Some unsolicited advice for applicants for Head of History (and other) jobs
I’ve been somewhat itinerant in my career. This is my 12th year of teaching (having begun my NQT year in 2008/2009), and I’m on my fifth school. I’ve held a range of additional roles in my career alongside my core History (and, for a time, Politics) teaching positions:
· Work-Related Learning Leader
· Joint EPQ Co-ordinator
· Acting Head of Year 11
· Associate Senior Leader
· Assistant Headteacher: Head of Sixth Form
· Curriculum Leader for History
I’ve also applied for lots of other jobs besides. I think in total I’ve interviewed for jobs at fifteen separate schools in my teaching career plus I’ve interviewed for a few internal promotions as well. You might think that this is a sign of weakness on my part — perhaps evidence of a lack of commitment to see a job through, or over-ambition or disloyalty or a lack of decisiveness in terms of plotting my career path. You might be right although at the time I’ve always felt like I had good reasons for going for the jobs I’ve gone for — either through personal circumstances (a need to relocate) as well as both voluntary and forced professional reasons. I never thought I’d be someone that’d move around a lot as I generally don’t like change very much, but for a variety of reasons this is the way it is.
What I will say is that I think I’m a much better teacher for having moved around a bit and the experience has done me a lot of good, even if it didn’t always feel like it at the time in some cases. That’s not to say everyone should do that — I think it’s usually a good sign if a school has a few staff who are ‘lifers’ there — that know the community and the traditions of the school. It usually says something positive if people want to stay in a place although sometimes people can get ‘stuck’ in a school and that isn’t very helpful either.
Looking at the ‘interview: success’ ratio I’m certainly not one to say that I’m some kind of interview whizz, however I thought that perhaps people might find some of my experience useful around applying for positions of responsibility and what you might do to get your foot in the door. This post is based around some advice I’ve recently given to a younger teacher interested in what they could do to be ready to apply for a Head of History post in the future, but might be of benefit to colleagues in all sorts of positions in their career.
If you are a less experienced colleague looking for that first Head of Department/Head of Year role
1. Grabbing opportunities for responsibilities in school that come up. Depending on your context, the opportunities might be small (e.g. writing schemes of work in the department or leading on a key stage) or they might be substantial — e.g. assistant head of department, assistant head of year, PSHCE or whatever (PSHCE — or Careers in my case — by the way is a great way to get a ‘foot in both camps’ in terms of Head of Department or Pastoral career routes). Aim to seek these out where you can and you feel they are things that would suit you — to get into a HoD role you may well find you need some experience of leading something first. Mentoring a student teacher is another good example because then you’ll have had to manage an adult and some of the questions you get at interview will ask about the challenges of this. If the opportunity to do NPQML comes up — then do that (even though I’m not persuaded it’s actually massively useful in preparing you for the job, it’s a good notch to have on your CV that’s widely understood by employers).
2. Further to that, and you may well be doing this already, take a look at existing job adverts for HoD roles so you can get a sense of what kinds of things they are looking for.
3. Data — this is an area I think a lot of teachers stepping up to a HoD post can feel uncomfortable with (particularly in a subject like History) — most interviews for a HoD job will require you to analyse and be comfortable with data of some description. Some schools are heavier on it than others. The data you are most likely to encounter on interview is attainment and progress for the subject (for example, how well the department grades at GCSE compare with some kind of national benchmark) as well finer detail that may look at the performance of groups of students (e.g. Higher, Middle and Lower prior attaining; Disadvantaged; Boys v Girls) as well as the performance of students in different teaching groups so you can compare teacher performance. If you are able to access some of this sort of data in your current school to have a look at that can be useful but might be off limits depending on how fussy they are. If you have SISRA you can probably see most things you’d likely encounter on interview. What they then normally do is ask you questions like — “What trends stand out about the data that are positive/negative?” “What actions would you take in light of this data?” — pretty standard stuff but if you’ve not seen any of it before or are uncomfortable about the prospect of dealing with data then being prepared is important. I know data is becoming downplayed to an extent now, but I think it’s naïve to think that it’s something you can ignore as a Head of Department and most schools fully expect you to be confident in dealing with this.
4. Do your ‘scouting’ on the prospective school — Again this is fairly obvious but it’s really important to do your homework on the school you are applying for. Reading their most recent OFSTED report is key especially the actions for improvement that have been suggested. Check their website to see what you can find out about curriculum/exam board options if it’s not obvious from the application pack. I’d also take a look at (in line with Point 3) information about the school available via the Compare School Performance website/league tables. This will give you their Progress 8/Attainment 8 as well as all sorts of information about subject entries/EBacc rate/P8 per ‘bucket’ etc. You should probably be familiar with this information about your own school as they may well ask you about that as well. You want your ‘scouting’ to shine through in your letter of application — I usually tend to lead off my letters with a paragraph trying to address or identify the issues the school might be facing before then getting into how I could help with some of that.
5. Linked to point 4, if you can do a ‘pre-visit’ I really recommend this as well. A lot of schools increasingly offer candidates for prospective middle or senior leader jobs the opportunity to visit the school in advance of making the application. I’ve done this for three separate posts — for two of them I then got the job and the third one I actually decided not to apply because I was so unimpressed by things that were said on my tour of the school! I think this is really important and helpful because you can get a chance to meet with your potential line manager and really ask questions about the state of the department. It really helped me when applying for this current job to dig beneath the ‘marketing’ in the application pack to know what the issues were so I could then tailor my letter around that. Visiting also shows you are a serious candidate and they’ll be more likely to pay attention to your application in the pile that they’ll receive. Usually you’d have to go and do this after school as I don’t think most current employers would let you out in the middle of the day (but some might if there’s no cover involved and especially if there’s some mutual understanding about why you’re looking for a new role).
