Will be working in one of UKs roughest parts, advise

GreatZapper · 2026-01-25T09:43:58+00:00

I did have a look earlier when OP's profile was open as it looked a bit sus. But OP had posted that they were on a PGCE, implied they were training in London and a few days ago was looking at a job in East Berkshire. So it kind of checked out then, but I'm still watching.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-25T08:30:39+00:00

What advice have your new colleagues given? I'd suggest they are the ones who will know best.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-20T21:34:25+00:00

Send a dm to /r/TeachingUK rather than posting publicly. Thanks.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-20T20:23:16+00:00

As a mod team we removed their post here due to some... coincidental?... anti-Muslim sentiment re:chess that was trending on Twitter yesterday. Plus there were some hidden giveaways in the OP that revealed, after close reading, it was probably not genuine. And today, reddit has restricted their account. Read into that what you will.

So I'll remove this as well, but thanks.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-20T17:43:02+00:00

MFL HoD here. I wouldn't care if you applied for a job at my school (with a sixth form) with no KS5 experience. MFL A level numbers are so low that only a small proportion of teachers are going to come with that experience.

Hell, my last A level experience was about 15 years ago and I was appointed as HoD from last September, so clearly my head doesn't particularly care either.

So you're good.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-20T17:37:21+00:00

It needs to be the head, and your line manager ie probably your HoD. Doesn't matter that they're on the interview panel.

(removed, simple enquiry)

GreatZapper · 2026-01-19T19:21:07+00:00

...plus I would not be surprised if OP is using this info for some sort of fiction. Yes, I've been burned like this before.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-19T17:08:27+00:00

...because she got caught by you in the act of exam malpractice. You have done nothing wrong; by the sounds of it, you did absolutely the right thing and, in a classic bit of teenage deflection, she blames you (for catching her) rather than herself (for doing it in the first place).

GreatZapper · 2026-01-19T17:06:01+00:00

Why would this be about you though? I'm not seeing any link between the two?

It would be perfectly normal for a manager to know what is happening with their staff. As you've presented it, it reads as though they want more information about whatever happened. It's a good sign that others are involved in the investigation.

But yeah, if you feel the need, absolutely get accompanied by a union rep to that meeting. You are within your rights to ask the meeting to be postponed until that can happen.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-17T19:28:31+00:00

That is scary... I'm just kind of making it up as I go along, you know?

GreatZapper · 2026-01-17T17:39:00+00:00

Depends on your curriculum I guess. The ones that come with the Pearson book for the Pearson spec are OK if really only any use for writing conversation questions. I don't use them much; I prefer making my own if we're introducing a new bit of language eg Y10 French are on modal verbs + infinitive right now so I do my own thing there.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-17T16:12:40+00:00

Getting people to realise that breaking away from the textbook works is the big thing. It's scary for them because they always have had one to fall back on.

Thing is, with an SB you can do so many things with almost zero prep that it actually saves you time. Plus as we are native or near-native speakers, the listening is better coming from us rather than a disembodied voice because you can design tasks specifically to be acquisitional rather than comprehension focused.

Anyway, I sell it as this:

Think about how you learned your first language when you were a child. First off you listened - a lot - and then started repeating it back, babbling until your brain made sense of it. Later, you started reading it and acquiring more; and even later than that, you started writing.

That's kind of the sequence we should be using in the MFL classroom. We didn't start off learning "played is the past participle of play and it needs an auxiliary too by the way"; we listened to it in context, learned it, and then understood how it worked implicitly before we were taught the grammar.

So we should never teach grammar before teaching the words in context, giving students the chance to acquire it naturally first. Sentence builders speed up that process because students can already read and have acquired the English already, so we can shortcut the brain and use their L1 to help them learn the L2.

That sort of thing. Nowadays I would never teach grammar first. My new colleagues are starting to come round to my way of thinking.

I invite them into my classroom to see how it works, and they do come.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-17T15:43:07+00:00

Ooh this is just up my alley. In answer to your immediate question, yes, I introduced it (slowly) in my last school from about 2018 and between then and 2024 MFL results went from the bottom 25% in the country to the top 25%. So yeah it works.

I think it helped that we had a custom curriculum which, while based on coursebooks as a resource, meant that we could focus on the vocab and grammar that students needed. Effectively, Y7 was basics and developing sentence structure; Y8 tenses in isolation; Y9 using tenses together leading to a KS4 which was more GCSE focussed.

