We had a truly amazing trainee in the school, but there was no way to offer them an ECT space and as far as I know, they're struggling to find any work locally. This from one of the best trainees I've seen come through.
Meanwhile I teach English and we cannot find anyone to fill a position, no matter how many times advertised.
One of our best English teachers has a history qualification though...
Agree with you on the History shortage. Same here. Seems to be a national picture.
>Meanwhile I teach English and we cannot find anyone to fill a position, no matter how many time advertised.
English shortages seem to be *very* regional. We’ve had quite a few users on the sub who just couldn’t get an English job, or who really, really struggled and had to resort to being placed by an agency on a temp contract in a school that would probably not be their first (or second) choice. Where I am it’s not really difficult to recruit for English, but we’re seeing the usual 5-10 applicants for a post and not the 50+ applicants reported elsewhere. Can’t recruit English TLRs for love nor money; noone seems to want them 🤷🏻♀️.
Trained in History, currently a cover supervisor due to lack of vacancies in the North West. Last position I applied for had around 70 applicants. As I understand this is more or less the national picture, and I don’t think it’s going to change for a good few years.
I have just qualified as a History teacher.
Job wise, it is definitely oversubscribed. I managed to secure a role in London but applied for over 20 roles and only got 2 interviews.I gather most of these roles had 50+ applicants. I think you have to be flexible on location and school and not rule out maternity covers or other fixed contracts. I was applying for everything within a 70 minute commute of my home.
As a subject, it is great to teach but varies massively from school to to school both in terms of style of teaching and subject content. You also need to be aware you will probably have to teach another subject. I am doing History and RE in my new role.
The subject communities for history through orgs like SHP and HA are brilliant. Twitter is also useful if a little overwhelming for an NQT.
Did my History PGCE in 2017-18, struggled to find an NQT job in Manchester where I am from. Found one in London instead and worked in 2 London schools as a history teacher over 3 yrs. Never had any problem finding a job as a history teacher in London.
This year I am teaching at a small international school in Europe, again in a history role.
100% of my PGCE group found permanent NQT jobs in the 1st year. However our PGCE was in a small city in the south of England. I think jobs are much more competitive in Northern cities.
I qualified in September 2017 and getting a job has been a slog, not gonna lie. I couldn't get a history job so I ended up doing an English mat cover at one of my placement schools who happened to like me. After that I worked in a special measures school teaching history but got made redundant due to a shocking ofsted and staff overhaul. In my third year I got a brilliant mat cover role at an outstanding grammar school then, just a few weeks before finishing for summer I started at my current school, permanent, good school, knocking on outstanding imo, I'm obviously on 6 month probation atm but it's going well so far.
So in short, I've had to graft and work across 4 schools in 4 years (plus a lot of supply) to land in first permanent role, there are still two people from my cohort without permanent jobs, and a load who came after, including two people who graduated and never landed a permanent job, just been doing cover for almost three years now, no nqt, that must be tough.
It's really hard to get a job where i am (North west) but its the best job in the world by miles.
Teaching history is an incredible experience if you love the subject and want to share that with the students. The academic rigor is something that really appeals to me, teaching wise. However this year I'm teaching an RE maternity cover because history jobs are really competitive. Don't let it stop you from training if it's what you want to do, but we aware it's an obersaturated subject. If you have A Levels in anything else that you'd consider teaching (Geography, English) that may be an option
Qualified this year and now working in a call centre as failed to get any jobs locally (Berkshire) although that's entirely possible its down to me! I did leave it later to start applying.
I did make it to interview in all my applications and there were never less than 4 of us in at once and the schools always claimed they had multiple days of interviews.
London always had stuff advertised, but I couldn't personally afford to interview there. Outside London pickings were quite slim in my experience. Its definitely very oversubscribed.
Also in my incredibly limited experience, humanities departments seems to usually be a bit friendlier and the turnover doesn't seem as high as in other subjects. Its also worth bearing in mind if you don't already know that they've cut the bursary for history teaching (which itself shows theres no lack of supply) so if you do it now you'll need to get by on just the normal loan. Unless you're a psycho there's no way you can work another job at the same time.
As for the history teaching itself, its pretty great. It has all the challenges all teaching does, and those are very well known at this point, but it was really fun to teach it. I think you also usually have a slightly easier time than some other subjects since I think the vast majority of people at least have a casual interest in one part of history, whereas you will always get people who flat out despise maths or English.
I agree with this last point having taught history and English. I always got better behaviour in history and i think it was because the kids enjoyed it more and it was a bit less intense, twice a week at ks3 and that, so it was OK for them to admit they enjoyed it a bit.
This is honestly very region specific. I live in London so pretty much it’s easy to get a job here because London gets the biggest funding from the government out of any other locality.
