I must admit that I've sent out a record number of applications this year, but only to jobs that are possibly beyond me on paper. This you may think that naïve and a waste of my time, but I've always lived by the philosophy "if you don't ask, you don't get". Now I don't appear to have "got" so far, but that hasn't left me hugely downhearted, for the reasons below.
I know that teachers in my subject, at least competent ones (which I, perhaps incorrectly, consider myself to be), are fairly few and far between; they have been for years and this situation is unlikely to change in the near future, if at all. Not even the gleaming and government lauded TeachFirst will rectify the shortage of staff or potential staff as there are just too many spaces to fill. Whatever your feelings regarding TeachFirst (and I'm sure other, similar "charities" will spring up with government backing in the near future), people who enrol are filling vacancies that would otherwise be very difficult to fill, and no matter how long these people remain in the profession, some at the very least must do a good job, and some must continue to work in education.
My qualifications aren't great. I am the first to admit that I took a relatively easy option regarding my degree (a degree I genuinely enjoyed, I hasten to add, despite lacking sufficient talent to really excel in it), and I had to spend extra time at university to bring myself up to speed in my current teaching subject in which I had decnt A Levels, but I now have over a decade of teaching experience and many other positives on my CV. I have held posts of responsibility, but they didn't really "float my boat" if I'm honest. It wasn't that I did them badly, in fact far from it (I'm not boasting at this point). I was given a Head of Department job temporarily which was offered to me permanently but I didn't accept. The reason for this is that I actually quite like teaching, and the further up the food chain you go, the less teaching you do. The problem is that I am applying for positions with no management and potential employers wonder why. The current obsession with promotion is held against those who don't necessarily want it; I look at the TeachFirst logo at this point.
Some people might not want to get out of the classroom - ever thought of that? However weird you may think that is, there are some of us out there. It's not that I think I couldn't do a decent job higher up the food chain, I just have no ambition to be there. Is it really a crime not to want to be a manager? Perhaps not, but rightly or wrongly, potential employers are suspicious.
There's also the fact that I see no point moving for the sake of do so; my experience is that most schools are essentially the same. Starting a new school is stressful and it takes a while to establish yourself and learn new ropes, so I will only move to a "better" school. These schools get many more applicants, many of whom look far better on paper than I do, so I fully expect knock backs.
The problem is that in the current climate if I don't move I will be forced to leave teaching. It's not that I don't enjoy it (not all the time, admittedly), but it is becoming unbearable in certain sectors. You need a good department head, which, fortunately I have, but no leader can't shield everyone from all the faeces being dropped on educators from various heights at present.
I know that I'm not alone in this feeling either. People, even in the current economic climate are leaving the profession in their droves. Although, with the rise in demand for private tutors due to increasing exam pressure on students, and decreasing attention paid in classrooms by them too, maybe this is what these ex-teachers are now doing.
Ultimately it boils down to the fact that if I don't find something else to do or a different place in which to teach soon, I can't be held accountable for my actions. I think the main regret I have is that I'm beginning to think that becoming a teacher in the first place was a mistake.
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