Ouch! Keep banging my head against the glass ceiling

[Piggywaspushed]

I wanted to know if there was anyone else like me on MN who has been applying for secondary SLT jobs for as long as me (about 10 years...) and got nowhere. I must have applied for 40 jobs ( in a 35 miles radius). I have been shortlisted maybe 4 times (not including the four times I have been interviewed at my own school) : once for a DH post (I was thrilled but flummoxed!), the others for AHT posts and once for a post 200 miles away which I got cold feet about and now regret. Failed at interview every time. I find it v frustrating, as I am sometimes told I am not shortlisted because of lack of experience on other schools! Oh the irony! In my mid late forties now , I fear it is now too late. And I am very sad because I really have given over half my life to teaching, am a career teacher and have been told by many that I am a really good line manager and teachers who half know me often wonder why I have not got further.

All we hear about is the recruitment and retention crises but there is a real bottleneck to break into SLT. And , yet, on MN all I keep reading about is how shit a lot of SLTs are...which doesn't make sense as, in many cases, those people were appointed from fields of 40+ (unless it's my school, in which case they are often internal)

Anyone else in the same , or similar, boat want to share my pain? Or anyone else have any real insights into why some people make shortlists and other candidates, equally good (or better) on paper don't?

ps this is staffroom, please be gentle with me

My twitter feed is often full of teachers tweeting about conferences on Saturdays and there has been a big maths conference these last couple of days, in the holidays.

I think because schools are being so tight on releasing teachers for CPD and refusing to pay for courses, teachers are doing it in their own time.

I noticed that Debra Kidd said that she was not running any further Northern Rocks conferences because she didn’t want to be part of this trend.

I bloody love Debra Kidd!

I have not heard of Debra Kidd : she sounds sensible. certainly everything Chartered College does is Saturdays.

I could do another qualification, I guess : but having done the leadership thing, I am not sure this is what I am missing : I genuinely am always meeting all the essentials and sometimes all the desirables of person specs, too...

I have already set up two staff CPD groups, but may see if I can set up a staff wellbeing group, or something. Not sure how one measures impact of this - but whole school SMSC doesn't seem to have done it on applications either!

Sorry, don't know if it's been said but you can ask the LA , as a data subject access request, for all the shortlisting panel (written) comments and interview panel scoring sheets and written comments.
Beware though. When people write those they don't expect the other person ever to read them and they can be brutal.

Wow, can you? I don't think these are LA schools though on the whole? Actually, I have shortlisted and I do recall now that we were told we had to keep all or notes and that. after a certain time period , we had to give them over for shredding. One man did ask to see the decision notes. I'd like to think a decent head could give me some honest reason at some point without the palaver, but it is worth considering!

I have been given interview notes after internal interviews. I was once told to pay no attention to them by an interviewer in a private conversation because she said the ticks had been put on afterwards to justify who got the job

Here’s Debra Kidd’s blog about Saturday CPD debrakidd.wordpress.com/2018/03/10/the-end-of-northern-rocks-the-beginning-of/

Her book Notes from the Frontline is worth a read.

You can get them from whoever holds the data, so the MAT in that case.
Just a thought, if you feel like you're not getting decent, constructive feedback.
You would need to have a thick skin to read it I imagine. Even as a successful candidate!

I shall think about this tiger !

I looked Kidd up : next course : Sat 19 May!

I asked to go on a David Didau literacy course. they are sending someone else

Ah. She mentions that in her blog...

I’ve gone off Didau a bit after the racism thing

Interesting that the Chartered College stuff is on Saturdays. Not confident enough in their pull to have it on a work day!

Racism thing? I don't know about this! Tell me more...

I do know he is a bit of an arrogant knob but his literacy stuff is very very good.

