Teaching Art in Scotland

[Pangur2]

Hello!
I teach Art in London but I'm from Dublin. I don't really like how art is taught in Ireland (sorry) and although it is a bit stressful I love teaching GCSE Art and A level. I have really good results; mostly A*s and A. Lots of digital stuff, life casting, special effects make up, animation etc.
The thing is I really really love Edinburgh and so does my husband. We'd love to move up eventually, but I really want to find out about what it's like teaching Art in Scotland.
I'd there scope for teaching some weirder stuff if you want to? Or is the course more prescriptive like the Irish Leaving Cert? (I'm so sorry!) After Brexit my English husband was furious and had notions of moving to Dublin, but I put a halt to that as I wouldn't want to teach Junior or Leaving Cert Art.

I am going to read the specs etc but I thought I'd try to get some initial opinions on the Scottish courses. Also would it be hard to get jobs for Foundation Art courses? Is sixth form college as much of a thing as it is in England? (It's not a thing in Ireland really.)
Thank you!

I hope that all made sense, I typed it on a new phone and I am not used to this keyboard at all...

I know nothing at all about art so hopefully some experts will be along soon. I can only give general information about Scottish education.

There are no 6th form colleges . Children go to primary school for 7 years from aged 5-11. Then 5 or 6 years on secondary school.

In secondary / high school, children follow the Curriculum for Excellence ( Google it ) .

All children take art and design I n 1st and 2nd year, then some of them will choose it for CFE national 5 exams which they sit in 4th year ( in some schools they choose subjects earlier or later ) .

Then some will continue on to sit CFE Highers in 5th year and Advanced Highers in 6th year.

Here's all the past papers here

www.sqa.org.uk/pastpapers/findpastpaper.htm?subject=Art+and+Design

Obviously if you teach in a big school you will have more of a chance to teach at Higher and advanced higher level and there will be better facilities.

Most schools are comprehensive and take pupils from a defined catchment area. Some are also religious schools - nearly all catholic. You have to be Catholic to teach there or be approved by the Church authorities ( I think you can only get this if they are short of teachers on that subject ) . Most of them are fairly religion lite at high school stage ( at least compared to ireland ).

So the schools are mostly defined by the type of housing in their catchement area, although parents can make a placement request for an our of area school.

There's no 11 plus or grammar schools or selective entry to state schools. Very few single sex state schools.

Cool, thanks for the overview! I'll start researching the art course, thanks!

Getting registered with the GTCS can take ages if you qualified outside Scotland. Might be worth starting the application process now? You will need degree and PGCE transcripts for starters. A vast majority of jobs won't take applications unless your application is at least pending, preferably you would be registered and have PVG in place already. Oh, and if you qualified on the job without PGCE is will be very difficult if not impossible to register (things have changed slightly recently and 'provisional registration' may be possible if you can top up pedagogy etc at an ITT institution).

I agree. The biggest obstacle will be the GTCS registration. Details here:

http://www.gtcs.org.uk/registration/register-of-teachers/routes-into-teaching.aspx