Even if you have been teaching a while, writing an application for a new role can seem just as daunting as when you wrote your first application all those years ago. Here are some tips for writing applications:

Action with impact

Make sure everything you include in your application also includes the impact that action had. Delivered intervention to a small group? Include information about the progress they made, with data if possible. Supported the school concert? Make sure you mention how this developed student relationships, school-to-home relationships or your understanding of health and safety.

Be specific

You have to be succinct in a person specification so every word matters. But it is essential that you are clear about the information you are giving to sell yourself properly. Don’t just put that you attended a school trip, be specific: you supervised borderline, PP Year 11 students in order to boost their knowledge and understanding. Forget the phrase contributed to SOW designs: you designed and delivered a sequence of lessons aimed at grade 7-9 target students to develop their understanding of AO2 in the Language exam.

Personalise it

You may think writing a generic response and then changing the interview school’s name will suffice, but it will be blindingly obvious if this is the case. Make sure you look at the school website, OFSTED report and Facebook page. What are they proud of? What areas of focus do they promote? What are their target areas? Knowing these things about the school will allow you to write a statement that clearly links to the school and shows that you have a genuine and sincere interest in joining the school community.

Give examples

Especially if you are moving for a promotion, demonstrating skills from the person specification is really important. These need to include examples to demonstrate how you have presented these same skills in the past. For example, the person specification might mention being able to support others, so include an anecdote of when you have done this e.g. it could be that you informally took a less experienced member of staff under your wing, when you picked up extra responsibility due to maternity cover or when you gave advice to another member of staff about behaviour management. And don’t forget to mention the impact of this too!

Ask someone to check it for you

As confident as you might be, it is always worth letting someone you trust have a read through your application for you to check for spelling and grammar errors, remind you of skills or situations you might have forgotten to include or check that you have written what you think you have.

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