Hi there everyone! We hope you had a lovely Christmas break and a great start to your New Year. We are now back in the office and can assist you with any needs you may have. To kick off 2022, we have decided to post a weekly blog here on our website, with lots of different content including advice, tips, FAQs and we are even going to post some interesting interviews with teaching and support staff, but also with a couple of our staff in the office, at a later date. To begin, we wanted to discuss supply as a whole and what we can offer you and our schools.
Working as a supply teacher on an assignment basis is a different route to teaching that offers many benefits in comparison to permanent teaching positions. Supply teaching can offer so much variety, it is a great way of getting your foot in the door of many schools in the area and getting know which ones are your favourite, as you could be working in multiple schools in a week. With its temporary nature, it offers flexibility, the opportunity to design your work schedule around your life and have no responsibility of paperwork outside of lessons. You will find that the more efficient and flexible you are, the more you will work. Supply also allows you to be inventive in your teaching style and can be very rewarding in that regard. All schools are different which is quite an exciting aspect of supply and you can adapt your teaching style according to the school you are teaching in.
As a supply teacher, your main responsibility is ensuring that the children’s education isn’t affected by their teacher not being present and they are disrupted as little as possible. Just like a permanent teacher you will still be expected to deliver engaging lessons and promote good behaviour within the class, while keeping it organised for when the teacher returns. You will usually report to the head teacher or the deputy headteacher but this can depend on the management of the school. Lesson plans are usually set in advance, following the national curriculum guidelines, so it is rare that you would be asked to prepare anything but it is also a good idea to bring emergency planning just in case there was nothing left for you. To be able to work as a teacher, you need a Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), PGCE OR B’ed and there are many different directions that this can be obtained. We will discuss this more in a future blog post.
As a supply teaching assistant, your main responsibilities include, assisting children who need extra support, helping teachers in lessons, getting the classroom ready and helping tidy at the end of the day. The person you report to will depend on the school as they can differ in size and management. In regards to supporting children, you could be assigned on a 1-1, 1-2 basis or as a general TA that will help the entire class, depending on the needs of the school and the children. To be able to work as a teaching assistant, you will need a minimum of a level 2 NVQ but a level 3 is desired.
At Claire’s School Solutions, we offer a choice of day-to-day, short-term and long-term positions and even vacant permanent posts, you could be covering for many reasons ranging from day-to day illness to maternity leave. If schools like you and need cover for the rest of the week, they will often ask for you to come back for rest of the week, as schools like continuity for the children. We will tend to call throughout the day but our busiest time is in the mornings so be prepared for early phone calls. If this is something you are not interested in, you can let us know. More information on the way we work will be in our blog post next week.
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From Team Claire’s x