6. Be aware that the school will do scouting on you as well — if you’re on twitter for example people are going to look — just check through your timeline and make sure you’re comfortable with what a prospective employer might see. Does it send out the right impression you want to give of yourself. It’d be lovely if schools were fine with people being really candid and honest all the time but some aren’t (and that is not unjustifiable in some cases). Some selective deleting of things before you apply or express interest in a position might be a wise move.
7. Definitely think about the type of school or department you’d like to work in — do your research around local schools so you’ve got an idea of what types of places you’d be happy to go to. Do you want to go somewhere that’s already successful, or are you more interested in a ‘turnaround’ type job? Do you want somewhere that is known for a ‘warm-strict’ behaviour approach, or more of a progressive-type Restorative Justice philosophy? Is autonomy or consistency more valuable to you? If you get a chance to visit any on some kind of CPD opportunity or networking then do it! I know for example which schools I’d jump at if a job came up without too much hesitation, and which ones I’d avoid like the plague, and which ones where I might be uncertain but want to find out more. For me, I want a school that has a serious behaviour policy and/or good standards of behaviour in general; a school that takes curriculum development reasonably seriously; a school where staff aren’t leaving in droves because of either leadership/behaviour problems; a school where people have a sense of humour and take themselves seriously but not too seriously, and a school where I wouldn’t be subordinate to some sort of Head of Faculty where I know I’ll have the autonomy to run the department how I want. That’s partly because of my wider experience — you might feel differently about some of those things — e.g. you might want a first subject leader role to work under a Head of Faculty to provide you with closer mentoring and support and a bit of a cushion in the likely event you don’t get everything right first time.
8. Overall remember that the school is probably more important than the role — I’ve definitely made this mistake before, going after a particular job rather than thinking about whether I actually wanted to work in the school. You have to be able to see yourself working in a place and being happy — if you’re not happy then the job (which is already demanding and time consuming) can become really overwhelming and I’ve seen that break some phenomenal people that have been lost to the profession as a result. Don’t rush to be a HoD because you feel like that is what you have to do (I definitely did that a bit with the Assistant Head role). If you’re happy in your current place then you can be a bit choosy and that is always a nice position to be in (probably helps you interview better too if you feel like you don’t have to get the job — it certainly does for me). It also helps you to be really honest about yourself, what you believe in and what you want if selected for interview. If you are applying from a position of relative inexperience then that’s fine — just be really clear about what training and development needs you’d like support with. You don’t want them to feel like they’re getting something they’re not, and you need to find out whether they can support you in the way you want. The old adage ‘if in doubt, tell the truth’ is an obvious one but so many candidates try and bluster and big up things they haven’t done and it usually gets found out.
What about if you are trying to climb back after a ‘career glitch’?
I went from being an Assistant Headteacher to a mainscale teacher and it was a pretty bad beat all things considered. When I then decided I wanted to try to rejuvenate my career ambitions I was left with some significant self-doubt — it doesn’t take a genius to look at a person’s job history and identify that someone has had a problem somewhere along the line if you go from SLT to mainscale. You feel that people will perceive you as a failure or as not good enough especially against that army of people you perceive mainly in your mind who have a spotless track record. I was fortunate in that my failure came after a period of prolonged success in a previous, highly regarded school so I could always offset that setback. But I appreciate if you’re newer to the profession and don’t have that to fall back on it might be a bit harder.
As it happens these fears have been constructed by me more than they were a reality. From my point of view, being dead honest about what happened in that SLT role has been important both about my own mistakes and where I feel I was let down by others — I think it’s important to own your mistakes though. No one likes a whiner (even it might seem justified). Secondly I think my story is probably not uncommon in the world of education these days sadly and so I think people are used to dealing with candidates who have had an up and down career journey. Thirdly I’ve gone through a lot of reflection to try to evaluate how I can improve in the future and hopefully that’s come through in subsequent interviews or pre-visits that I’ve had. Fourthly, there is perhaps something to be said for someone who has experienced failure before. I’m a big sports fan and there are lots of examples of coaches and managers who have failed in one place before going on to achieve spectacular success elsewhere (Bill Belichick, six-time Super Bowl winning Head Coach of the New England Patriots is one of the many people who can count ‘failed Cleveland Browns Head Coach’ on their CV, as a case in point). Surviving setbacks does make you a bit stronger and it makes you hopefully a bit more empathetic of others who are having a tough time. It also helps you to define your values and your red lines as a manager perhaps more clearly.
So in this case my advice would be to be open and honest about what happened — schools are pretty good as sussing out BS (they would be from me anyway as I’m a hopeless liar with a rubbish poker face). If another school doesn’t like that then it’s probably not the right place for you anyway — no consolation if you’re desperate for a job but a fair enough point nonetheless.
Something else that you find beneficial is to find some support via a professional coach — I’d particular recommend it if that person wasn’t a teacher to give you more perspective. I sought out some coaching during one of my periods of being at a crossroads and it was really useful to me in terms of helping to clarify my own thinking.
To sum up…
There’s a lot of tremendous opportunities out there in teaching — but do be a bit picky. Also, beware of the fallacy of the ‘dream job’ — maybe this is just me but I’m not sure such a thing exists. I definitely thought it did and then was rather quickly disabused of that notion. Or, if it does, that perhaps it is a dream job only for so long until circumstances change and you ought to be mindful of that.
I’m very happy to offer any advice (for what it’s worth) on aspects of job-hunting for teachers — in particular Secondary History teachers — please feel free to contact via twitter @HistoryKss