Someone I work with has been to a couple of CC things : he says they are very good but he is young, no kids, ambitious would no doubt make a shortlist even though I mentor him

Oh he posted the first comment on this blog: www.learningspy.co.uk/research/differences-and-similarities/ about race, IQ and educational outcomes, basically a topic which needs handling with the greatest care and sensitivity, if handled at all, and he just dropped it casually into conversation.
Then he got accused of racism a lot on twitter, because linking race and IQ is a favourite past time of racists.
Then he wrote a boo hoo poor me I’m so misunderstood blog post www.learningspy.co.uk/featured/on-being-called-a-racist/

And he was just a complete cock about it.

To be fair to him, he then wrote this where he finally seems to get what people were on about www.learningspy.co.uk/featured/coming-terms-white-privilege-structural-racism/ but still in a bit of a smug way.

But you summed it up with ‘arrogant knob’ tbh.

Yes, he is. But he can see right through an awful lot of statistical bollocks. On Twitter he tends to retweet some dubious educationalists. A narcissist, too. hey ho.

oh dear. I have just read it. Oh dear oh dear. Silly man.

Yes, tone deaf, unaware of his own privilege and totally arrogant. I bet he doesn’t have any problems getting promotions.

He doesn't need to be because he has so successfully self promoted!!

A joke I have with a teacher on my reading thread is that we call him Didau Duck , as in 'oh no , here comes Didau; everybody duck!'

He rather reminds me of someone I work with.

But, yeah, just looked him up : spent 15 years in the classroom and was head of two departments and an AH within that time.

Still 15 years is roughly 13 more than Daisy Christoudoulou has done!

I’ve noticed you’re a bit down on poor Daisy. What’s the problem? I saw her talk about assessment after levels at ResearchEd (what’s that? Saturday CPD paid for out of my own money because school won’t send me on courses?) and she was spot on about schools trying to replace levels with whatever level-like thing they could grasp at, which turns out to be new GCSE grades (urgh) for the vast majority of schools.

I feel she has become Daisy Christodoulou TM a bit.

I read her book and it bored me and told me nothing new.

I guess I am not so bothered about the levels thing because we get ours at year 9.

I am worried her comparative marking thing will gain traction and spread and I really just want to be able to mark : I don't want to have to sit for an hour or so with everybody else making piles of marking in rank order because it is 'more accurate' and 'saves time' when it doesn't.

I am also a bit worried by how in thrall to her Nick Gibb is,, so there isn't a lot of critical analysis of what she says : she is the new Hattie perhaps!

She was phenomenal on University Challenge, admittedly!

She is like one of those people who get a head of year job , having been a form tutor for all of a year or so. I like people who have walked the walk ...which of course takes us back to why I am not being shortlisted : I have walked more miles than The Proclaimers! And that is not valued much any more.

Tbf I glaze over at comparative judgement because it’s irrelevant to maths! It seems to make sense, for summative assessment to me, I’m surprised you don’t like it!

Daisy is, at least, a woman on a stage that is dominated by men. All credit to her, she must work incredibly hard to have the profile she has at her age.

I suppose so... but I think the fact that some people work so hard can be a double edged sword for the rest of us.

The issue with CJ is it is being heralded as the answer to workload and it really isn't. And I don't know one single English teacher who doesn't mark by norm referencing what she has marked against the other things she has marked.

It would be fine if it were just done for mocks and exams, but I suspect some schools will say everything has to be marked using CJ, which will definitely increase workload!

How about telling us to stop incessantly ranking and grading stuff and just allow us to mark it? Like in the good old days.

Ross McGill I do like : but you are probably going to tell me he is signed up to the Ku Klux Klan!

Ross McGill @teachertoolkit #fiveminuteeverything #mostfollowedteacherontwitterever. That Ross McGill?
He’s probably fine, but I can’t get past how self-promoting he is to read what he actually has to say. I hate the layout of his website! (Not read his book, tbf which is supposed to be good).

Oh crap, I just realised he signed up to MN with that username and so now has been emailed about my comment. Sorry Ross.
But, tbf he did sign up to MN to spam it with his blog, if I recall correctly, and urged his twitter followers to do the same.