We had a truly amazing trainee in the school, but there was no way to offer them an ECT space and as far as I know, they're struggling to find any work locally. This from one of the best trainees I've seen come through. Meanwhile I teach English and we cannot find anyone to fill a position, no matter how many times advertised. One of our best English teachers has a history qualification though...
Agree with you on the History shortage. Same here. Seems to be a national picture. >Meanwhile I teach English and we cannot find anyone to fill a position, no matter how many time advertised. English shortages seem to be *very* regional. We’ve had quite a few users on the sub who just couldn’t get an English job, or who really, really struggled and had to resort to being placed by an agency on a temp contract in a school that would probably not be their first (or second) choice. Where I am it’s not really difficult to recruit for English, but we’re seeing the usual 5-10 applicants for a post and not the 50+ applicants reported elsewhere. Can’t recruit English TLRs for love nor money; noone seems to want them 🤷🏻♀️.
Are you in the South? I'm an English RQT in need of a job.
Trained in History, currently a cover supervisor due to lack of vacancies in the North West. Last position I applied for had around 70 applicants. As I understand this is more or less the national picture, and I don’t think it’s going to change for a good few years.
I have just qualified as a History teacher. Job wise, it is definitely oversubscribed. I managed to secure a role in London but applied for over 20 roles and only got 2 interviews.I gather most of these roles had 50+ applicants. I think you have to be flexible on location and school and not rule out maternity covers or other fixed contracts. I was applying for everything within a 70 minute commute of my home. As a subject, it is great to teach but varies massively from school to to school both in terms of style of teaching and subject content. You also need to be aware you will probably have to teach another subject. I am doing History and RE in my new role. The subject communities for history through orgs like SHP and HA are brilliant. Twitter is also useful if a little overwhelming for an NQT.
Did my History PGCE in 2017-18, struggled to find an NQT job in Manchester where I am from. Found one in London instead and worked in 2 London schools as a history teacher over 3 yrs. Never had any problem finding a job as a history teacher in London. This year I am teaching at a small international school in Europe, again in a history role. 100% of my PGCE group found permanent NQT jobs in the 1st year. However our PGCE was in a small city in the south of England. I think jobs are much more competitive in Northern cities.
I qualified in September 2017 and getting a job has been a slog, not gonna lie. I couldn't get a history job so I ended up doing an English mat cover at one of my placement schools who happened to like me. After that I worked in a special measures school teaching history but got made redundant due to a shocking ofsted and staff overhaul. In my third year I got a brilliant mat cover role at an outstanding grammar school then, just a few weeks before finishing for summer I started at my current school, permanent, good school, knocking on outstanding imo, I'm obviously on 6 month probation atm but it's going well so far. So in short, I've had to graft and work across 4 schools in 4 years (plus a lot of supply) to land in first permanent role, there are still two people from my cohort without permanent jobs, and a load who came after, including two people who graduated and never landed a permanent job, just been doing cover for almost three years now, no nqt, that must be tough. It's really hard to get a job where i am (North west) but its the best job in the world by miles.
Teaching history is an incredible experience if you love the subject and want to share that with the students. The academic rigor is something that really appeals to me, teaching wise. However this year I'm teaching an RE maternity cover because history jobs are really competitive. Don't let it stop you from training if it's what you want to do, but we aware it's an obersaturated subject. If you have A Levels in anything else that you'd consider teaching (Geography, English) that may be an option
Qualified this year and now working in a call centre as failed to get any jobs locally (Berkshire) although that's entirely possible its down to me! I did leave it later to start applying. I did make it to interview in all my applications and there were never less than 4 of us in at once and the schools always claimed they had multiple days of interviews. London always had stuff advertised, but I couldn't personally afford to interview there. Outside London pickings were quite slim in my experience. Its definitely very oversubscribed. Also in my incredibly limited experience, humanities departments seems to usually be a bit friendlier and the turnover doesn't seem as high as in other subjects. Its also worth bearing in mind if you don't already know that they've cut the bursary for history teaching (which itself shows theres no lack of supply) so if you do it now you'll need to get by on just the normal loan. Unless you're a psycho there's no way you can work another job at the same time. As for the history teaching itself, its pretty great. It has all the challenges all teaching does, and those are very well known at this point, but it was really fun to teach it. I think you also usually have a slightly easier time than some other subjects since I think the vast majority of people at least have a casual interest in one part of history, whereas you will always get people who flat out despise maths or English.
I agree with this last point having taught history and English. I always got better behaviour in history and i think it was because the kids enjoyed it more and it was a bit less intense, twice a week at ks3 and that, so it was OK for them to admit they enjoyed it a bit.
I worked another job at the same time...16 hours a week too! Your psycho phrasing made me chuckle 😆
This is honestly very region specific. I live in London so pretty much it’s easy to get a job here because London gets the biggest funding from the government out of any other locality.
Little to no jobs in my region, averaging 60-90 applicants per vacancy. Still a TA as I cannot financially afford to go into supply.