After the experience of the last placement in West London, I developed a hard shell. Never again would I expect at the outset that anyone employing me would have my best interests at heart. I would go in, do the job, be respectful, and then leave. Small talk would be left at the door. I can still be nice but I would only employ it in service to my job and people who were genuinely kind. The last school operated as a business and that meant that its management was not interested in the long-term welfare of its staff or retention. After realizing this, I cannot judge the staff based on my expectations of how they behaved towards me. With this thicker skin and wiser head, I have decided to go above and beyond and get qualified so as to get all the benefits that a full-time teacher enjoys.
In reaching for the stars I have signed up with two organizations, one focused on getting me into a school to do paid teacher training and another agency that pays more per day. I have worked in supply for almost two years and I am now confident enough to try and reach my goal, of becoming a fully qualified teacher and thus searched for organizations who could cater for this. I found quite a few but the one I chose was called Grad2Teach and I’m very happy so far as they have assured me that I am a strong candidate to go on to doing my QTS assessment. Their team including Chris, Alex, and Ana are very professional and best of all, down-to-earth and fully supportive of my goals while at the same time scrutinizing my experience but that is something that I wanted in order to improve my practice. They explained that at every stage of the journey, I would be supported, given constructive feedback and thus become a better educator. I finished my first interview and I’m pretty happy with how it went, I was confident and my plan was great. My feedback suggests they already had an experienced teacher for the position but because they had me booked in, they had nothing to lose and despite learning of this I am not sad, why? Well, I actually didn’t like the school and it was far from my current location but I would have accepted the position to get my QTS as the management were quality people with a clear vision for the future and anyone would love the chance to work in such an environment. The team at Grad2Teach has assured me that I have a lot to give and reassured me that I will find a school in the near future, I am quietly confident in their pursuit of work for me, and best of all I am treated like a human being.
The second decision I made was to switch to another agency for better terms and conditions. I heard about an agency called Diverse Apply by being approached on LinkedIn, their approach is long-term teacher retention and paying supply staff a fair amount. It is early days so far but they have assured me that they are trying to change the system. I will report back if I hear something more than their promises. Their Director, Jamie was the youngest Head of school ever in the UK at 27 years old and could see the challenges within the system over the course of a few years as teachers left the profession or left the country and how he could make them love their job again.
This has given me hope of a way forward but now with a thicker skin, I will reserve my enthusiasm for when I actually get a genuine opportunity. Right now, very strange is the lack of supply work, I’ve had more than a few days of no work being available. My SGP contract ensures I get paid 4 days a week regardless of the economic situation. I tried to switch to a PAYE system for salary but my agency is very sluggish in its execution as it pays them more to keep me under the umbrella system.
If you ever work for an agency ensure you ALWAYS GET PAID IN THE PAYE METHOD as this is your true salary. Don’t trust them to put your interests first. Hound them until they do what you asked them to do. I have only now got them to back pay me the rate they agreed before that they tried to deny any existence of. Another agency named Protocol messaged me with an offer of great rates to work with them when in fact the salary was identical and I immediately turned them down.
Hopefully I will have more to report on in December so until then it is goodbye for now.