You’ll need a well put together, grammatically-perfect teaching CV. Not only should this prove your teaching skills, knowledge and specialisms. But, it should also display your dedication to student’s long-term development and sheer passion for education.
To do so, make sure your teaching CV answers these four questions:
What is your teaching expertise?
Don’t make the mistake of merely stating the educational establishment, dates and a few general responsibilities in your work experience section. In order to show off your teaching expertise, you need to provide detail about each teaching role you’ve held. Use this template as a guide:
Role outline: 1-2 sentences outlining the place of work. For example, was it a school, college or university? As well as the specific age groups and subjects you taught.
Responsibilites: In the form of a bullet-pointed list, note down important day-to-day duties. Where possible, add impact by incorporating results, facts and figures.
Achievements: If you have any notable achievements, add them onto the end to catch recruiter’s attention. This could be something along the lines of “Improved class exam results by 20% and achieved a pass rate of 85%” or “Set-up a new subject after-school club which 40% of the class attended”.
Make sure to add your subject and curriculum knowledge, ages and levels taught and impressive achievements into your personal profile, too.
Are you qualified?
The teaching industry is (understandably) heavily regulated as professions go, and teachers are expected to meet several educational requirements. Whether you hold a degree in education, a PGCE or an alternative teaching qualification, it’s essential to make it clear on your CV.
Make sure your personal profile highlights your qualifications. This ensures potential employers can easily spot them whilst making the initial shortlist.
Add a more in-depth educational section at the bottom of your CV. This can detail your PGCE and/or degree, A-Levels and GCSEs and vocational training along with the institution name, dates and grades. You might want to also go into more detail about placements, modules or assignments. Especially if you feel they’re highly relevant to the position you’re applying for.
Do you help outside of the classroom?
Competition for teaching roles is tough, so showing your experience beyond the classroom can help you stand out in a pile of applications.
Have you lead extracurricular activities, helped organise school events or trips, organized revision classes or done anything else which went above and beyond your job description? These things are all great for your CV and prove your passion for student development.
And if you’ve acted as a head of year, head of subject or have aided in school administration, budgeting, safeguarding, special needs, training or other duties, add them into your CV and personal profile too – they’ll give you huge brownie points!
What do your students achieve?
Employers want to know that as well as simply fulfilling your duties, you had a positive impact on your students and the school as a whole. A great way of doing this is to make your CV achievement-focused with facts and figures, for example:
- Raised the average GCSE grade from C to B
- Introduced an anti-bullying campaign which lessened bullying reports by 40%
- Achieved a high pass rate of 90%+ in A-Level class 3 years running
- Introduced a revision class and helped 50% of low-ability GCSE students achieve above their predicted grade
Quantifying your achievements in this way is sure to help you catch recruiter’s attention and add huge value to your CV.
Master your teaching CV
Hopefully, with a little time and effort, you can put together a winning teaching CV. Once it’s ready, register it on sites like Education Jobs and find the right job opportunity, for you!
About the author: Andrew Fennell is the founder of CV writing advice website StandOut CV – he is a former recruitment consultant and contributes careers advice to websites like Business Insider, The Guardian and FastCompany.
