What's teaching like in Wales?

[rollonthesummer]

Are things better than in England? My DH's family are Welsh and it's so lovely where they live (south wales). Teaching is such a shitstorm here in England at the moment, it makes me want to give teaching one more chance somewhere else!

What's the PMR/planning/curriculum/Ofsted/marking/use of unqualified teachers etc like?

Would I not be allowed to teach in Wales as I don't speak Welsh though?

Don't kid yourself - I'm a governor at DD's primary and Estyn have decided it is and most local schools are adequate. The beurocracy is unbelievable.

The national curriculum for Wales is old (2008) and due an update. There's a literacy and numeracy framework that's to be integrated, I believe, at some point, but no big new curriculum change for a while. All easy to find online.

There's an expectation of being able to teach your class welsh, but some teachers do team teaching and swap with another to teach to their strengths. There's an expectation too that even english speaking schools will still use as much Welsh as possible so it's used incidentally for commands and common phrases and also we teach it through our other topics where we can too.

No SATs. But there are tests for year 2-9 in reading, numeracy and mathematical reasoning.

There's less money in education here. Funding per pupil is much lower than over the border.

PPA time was initially covered by qualified teachers, but increasingly it's covered by HLTA's and now TA's too.

Some areas of Wales will require you to be fluent in Welsh as all schools are Welsh medium.