or already busy working full-time. You need a dedicated teaching CV because: • It will draw out your experience to date, what your achievements have been, what you have accomplished and where you have developed and improved over time • You can market yourself to prospective schools and agencies quickly • You can set yourself apart from other applications – it is your chance to shine! • As a graduating teacher, you can actively seek employment before you graduate by sending your CV to agencies who are constantly proactively searching for suitable teaching candidates • A dedicated teaching CV can increase your chances of securing the position you want • It will enable you to attend recruitment agency events throughout the year, allowing you to meet with several hiring schools in one evening CV writing top tips for teachers Follow these basic tips to ensure your CV stands out: Font – you may love Comic Sans 16 and think you’ll stand out but your future employers won’t. It is recommended to use Times New Roman for hard copies and Arial for electronic copies. Use the same font throughout your CV and only use black. Go easy on bold and italics – use bold for section headings and italics for job titles. Make sure your formatting is consistent and, above all, easy to read. Length – it should be no more than two pages. Remember always to be truthful and honest but in a concise and interesting manner. Punctuation and grammar – This is the most straightforward step yet easy to slip up on. Do not be complacent, and make sure you and a friend proofread your CV before sending it to a school or teaching agency. What to remember when writing a CV for a teaching position • When writing a CV you should put yourself in the hirer’s shoes; does your CV confirm you are qualified to fulfil the job? Does your experience meet the job specification? Most importantly, will the person reading it want to find out more by inviting you to interview? • Many education staffing agencies will provide free support with writing and updating your CV as your career develops. What sections to include in your teaching CV Personal Statement When writing your CV it is important to include a personal statement. This will allow you to personalise your message to prospective schools or agencies. Agencies often have excellent knowledge of local schools and existing relationships with head teachers so will be able to advise you on how best to tailor your personal statement to a specific school or role. It should be no more than one short paragraph so do not try to fit in everything that you have studied or all your achievements. • Have your personal statement proofread to ensure there are no spelling or grammar mistakes • Tell the school what skills and extracurricular opportunities you can you bring • Show you have a passion for teaching • Briefly give evidence of your teaching successes, where you bring added value and, if applicable, where you have helped raise attainment • Teaching Qualification – This is typically a PGCE or Bachelor of Education (B. Ed.) state your start and finish dates, the college or university where you are studying and, if relevant, a brief overview of the course. • Degree – if you have studied another subject then provide details in the same way as your teaching qualification and link the degree to relevant aspects of teaching. • Additional qualifications – only include recent qualifications that are relevant to the role. Career Summary State the roles, schools and dates in your employment history, regardless of your level of experience. Provide a brief summary of specific teaching responsibilities, and highlight achievements and any extra responsibility you were given and extra-curricular activities you undertook. If relevant, include any techniques and methods you used to teach and control your class effectively. References In line with the Department of Education’s ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’, you will need to supply two referees. One of these must be from your most recent teaching post or placement. Make sure you inform your referees that they will be contacted. Aside from being polite, it will ensure that they are returned in a timely manner. Make sure you also include the following in your application: • Any other teaching experience (e.g. sports coaching, summer camps or youth groups) • Relevant voluntary experience • Any interests you may have that are relevant to teaching • Skills that will be useful in the role (e.g. leadership, IT and languages) Get your free CV template from  justteachers. About justteachers justteachers is a leading supplier of teachers, nursery nurses and support staff into schools, colleges and nurseries nationwide. Its continued expansion reflects the high level of service it