Where to look

Suggested places NQT jobs may be advertised

Your PGCE tutor
Your tutor is probably your first port of call. He or she will have many contacts with schools in the area, and not only the ones that you and your coursemates will have used for placements this year. If vacancies suitable for NQTs come up in a local school, they may well contact your tutor who will circulate them. If you do not want to teach in the region or area where you trained, your tutor may still be able to help by putting you in touch with equivalent tutors in your chosen region.

Your GTP or SCITT provider
You will have been embedded in a school for your training and, if you are lucky, you might like the school and it may offer you a contract for your NQT period and beyond.  However, you do not have to stay in that school if it does not suit you and, equally, sometimes the host school does not offer to keep you on after you gain QTS. Your GTP provider may be able to help you with other vacancies in the region or area.

Your local IOP Physics Network Co-ordinator
The IOP’s Physics Teacher Network provide support for teachers across the UK through a network of regions. Usually teachers or former teachers themselves, our Network Co-ordinators have close links with the schools in their region and often know of vacancies. This also means they are likely to be able to answer your questions about a specific school. So, if you know which part of the UK you would like to work in, use this link to find and contact the appropriate Network Co-ordinator.

TalkPhysics
When we hear of vacancies suitable for NQTs we post them to the Learning to Teach Physics discussion group on the TalkPhysics web forum.

TES (Times Educational Supplement)
This is THE place for teaching job ads.  You can browse on-line or set up e-mail alerts or look in the weekly print edition. Be warned, at the height of teacher recruitment somewhere around April/May, the print version of the TES can be several inches thick, listing 600-700 jobs in a single week. NB When searching, it’s worth typing physics under both the physics and science categories. This is because a shortage of physics teachers has made some schools pessimistic that they will be able to find a specialist, so instead they advertise for a general science teacher who has ‘ability to offer’ or ‘capability to teach’ physics. You’ll also find some overseas jobs advertised here.

Local Education Authorities
Local Education Authorities know of all the vacancies in the schools they fund, so will be able to alert you to local vacancies.   In addition, the TES is an expensive place to advertise and many schools choose not to use it. LEAs usually have a jobs mailing list which you can request to join. Plus, there is a certain amount of word-of-mouth in LEAs, so getting your name known can make a difference to whether you spring to mind when an LEA hears of a vacancy.

The Schools Recruitment Service
The government-funded Schools Recruitment Service has been live since early 2010. It aims to manage the whole job application process online for job-seeking teachers, from sending job alerts by e-mail or SMS texts and offering an online application system to allowing employers to search against your interests, experience and qualifications and contact you about potential vacancies. Some Local Education Authorities have announced that they will use the service as their preferred route to advertising vacancies, but in terms of volume of vacancies listed, it’s still early days.

Local papers and regional press
Many schools and colleges advertise vacancies in their local newspapers. Click on the above link to reach a list of over 1,200 local newspapers and websites. Their formats are varied but most have job searches online.

Independent School Council
Vacancies in private schools are advertised on the ISC website. Independent schools do now have government authorisation to provide the statutory functions necessary for the NQT induction via the Independent Schools Council Teaching Induction Panel ISCtip.

Schools’ own websites
Many schools advertise vacancies on their own websites. Alternatively, if there is a school you are interested in, you could contact the head of physics/science direct and ask if they are looking for anyone.

Other suggestions

  • eteach - online recruitment site