Croydon is a great place to be an NQT with teaching schools at West Thornton Academy, St James the Great and Chipstead Valley Primary School all offering courses for NQTs. The Octavo Partnership also offers ‘Appropriate body’ services to Croydon schools for the statutory induction of Newly Qualified Teachers.
It is well documented that there are currently teacher shortages in London and many parts of the UK and schools in Croydon, like many other authorities, are keen that NQTs consider whether our borough might be the place to start your teaching career. The incentives being offered vary from school to school but all our schools are keen to attract new talent and make sure that NQTs are inducted well and properly supported so that they go on to have a long and successful career in teaching.
There has been a trend in recent years for some supply agencies to seek to sign up NQTs ‘en masse’ with the promise that the agency can take all the stress out of finding a job. In actual fact finding a teaching job is relatively stress free in many parts of the country at the moment, as demand outstrips supply, and in no way do trainee teachers need an agency to organise this for them. By looking at sites like croydoneducationjobs.org you can easily find available jobs and a quick phone call or e-mail normally secures a visit to the school or at the very least a chat with a senior leader to assess your suitability for the job. What supply agencies won’t tell trainee teachers is what they charge the school for making a placement. Charges to a school of £7000 (roughly one term’s salary) are not uncommon and these are payments any Headteacher or Governing Body would seek to avoid. In many cases the agencies have done very little for this money – simply made a connection with the trainee teacher, sent out a ’round robin’ e-mail flyer and got the candidate one or two interviews. The teacher gets a job they could have easily found themselves and the agency is many thousands of pounds better off. With budgets tightening Headteachers around the country are hoping that the next generation of teachers will be bold and independent and make direct connections with schools, cutting out the middle men. Recruiting, once a straightforward task that took place for a few weeks after Easter, is now a year round process with now jobs being posted all the time. In order to keep abreast of developments why not log in and sign up to be alerted to jobs that interest you. You can be assured of a warm welcome from any Croydon school advertising on this site and even if they haven’t got the ideal role for you they may well be able to ‘signpost’ you to colleagues within the borough. Take your future into your own hands!
Jolyon Roberts, Executive Headteacher, The Pegasus Academy Trust
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