MFL in North Wales

[eggofmantumbi]

Anyone teach in a school in North Wales? What's the situation like for MFL (I'm a French/ German specialist) at your school. Relocating due to husband's job and I'm worrying about there being fewer posts due to Welsh teaching....

[BookWitch]

I'm also an MFL specialist looking for teaching work in North Wales, it is my local area, but I have been overseas teaching EFL for the last ten years. I did my PGCE and NQT in England, and I've never taught in Wales.

I do speak Welsh, but not well enough to teach in Anglesey or Gwynedd. If you can travel to work in Conwy/Wrexham, the Welsh requirement is less stringent.

[eggofmantumbi]

Ah ok that's interesting. Husband will be working in Bangor so we might need to look at Welsh requirements if schools before we decide where to live....

[BookWitch]

If working in Bangor I'd look to live midway between Bangor and Conwy/Llandudno/colwyn bay, welsh requirements are more relaxed and several private schools around Llandudno that might be recruiting

[eggofmantumbi]

Thanks @bookwitch. We've been looking at Conwy/ Colwyn bay today online, so hoping to go have a look soon.
The other reason to live outside of Bangor for us is that we don't want our daughter at a Welsh medium school. She's already being brought up bilingually and we want her to focus on mastering those 2 languages!

[BookWitch]

Look at Bodelwyddan. It might look too far from Bangor, but I did it early morning and again in the early evening this week and it was 30 mins each way. Bodelwyddan would put you easily in reach of Wrexham and Chester (in England) for plenty of teaching jobs.

Deganwy is a nice area too (v close to Llandudno and Conwy), 20 mins from Bangor

[sakura06]

Beware of commuting on the A55 though. It can be very busy indeed. Bangor is a great place, being a university city. Conwy and Denbighshire are less Welsh-speaking, so you might find the range of jobs there. Some Welsh language learning is compulsory in all Welsh schools, so your daughter may become trilingual, but that would be a wonderful gift.

[sakura06]

By the way, eteach or council websites often seem to be the best places to look for teaching jobs in Wales (as opposed to TES).

[eggofmantumbi]

Thanks for all that information everyone. Really happy for her to do Welsh at school, but just would rather it wasn't Welsh medium. The eteach tip is really helpful. I wouldn't have thought of it

[sakura06]

Good luck! 👍