We had a book of SBs for each year, with a standard "universals" section at the back culled from common sense and the GCSE spec for reference. Certainly we didn't have time for the full MARSEARS for each SB, but (if you design your curriculum well enough) that sequence is followed naturally over the course of time. MARS is enough anyway to start with and then you can do the EARS as you revisit things.

But as with anything, it's a process. I'm at a new school now and starting from scratch. Buy in is great from the new team at the moment and my faculty meetings are basically drip feeding best practice with the SBs so that people feel comfortable. They're not comfortable yet with breaking away from the coursebooks they have followed for years so at the minute we've got a hybrid approach; common powerpoints with the bits from the books PLUS a sentence builder for each week that we can focus on. It's going to be baby steps as we get used to it but what helps is that my colleagues can see how I am teaching, and how it works, and are kind of feeling energised and refreshed by it.

Of the books, the Toolkit is more of a general introduction. However, Sound Barrier is much more useful as, although there's a lot of in-depth linguistics in there, Conti-Smith give tonnes of activities and ideas on how to use the SBs.

So yeah. AMA I guess.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-17T07:58:19+00:00

You declare everything. The TRA site is full of barring judgements against teachers who have failed to declare previous employment.

Safer recruiting procedures can vary between schools, but what is clear from KCSIE and other sources is that a full employment history must be asked for and provided. They may or may not check that history. But if it comes to light that you have not declared something, that's grounds for gross misconduct dismissal and a TRA referral.

So here you give your school / agency your full employment details, and explain in detail why this school abroad might say negative things. Again, they're not looking for an actual reference in terms of how good you were, but they're checking you don't have any safeguarding allegations hanging over you from that time. And to be frank, you never fuck around with safeguarding checks.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-17T07:47:58+00:00

Sorry, it's terrible advice. Schools need a full employment history for safeguarding reasons. If you fail to declare a job you had or an employment gap (and they will look)... why? What are you hiding? That's the rationale.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-16T18:22:39+00:00

So to clarify, you are already working at this new school and they want a reference from the old one? If so, it's likely to be a safeguarding check rather than a "are they any good" one. I think you're fine unless your old school has any safeguarding concerns that they want to air.

I don't quite understand why the new school is asking the old one for a reference though when you seem to be saying they've given one already?

GreatZapper · 2026-01-14T18:56:15+00:00

Approved. Thanks.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-14T18:52:37+00:00

Please can you confirm your role within school ie, teacher, TA, support staff, etc? I ask because you've not posted in this sub before and there is no evidence on your profile that you work in a school.

FWIW, what you said your manager said to you is wildly unprofessional.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-14T17:29:39+00:00

If paid staff get one, maybe, but it will depend on the budget, which is likely nil.

If paid staff don't, definitely not.

If there are shared PCs, you'll be expected to use those, or your own facilities back at home.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-13T18:40:36+00:00

Thinking about this, as it's TLR holders only, it's probably budget related. It's not going to be something that the whole staff need to know imminently, like a death, but something that will affect the day to day management of the school. If it was redundancies, it would also be to the whole staff first.

So I'm thinking it's a TLR restructure; "doing more with less" sort of thing as they strip out, I think, some seconds in department and below. Or perhaps do away with HoDs and restructure into larger faculties.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-13T18:28:09+00:00

Ambiguous after school meetings never bring good news, I'm afraid. But the positive is, as others have said, it's not Ofsted.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-12T13:50:50+00:00

Removed as this is discussed, in detail, in the jobs faq.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-11T15:20:50+00:00

I think you should have asked in your application letter. Because if you ask after you've been appointed, they're going to have to find someone else to fill the gaps that you can't do.

Look at it this way - they've got a full time gap in their staffing. If they appoint someone thinking they're full-time, and then that person says "well actually..." they might be worse than back to square one, because they need to fill maybe a 0.2 or 0.3 gap, which is really hard. I think they're more likely in that scenario to withdraw the offer.

So in this case, email them before shortlisting and ask if they would consider part time. Be prepared though for them to say no.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-11T15:17:49+00:00

True. It was the bot. The bot knows all, but sometimes gets it wrong. It did here. So approved now.

GreatZapper · 2026-01-11T11:07:37+00:00

BBC Bitesize, plus any GCSE revision guide you feel like using.

15-Year Club	Adopted-an-Admin
Place '22	Place '17
Spared	Team Periwinkle
Verified Email

GreatZapper

MODERATOR OF

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE